WTF were they thinking? There is more than enough for them to have gone with on thanks to the anime and manga. No, they have to go and make their own storyline and change the characters...

Forget Super Mario Bros, ignore Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, fuck Fist of the Northstar...this is the biggest fail for Hollywood ever

Yeah, comic movies are normally crap. I suppose the source material just doesn't translate too well or something? Weird when it's all perfectly storyboarded out like it is...

My fave comic film is Tank Girl. It was NOTHING at all like the comic (except Lori Petti did look like TG, and very hot at that), but that didn't matter, for what it was, it was good in of itself. -not as good as the comic of course, but good in its own way.

Wow, this actually looks like a fan-made trailer. You know the type; where they take a bunch of clips from unrelated movies and splice them together in a very rough approximation of the subject matter.

I think it might just be that bad ink.
The publicity pics seem to match it at IMDB.

But you're right in that it does look that bad.

You forgot Batman and Robin.

Also, I saw this trailer a few days ago. It made me feel violated.

No, you're wrong there. That's another film that was good for its own sake. Bugger the stupid comic. That was a nice visual spectacle. Jim Carey was as feeble as he usually is (not always, but a lot of the time), and Tommy Lee Jones was wasted utterly in his role, but the film as a whole was ok in its own right

Um... You're thinking of Batman Forever.

Yes I am... Probably.
bloody batman crap... all the movies sound the same

Sadly, unlike the badass Thundercats movie fan trailer, this is real...

None of those were very good. But this...

This is just...

I...

I don't know what to say...

I do.


"THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELS YE!"

If only that would work...
But I don't think even Satan is evil enough to do this.

*sigh*

Wait a minute...those capsule things in DB that hold vehicles and houses in them don't look like transformers! They go "POOF" damnit! =/

If you are going to complain about something, complain about Bulma's hair not being blue. Because, clearly, that is the most horrible crime this movie commits.



So... Dick Cheney made this movie?

I guess the weird part about this is how the changes seem so arbitrary. Like, I know from reading online that Goku is in Highschool. Okay... Now, I can understand making him high-school aged instead of a kid: kids are hard to work with and it could set the wrong tone for the film. But the idea of Goku as this wild, uncivilized youth is pretty much his whole character, even into adulthood. Granted they might convey that somehow in a way that doesn't show up in the trailer, but I doubt it.

Other things, like Roshi now being presented as a completely serious character. Frankly, his over-the-top perversions would just make a live-action film... upsetting. So, yeah, tone that down, I'm all for it. But now he's essentially an all-new character. I'm guessing they didn't want to hire Chow Yun Fat and try to give him the comic relief role.


All in all, it doesn't FEEL like Dragonball. I really wish that Stephen Chow had chose to stick through it all the way as a director, because I think he would be able to get the feel down right, even if he was pigeon-holed into a vastly different story. Kung-Fu Hustle was very much a live-action Dragonball (not Z), at least in presentation.

I dunno... you remember that rumor about how the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was originally just a script that happened to have a similar idea, and when Warner picked it up they realized it and just slapped the League name on it for convenience's sake? I can't shake the feeling that's what this is: a movie that just coincidentally was about magical items that could grant wishes so they just called it Dragonball so they wouldn't have to deal with copyright problems.

I just picked the most minor of a long list of complaints.

Actually if you look up pictures of the live-action Bulma, she has a blue streak in her hair...because the costume designers are so rebelious like that.

The "I, Robot" method? Makes sense.



I knew they'd make their grab for power one day...

(That blue hair thing was a jab at the fanbase, and their apparent priorities, by the way)


I wonder if Goku will have a monkey tail?

Actually...no he won't.

Goku is a high school senior who is having trouble with a Texas bully...yeah...no kidding... Goku is just a human who gains powers because of everything going on.

Oh, and Chi-Chi is the chick in white who looks like fucking Tilla Tequila and is like 20 in the movie...

Remove Batman Returns and Hancock from your list. They're mediocre at worst, but not outstandingly awful like Catwoman or Daredevil.

Also if you idiots really wanted it to be JUST LIKE THE COMIC in every imaginable way, it would be even worse if not downright comical than what you're seeing in the trailers. Have any of you heard of, let alone seen, Dragonball: The Magic Begins?

