Vadakin

Apr 8 2009, 08:36 PM

Kami isn't vital to the story though...he trains Goku, dies when Piccolo dies, comes back and then merges with Piccolo - and that's pretty much it.

Sure he created the Dragonballs, but if you just combine him with Piccolo from the start then it solves a lot of problems.

As for Krillin...well he's what drives Goku over the edge. The first time he died, Goku went looking for revenge and the second time he died Goku became a Super Saiyan.

These are two events that are important in Goku's life, especially since the rules of the Earth Dragonballs say that a person can only be wished back once.

So what does this mean? Well I hate to play devil's advocate but there is a way around this as well...have Frieza kill Roshi or Chi Chi. I'm not saying that this is what they should do, but it is an option that Wong may be considering.

Having said that, given the backlash over the lack of Krillin in DBE, I have a theory. Maybe Krillin will die alongside Goku at the hands of Raditz and they will train in the afterlife together.

As for what pisses me off...well it's that they went too far. They tried to make a film that appealed to a mass audience but they went too far in that direction.

Look at the successful comic book movies from the past few years. X-Men, Spider-Man, The Dark Knight...they all made changes to better suit the mainstream but they managed to keep the essence of the characters and story intact.

I've said it before. Break it down into its most basic parts and build from there. You can make a crowd pleasing Dragonball movie without straying too far from the source material. It is possible.

The problem with Fox is that they think their audiences are stupid (given the numbers for X-men 3 they may have a point). They think we can't handle a full sized Galactus or a monkey-boy who grew up in the woods and fought bad guys.

They targeted kids for this movie but the truth is, most of the fans of Dragonball are in their late teens and older. Yes there are young teens and kids who like it but those who grew up watching it when it first became a hit in the west have all grown up now.

I'm 24. I spent my teenage years watching Dragonball. This new movie seems a little too "kiddie" for me. I don't mean I want lots of violence and sex jokes. I want something that I can enjoy as much as I did that show.

The first time I saw Dragonball Z was during the Cell Saga when Trunks fought Cell. It was the episode where Vegeta loses to Perfect Cell and Trunks steps in. I'd never seen or heard of it before and it wasn't until Cartoon Network ran a marathon of the entire series of Z that I caught up on what was actually going on. But I got into it pretty quickly.

With a movie you have 2 hours or so to bring people into that world, but you don't do it by trying to relate to the audience by any means necessary, you do it by simplifying the concept and breaking it down into its core elements. You let the movie guide you through that world. You don't force feed the audience with stereotypical 90210 BS.

Characters can have elements to them that are relatable but you don't build that character around trying to be relatable.

Take Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. He's a farmboy. Young, ambitious, wants adventure. Many can relate to that. But it's achieved by simple things like looking at the binary sunset, not by having him in Mos Eisley High School. Heck Luke isn't even our window into that world, it's the droids who guide us through...two machines programmed to act human.

The problem though is that Fox doesn't care about the source material. They don't care about the fans or even how to make an entertaining film that really does appeal to lots of people.

As Tom Rothman put it...and I quote: "F*** the fans. We already have their money."

The sad thing is, there was a movie that came out last year, starring Jet Li and Jackie Chan called The Forbidden Kingdom, which like Dragonball was (loosely) based on Journey To The West and it felt more like Dragonball than anything I've seen so far of DBE.