Dragonball: Evolution (2009)
Before it was the popular 1990’s anime series Dragon Ball Z, the Dragon Ball franchise started off as a Japanese manga in 1984.
If the subtitle doesn’t make it obvious enough, DragonBall Evolution is a live action film (loosely) based on the first volumes of the Japanese original comic. What this means is that fans of the original comic are now balding their way through their 30’s, whilst fans of the TV show are probably drinking away their prime in their 20’s.
Yet Evolution seems to be more concerned with recruiting the testosterone troubled boys of today than it is rewarding fans of yesteryear. This would be fine if the film didn’t feel as though it required its audience to have prior knowledge of the Dragon Ball universe to make any real sense of it all.
The plot is simple enough to grasp, but the film launches its audience head first into a muddling universe which surely requires you to be a Dragon Ball enthusiast to truly understand its many nuances.
The biggest problem is that the 150+ anime episodes (of the original series) have been heavily truncated, and repackaged, into an 85 minute film fit for the attention span of a teenager. The story itself revolves around high school outcast Goku (Justin Chatwin), trained to fight by his grandfather Gohan (Randall Duk Kim), who gives him an orange-glowing Dragon Ball for his 18th birthday.
The ball is one of seven, which when combined, grants the bearer a single ‘perfect’ wish. However Goku’s birthday celebrations are cut short when the evil alien Piccolo (James Marsters) attempts collect the Dragon Balls, and use them to bring forth the apocalypse. With the help of his grandfather’s mentor Roshi and his ragtag gang of fighter friends, Goku must stop Piccolo before he collects all seven Dragon Balls.
Fans decried every scrap of material they could get their hands on, from leaked screencaps to shots of unpainted action figures to the teaser trailers, each time their derisive laughter and scorn growing louder and louder.
In the end, a bunch of talentless hacks with studio money slapped together a big steaming pile of baffling garbage that fails utterly on every possible level and will please no one at all.
Maybe your eyeballs will come out if you watch this, please be careful. More at: cutprintreview.com
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Originally Posted by ware4me