I bet you havent.

What is it like to be such cave dwelling babbies?

oh chow yun fat, how you have fallen. i remember when i used to think of you as a total badass.

<sniff>

There is no language which contains words strong enough to describe this travesty.

The people who made this...

They will pay

Oh LeFarce, ever the Troll.

Aaaaanyway, as I said in my post I recognize that there are certain things that just don't translate into live-action. Much of what happens, especially in early Dragonball, is really only acceptable because of the style and presentation of comics/animation. "Dragonabll: The Magic Begins" is actually a good example: that version of Master Roshi is a lot like the one from the comics. And he's so over the top ridiculous (even by the standards of that movie, where Yamcha is some kind of gay cowboy with a talking parrot) in a real-world setting that it's just... distracting, to put it politely. So, yeah, you do have to tone things down, and you do have to change the story to make it all work coherently in a single 2-hour movie.

Thing is, though, that it should still try to emulate the universal strengths of the source material.

For an example, I'll take the recent Dark Knight, and more specifically, The Joker. He's a very different character than in the comics: most obviously, he wears makeup instead of suffering from some kind of vaguely defined skin condition. The whole "falling into a vat of chemicals and turning into a clown" thing was a bit too much for the way the new movie series goes. This Joker also doesn't have the whole circus/cartoon tone that the comic joker goes for: he's the type of guy to blow up a building because he thinks it's funny, but he's not the type to wear a squirting flower that shoots acid. Yet they still managed to capture the essence of the Joker, the part of him that made him truly scary despite being a dapper clown: His sheer, chaotic nature. It's his most important feature, and what makes him such a daring foil to Batman. The humor, the wit, the level of insanity is all well and good, but without the underlying sense of unpredictability and madness it's worthless.

So... yeah, I agree. You can't make it the same as the comic. You can't do the same story and you can't have the exact same characters. The best you can hope for is to capture the feel of the story, or the idea. Now, I really haven't seen too much of the new DB movie, since this is the longest trailer they have available and not much character-wise happens, but I can't shake this feeling that it's just... wrong. The characters don't act like themselves, or even like some aspect of themself that doesn't come out often. They're just... different people, who happen to have the same names.

A lefrace post?!? And I missed it!!?? Guess I might have to get back to lurking.

YES YES YES YES YES YES YES HELL YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I AM MEGA PUMPED THIS MOVIE LOOKS FUCKING AWESOME. IM SO GLAD THEY NAILED EVERYTHING PERFECTLY HOW IT WAS IN THE MANGA/ANIME. THIS IS THE BEST MOVIE EVER AND WILL MAKE A BILLION DOLLARS OPENING NIGHT.


picolo looks dope as all hell.

this is the nature of hollywood and american movies. it will makes it money back due to the name of the movie and character's names alone. even if the story or the movie or the characters in the movie has NOTHING to do with the source material whatsoever.

many of my friends were so excited about this film....and i kept being a naysayer. i hate most movies....so they just chalk it up to that, but in the end, i have to bite my tongue, because they hate it even more when i say "i told you so."

the live action g.i.joe movie is just like this, "g.i.joe in name only" and i've just accepted it. i don't have to watch it. i don't get mad about it. i just accept that is will suck cobra la's balls. i'm not allowed to talk about the final script i've read. i'm not allowed to talk about plot holes or stupid costumes. my friends are all determined to be excited about this film, so i just shut up and let them be disappointed.

i'm pretty excited about the DB movie, actually. this trailer makes it look far worse than even i thought was ever possible for them to do, and i can't wait to sneak a flask into the theater and get a good laugh at this catastrophe.

His hair is stupid...
Ok, the hair in the anime and manga is the usual stylised way they draw messy hair. It doesn't actually depict someone with stupid hair. How stupid does someone have to be not to realise that. Jebus, I'm not even an anime or a DBZ nerd and I know that.

Wild horses could not drag me to see this movie. I don't consider a license alone to be reason enough for anything.

omg thats so awesome! WOOOOOOOOOOOTTTTT!!!!!!

I give it 6 out of 5!!! XD

Please.

This is the ultimate MST3K movie.