DragonBall (2009) Live Action Film: Makes Super Mario Bros Seem Oscar-worthy

I bet a lot of you have heard about this. James Wong is directing a live action version of DragonBall (and probably going to ruin his career in the process, though there isn’t much to ruin when you directed Final Destination 3). Not since Ramen Girl has anyone tried to ruin a perfectly good Japanese story so unforgivably. Though, I suppose, at least Dragonball will have that potential to become a good drinking game. It has that going for it. Erin brought this to my attention a while ago, when it was still in rumors-ville, but recently, when a trailer actually came out, I decided that it needed a little more attention. We’ll be showing you the trailer a little further down. But first, we have to show you the cast. Try not to throw up in your mouths.

Goku: Justin Chatwin

Okay, so Goku had dark hair back in the day, so Justin’s got that part right. After that, he’s got absolutely nothing. Nothing. He’s a skinny little knee-biter, and if you’ve seen the original Japanese version of DragonBall, his voice isn’t a girl’s voice. Someone should kick him between the legs. Steve Buschemi would have made a better Goku than this guy. Who did the photoshopping on his hair, btw? A monkey?

Piccolo: James Masters

First off, Piccolo is not white; he is green. Secondly, what’s wrong with the dude on the right? Does he not make it outside very often? Is he part fish? Is he trying to learn Japanese from anime? All I know is I’d never let my child hang out with Uncle Piccolo if he looked like that. My pick? Probably that green dinosaur that was on Barney.

Bulma: Emmy Rossum

Ugh, now I’m getting frustrated. I didn’t realize Laura Croft was making an appearance.

Master Roshi: Chow Yun-Fat

Okay, so finally there’s a decent cast member. Not the best actor in the world, but at least I’ve heard his name before…but wait, where’s the beard? I wish Mr. Miyagi was still alive.

Yamcha: Joon Park

This almost feels accurate, actually. Too bad they didn’t manage to get anywhere near this with the actual main characters of the film.

Mai: Eriko Tamura

Alright! Someone who’s actually Japanese. Wait a sec. Who is this? “She is a chief enforcer of Piccolo’s and a shape shifter.” Whhaatt?

So you have the cast, now, so why don’t we find out what the plot is:

Goku (Justin Chatwin) goes on a journey to find Master Roshi (Chow Yun-Fat) and gather the seven mystical Dragon Balls before the evil Lord Piccolo (James Marsters) can. Along his way, he meets Bulma (Emmy Rossum) who then joins him to help him in his mission. When arriving at Roshi’s place, he is not welcomed with embrace but he has to fight Roshi. Roshi soon learns that Goku is the grandson of Gohan (Randall Duk Kim) and thus trains him to prepare him for the ultimate battle with Lord Piccolo to prevent him from collecting the powerful orbs.

And now, what you’ve all been waiting for: The trailer. I think April is when they restart the Large Hadron Collider back up. Hopefully it brings an end to the world first, before this movie can do something much much worse to us.

So there you have it. The end of the world as we know it. You thought Super Mario Brothers the movie was bad. You thought Mortal Combat was bad. You thought Street Fighter was bad. Oh no. This is going to be much, much worse. I’d rather get kicked in the DragonBalls than sit through this thing.

[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtfKlv0G_G8']

Tell me what you think? Think it’ll be good? Who should be playing these characters instead of the ones chosen above? Steve Buschemi FTW?

  • ricardo

    I hope Toriyama akira dont watch this or he will go to a better place¬¬ was it my eyes or did goku kissed bulma? Goku was a kid on the saga wasnt he?

  • Maciel

    that was funny though haha “PS this movie is going to be so bad that the makers and actors are gonna owe the goverment and ever citizen in the world an apology and 50 mil in cold hard cash…Congress should be thinking about that as a bail-out plan XD”

  • http://www.myspace.com/vampjoseph VampJoseph

    Now that I've forgotten about the trailer and just now watched it again, I take back my previous statement………well the first part of it anyway. It looks like Fox is doing a re-imagining of the franchise where the Goku is some kid that grew up in a city, has no idea about dragonballs or matial arts (or a very rudimentary knowledge) and the rest of the movie progresses something like Karate Kid (I'd rather watch those movies than this and they sucked too). It's, tired, old and extremely formulaic, a formula, I might add, that died with the early 90's. As I said above, Watch the japanese version, it looks at little better than this.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jX38JOO1lTY

  • ssss

    this movie doesnt even make you dowload it from the internet

  • AquariaSpirit

    Did they seriously try to pull off a Dragonball movie? What the heck were they thinking!? i thought we have all learned what happen when you turn japanese pop culture into a movie?! What's next? A Gundam Seed movie!?

  • ??????

    About the Goku needing to be a Japanese guy thing, remeber that Goku is supposed to be an alien from another planet, so he isn't necessarily going to look like someone from Japan. But I don't really care either way, so whatever.

  • ??????

    By the way, the trailer, to me, actually makes it look like it's going to suck less than i thought it would. but it's still stupid, I may go see it just for kicks.

  • Kaii

    Steve Buschemi should be all of the characters…

    STFU DONNY!!

  • Heather

    I really think that no matter what you do, translating *ANIMATED* characters into *REAL LIFE* will never be 100% Successful. The only people I have ever seen make it happen is disney, and they wake up and poo movies.

    I believe that so long as the characters personalities are correct, and the relative plot is followed well they have done a great Job in bringing a nearly thirty year old animated series into this era.

  • adriana

    hi! I saw in your description that you wrote “Laura” but it's “Lara”…sorry I'm just a big fan of her…and about this movie…I'm not a dragon ball fan but I did like your face when you throw up…that was sick xD

  • Ninja

    Wow this doesn't even look like DBZ

  • http://xtremax.com Web Design

    have anyone seen the soccer ball movie. In which that soccer team were like dragon kids. It was interesting the animations. The action is more like funny rather than thrilling myself.

  • Ann

    omg dont even joke, i heard rumors back then about there being one and i still here rumors circulating thats theres gona be one, there was even a cast list and bpoy was it god awful so dont even joke. Hollywood has to either get fresh people with new ideas or just stick to wrecking they're own recycled over-used stories and leave other cultures alone, anime does not need to ruined by the likes of live-action hollywood versions. they've done enough already! >_>

  • Ann

    omg dont even joke, i heard rumors back then about there being one and i still here rumors circulating thats theres gona be one, there was even a cast list and bpoy was it god awful so dont even joke. Hollywood has to either get fresh people with new ideas or just stick to wrecking they're own recycled over-used stories and leave other cultures alone, anime does not need to ruined by the likes of live-action hollywood versions. they've done enough already! >_>