Why All The Hate?

I think it levels down to its lack of respect for the source material, and of course a non-Asian playing Goku. People are STILL complaining about that.

Sort of the modern day SUPER MARIO BROS. movie, it's so unlike its source material you wonder if the people who made it even knew anything about what it was based on.

But all things considered, I enjoyed it. Not as good as the DRAGON BALL anime, but I've never been a die hard fan of the shows anyway. I don't think EVOLUTION will get a sequel, but I'm open to another live-action film in the future. I'd prefer it be based on the early Z sagas, but I'll probably still see it no matter which anime it's based on.


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Because it isn't well made, has a boring villain, isn't action packed or faithful and wasn't funny.

Look, from a film-making perspective, it's a bad movie. Badly written. Badly directed. Badly staged. Badly filmed. Badly acted. Bad SFX. Bad VFX. Bad sound.

It's objectively a bad movie.

Yea it was pretty bad they didn't put in krillin or kami two really key characters in the series

Why?

Why....

For several reasons:

1. It is a complete and utter failure as a narrative- both as an adaptation of the source material (which it clearly had no respect for or understanding of at a very fundamental level) and as a coherent hero's journey.
2. The casting is beyond terrible- and I don't even mean Chatwin not looking "asian" (by the way, people can have asian ancestry and look European if they are mixed- so going by looks is stupid) - since Goku is an alien and in no way looks like what people think of as east asian features - hell he has blonde hair and blue eyes when he goes ssj! It is terrible because, race aside, the actors are universally horribly wrong for the roles. Chatwin doesnt resemble goku even if one makes allowances for it being live action. Rossum doesnt resemble a live action bulma- and a half-assed blue stripe in her hair (what, they were afraid of going too animated with the look and ruining the movie? It is already as bad as it could get this side of Uwe Boll), and zero effort whatsoever was made to make them in any way look like their characters.
3. It is horribly, hoRRIBLY acted. It truly is a clear case of bad actors and just not giving a crap. When Chatwin is supposed to be "angry" and "powering up", he just looks for all the world like he is taking a massive dump. He can't even pull off anger as a believable living being. Even Chow Yun Fat is clearly just here for a payday- they couldnt even be bothered to shave his head or make the slightest effort to make him resemble Roshi- and hid hammy beyond belief performance here proves he just does NOT care at all. Every single performance is easily worse than a middle school play. Grade school even. It is painfully obvious that nobody on set knew what was going on and they literally showed up, read the "script" and repeated some lines with no retakes.
3. The writing is non-existent and again, the writers prove that they had NO idea what dragonball is or what even happens in it. They got several key plot points- which they'd know if the did more than glance at a few episodes while high one afternoon- 100% wrong- the origin of the dragonballs, oozarus, goku's history (high school? REALLY? Goku can blow up a mountain and has to deal with high school bullies? That and he clearly never WENT to one- that fact is integral to the nature of the character and they couldnt get that right. They completely ignored that krillin exists and is one of goku's first friends and actually quite important to later plot events. If you doubt the writing is bad, understand this: this was made during a writer's strike- which meant there were no real writers available- and so they literally did not even have an actual SCRIPT for the thing. They put together and filmed this thing in about a month or two in mexico (again, being very cheap) with no script and with actors and a director who had no clue what they were doing. That isn't made up- this is a fact.

4. The visual effects were beyond lazy and horrible. The "kamehameha" was just a badly cgi'd mist - it didnt even resemble an energy wave. It was bad because they made this with no budget- under 50 mil and a lot of that was just to pay people for showing up. Usually only indy films and small dialogue driven projects like Clerks are made for so little. Again, the effects were slapped together in a fraction the time usually given for post production. They knew they were making a POS film and they rushed it out as fast as possible just to be done with their contracts. Don't believe me? Look on youtube. There are MANY examples of fan-made dbz style fights with far more convincing energy effects. And they were made for free on their home computers. This thing cost 47 million dollars. Theres no excuse even at that budget.

5. In every way, this film is an insult to the source material and to eastern arts in general. It is one of the single worst examples of filmmaking in the last twenty years, and those responsible should be held accountable for essentially crapping on 47 million dollars which could have been used for a far better film or even donated to the needy or to research. Instead, they wasted it entirely. In any other business, you screw up with near 50 mil on a project, you lose your job and never work in that field again.

Come to think of it, chatwin and rossum really havent gotten good work in hollywood since then. That's no coincidence- the thing was a bonafide career killer. The fact that even those who "wrote" for thd thing AND the actors have apologized publicly for it should tell you how bad it was. I paid $7 to see it in theaters- and I consider it one of my lowest moments in life. I still want my money back.

My motto is no matter how perfect a movie may be, there will still be at least one person who hates it. So it also works in reverse, no matter how bad a movie may be, there will still be at least one person who loves it.
About the fact that you're a DBZ fan, are you sure? Because I grew up with DB (and Conan and Naruto and Harry Potter, but DB was the first), and I felt completely insulted by this movie. Not commenting on the acting, I think the actors and actresses did their best. But the plot was horrible, too fast-paced, and showed almost no relation to the original source, which it should, because it is an official LIVE ACTION ADAPTATION! The CGI was meh at best, and calling Kamehameha "air-bending" was just like throwing a bomb on my childhood. (funny, since the Last Airbender live adaptation also managed to piss off a lot of Last Airbender fans). I expected the movie to be different, but not like this. If they decided to Westernize it, and Westernize it completely. If they decided to keep it original, then keep it original completely. Don't just do it half-assedly.
Also, being the first licensed movie to make an adaptation of such a famous anime, you'd think they would seek out advice from the creators. But no. Toriyama Akira, the author of DB, said:
"Also, at the time of the Hollywood movie, the live-action Dragon Ball, the script had too little of a grasp on the world and its characteristics, and on top of that, it had a conventional content that I couldn’t find interesting, so I cautioned them, and suggested changes; but in spite of that, they seemed to have a strange confidence, and didn’t really listen to me. What came out in the end was a movie I couldn’t really call a Dragon Ball that lived up to my expectations."
You should note that Japan is a country with a very high sense of politeness, especially with people like Toriyama. Yet he said all that. It really shows why this movie deserves this kind of hate.
But I don't hate you. Defending a movie you like is not wrong at all.

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