Saturday, July 19, 2008

Is This A Joke?

We Can't Believe It's Goku!


Sankei Express has posted a picture of the first ever movie poster for the Dragon Ball movie, which will be hitting theaters on March 13th of 2009. We've posted it here for all our readers to see. The poster features a picture of the backside of Justin Chatwin as Son Goku. We're not particularly enthused about this movie after seeing this poster... in fact, our already low expectations just got lower. We agree with most fans' opinion that Justin Chatwin looks too scrawny for the role. The Japanese article talks about how Chow Yun Fat and Eriko Tamura are playing Master Roshi and Mai respectively, and reveals the film's budget. A whopping 10 Billion Yen - or for those of us who don't know the exchange rates, around 94 Million US Dollars. We have even read of James Marsters talking in interviews how this will likely be a trilogy. Oh Fox, if this is a hit, it will be a miracle. Or else, it will be just like the disappointment that was Speed Racer.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

People never learn. Watch dragonball again seriously watch it, Goku was never that big Chatwin is just about the right size he trained for 7 months that’s longer then the guys of the movie 300 trained. Give me one serious, good point why this movie looks bad and don’t tell me the actor because over 50% of the main character have won awards don’t tell me it’s the director because he has worked on a hit TV show and has made plenty of good movie and don’t even get me started on the postproduction people people who worked on 300 matrix AVP AVPR Alien 1-3 Predator, makeup artist and concept artist who worked on all the super hero movie from Spiderman to x-men. and you tell me what is so bad about this movie really and that fact the James Wong, James Marster, Justin Chatwin, Chow jun-fat, Emmy Rossum, and Joon Park are seriously fighting to keep this as close to the source material as possible in a film, and even the costume designer, studied the show so that they could get the best looking costumes for every one of the characters, as far as story we have already been told the there will be cameo appearances from many of the character people think won’t be in this film so chill out and just WAIT FOR THE TRAILER at least.

sailordees said...

Hinkle:

We're not saying that everyone should take our opinion. But we've seen a few leaked videos and a lot of the pictures that have come out, and we haven't been very impressed. There are a lot of other fans who share the same sentiments, and even though the cast and the crew may have so much experience and efforts behind them, well, we haven't been feeling it very much from what we have seen. At the same time, a fan could make the same argument that the experienced Wachowski brothers directed Speed Racer, and how Emile Hirsch was a die-hard fan of the show, but we all know how that flopped. We've seen Dragon Ball and we know that Goku wasn't that big. But we still expected at least a little bigger, especially since this story comes from the penultimate saga. Don't get me wrong: I am a James Marsters fan but I don't necessarily support everything he has done. I have my own opinions about how he has been talking about this movie to the press, but that's not for here. Again, we're not saying you should take our opinion. I'm sure for every blog that has a negative opinion of the Dragon Ball movie there are many more that have positive ones. We're not going to retract or change the tone of our article. We'll be happy if the movie proves us wrong and it will pave the way for more live-action anime flicks to be made in North America. But right now, it just doesn't look like it's going to be that great.

Anonymous said...

I got my hopes up about SpeedRacer, willing it to be good enough to prompt other anime adaptations and *fingers crossed* eventually Sailor Moon. It dissapointed. At least SpeedRacer was kind of cute and I enjoyed it for what it was - now Dragonball will probably be even more of a disapointment.

There are SO many animes that could be adapted brilliantly under the proper director - Cowboy Bebop, Princess Mononoke (any Studio Ghibli work), and even more challenging ones like Princess Tutu, Inuyasha, or Sailor Moon. With the proper balance of realism and anime-esque imitation any anime could be fantastically translated into a live film, but at this rate I'm very concerned.

sailordees said...

I agree with your point about animes being adapted properly with the right directors... I'm keeping a very close eye on the Ghost in the Shell adaptation that has Spielberg at the helm. He is known to be a fan of the anime genre all around and I think he has a better chance of doing it justice. From my sources in Japan I have heard that the general reception is unsure if this movie will be worth it.