Goku’s Quest, Goku’s Workout, making a scene, life after film school, music video, gag reel, digital copy

Dragonball Evolution is directed by James Wong and stars Justin Chatwin, James Marsters, Jamie Chung, Emmy Rossum, Joon Park, Eriko Tamura, Randall Duk Kim, Texas Battle, Ernie Hudson, and Chow Yun-Fat. The film is based on the Dragon Ball manga and anime franchise created by Akira Toriyama in 1984. ***

In a semi-futuristic world, Goku, a young man trained in martial arts by his grandfather, embarks on a quest. Along the way he meets a wide variety of interesting characters, good and evil alike. But things take a turn for the worst when Piccolo, an evil demon king sealed away two millennia ago, returns to terrorize the world. Goku sets out to defeat the evil overlord, and in the process discovers the terrible truth of his own origin. ***

Let me start this review by stating you will never meet a bigger fan of the Dragon Ball/Z/GT anime/manga series than me. I’ve loved the s eries since I was 11 years old, way back in 1995. Also let me say that I have been opposed to the making of a live-action Dragon Ball film from day one. Does Dragonball Evolution confirm my worst fears, or is it a pleasant surprise? ***

It’s even worse than I thought it would be. Not only is the acting stale and the direction weak, the writers have more-or-less reimagined Toriyama’s entire fictional universe – and NOT for the better. I could go through and nitpick each and every thing, but I don’t want to more you, the readers, with a book’s worth of complaints. A few major complaints include turning Goku into a city-dwelling, school attending 18-year-old emo kid(he was basically a mountain hick in the manga/anime!) completely changing his origin story (which pretty much tosses the concept of Super Saiyan in potential sequels out the window), and ditching various important characters to the storyline while maintaining other unimportant and uninteresting ones. It certainly doesn’t help that the actors are obviously disinterested in the material and were most likely only on board as a contractual obligation. The fun-filled, action-packed world Toriyama invented so long ago is gone. Not only is the movie an insult to Toriyama’s work, it’s a likely candidate for worst film of the year. ---

Image and Sound:

Yes, the movie is poor. But it’s hard to fault this Blu-Ray transfer. It’s a great home video transfer of the movie, with strong detail throughout and hardly any flaws whatsoever to speak of. Depth is always good and the colors vibrant. The audio is equally impressive, creating a sense of ambience and atmosphere is just about every location our heroes travel to. Fox knows how to make quality transfers, and Dragonball Evolution, bad as the movie itself may be, is no exception to this rule.

There are a bunch of standard “behind the scenes” featurettes on the disc, featuring footage of the cast and crew alike, and their exploits behind making the movie. A gag reel is included as well, and so is a digital copy of the film. Any fan of the film will most likely be impressed by what has been included.

Final Words: