If a dragon falls in the box office and there’s no one there to see it, does it make a sound?
Sadly, the studios have probably heard the unimpressive noise made by Dragonball Evolution: a resounding “thud.” The Hollywood Reporter has reported that the anime adaptation of Goku’s path to the mystical Dragonballs made an underwhelming No. 8 in this weekend’s box office, even with this being the film’s opening weekend.
The film made $4.7 million in the U.S., and has made over $25 million abroad. That said, with an alleged total budget of $45 million, that makes the path to profitability all the easier. And if word of mouth is any indication, it’s going to need it.
It hasn’t done much better in terms of reviews, either. Opening without press screenings, I’m thinking even the studios knew what was on their hands. Earning 15% rotten over at RottenTomatoes… here’s some of the best of:
Hollywood Reporter: Another Japanese manga bites the dust with its cinematic adaptation: in this case, the Dragonball Evolution series, which has spawned a hugely lucrative worldwide cottage industry that has lasted a quarter-century. That success is likely to come to a screeching halt with this big-screen version, which will displease its fans and prove utterly baffling to the uninitiated.
Emmanuel Levy: The movie is at best a mixed blessing, helmer Wong moves things around quickly (running time is only 83 minutes), but the film lacks the scope and style of a mythic epic and the leads are played by actors who may be too old to be teenagers.
The Times (UK): Dragonball Evolution is an example of Hollywood at its most calculating and cynical. Utter drivel.
Total Film: Tearing through its mystical, who-gives-a-toss storyline like a pissed bat bouncing off cave walls, Dragonball’s cocktail of cheap effects, eye-rolling cliches and dismal direlogue will have fans of the series condemning it as a beyond-lame failure.
For my Rama readers who went and saw the film this weekend — what did you think?
April 13th, 2009 at 8:28 am
I went to see it expecting a “so bad it’s good” type deal and perhaps some campy fun, but it was just really bad. The Times (UK) quote really summarized it best. It takes elements of DB and plugs it into a typical teen coming-of-age formula.
I was surprised how little actual fighting was in the movie. I think the only straight-up hand-to-hand fight scene was when Jamie Chung fought herself.
April 13th, 2009 at 8:38 am
If you are going to adapt something with a huge fanbase it’s probably best to be as faithful to the source material as possible. Whitewashing it for Hollywood is the most effective way of alienating the manga and anime fans. Casting a white dude as the lead told everyone this was not going to be the Dragon Ball movie they wanted.
April 13th, 2009 at 9:21 am
DB fans are some of the most hardcore on the planet and most of the reviews I’ve heard (from DB fans) are negative because they weren’t unrealistically faithful to the material. Film as a medium has to make a lot of concessions that Toriyama or the toons did not. (Brevity being the most pressing, of course.)
I’ve heard everything from “They didn’t have any talking animals!” to “Goku is simply another Peter Parker clone!” (Goku was always a clueless nerd and, let’s face it, Spider-Man doesn’t have the market cornered on “coming of age” stories…)
It makes sense that this movie bombed because it’s a kid’s movie and no kid is going to make it to a theater if his or her parents are hardcore DB fans from a decade ago and can’t get over themselves enough to know that “Dragonball Evolution” is a different iteration of an Intellectual Property and is adapting a twenty-year-old story for the Disney Channel age. There’s a reason they tacked “Evolution” onto the end of the film.
Most of the parenting age are probably pirating and watching it on the Internet, anyway, because it’s a similar culture. (Though I do expect DVD sales to be swift and Cartoon Network to play this movie constantly…)
“Dragonball” is a case of “enjoy what it is, not what you wanted it to be” and, for the record, both I and my soon-to-be six-year-old son-in-law enjoyed the movie.
The fact that he ran around throwing Kamehamehas for days after seeing the movie should give people hope because one day kids like that ARE going to pick up the manga and animated series; “Evolution” is a gateway drug and I’m glad to have it.
April 13th, 2009 at 9:43 am
@Lawrence … The clothesline fight at the beginning of the movie was one of the coolest things I’ve seen in awhile. A lack of fighting wasn’t the problem; it was the length of the fights. They were all too short, which was bound to happen as studio execs fought to keep running time to a minimum (e.g. “kid’s movie length”). The DB fights that we know and love (previous to this, of course) were giant, multi-episode epics where Toriyama (and animators) had the license to sit back and focus on someone sweating for five minutes at a time–excuse me, “powering up”–and that simply wasn’t an option for Wong and company.
@ Chris West … the fact that someone would write “Dragonball Evolution” off because they “cast a white guy” is part of that irrational fanboyism I talked about in my previous comment. It’s absurd. Enjoy the movie for what it is, not what you wanted it to be.
April 13th, 2009 at 10:58 am
@Chris West
I think you can get away with a white Goku since he’s suppose to be from outerspace. For what it’s worth, most of the main cast was asian.
@Jeremiah Allan
I don’t think “son-in-law” means what you think it means.
I actually thought the pacing of the movie was fine. I always thought the pacing of the cartoon was too slow “We only have two minutes before the planet explodes!” (5 episodes later) “Oh crap! Only 30 seconds till the planet EXPLODES!
And while I disagree about the quality of the movie (I don’t have that much affinity for the manga/anime and I still disliked the movie). But I wouldn’t be surprised if it spawns a new cartoon ala Speed Racer: The Next Generaton.
April 13th, 2009 at 11:29 am
Haha, Lawrence, you right chum, you’re right. I was in a hurry between classes and trying to speed through all the thoughts in my head and things got all broken up. Know what I mean, not what I say, eh?
On the other stuff, though, I was just telling my flatmates that DB:E seemed an awful lot like a backdoor pilot. I’m glad I’m not the only one who got that impression.
April 13th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
My big question is how they got chow yun fat to do this movie.
April 13th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
The movie suffers in areas, definitely. The dialog is terribly cliche in some points. But I felt the cast did a good job with what they had. I thought the production design was interesting (I love how they did Roshi’s house. I really do). The spirit of the original comic was there, even if they stumbled along the way. Aside from a small budget, what I felt hurt the film the most was its short length. If they had another half hour to flesh out the plot it would have held together much nicer.
I went in expecting this film to be either surprisingly good or hilariously bad. I got surprisingly good. It was better than Spider-Man 3, for sure.
April 13th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
“the fact that someone would write “Dragonball Evolution” off because they “cast a white guy” is part of that irrational fanboyism I talked about in my previous comment.”
Well, the film should be written off because it’s bad.
However, I don’t think it’s irrational of people to be upset at the casting of the lead actor. After all, there was quite a bit of discussion about the roles of Asians in cinema as a result of this casting. It’s not hard to see how Hollywood tends to treat Asians as second-class actors when they cast a white guy as the lead when it should have been given to an Asian.
April 13th, 2009 at 9:07 pm
No surprise there
May 2nd, 2009 at 1:12 pm
This movie had so much potential, for non-DB fans and DB fans alike it was chalk full of cliches and C-level acting if that. I believe there are youtube DB-DBZ inspired action fan-clips that had better special effects than this. Piccolo came out of no-where, there was little to no character growth in anyone…well I take that back. Roshi dying and realizing he wanted to stay dead was a very good character direction to put the turtle hermit in.
And to total it up, Yamcha scorched his nads…Bulma basically stares into the camera and acknowledges the title of the movie by going ‘DBE…catchy.’ which crushed the people who were watching it and stomaching the movie.
The way it was promoted before it was finished made me think ‘Hmm maybe it’ll have some good stuff.’ but no. It was crap. A seven foot monkey destroyed the world 200 years ago along with Piccolo…and wow Goku is that same seven foot monkey. I am surprised to hear the budget was 45 million dollars, I kept hearing 100 million; maybe they’re both right and they split the 100 million dollar budget to make two films? Who knows anyway they can return the rest of their budget money because this movie failed BIG TIME!
And no no no it is not because it was released ahead of time and watched online, it was because it was full of fail.