domingo, 12 de abril de 2009

MIQUELO'S REVIEW IN ENGLISH

I’d like to start saying that Dragonball Evolution is not a bad movie. Maybe Scary Movie 2 or Batman and Robin are bad movies, but Dragonball Evolution it’s not. And I say this because describing it as a bad movie would be to praise it; Dragonball Evolution is a human being’s aberration, a mess of Biblical proportions, an offensive moving pictures. Dragonball Evolution is so bad that it made me dizzy and gave me a headache. In fact, I have already seen the bootleg version! However, watching it in the theater, on a big screen and with high sound and image quality, putting all my attention into it (when I saw the bootleg I wasn’t paying that attention) I have finally being able to appreciate in a full way how bad this… thing is. But my comment isn’t pure and free hate, so I will share my impressions on the “movie”:

[color=red]The “story”[/color]

As we all know they changed completely the original story of Dragon Ball leaving only a few stuff: for example, the name of the characters (but not even the number of the dragon balls was respected, because if you watch closely the only find 6 dragon balls). Nothing more is intact; of course, the made references to the original but these are lost in a sea of nonsense and ridiculous stuff. The high school part is totally unnecessary and irrelevant to the plot and in fact it’s never mentioned again. However, it is very bad accomplish from its beginning towards its end: the way Fuller crashes Goku’s bike just doesn’t make any sense, because if he wasn’t a super gifted warrior he have been seriously injured. So what, Fuller was trying to kill him? The same happens at the party: are they going to murder him? Because it looks that way, but nobody seems to care, or to react or to call the cops. By the way, why is ChiChi dating this Fuller semi psychotic guy? Why doesn’t she care at all when Goku beats him up if he is supposed to be her boyfriend? Besides, all the lines of Fuller made me feel I was watching Scary Movie.

The next thing that happens just pops up from nowhere (yes, because everything in this movie just pops up from nowhere): Piccolo appears (from nowhere) in Gohan’s house, from nowhere knows that he has a dragon ball, from nowhere Goku feels that something is wrong with his grandfather, and in the most cliché scene of history the dying grandfather gives a mission to Goku. Up to this point I think that the movie is… a very bad word, but I hoped that from now on we can get in a faithful way into the Dragon Ball universe. Oh boy I was wrong: the worst was yet to come.
So from nowhere Bulma pops up, she allies with Goku, and from nowhere they pop up in the city. From nowhere Goku feels that is grandpa whispers him: “Roshi lives in this house!!” and they go in. The next thing I remember is feeling a big confusion while I heard Roshi speaking of a lot of crap that doesn’t make sense within Dragon Ball: ¿Eclipse? ¿Nursery rhymes? ¿Gohan trained Goku because he was the chosen one? And another thing that I just couldn’t handle was that Goku saw the future every time he touched a dragon ball and that Roshi said the explanation for that is the dragon guying Goku. Really, from where the hell did all this stuff came from? Not from the original source, that’s for sure. Things from here just gets worst (yes, it is possible). Roshi tells Goku he will teach the air, fire and earth… what is this, Captain Planet and the planeteers? Clearly no one at FOX understood what is the meaning of “ki”.

From nowhere Chichi pops up just to disappear, while from nowhere Bulma suggest that they continue searching the dragon balls. From nowhere appears a hole and a very irritating guy who claims his name is Yamcha (what a coincidence, he has the same name that this character from Dragon Ball… wait a minute… Nooooo!!!). He is a thief, but not a fighter, so they kind of miss something big here. After several hours, but from nowhere, Bulma’s radar picks up a dragon ball signal and Roshi jumps out of the hole to confront Yamcha (why did he waited so long for doing that?) and now they are allies. From nowhere they arrive to a volcano and Mai (by the way, in the movie we never hear her name) pops up from nowhere in Piccolo’s presence to inform him that they are about to find the dragon ball. Instead of going himself, crunch them all and get the ball, from nowhere Piccolo decides to create monsters that just pop up immediately (did they teleport?) on the volcano.

