Dragonball: Evolution – So bad it’s…still bad

The PG action movie.

It’s a source of joy for many and annoyance for some. Its reason of existence is limited in scope: it needs to make as much money as possible from a single demographic, pre-teen boys (now maybe girls), in the weeks it shares the screen with competitors like Hannah Montana and before the family-movie Pixar behemoths eclipse it from the cultural zeitgeist forever. This isn’t an easy task on its own merits, or so producers believe.

However, if you manage to prop the PG action movie with a ridiculously popular franchise name, you turn an otherwise forgettable weekend alternative into a capitalistic imperative for ten-year olds across the country. Not only that, but you may even draw out some college geeks on an ironic quest to see someone’s representation of their childhood.
And, as it turns out, many of those may like it.

The first time I can remember being offended by the sheer badness of a film’s quality was when I was 9 and went to see Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie with my Mom. Granted, I was growing out of the Power Rangers phase, but I distinctly remember thinking that the first one, which in retrospect is so campy it can only be enjoyed in a certain mood, at least felt like it merited a minute of my time. However, Turbo taught me that no person should ever utter the lines uttered by Tommy and Kimberly in that movie. No villain in any influential franchise should ever have such unconvincing motivation as Divatox. And nothing as sickeningly useless as Justin should ever be conceived…ever (this rule gets broken over and over again — see Jake Lloyd in The Phantom Menance).

This movie was Michael Bay required watching.

But…at least, looking back on it, there was some level of distinction. There was some sort of midget. And the cars in the jungle. And the Rangers were still the Rangers…as terrible an idea as it was, this was the continuation and the future of the franchise. These were the Power Rangers, for better or for worse.

Dragonabll: Evolution has no such distinction. What 20th Century Fox did was take the names Goku, Bulma, Roshi, Yamcha, Chi-Chi and Piccolo, apply them to single-dimensional splotches of life, mixed in a hodge podge of vaguely oriental conflict philosophies and processed it through a computer algorithm. Even Disney Channel movies have more original scenarios.

The movie is, in the loosest sense of the word, an adaptation of the Piccolo saga in the Dragonball manga/anime. In that version, Goku is a young warrior entering his teens who has saved the world and found the Dragonballs on a couple of occasions already. The demon King Piccolo escapes an ancient containment and terrorizes the world until Goku, after much training and death of his friends, fights a tough battle and eventually bursts a hole through Piccolo’s chest. Before dying, King Piccolo releases an egg for his evil legacy to carry on through a young incarnation that eventually is forced to ally with adult Goku. In Dragonball Z it is revealed that Goku is actually an amnesiac alien sent to Earth to destroy its people for his bloodthirsty race, the Saiyans, which is the reason behind his former tendency of turning into a destructive giant ape at the full moon (cauterizing off his tail in his youth put a stop to it). Oh, and Piccolo is also part of an alien species known as the Namekians and he is the other half of the current God of Earth.

The anime would not be rated PG.

Dragonball: Evolution looks at this and decides it’s not simple enough. Piccolo (James Marsters, Spike in Buffy the Vampire Slayer) is still a “Namek” alien, but this is only mentioned once in passing. He’s also referred to as a god, so the movie tries to have it both ways. It’s apparently unimportant. Either way, he terrorizes the world 2000 years before…whatever future year DBE is set in (it’s past 2010) along with his pet monkey demon, the Oozaru. He is contained by seven ancient warriros and then escapes for some reason (literally, there is no given reason). As in the source material, this world has seven Dragonballs that when gathered can summon the dragon Shen-Long and grant one wish. Piccolo’s evil purpose is to collect the Dragonballs and use them to…wish for complete world domination as opposed to fighting for it or something, I don’t know. This time, he’s also accompanied by the busty assassin named Mai (single-named Eriko).

Goku (Justin Chatwin, Eddie from a flashback in Lost) is a white 18-year-old who lives with his asian grandfather (Randall Duk Kim, the Keymaker in Matrix: Reloaded). He is constantly bullied at school, presumably for his somewhat messy hair, but he isn’t allowed to fight back, so he comes off as a great loser. This doesn’t stop his crush, Chi-Chi, from taking notice of him and his “different”-ness. But when Goku ditches his grandpa to hang out with the girl, Piccolo attacks the old man and kills him. A half-trained Goku goes in search of the Dragonballs so that he can banish Piccolo, picking up techno-bitch Bulma, bandit Yamcha, and the lecherous Master Roshi along the way.

Dawson’s Creek-lite plot aside, the movie does itself no favors by having distractingly vapid dialogue delivered by severely undertalented or unengaged actors. Even Chow Yun-Fat, while most closely approximating the quirky nature of his character and the expressiveness of anime, fails to convince us of Master Roshi’s supposed power and importance. I thought maybe Emmy Rossum would bring some legitimacy to Bulma, but it turns out what I liked about her in The Phantom of the Opera was purely physical. And Joon Park is the most glaring example of flat caricature in the role of Yamcha.

