Dragonball Evolution - What Happened?

will you possibly kill enough time for roughly 15 minutes while being both entertained educated and maybe even get slightly depressed will magnet muscles reveal the problems both creative and financial that plagued the most high profile anime adaptation of all time dragon ball evolution find out on the next episode of what happened dragon ball evolution defeated [Music] yeah okay so we're uh we're doing this one huh okay all right let's burn some muscle dragon ball z is pretty big in the world of anime in fact it's pretty big in terms of media in general and i'd be surprised if you haven't heard of it in the early 2000s it was bolstered even further outside of japan with the booming popularity of various dubs that received the world over it's over 9 000. tons of merchandise and most importantly of all gt final bout [Music] now despite the manga and anime having been finished for years it wasn't long before the money sniffing noses of 20th century fox executives caught wind of the fact that blonde's spiky hair and screaming a lot was popular with the kids thus they optioned the movie rights from toei animation and dragon ball creator akira toriyama and then not nothing nothing at all remember this was back in 2002 when fox had announced they had acquired the rights and registered a movie domain but it took them a further seven more years until db evolution finally dragon rushed into movie screens across the planet earth however rather than that same earth giving it its hope and its energy and instead gave it apathy and derision until it simply cratered into the ground now why that seven year gap you ask well a few reasons but really only one reason fox couldn't find a director that was free affordable and gave a [ __ ] about dragon ball this search to get a creative team together was an arduous one with some wild names being thrown around at the time including but not limited to robert rodriguez who is busy down at the old spy kids factory zack snyder and most unbelievably of all george lucas who was actually being courted since he had a working relationship with fox which would have been just so mind-blowing there would have been so many scenes of goku and chichi just sitting down on couches talking please tell me george at least filmed some test scenes i'm begging for this to still somehow happen anyway none of these ambitious plans coalesced and with that time taken trying to find the right z fighters to take this project head on the popularity of dragon ball z started to wane in the later half of the 2000s or at least enough for fox to get increasingly worried about its profitability i myself must confess i had long stopped slaving away at my amvs hosted on dbzlegacy.com cut it out and as fox approached those late 2000s and if you know anything about hollywood filmmaking around that time you might suspect what's coming next instead of the producers continuing their search for the perfect filmmakers the looming writers strike was about to go into effect which rushed into production many other films circa around 2008 with this new cutoff point fox then had to settle for much less and i present to you much less dragon ball was going to be written by one ben ramsey who at that point only had the obscure and 90s as [ __ ] the big hit as his only writing credit in terms of directing and producing well here's where things get interesting did did i say interesting i meant extremely confusing well it's both really stephen chao was then somehow brought aboard the project which at first seemed like an inspired choice his pension from martial arts comedies was a perfect fit for the source material but it quickly became apparent that his name was simply being used as a marketing strategy rather than him being a true creative force we call this the quentin tarantino presents effect now when this new creative team was publicly announced fox played it coy on who would actually be sitting in the director's chair until it was eventually revealed that james wong a veteran writer slash director of tv as well as the final destination franchise would be given that share in a statement stephen ciao said that he himself was a fan of toriyama's work saying that it's an airy and unrestrained story which leaves much room for creation um okay that that just seems like code for there's gonna be different [ __ ] in here just letting you know as for why he wasn't directing himself well because he felt that he should only direct things that he himself created you know fair enough but tin foil hat time there's also the possibility he simply didn't want to work under those fox producers on a rush script with a massively slashed budget because very quickly changes started to happen or evolutions well initially announced as simply dragon ball evolution was tacked on because i don't have an answer for that just just a cool word that fox marketing thought kids would respond to how do you do fellow kids changes very much then spread to the working script as it's been reported that was much more faithful to the source material and even featured well-loved fan favorite character the ox kit also they plan to include krillin as well after some serious brainstorming though fox felt it was simply too expensive to realistically shoot and asked for rewrites to reduce the scale and scope a decision which would totally not turned out to be what happened material at all now while ben ramsey did rewrites apparently that still wasn't good enough and james wong himself also contributed quite heavily to the script akira toriyama was also consulted and when i say consulted i mean ignored he attempted to offer suggestions throughout this script writing process as well as during the actual filming but several sources cited that these suggestions were never taken seriously this of course would then cause huge ripples in the pool of time which we will dip into a bit later casting apparently was also a bit of a to do with producers hoping to snag some big stars by attempting to maybe hide some facts about the production in order to get them to sign on the dotted line ron perlman was sought to play lord piccolo with a lucrative offer but dropped out at the last second opting for red makeup instead of green and filmed hellboy 2 the golden army instead which might have been the fastest anyone's ever dodged the biggest bullet ever the part then went to james spike masters who was familiar with dragon ball and really relished doing the best possible job he could given the material the really bad material defeat ozaru when the blood moon eclipses the sun you will become mutsaru now as for goku you can say a lot about the performance of justin chatwin and believe me people have but one thing you can say about the guy is that he at least did his homework in preparation for the role he read volumes and volumes of the manga watched a ton of the anime and even went the extra mile to read dragon ball's inspiration journey to the west so good on him unfortunately when the script recasts goku as a moody