That has to be one of the worst scenes ever filmed, but let’s move on: once Goku gets the dragon ball and out of nowhere (that’s right!) Roshi thinks that it is a good idea to go and visit his masters so they can imprison Piccolo again (I’m a little confused: the plan to defeat Piccolo is to ask the dragon to vanquish him, to train Goku to defeat him –because he is The One- or to imprison him again?). Sifu Norris (?) receives Roshi as his favorite skeptic because he didn’t believe in the story of Piccolo and Ozaru, and one more time I wonder what the hell am I watching: I’m sure it can’t be Dragon Ball, maybe I entered to Fast and Furious by accident. So, pop up from nowhere is Mai fighting Chichi in a tournament, and Goku hugging Chichi.

Now, as a slap in the face to the fans, the Kame Hame Ha is introduced as an air bending technique (so where is the ki?) able to turn on candles. Goku tries to learn it, but he gets bored and he tries to cheat (sweet niblets!, he is exactly the original an innocent Goku! Thank James Wong for such a faithful portrayal of a beloved character). Chichi enters and says that she will let him touch her if he turns on the candles with his air, I mean, ki. Of course, with that kind of incentive Goku makes it! Why don’t we just change his name to Troy Bolton Ozaru? And of course, from nowhere Bulma and Yamcha are now best friends and are in love; they no longer want fame nor fortune. When they talked I was like: what the hell are they talking about? Why suddenly their motivations changed? Of course Piccolo and the eclipse had something to do with this, but the last time I saw them neither of they seemed to give a shit for what happened. Mr. Wong, this characters needed more screen time.

Then Mai stoles the dragon balls and hurts Goku badly with a shot (?), he sees his grandfather who says to him for the thousand time and I am so sick of it: believe in who you are, and the end of the Dragon Ball world arrives: Roshi revives Goku with a Kame Hame Ha (!!). In fact, that should have killed him. At this point I was tearing my hair off and shouting: Noooooo!!!! I don’t think that bothered the other six people that were watching the movie.
It is the time for the “great” ending. Goku and company go to the Dragon Temple, a place that pops up from nowhere (not because it came from the earth, but because Roshi and Piccolo just knew of it, and it doesn’t make sense that you have to summon the dragon in one specific spot). Seven minutes later it’s all over. The most anticlimactic ending I have ever seen. There is nothing memorable, nothing makes sense, it’s all rushed: bad script, Ozaru is pathetic, it doesn’t make sense that he is Piccolo’s servant, the fighting is bad and lame, the apparition of Shen Long doesn’t create any expectation and doesn’t impress at all.
I prefer to forget about the after credits scene.

[color=red]The fights.[/color]

Maybe the fights were good. No, they weren’t. The director had no idea of what he was supposed to do. Contrary to any rational development, every fight is worst, more boring and less memorable that the previous. The first with Gohan is not bad, the one in the party is very normal (although in general things weren’t making any sense in that point, so that kind of stuff didn’t let me just enjoy the fight). Then is the fight with Roshi, which is good, but is short. After this the Fullums showed up in a way that I couldn’t see anything: it was dark and the shots were confusing. However, the biggest deception was the fight against Piccolo: random wind, a couple of punches, and then it’s all over with a fast Kame Hame Ha. All very short and fast; people, have you ever watched the anime? The movies have structure, duration, they actually make damage to each other, they use more than one special technique.

[color=red]Special Effects[/color]

They are not the worst part of the movie, but not as good as they were supposed to be. The ki (or air?) effect didn’t look bad, but Piccolo’s ship looked so cheap that I tough it was made in PowerPoint and the regenerating Fullums made me think in the darkest time of the Power Rangers. If the Ozaru looks better and more real in the bootleg version than in the actual movie, then you know there are problems with the special effects.

[color=red]Editing[/color]

I usually don’t even look at the editing, but in this movie is so bad that you do notice it. When I saw the bootleg version I tough: this is obviously missing some scenes. But no. It was the same on the actual movie. Transition between scenes sometimes feels weird, like if there were scenes in the middle missing, and in some fights (the party) you see that they are getting ready to throw a punch and in the next scene they already threw it. With nothing in the middle!

[color=red]Characters[/color]

In the same way that with the story, the characters have been changed and the little references they make to the original don’t have any value. Just because Chatwin eats in one scene and Chow Fat has a bikini magazine doesn’t mean that automatically they are Goku and Roshi. I never saw the original characters reflected on the big screen: Goku is serious and hormonal, so he is more concerned during all the movie with having sex with Chichi than with his training and strength. Roshi looks like a drunken homeless, Piccolo hardly has 10 minutes of screen time and 4 lines to say, and he doesn’t looks like a threat; Chichi just shows up from time to time in a random way and Yamcha is not a fighter. Maybe Bulma, besides her being so “Lara Croft”, was their best job.

Besides all this characters don’t have any motivations, we don’t know what they want, nor does any of them have any development. They are flat characters. And when they try to give them motivations they don’t do a good work: Bulma wants the dragon balls as an energy source? Yamcha wants a part of the income for that? Does Piccolo want to conquer the world with them? Does he need to do that, did he needed that 2.000 years ago? (come on, he is supposed to be so powerful that he doesn’t need the dragon balls to conquer the world). Something interesting of Dragon Ball is that everyone haves a wish in mind, but that is loss here: what do we know about the characters if each doesn’t have his own whish? Where is the tension generated from wondering at the end which wish will come true?

[color=red]Conclusion[/color]

¡DRAGON BALL HAS BEEN CASTRATED!

[color=red]Rating[/color]

0/10

[color=red]Some stuff that just doesn't make sense (bonus):[/color]

-Finally, how old is Goku? Is he 18 or 2.000 years old? [Is he the same Ozaru of the past or a new one? If he is new how did Gohan knew about his transformation? Why does he listens to Piccolo's orders?]
-How old are Roshi and Gohan? Do they know that Goku is the Ozaru, and how? Why Roshi seems a lot younger than Gohan if he is his master?
-Why Goku has premonitions when he touches the dragon balls?
-Why Goku is hated in the high school if he looks, talks and behaves the same?
-Why sometimes Bulma's radar picks up the dragon ball signal and sometimes doesn't (for example, when they fall on the hole, it just picks the sign suddenly; why it didn't from the beggining? Why she doesn't know that there are six more if her radar should have show her six more signals?
-If Piccolo doesn't have a radar, how does he locates the dragon balls? How did he knew that Gohan had one and that the dragon ball wasn't in the house? If he can "feel" them, why he didn't went to Chichi's house searching it (Goku had it at the time)?
-What is the wish that Piccolo wants to ask to the dragon? How is he released?
-Why does he needs Mai if he can just go an crush everybody? Why does he needs and creates the "Fullum"?
-Finally the Kame Hame Ha is energy or air (an air bending technique)? How the hell does that revives people? It is supposed to HURT, not HEAL. At the end, why does it pulls Goku in Piccolo's direction instead of pushing him to the other way (as it is supposed to)?
-Why Goku doesn't revives his grandpa along with Roshi? (ie. asking the dragon to revive all the persons that have been murdered in the last 7 days).
-They don't even found the 7 dragon balls, they just found 6: Piccolo has three: the one in the village, the one in the lake, and the one that stole from Bulma. Goku has one from his grandpa, Roshi has one and they find one at the volcano. There are 6! Not 7.
-Which one is finally the idea to defeat Piccolo: use the wish from the dragon balls, use Goku because he is the chosen one of inprison Piccolo with the mafuba? On the movie there were like the three at the same time.
-At the end Piccolo is just there next to Goku and he suddenly dissapears. What happened here? Did the nurse pick him up? Why everybody just forgets about him?
PS: Piccolo DOESN'T need a nurse. Besides, it doesn't look like he took a lot of damage anyway.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuTtgcjKTeQ

1 comentario:

Anónimo dijo...

I totally agree with you buddy, and I understand your rage and frustration. Crappy plot, bad acting and even cheesier effects really fucked up this movie. It should've gone straight to DVD... anyway.