What if Dragon Ball Evolution was good?

[DanielSSJ]

Dragon Ball Evolution. We all know what it is and how it failed. Some of us haven't seen the movie, and the rest of us would probably like to forget. but how could've the movie been better? Specifically, how could've Dragon Ball Evolution been, not just a better Dragon Ball adaption, but a good movie in general?

[Hellspawn28]

For the movie to be good, it needed:

- Better actors and acting. Almost everyone in the movie was terrible and no one really could not act. Justin Chatwin was too random of a choice since he didn't really look like Goku and he could not act.

- Better special effects. The practical effects are decent while the CG looks like shit. The movie looks and feels like something from the late 90's.

- Better writing because no one in this movie had any level of personality and there was no chemistry with any of the main characters. Piccolo was a generic villain with a one dimensional personalty. The movie wants us to think that these Dragon Balls are important when no one really cares about the characters and story in the movie to give a damn. The writing is the biggest issue with this movie since everything in this movie was terribly written. Even people who never watch or read the manga, or don't even like the series felt the movie was awful.

- Get rid of Goku being in High School and just have him live on his own in the wild. Starting off with Piccolo was not a bad choice since he was the first major villain in the series. Changes to the series is fine as long if they are done right.

With a good cast, acting and writing then Dragon Ball could have been a 7 part movie series. Start with Piccolo then do a mix between the 21st Tenkachi Budokai and 23rd Tenkachi Budokai for the second movie. The third movie can have Radditz, Nappa and Vegeta. The 4th movie can have Freeza. The 5th movie can have #16-18 and Dr. Gero. The 6th movie can have Cell. The 7th movie can end with Majin Buu.

[Vijay]

Solid premise, good actors, epic music. Screen-play & direction is what makes or breaks a film

I'm not saying DBE doesnt have any of these. It had. Only prob was it was done very superficially.

Justin was okay. You dont need A-grade Hollywood star to be Goku. But there needs to be some decent amount of exposure/depth to understanding the character

Evans knew how to play Captain right. Tobey Maguire showed appropriate intensity when required in the SP trilogies & Edward Norton underplayed in Incredible Hulk. See, there needs to be some level of self-counsciousness & respect when you "act".

Chatwin requires more honing

Screenplay & direction was trash in DBE. The soul was lacking & bombastic, Transformer-esque vibe was prevalent throughout da film

A good DragonBall film requires a studio/maker/director who recognises & appreciates the source material. Rest will be history!

[Hellspawn28]

We need someone who can pull off Goku's personality. Justin Chatwin was unable to do that. James Marsters is the only actor in the movie in my opinion that pull off a decent role. Everyone else was bad.

[Zephyr]

We may have had a live action film series instead of the anime resurgence we're getting.

[Super Saiyan Swagger]

- Stephen Chow directing and writing the film
- Actors that look appropriate for their roles (except for James Marsters. He actually did a pretty good job as Piccolo)
- Recreate the Dragon Ball world rather than making a modern look of it all
- Include Krillin somehow
- Don't make the Kamehameha fucking heal people
- Scrap the whole Highschool crap
- Include some over-the-top fights
- More emphasis on humour
- Make the whole adventure aspect feel interesting and new by having our heroes visiting locales similar to that of Toriyama's work rather than places that look generic as fuck such as a volcano or a desert. Get some inspiration from Toriyama's work and recreate his unique locales.

Spoiler:

Recreate stuff like this! It would look great.

-Don't include Goku's backstory yet, save it for a sequel.

It's really hard to make a live-action adaptation of Dragon Ball while still trying to keep the source materials charm and magic, so I can somewhat understand why they approached the adaptation the way they did. But it didn't work at all and the film is nothing but a mess. What I listed above could at least make the movie good... 'faithful' would be a more appropriate word. I actually don't know if it would be any good.

I'm actually super curious what would have happened if DBE was a box office success and we got sequels.

[Cipher]

Literally every choice would need to be different. Like, every single one.

It is a monstrously terrible movie, interest in its source material aside.

[whitetop]

I would just say everything x10 betters. just the whole film.

Actors and writers that know what dragonball is all about, not a quick look at it but a really good look, take notes build from it, with the CGI today this could be a great film if they did a new RL one based on dragonball properly,


(i seen the cover and knew it was a bad film + watched first 10 min and had to return for refund as it was that bad)

[Gonstead]

James Marsters is the only actor in the movie in my opinion that pull off a decent role. Everyone else was bad.