teenager who has to navigate high school bullies go to parties and has more interest in dating girls than training and fighting well he wasn't really playing goku at all anymore now while on the subject of chatwin the subject of his hair is never really far behind early tests had all the actors outfitted with over-the-top wigs to better mimic the original look of the characters apparently though the effect was not satisfactory for the director james wong who felt it best to keep the actor's hair as natural as possible which explains that one aqua green streak in emily rosem's hair honestly while many fans had issues with this i really doubt the inclusion of wigs would have improved the movies um anything random changes like these permeated throughout the rest of the production master roshi for example instead of being an elderly hermit living it up in a tiny tropical island was played by the much younger ciao young fat who lived in a downtown apartment oh but look see it kind of has a hawaiian shirt on so uh yeah there's your nod fans goku's ozaru form oh god it was was a generic human sized werewolf like thing beast in the final film and looked even worse during the initial filming until people with i guess eyes looked at it all of these horrible decisions were likely due to keeping a more grounded and believable tone i guess you don't want to scare off the normies while also having the added benefit of being really cheap now in terms of last minute decision making something that actually helped the movie was james marsters taking a bit of creative liberty with piccolo the original approved makeup design had him looking far more human and strangely far more attractive now since marsters was a fan of dragon ball once he got in the makeup chair he worked with the main artist on set to change the look pretty dramatically and fortunately james wong didn't fight this change and wound up being what you saw in the finished film looking about as accurate as you could really hope for in a production like this now as for the actual filming as you can probably surmise it was a bit rough as a good chunk of it had to be filmed as a good chunk of it had to be filmed in an abandoned and unair conditioned jeans factory in durango mexico now why was this so yep you guessed it it would save dramatically in terms of on location filming james marsters recalled this particular phase of the production quite fondly yeah they told me it was a 120 million dollar picture and that stephen chao was producing steven chow who did kung fu hustle so i get to durango mexico and it's a 30 million picture and stephen chow was just on paper to fool us into getting down to durango mexico ciao young fat and i were cursing in the desert over this like son of a [ __ ] so yeah filming pretty much went like that in fact it went so well they even decided to film some more while originally scheduled to release in 2008 it somehow missed that date i guess the editor or producers looked at it and decided reshoots were absolutely necessary now while this is indeed common in a lot of productions it does tend to occur in shows where the script becomes an issue after said reshoots were completed dragon ball evolution was then set to under deliver in theaters in march of 2009. now at some point during all of this the idea was floating around and even planned that this was going to kick off an entire movie franchise spawn [ __ ] loads of sequels despite you know all the massive fan backlash in regards to the everything while it's unclear just how much planning had been done on future films the post-credits scene of evolution certainly and stupidly promised more like many movies trying to exist well beyond their means leading into the actual premiere of evolution that same confidence strangely was nowhere to be seen it was a film that fox elected to not be screened for critics therefore there would be no day 1 reviews to inform the audience about its quality we've talked about this before on previous movie episodes of what happened as this is a common tactic studios employ when they know they have a massive stinker on their hands and in this case they had a massive stinker on their hands farting in with a 14 on rotten tomatoes dragon ball made just 9 million dollars in total in north america on a budget of 30 not counting marketing worldwide however it bottomed out at around 58 million so it's safe to say that it likely didn't even post a profit if there were any concrete plans to make sequels then they were quickly final flashed off the face of the planet no this isn't happening there's no reason for me to go on what what am i fighting for james wong never directed a motion picture again opting to go back to tv where he directed and wrote a few episodes of the x-files revival ben ramsey for his part formally apologized for the part he played in this whole disaster i knew that it eventually come down to this one day dragon ball evolution marked a very painful creative point of my life to have something with my name on it as the writer be so globally reviled is gut wrenching to receive hate mail from all the world is heartbreaking i spent so many years trying to deflect the blame but at the end of the day it all comes down to the written word on page and i take full responsibility for what was such a disappointment to so many fans i did the best i could but at the end of the day i dropped the dragon ball i know what it's like to have something you love and anticipate be so disappointing to all db fans out there i sincerely apologize there is of course a silver lining to all of this since his experience helping develop the film was abjectly miserable and frustrating it is what spurred toriyama to return to the franchise that made him famous this culminated in dragon ball z battle of gods which was a big hit in japan and since it only needed to be dubbed and had a small theatrical run was also a big hit for a funimation this then led to all the subsequent films and finally into dragon ball super which kicked off an entirely new and still ongoing saga no not that sega get that [ __ ] out of here so pretty much all these new dragon ball characters story lines lore and games were simply birthed out of the desire to erase the memory of evolution from the collective subconscious of fans the world over to not let this be the last image people see when they think of dragon ball toriyama even said as much dragon ball once became a thing of the past for me but after that i got angry about the live-action movie rewrote an entire movie script myself and now i'm complaining about the quality of the new tv anime so it seems that db has grown on me so much that i can't leave it alone if you know of any other games movies or anime adaptations that are ripe to be exposed on our stage screen them out in the comments below take a flying nimbus cloud over to my twitter or instant transmit yourself into a flophouse vip patreon and use the seven magic balls to make your wish come true see you next time and thanks for watching [Music] [Applause]

