Dragonball: Evolution (2009)
"Dragonball Evolution" (original title)

The young warrior Son Goku sets out on a quest, racing against time and the vengeful King Piccolo, to collect a set of seven magical orbs that will grant their wielder unlimited power.

Director:

James Wong

Writers:

Ben Ramsey (screenplay), Akira Toriyama (novel)

Stars:

Justin Chatwin, Yun-Fat Chow, Emmy Rossum

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Justin Chatwin	...	Goku
Yun-Fat Chow	...	Roshi
Emmy Rossum	...	Bulma
Jamie Chung	...	Chi Chi
James Marsters	...	Lord Piccolo
Joon Park	...	Yamcha
Eriko Tamura	...	Mai (as Eriko)
Randall Duk Kim	...	Gohan
Ernie Hudson	...	Sifu Norris
Texas Battle	...	Carey Fuller
Megumi Seki	...	Seki
Ian Whyte	...	Oozaru
Richard Blake	...	Agundes
Jon Valera	...	Moreno
Rafael Valdez	...	Butler

Storyline

The story begins with Goku, who seeks out upon his adoptive grandfather Grandpa Gohan's dying request to find the great Master Roshi and gather all seven Dragon Balls. Of which he has one, in order to prevent the evil Lord Piccolo from succeeding in his desire to use the Dragon Balls to take over the world. And Goku's quest is to obtain the mystical Dragonballs before Piccolo does.

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Plot Keywords:

dragon | grandfather | orb | warrior | self control | 

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Taglines:

This Easter the legend comes to life.

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Genres:

Action | Adventure | Fantasy | Sci-Fi | Thriller

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated PG for intense sequences of action/violence and brief mild language

Details

Official Sites:

Official site Official site [fr]

Country:

USA Hong Kong UK

Language:

English Japanese Hindi

Release Date:

10 April 2009 (USA)

Also Known As:

D.B.E.

Filming Locations:

20th Century Fox Studios - 10201 Pico Blvd., Century City, Los Angeles, California, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$45,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend:

£436,224 (UK) (10 April 2009)

Gross:

$9,353,573 (USA) (29 May 2009)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Dune Entertainment, Star Overseas

Technical Specs

Runtime:

85 min 100 min (uncut)

Sound Mix:

Dolby DTS

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Justin Chatwin considers it an honor to play Son Goku: "He is a very important and epic character. He is always seeing the positive side of things, does good things, and always tries to help and take care of the weak, not only pursuing his power. He is a dependable and loving man as well as a boy". However, when Mexican media reporters approached him about the film during production, Chatwin quietly and nervously praises the film's take on the famous franchise.

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Goofs

When Goku pulls his grandfather out of the broken house his grandfather is covered in dust, during the next scene the grandfather doesn't have any dust on his jacket or face.

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Quotes

[first lines]
Grandpa Gohan: In a time before many can remember, our planet faced its greatest challenge. A warlord named Piccolo camed from beyond the stars, bringing darkness and chaos to our once peaceful world. Aided by his disciple Oozaru, the evil pair brought the human race to the brink of annihilation. Cities and countries crumbled beneath them. Countless lives were lost. But... finally, a group of brave warriors created the Mu Fu Ba, a powerful enchantment that imprisoned Piccolo deep within the Earth...

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Crazy Credits

SPOILER: There is a scene in the closing credits: Piccolo is revealed to have survived, and is in the care of the woman he spared in his first scene.

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Connections

Referenced in Weakest link: Hitori gachi no hôsoku: Episode #1.3 (2002)

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Soundtracks

"Worked UP!"
Written and Performed by Brian Anthony
Courtesy of Sogni Records - 7 Entertainment, LLC

User Reviews

A Nutshell Review: Dragonball Evolution

Hollywood plundering Japanese pop culture isn't something new. From "Americanizing" television series for the kids from Power Rangers to Ultraman, and adapting famed characters from Japanese film, games and manga to frequent disastrous effect, it still wouldn't stop the studios from going after one property after another. This time round it's the long running Dragonball series, because the assumption is that the built-in fan base would translate to instant dollars at the box office. Not.

You have to give the filmmakers a little bit of credit though, being either foolhardy, or just plain ballsy. It's a given that they cannot condense and distill the rich content into a surprisingly less than 90 minute movie, and live in the hopes of producing a sequel, or to generate a franchise (i.e. don't leave the cinema hall when the end credits start to roll). But what they successfully do, is to super-summarize the entire mythos by throwing out everything except the main gist of the entire manga, making it extremely simplistic in poor lazy-man standards in adaptation.

For the uninitiated, the film would serve as a quick launchpad to the original manga. For those with a wee bit of knowledge of what it's about (like myself), the film just treads along the same lines and doesn't offer you new information. For the fanboys, I guess you'll only get some kicks at seeing some of your favorite characters come alive, only that they look more Caucasian, and have a head full of hair when they're not supposed to (someone forgot to insist that in the contract?) That's all you're gonna get. Period.

As far as film-making and story-telling techniques go, you can see cliché after cliché being thrown at you, with the poorly and cheaply rendered special effects offering no consolation. Justin Chatwin's Goku is your typical teenager who possesses innate potential yet to be realized, and in his frustration he gets treated by peers as a loser geek. He lives with his grandpa Gohan (Randall Duk Kim in stereotypical know-it-all like in Kung Pu Panda), and develops a crush on school hottie Chi Chi (Jamie Chung). Goku's calling in life is to prevent an apocalypse from happening with the return of chief cardboard baddie Lord Piccolo (an instant shoo-in as one of the worst cinematic villains, ever!) and his temporary sidekick Mai (Eriko Tamura) who attempt to collect 7 dragonballs to fulfill an ancient myth. And of course Goku needs a Fellowship, in the form of irritating tech-wizard Bulma (Emmy Rossum last seen in the sinker Poseidon), mercenary Yum Cha (Joon Park who probably copied Rain's uninspiring cinematic turn in Speed Racer to a T) and Chow Yun-Fat the biggest name of them all here trying his darnest best to act cute as Master Roshi, who imparts skills in double quick time to Goku.

Speaking of time, or the lack thereof, everything is compressed. From two weeks to two days and the day of the blood moon shielding the yellow sun (OK so I made that up), everything moves at so fast a pace, that all you get are cheesy lines of dialog, and an excuse to paste some action sequences together. And James Wong certainly can't direct action (despite being at the helm of Jet Li's The One, which was of course bland and bad), opting to pay homage to Zack Snyder's slow-mo technique, and midway changing the style to having the camera being too close to the action, in the dark, coupled with quick MTV cuts that you don't get to see a thing.

And the rush job just doesn't stop at the narrative or the action. Special effects wise, they look really cheap, and I wonder whether Producer Stephen Chow would roll his eyes at what would be extremely pale when put side by side with his Kung Fu Hustle done many years ago. Ayumi Hamasaki's contribution of the theme song Rule sounded really bad as well (I may get flak from her fans), and I guess having some Asian participation doesn't legitimize what is essentially a poorly done movie. Not even Chow Yun-Fat's star status could save this, and you wonder what figured when this is the movie that he gave up Red Cliff for.

This is basically a movie that only children below the age of 5 will enjoy tremendously, despite having to see 6 half-balls, contributed courtesy of the 3 lead female characters, being continuously flashed on screen, thanks to some neck plunging wardrobe (where's that malfunction when you need one?) Totally bland and really uninteresting, I would suggest sticking to the manga instead.