Ironic considering he's a pretty big fan of Dragon Ball. He even had some of his input detailed into the final design of the look of Piccolo.

[ekrolo2]

By not doing it in live action? It's probably hypocritical of me to say this as a comic book fan, but Dragon Ball can't work in live action as far as I'm concerned.

[B]

A straightforward live-action adaptation of DB cannot be good. Sorry.

There are so many problems with this movie that it would take all day to list ways to fix it. How about the fact that nobody bothers to explain anything about what is going on? Who are these people? Why is Goku training? How did this tournament come to be? The movie assumes fans will fill in the blanks themselves, but it's so far removed from its source material that I don't see why a fan would care? It makes no effort to be coherent.

[successoroffate]

For the movie to be good, it needed:

- Better actors and acting. Almost everyone in the movie was terrible and no one really could not act. Justin Chatwin was too random of a choice since he didn't really look like Goku and he could not act.

- Better special effects. The practical effects are decent while the CG looks like shit. The movie looks and feels like something from the late 90's.

- Better writing because no one in this movie had any level of personality and there was no chemistry with any of the main characters. Piccolo was a generic villain with a one dimensional personalty. The movie wants us to think that these Dragon Balls are important when no one really cares about the characters and story in the movie to give a damn. The writing is the biggest issue with this movie since everything in this movie was terribly written. Even people who never watch or read the manga, or don't even like the series felt the movie was awful.

- Get rid of Goku being in High School and just have him live on his own in the wild. Starting off with Piccolo was not a bad choice since he was the first major villain in the series. Changes to the series is fine as long if they are done right.

With a good cast, acting and writing then Dragon Ball could have been a 7 part movie series. Start with Piccolo then do a mix between the 21st Tenkachi Budokai and 23rd Tenkachi Budokai for the second movie. The third movie can have Radditz, Nappa and Vegeta. The 4th movie can have Freeza. The 5th movie can have #16-18 and Dr. Gero. The 6th movie can have Cell. The 7th movie can end with Majin Buu.

In short: The movie needed a better budget. Just like Marsters said, they we're called up for a 100 million $ production and in the end it was only a 30 million budget.

If we take that into consideration, it is explainable why the movie felt short. I still own the Blu ray of the movie, and I still remember the Best Buy Clerk asking me "Why are you buying this crap?"

If I look at the movie with a critic eye looking for flaws and mistakes, of course I am going to hate the movie. However, every time I watched the movie I always look at it as a separate entity and therefore try to enjoy it as much as I can. It's not perfect, but it's not that bad neither. Until this very day, I still enjoy Marsters dedication to play the Piccolo Character and hope that we get another movie in the future (with a better budget of course)

[FoolsGil]

Let me channel John Campea for a minute. paraphrased: "Make a good movie first off. The problem wasn't that the director alienated the fans. The problem was that the director made a bad movie. Them being faithful could have still made a bad movie if they still had bad plot and bad dialogue and bad action."

So though I hate the idea of how the characters were, even Goku in fucking High School, if the movie was actually good, it wouldn't have mattered in the long run. I know I would have been hella curious if it had a 90% on the Tomato Meter and Goku was in High School.

[Hellspawn28]

I think Dragon Ball Evolution needed a better director. Fox pick the guy who work on Final Destination and The One. I enjoy the Final Destination movies for what they are, but James Wong was not the right choice for the movie. The guy has never done a single good movie in my opinion. James Wong said that he is a big Dragon Ball fan, but he sucks at storytelling.

[nickzambuto]

Since the movie did literally nothing right, all you can do is just list off generic improvements. Better script, better actors, better director... but wouldn't ALL movies benefit from those things? Well Dragon Ball Evolution is a unique case where literally every department was done terribly.

If I can say one thing in specifics, I'd liked if it was based more on the source material, at least in tone and atmosphere.

[Captain Strawberry]

Also they don't need to get Goku's hair exactly right. They can just do the fringe/bangs and a bit spiky.

