DragonBall: The Live Action Movie

mystyc writes "scifi wire has a disturbing piece on how Twentieth Century Fox acguired the movie rights to the Dragon Ball franchise. What is disturbing is that they plan to do a live action dragon ball movie! You'd think hollywood would have learned their lessons from such notable live action anime failures as The Guyver, Fist of the North Star, and others who's names must not be spoken. Then again, hollywood doesn't work that way."

Comments

Re:DBZ Movie

[Alkaiser]

Who marked this as "Troll"? There is an HK live action Dragonball movie, released in '89, and if the box cover and actor list are any indication, it does suck. I was at DVD Planet last weekend, and I happened to see it on sale.

Re:Not only is he right but...

[Anthy]

Not to mention that a lot of American anime fans don't realise the meanings of the word shounen and shoujo. "Shounen" means boy, not man, young boy. Someone in their twenties is not a shounen. "Shougjo" means young girl, not woman. Take for example Rurouni Kenshin. In Japan it was published in a shounen magazine ie. a magazine targeted at *young* boys. Also, there is this little excerpt from Nov Takahashi who was explaining the differences between Japanese and Western cosplaying:

These connections > between fandom and criminal activities have led to the current restrictions > on costuming in Japan. Many fans in Japan do not let their > friends/family/coworkers know that they are fans. SF/Fantasy/Anime are > seen as the pursuits of children and to admit that you engage in such > activities is admitting that you are still a child.

There is already a Dragon Ball live action movie

[codexus]

I saw it at an anime convention many years ago. IIRC it kind of sucked. It was a fun thing to watch at a convention though,

Ninja Scroll also to go live

[rtos]

Looks like that isn't the only one to be made into live action.... Jûbei ninpôchô will too. I shall now blockquote from Yahoo News:

'Mortal' Maven Nabs 'Ninja Scroll'
Wed Mar 13, 2:31 AM ET
By Dana Harris

HOLLYWOOD (Variety) - "Mortal Kombat" producer Larry Kasanoff has bought all remake rights to the Japanese 1994 anime blockbuster "Ninja Scroll" with the intention of turning it into an f/x-driven live-action feature that will spawn television, live stage tours, video games and music.

Critically acclaimed as Kawajiri Yoshiaki's masterpiece, "Ninja Scroll" is a samurai sword-and-sorcery epic in which a masterless ninja for hire joins forces with a powerful female ninja after her team is destroyed by a powerful man-monster. They create a tragic love story that culminates with the overthrow of the Shogun government.

"Anime is today what video games were seven years ago -- an entirely different style of entertainment that will be mainstream in the very near future," Kasanoff said.

Kasanoff is chairman and CEO of Threshold Entertainment, whose digital animation and effects subsidiary, will supervise visual FX for "Ninja Scroll," while another unit will create and manage the online presence of the brand.

Threshold also represents such entertainment properties as Duke Nukem, Mortal Kombat, Playboy, Hellraiser, Pepsi Co./Frito Lay and Ozzy Osbourne, developing brands for film, television and the Internet.

Jûbei!!!

Re:a movie is not long enough

[JabberWokky]

I dunno - Dragonball: the Magic Begins, is a live action movie of the Dragonball saga (with some of the names reverting to the original Monkey King fables). They had plenty of nifty battle scenes, both two powerful and/or crafty people doing battle and large nameless army guys against a small number of people. Plus it's got a *really* hot 80s chick (in a Missing Persons, big hair, loads of makeup way).

It's well worth watching just for seeing the damncool actor that plays Master Roshi. It's still for children, a la DB animated and DBZ (both of which I never really could stand to watch), but it's a really good movie to put on with a bunch of friends over, preferably after everybody has had a few. The opening battle scenes are some of the most fun in HK Cinema style battles. Burrowing underground, bouncing from tree to tree and visual gags. Fun, stupid stuff.

If you like it, try out Lion Man Maru and Master of the Flying Guillotine (both of which I didn't bother to look up the spelling of). More stupid live action battle fun, only a slim notch above an average Ultraman episode.

--
Evan