The Mike
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Found this article and it made me laugh....then cry.
8 Ways They're Going to ^^^^^k Up the Dragonball Movie
Posted at 5:04 AM Jul 11, 2008
By Bryan Hartzheim
Stand In?
We’ve now seen the first poster of the live-action Dragonball movie, and it is not satisfactory. Let’s start with the good: they got the number of stars on Goku’s original Dragonball correct. And now the bad: Bulma looks like Claire from Resident Evil, Master Roshi looks like Chow Yun Fat wearing a Hawaiian shirt, Chichi looks like nothing, Goku looks like he’d be at home at a bro bar, and Mai—who gives a ^^^^ about Mai? At best, she was a minor comic foil to Pilaf’s antics. She doesn’t throw a punch in the whole comic series. Worst of all is how Goku holds his Dragonball like Yamcha’s weak-ass “super move,” sokidan.
This does not look good. Next thing, we’ll be getting Krillin totally written out of the movie and replaced by some random asshat. Wait, this has already happened, you say? This movie is shaping up to be one giant ass-eating piece of suck. Before things get any worse, we’ve assembled a must-have list of elements for the movie to retain from the series in order to keep the spirit of the original Dragonball intact. That’s right, the original series (the arc this movie is being based on); no “It’s over nine-thousaaaaaand!” Z bull^^^^ here. Not including a single one of these things will result in something significantly worse than Dragonball GT.
8) No Gratuitous Shots of Bulma’s Boobies
By last count, Bulma bares her bust at least three times to various horny males, including the time Oolong changes into her to show her vanilla pudding bags to Master Roshi (she also does one emphatic flash of her bottom half, for good measure). Yes, before she became relegated to fixing broken Dragon Radars and sporting groovy new hairstyles of the day, Bulma was the series resident fan service who flashed us more than a drunken college chick in Girls Gone Wild (well, nearly as much). To be deprived of her rack for a sissy PG-13 rating would be a disservice to any red-blooded male and many rugged, rack-appreciating females (God bless you gals!). Emmy Rossum’s shirt should come down at least twice, with close-up of Yamcha's nosebleeds when appropriate.
7) Starring More Svelte Femme Fatales than Testosterone-Induced Warriors
On that note, seriously, the entire Dragonball series has like, two legitimate female fighters, one of whom is an android. Even including the movies, the world of Dragonball is not a female-friendly place. It’s a Darwinian landscape where women are shoved to the margins, and in those margins make rice balls for the hungry warriors. We don’t care what women are thinking about, unless it’s about how their men are so difficult to deal with—as they should be, the world-saving bad-asses that they are. So why does the poster have more chicks than dudes on it? Where the hell are Krillin, Tienshinhan, and all of Piccolo’s instrument-named henchmen? Why is Mai suddenly his right-hand “man”? This just smacks of marketing deception and equal opportunity employment. The fact is, in Dragonball, the women can’t do it too. Get Chichi back in the house making Gohan a geek; again, pull Bulma’s shirt down all the way to her ankles; and if we must include Mai, at least “reinvent” the series with a little lesbian action with Lunch in both her incarnations (is she even in this movie? No? Blasphemy!). Please, ladies, let us guys have this one and just go and eat chocolate and sip chardonnay or whatever it is y’all do together on a Friday night.
6) Making Goku More Like Gohan than God
Speaking of Chichi, all indications of story synopses point to a sad, sad premise of the movie: Goku is a high school student. Goku is a simple, generous soul, and probably the strongest manga character who ever lived. He is not, however, a student. Goku hates school, or, at least, he can’t read. We’ve never seen him read anything other than a Dragon Radar, and we’re not about to start with any of that learning nonsense now. Save the school story arc until the mentally-weak Gohan (that's him above) enters the story. Leave Goku, eternal savior and representative of the little guy (remember, he is the lowest level of Saiyan) as he is.
5) Replacing the Japanese Music with Generic '80s Metal
Man, Dragonball had some great music didn’t it? Of course, I’m talking about the original Japanese mood music, not the bastardized American metal rock. Don’t believe me? Compare the intros. First, the Japanese original Dragonball theme song:
It gets you pumped for the action and journey, with inspirational lyrics like “The world is itself a giant treasure chest,” and “Let’s break through the sky on cloud machines” that testify to the adventure of the search for seven magical orbs from God. The American song, on the other hand:
A bunch of ^^^^^^^s screaming “Rock the Dragon!” to wailing guitars like Ultimate Warrior’s intro music. It’s a little catchy in a mindless chant sort of way, but we’re taking the “mystical” quotient down several notches with this kind of stuff.