As for the two hot asian chicks, Eriko and the script manage to take an already forgettable character from the anime and make her even more anonymous. Mai exists to be a flunky. A flunky with guns and this hole in her shirt. Out of all the “actors,” my favorite was  Jamie Chung as Chi-Chi. She didn’t have better lines by any means, nor did she try to salvage the performance with any amount of distinctive acting ability, but her cuteness blended in naturally with the character and actually exhibited some layering and versatility. She was also really, really hot.

Perpetual virginity test: Which do you find hotter...Top? Or bottom?

For a supposed fan of the show, James Marsters was neglible as Piccolo, or Every Bad Guy Ever.

Dragonball: Evolution also finds it necessary to implement the archetypal Jock Bully characters in a vaguely futuristic high school. This is one of the things the scriptwriters really found cool about Dragonball – the cars and the undefined future. They also briefly try to include something like the Tenkaichi Budokai tournament, but that only serves as a vessel for another overplayed villain strategy. As far as plot progression goes, the story is extremely segmented with little transitional reasoning between scenes. At its most climactic, DBE spares us long, drawn-out attempts of suspense at its contrived twist. It just barrels along, determined to clock in under 90 minutes.

Visually speaking, a lot of the scenery and cinematography is fine, but when it comes to the film’s bread and butter, the fighting, there is nothing that doesn’t appear to be either poor stock CGI or sad attempts at impressing the audience with the tired art of Slow-Mo Fu. The Kamehameha wave, reduced to a swirling mist of multi-purpose “air,” looks much more impressive in 1980s animation cells than with professional Hollywood effects. Goku’s special abilities are now also referred to as airbending, probably to get Avatar fans excited.

No force in the world can stop Aang -- er, Goku's airbending techniques.

After discussing it with my friends, including Rorscharch, Riker, and Ivo, my understanding says the primary defense of the movie or rather, critique of my criticisms is that this is a) a PG action film for children and b) based on Dragonball, which is a kid’s anime in the first place and shouldn’t be expected to produce depth or gravitas.

I respectfully disagree.

The Dragonball manga and its subsequent franchise installments spawned an international cultural phenomenon. And while obviously it’s very possible to enjoy the stories on a purely superficial level, enjoying the fights, easy humor, and childlike simplicity, I believe the manga and the anime eventually came to embody some emblematic themes about pride, good and evil, and the life of a natural warrior. And even if this is complete extrapolation on my part, I believe a film adaptation should take the things that occupy our imagination and enhance them — flesh out characters, explore complexity of conflicts, have good special effects.

I also think it’s somewhat damaging to our younger generations to assume that all they want is camp and blandness. My favorite media as a kid were things that I felt stimulated me; made me think. Dragonball: Evolution, like many movies geared at the younger market, avoids higher thought like the plague. It’s not even a matter of it being stupid. It’s completely unaware that proven elements of quality storytelling exist. If anyone behind this was inspired by work on Turbo, then imagine what work from a person “inspired” by Dragonball: Evolution might look like. Actually, I don’t really worry about that. Inspiration is simply something that seems impossible from this soulless rip-off.

There is no need to Westernize something that the core audience understands to be oriental in nature. There is no need to stick original characteres in a “comfortable” setting for the American preteen. There is no need to rush along character development with broad strokes recycled from the latest action travesty. Imagine if the movie had actually handled its source material with a little more of that Watchmen-type reverence to its source material. If we could linger more on a subtle interchange of philosophical ideals between Bulma and Yamcha rather than the quick and contrived romance that had to happen.

Aw, you're so pretty...but Bulma has blue hair.

Imagine if there were some of the touches that made the manga/anime its own…the inclusion of Puar and Oolong, for example. Or show examples of Goku’s ravenous appetite. In fact, a different handling of Goku altogether.

Goku is an alien. Even before this was expressly revealed, it was clear that he was actually different, not just “nerdy kid who can fight” different. He doesn’t get conventional social norms. He has an insatiable appetite that is scary to witness. He is clinically naïve. He’s aloof. And he fights because he loves fighting. None of this comes through in the movie adaptation of Goku. He’s just Every Other White Kung Fu Hero.

Imagine if they had crafted this as the beginning to a series of films that pushed our imaginations to their limits…rather than diluting them to a universally understood pastiche. What do you think would have been more profitable?

Considering they made it clear that they want to make a sequel, I’d say I’d be more interested in paying money for a franchise that actually lives up to the name Dragonball instead of this cash-in. And I hope that this is where they leave this incarnation so that, down the road, an actual film will come of it.

Though I trashed the film, its flaws were more pitiable than overtly offensive. Some set design and art direction worked for me and the pace is mercifully quick. It’s not nauseating. It’s just forgettable. 2 out of 10 Dragon Radars.