[TheBlackPaladin]

1) Above all else, make it a character-based Dragon Ball movie, not a phoned-in Dragon Ball/Dragon Ball Z hybrid movie.
Evolution felt like they were trying to combine Dragon Ball and DBZ and rush through a bullet-point list of important story moments. Not only was there a frequent clashing of tones, but it also felt very rushed. My guess is that they thought as long as they threw in some fight scenes, fans wouldn't complain...but the fight scenes were some of the biggest let-downs in the film. To really do DBZ's battle scenes justice, you need to have a Man of Steel budget (I don't like everything about Man of Steel, but that final battle at the end with Supes against Zod was probably the closest thing I've ever seen to a DBZ fight on a live-action movie screen). Realistically speaking, there's no way Fox would green-light a movie with such a monstrous budget unless they were damn confident in their ability to sell tickets, and there's no way they'll have that confidence in a post-Evolution era. They need to see a successful first entry in the franchise first.

The good news is, the Man of Steel-budget fights really don't happen until DBZ, so you don't need as big a budget for a Dragon Ball movie. A good way to keep the budget down? Make it a light-hearted action comedy (but not a parody, of course) with an emphasis on developing the characters, with only two or three fights. Then, when that movie's successful, you won't have to spend as much time on character development in the subsequent installments and will have the budget to accurately re-create DBZ's fights.

2) For the love of God, re-create Akira Toriyama's world, don't create some other world that's vaguely Dragon Ball-inspired.
Not much to say here...if anybody has seen Evolution, they know that it's pretty much a new world and with new characters, not really a faithful emulation of the original world. I understand some things would have to be changed (they could tone down the colorfulness of it all...that works as a cartoon, but I wouldn't want the live action Speed Racer look), but they should keep it to a minimum. When I completed my viewing of Evolution, I wasn't even sure who it was made for. Clearly not fans of the source material. If you want to create an original world, then make an original movie.

3) Give Akira Toriyama the right to approve the script.
Also not much to say here. The creator deserves to have final say here.

BONUS ROUND: Cast Chris Pratt as Goku, Hugh Jackman as Vegeta, and Andy Serkis in a motion-capture suit as Freeza.
Not necessary, but I dare say this would be awesome.

[Hellspawn28]

I'm glad that Puar and Oolong did not show up in DBE. No one would take the movie seriously with talking animals. Not to mention talking cartoonish CG animals always look terrible. Remember how bad Scooby Doo and Garfield looked in CG? If they can't make those two look good in CG with bigger budgets then I doubt they would have pull it off with CG. The Oozaru in the movie was too small. It should have been half CG and practical similar to the T-Rex from Jurassic Park.

Besides getting Pura and Oolong. I would get rid of the Ginyu Force if I ever did sequels to Dragon Ball Evolution. The Ginyu Force are too goofy and no one would take them seriously. I would have Zarbon have a bigger role instead. Fat Buu would need to be taken out too and just have Super Buu be the main form of Majin Buu for future sequels.

If DBE was good and did well for sequels. I would do the movies like this:

Movie 1 - First Hunt for the Dragon Balls arc and Piccolo as the main villain
Movie 2 - The Tenkachi Budokai and the return of Piccolo. Krillin, Tien (No Chazou) and Tao appear in the movie.
Movie 3 - The Saiyans arrive. Goku and Chi Chi have a child. Piccolo becomes a good guy.
Movie 4 - They go to Namek to fight Freeza and Zarbon.
Movie 5 - They return to Earth to deal with #16-18 and Dr. Gero
Movie 6 - Cell arrives and the Cell Games begins.
Movie 7 - The final movie with Majin Buu.

BONUS ROUND: Cast Chris Pratt as Goku, Hugh Jackman as Vegeta, and Andy Serkis in a motion-capture suit as Freeza.
Not necessary, but I dare say this would be awesome.

Andy Serkis would be make a good Majin Buu via motion cpature. I would have Freeza be played by Christoph Waltz. Cell would be played by Michael Fassbender.

[Lord Beerus]

- Keep the original script
- Recast everyone
- Have Zack Snyder direct
- Have Rick Baker be in charge of makeup and hairstyling
- Have Emmanuel Lubezki in charge of cinematography
- Have a budget of $100 million+

[Hellspawn28]

Zack Snyder is not very good director in my opinion. His other movies like Watchmen, Man of Steel, Dawn of the Dead and Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole are very hit or miss with a lot of people. 300 was good, but not great. I don't think he would capture the feel of Dragon Ball. Dragon Ball should be similar to the recent Marvel movies with it's tone. The movie can have a serious story line and serious moments without being very dark and gritty.