Channel: Matt McMuscles

Views: 502,492

Keywords:

Id: r2E7DJEIDsY

Length: 17min 20sec (1040 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 12 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/NorrisOBE]

What's funny is that Emmy Rossum with blue hair was actually possible since Mary Winstead was filming Scott Pilgrim at the same time with blue hair.

Speaking of Bulma, JAMIE CHUNG WAS RIGHT THERE! She was the perfect girl for Bulma. She had as much talent as Emmy Rossum, and Emmy Rossum was completely miscasted that Emmy blamed DB Evolution for ruining her career in film and had to rebound with Shameless. Based on Jamie Chung's recent work with Big Hero 6 and Lovecraft Country, she could've played a great fucking Bulma.

The late 2000s was the wrong era for a Dragonball film. If they had waited to mid-2010s when K-Pop started gaining mainstream with Crunchyroll & Netflix making anime mainstream again, a Dragonball film would rock with an all-Asian cast like Mulan and shit.

Hell, since Fox still has live action rights to Dragonball, they could make a live action Dragonball show for Disney+! Come on, Mr.Iger! DBZ is as popular as Star Wars and Marvel, so why not show Goku some love at Mouse TV?

[u/Detective_Robot]

James Marsters would go on to voice Zamasu and he fucking killed it.

[u/itsachickenwingthing]

Y'know, all of Matt's recent content about this clusterfuck got me to think...

Wouldn't Evolution have been moderately better if it had adapted the Buu saga instead? Like, Justin Whathisface's hairdo and everything even matches better with teen Gohan than it does with Goku. You could even get away with keeping the high school setting too! Naturally you'd have to replace Piccolo with Babidi and the gang, as well as come up with an alternative setup since your starting the story so late in the timeline.

[u/dracorulezu]

I've been watching Shameless and wow itbis weird that not only are Goku and Bulma main characters in the first season, but are also together. Trippy.

[u/TostitoNipples]

Matt pulled an Eyepatch Wolf and used a picture of Go Nagai as Toriyama.

Unless that was a dig

[u/The_Draigg]

I mean, at least this movie got Akira Toriyama back into making Dragonball stuff, for better or for worse. It takes a special kind of bad for that to happen.

[u/Maestrozauntera]

Does anyone know what the clip from 16:41 is from? I know the other two are yakuza and attack on Titan, I just can’t place that one.

[u/jabberwockxeno]

I actually sort of thought Roshi's house in this was neat.

Yeah, it's not litterally on an island, but being a ramshack place straight up in the middle of a city surronded by skyscrapers like the house from Up is a neat idea, and a smarter film might have tied that into a broader theme that tried to adapt Dragon Ball to the modern day time period, an allegory for the contrast between traditional mysticism and modern day society

[u/not-so-radical]

I love Dragon Ball and honestly I don't hate this movie. It's so different from the source material that it doesn't even bother me.

I put it on for a laugh sometimes.