Why Do I Put Myself Through These Things?

This is an attempt at a review of Dragonball: Evolution, so if you want to run screaming into the night, here's your opportunity. Originally, I was going to liveblog myself watching it today, then do an actual review tomorrow, but I asked myself if I hated you all that much. After all, when I watched this the first time (with Alex), we spent at least 30 minutes afterward trying to think of movies we thought were worse. We did come up with quite a few, but when we're saying, "Well, at least it was better than that Charlie Sheen movie Wraith we watched on Monstervision* that one time", that's probably not good.

I do wonder though, when I'm thinking about ripping a movie, what was the intent of the people involved? Where they just trying to cash in on kids being familiar with DragonBall, or were they really making their best attempt to adapt the story to a single movie? Was it just a paycheck for them, or are they fans of the material, and if they're fans, does that help or hurt**? And should any of that matter to me, trying to decide whether it's good or not?

I'm probably being overly harsh on the movie. On a second viewing, it really isn't that bad, and parts of it are quite enjoyable. Not so much the parts with lots of screaming (though the movie doesn't even approach X-Men Origins: Wolverine when it comes to time spent on characters yelling), but the funnier parts, that evoke the spirit of DragonBall more than DragonBall Z, those work. Sometimes. You've got oddball teenager Goku, living with his grandfather, who gives him a weird orange ball for his birthday, and tells him that there are six more like it, and if you gather all seven, you can make a wish. Then his grandfather is killed by an evil alien after all the balls, and Goku teams-up with some other folks to try and find the DragonBalls and stop the evil alien. There's some other stuff in there, a couple of romance subplots, some stuff about self-sacrifice and not running away from your destiny, but the search against the clock is the main thing.

Chow Yun-Fat makes an excellent Master Roshi, managing to shift between sage and respectful teacher, and goofy, possibly senile old man. They took a lot of the lechery out of the character though, maybe for the kids, but the bits that are there add to the humor. I'm not sure how to rate Justin Chatwick as Goku, because the movie version really doesn't bear much resemblance to the manga/anime version. The classic version was a sort of naive bumpkin, who doesn't understand much of anything about the world at large***. Movie Goku is more like Peter Parker: He knows about the world at large, at least enough to know the life he lives with his grandfather in the country isn't normal. He goes to high school, he's awkward around girls, and the jocks pick on him because he's different, with his odd hair, and the weird stories his grandfather tells him about aliens nearly destroying the Earth 2000 years ago. I think when Chatwick is trying to convey Goku's awkwardness at fitting in, he does well, stumbling over his words, biting back on his frustration that he's not pummeling these stupid jocks.

Emmy Rossum (Bulma), and Joon Park (Yamcha) both captured the sort selfishness the characters exuded in their early appearances, and that core of decency each one had (or developed underneath), and so the two sides sort of wax and wane, the concern for their fellow man coming out one moment, the desire for fame or wealth asserting itself the next. Rossum also has that tendency to be impressed with her intelligence Bulma had in spades. I can't say much about James Marsters as Piccolo. He doesn't get to do much but make hand gestures and dire statements about the world being doomed, or people dying, or whatever. There is one scene I smiled at, because as he strides into a room, I could the confident stride he used when Spike was having one of his rare good moments. You know, when Buffy and the Scoobies weren't either kicking his ass or treating him like dirt. It's a small thing to like, but I did enjoy it for some reason.

I like that we actually get to see Goku living with Gohan. In the series, Gohan's been dead for awhile by the time we meet Goku, so we never saw them interact, we just know Goku liked his grandfather, and keeps the 4-star DragonBall because he thinks it has his grandfather's soul in it. Granted, most of what we see is his grandfather trying to teach Goku to concentrate, and show more focus, and I think we're supposed to see how unusual Goku's life is, so we can see why he has trouble fitting it. But, we do see that Gohan cares about Goku, and is trying to help him to be comfortable as himself, rather than trying to be some idealized version of "cool".

There are a lot of fight scenes in the movie, and there's some good and bad with them. One good thing is there is no damn shaky camera crap like in those blasted Bourne movies. It's as if they realized I'd like to see the fight scenes. Revolutionary concept. I think they overuse slow motion, though. Someone fires an energy blast, they go slo-mo as another person dodges and the blast explodes. Someone throws a punch, slow-mo, then speed up as the person receiving the punch goes flying (or stands there unaffected in one instance). For some reason at the beginning, they do a slow-motion of sweat dripping off Goku's face, and later, during a big explosion that sends water into the air, they do close-in slow-mo on a bead of water that splits into two, unequal sized beads of water. Maybe they were just trying to make it a little longer (it's only 85 minutes long). Also, while I think the fights scenes are most well laid out, they make sure you can see what's going on, and the movies look good, whenever someone goes for some sort of flying attack (say, a kick), it looks bad. Which works when it's one of the jocks, and you know Goku's about to make him look silly, but when it's Goku, it looks really awkward. I think it's because they switch to slow motion, or because no one ever takes a running start before they do a flying kick. They go from standing to launching forward, leg extended.

There are certain twists the plot takes I don't particularly care for. They spend a good chunk of the movie trying to find all the DragonBalls, then they declare there's no way they'll find them all before the eclipse, and so they have to try something else. Well, they only had seven days to find them all to begin with, and the six besides Goku's could be anywhere in the world. How could they not figure that out sooner? The fact Piccolo's henchwoman can steal someone's blood, then shift to look like them kind of came out of nowhere. I mean, we've sen they have technology to make monsters from Piccolo's blood, but this a bit different. And what's her deal anyway? Why does she work for Piccolo? And if he was sealed away 2000 years ago, how did he get out? Did she release him, and if so, why****? If it took 7 guys to do the Ma Fu Ba and trap Piccolo last time, how is Roshi going to pull it off by himself? Why not bring along all the guys that helped him whip up another containment vessel? That'd make six, and they've surely got to know something about the technique. Why does Oozaru serve Piccolo, if it's an engine of destruction, why wouldn't it just rampage, Doomsday-style? If Yamcha's Humvee thing has a hover/flight mode, why not use it before driving off a cliff?

So lots of questions. I don't know if all of those qualify as plot holes, but they're things that nagged at me as I watched, so I've got to dock the movie for them on those grounds at least.

One thing I'd have liked to have seen in the movie. Before his grandfather dies, he tells Goku to always remember to have faith in who you are. But Gohan had all sorts of sayings (we know this because Goku uses several of them throughout the movie), and I think it might have been kind of interesting if he'd died before specifying what he wanted Goku to remember. Then we could see Goku struggling to figure out which message his grandfather felt was most important, as maybe he meant the part about trusting yourself, rather than relying on external senses, or the bit about knowing your enemy. All the sayings tie-in together, so maybe there would have been no point, and I'm just looking for a way we could have taken his transforming into a large ape-thing out of the movie. Some things just work better animated, or drawn and left to the imagination to animate.

* Does anyone else remember Monstervision on TNT back in the day? Hosted by that Joe Bob Briggs fellow? I loved that. It was a Saturday night staple for years for me.

** Because sometimes you can be too attached to something. happens with us fans all the time, right?

*** I'm pretty sure he meets Bulma when he sees her car coming towards him and thinks it's some weird monster out to steal his dinner.

**** In the manga, her boss Emperor Pilaf accidentally frees Piccolo, then they all agree to serve him, but the movie simply says Piccolo got free. . . somehow.