8 Ways They're Going to ^^^^^k Up the Dragonball Movie
Posted at 5:04 AM Jul 11, 2008
By Bryan Hartzheim
Stand In?
We’ve now seen the first poster of the live-action Dragonball movie, and it is not satisfactory. Let’s start with the good: they got the number of stars on Goku’s original Dragonball correct. And now the bad: Bulma looks like Claire from Resident Evil, Master Roshi looks like Chow Yun Fat wearing a Hawaiian shirt, Chichi looks like nothing, Goku looks like he’d be at home at a bro bar, and Mai—who gives a ^^^^ about Mai? At best, she was a minor comic foil to Pilaf’s antics. She doesn’t throw a punch in the whole comic series. Worst of all is how Goku holds his Dragonball like Yamcha’s weak-ass “super move,” sokidan.
This does not look good. Next thing, we’ll be getting Krillin totally written out of the movie and replaced by some random asshat. Wait, this has already happened, you say? This movie is shaping up to be one giant ass-eating piece of suck. Before things get any worse, we’ve assembled a must-have list of elements for the movie to retain from the series in order to keep the spirit of the original Dragonball intact. That’s right, the original series (the arc this movie is being based on); no “It’s over nine-thousaaaaaand!” Z bull^^^^ here. Not including a single one of these things will result in something significantly worse than Dragonball GT.
8) No Gratuitous Shots of Bulma’s Boobies
By last count, Bulma bares her bust at least three times to various horny males, including the time Oolong changes into her to show her vanilla pudding bags to Master Roshi (she also does one emphatic flash of her bottom half, for good measure). Yes, before she became relegated to fixing broken Dragon Radars and sporting groovy new hairstyles of the day, Bulma was the series resident fan service who flashed us more than a drunken college chick in Girls Gone Wild (well, nearly as much). To be deprived of her rack for a sissy PG-13 rating would be a disservice to any red-blooded male and many rugged, rack-appreciating females (God bless you gals!). Emmy Rossum’s shirt should come down at least twice, with close-up of Yamcha's nosebleeds when appropriate.
7) Starring More Svelte Femme Fatales than Testosterone-Induced Warriors
On that note, seriously, the entire Dragonball series has like, two legitimate female fighters, one of whom is an android. Even including the movies, the world of Dragonball is not a female-friendly place. It’s a Darwinian landscape where women are shoved to the margins, and in those margins make rice balls for the hungry warriors. We don’t care what women are thinking about, unless it’s about how their men are so difficult to deal with—as they should be, the world-saving bad-asses that they are. So why does the poster have more chicks than dudes on it? Where the hell are Krillin, Tienshinhan, and all of Piccolo’s instrument-named henchmen? Why is Mai suddenly his right-hand “man”? This just smacks of marketing deception and equal opportunity employment. The fact is, in Dragonball, the women can’t do it too. Get Chichi back in the house making Gohan a geek; again, pull Bulma’s shirt down all the way to her ankles; and if we must include Mai, at least “reinvent” the series with a little lesbian action with Lunch in both her incarnations (is she even in this movie? No? Blasphemy!). Please, ladies, let us guys have this one and just go and eat chocolate and sip chardonnay or whatever it is y’all do together on a Friday night.
6) Making Goku More Like Gohan than God
Speaking of Chichi, all indications of story synopses point to a sad, sad premise of the movie: Goku is a high school student. Goku is a simple, generous soul, and probably the strongest manga character who ever lived. He is not, however, a student. Goku hates school, or, at least, he can’t read. We’ve never seen him read anything other than a Dragon Radar, and we’re not about to start with any of that learning nonsense now. Save the school story arc until the mentally-weak Gohan (that's him above) enters the story. Leave Goku, eternal savior and representative of the little guy (remember, he is the lowest level of Saiyan) as he is.
5) Replacing the Japanese Music with Generic '80s Metal
Man, Dragonball had some great music didn’t it? Of course, I’m talking about the original Japanese mood music, not the bastardized American metal rock. Don’t believe me? Compare the intros. First, the Japanese original Dragonball theme song:
It gets you pumped for the action and journey, with inspirational lyrics like “The world is itself a giant treasure chest,” and “Let’s break through the sky on cloud machines” that testify to the adventure of the search for seven magical orbs from God. The American song, on the other hand:
A bunch of ^^^^^^^s screaming “Rock the Dragon!” to wailing guitars like Ultimate Warrior’s intro music. It’s a little catchy in a mindless chant sort of way, but we’re taking the “mystical” quotient down several notches with this kind of stuff.
