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James Marsters Knew Dragonball Evolution Was Doomed From His First Day On Set

bitbydeath

Member
Damn shame it didn’t get treated properly, this could have been massive.

"'Dragon Ball Z' was important for me as a father, so I was really into it when I got the role. And they told me it was a $120 million picture, and that Stephen Chow was producing. And Stephen Chow is the director of 'Kung Fu Hustle' and 'Shaolin Soccer.' Which if you guys haven't seen his films, go get them, just fabulous. They're funny, goofy, violent, scary: Everything you would need for Dragon Ball to work.
"And I get out to Durango, Mexico and it's a $30 million picture and Stephen Chow is just on paper to fool us down into the desert. And they don't even want to pay for the stuntman to get made up like me, so they never used the stuntman; they just kept putting me up on wires. I still have a separated clavicle from the shoot, because it was just gnarly. But I still wanted my son to at least like my part in it."
"So this is the funny ending to it. So, it comes out, and I wanted to hit, because frankly we get three pictures out of it if it hits, and we get another chance to do it again, and then we get to do 'Dragon Ball Z' material, and my character is going to transform into the Piccolo that we all know. Because I was doing King Piccolo, so I wanted to ... I wanted to pump out and be Piccolo and surprise everybody."
"And so, my son was all excited about the movie, and so we go into the Cineplex, and he leads us into the theater, and I'm like, 'Please man, full house, opening night,' and we walk in there and it's packed. It smells like body odor, beautiful. And it's hard to get three seats together, my daughter, my son and I, and we get three seats together and I'm so excited. Something in my brain goes off like, 'This is too good to be true.'"
"And I lean over to the teenager next to me and say, 'Is this Dragon Ball?' and he goes, 'What?' and I go, 'Is this Dragon Ball?' And he goes, 'What? No! This is 'Fast & Furious,' man!' So we get up, and we go across the hall to 'Dragon Ball'; my son was so excited he led us into the wrong theater. And I'm thinking, 'Please man, just 50 people.' And we walk in there, and including us three, there's five people in the audience."
Akira Toriyama would later say on the event of "Dragon Ball's" 30th anniversary that he had meant to retire from the title, but the live-action movie was so bad, he had to return to wash the bad taste out of everyone's mouths
https://www.slashfilm.com/882722/ja...olution-was-doomed-from-his-first-day-on-set/
 

SJRB

Gold Member
Still think fans and actors alike fell victim to what was probably a massive money laundering scheme.

I feel bad for the actors who all clearly went in expecting to make a great Dragonball movie.
 

FunkMiller

Gold Member
One wonders why he didn’t walk when he found out the budget was slashed and Chow wasn’t involved. I guess his agent did a pretty horrible job with the contract.
 

UnNamed

Banned
I remember his interviews in 2009 where he talked about DragonBall movies, yes movies, because he was sure DragonBall would have been a success and so he talked about the evolution of his characters in the next movies.

He's just embarrassed to say he's a bad actor who make bad movies.
 
I remember his interviews in 2009 where he talked about DragonBall movies, yes movies, because he was sure DragonBall would have been a success and so he talked about the evolution of his characters in the next movies.

He's just embarrassed to say he's a bad actor who make bad movies.
He's a great actor. He had nothing to do with why this movie was shit.
 

YCoCg

Member
At least he got to redeem himself in the Dragon Ball community by being the voice of Zamasu in Super, which has already lead to more work due to him coming back for the video games.
 

Hugare

Member
Hahaha, this is both hilarious and sad

The part about Toriyama saying that he was going to retire, but after seeing the movie he decided to come back to wash the bad taste of everyone's mouths must hurt James to this day

Traumatized his kids for life, but welp, at least he got paid
 

MastaKiiLA

Member
The only good thing you can say about the film is that the only person whose career was destroyed by the project was the director, James Wong. Everyone else seems to have survived it well enough.

The project was sent to die. Budget, and casting sent up huge red flags. The production crew wasn't actually that bad. No reason Wong couldn't be trusted as director, he'd done some decent films up to that point, including 3 popular Final Destination flicks. However, the script was fucking awful, and then the decision to cast Chatwin as Goku almost immediately lost the entire fandom, the very people needed to drive this film's success. Tone-deaf executives killed this movie IMO. I have to now check to see if McMuscles or JoBlo have episodes covering the production of this film.
 
Hahaha, this is both hilarious and sad

The part about Toriyama saying that he was going to retire, but after seeing the movie he decided to come back to wash the bad taste of everyone's mouths must hurt James to this day

Traumatized his kids for life, but welp, at least he got paid
Ironically James voiced Zamasu in Super and the games, so that actually benefited him.
 
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Doom85

Member
A DBZ movie is doomed the moment anyone says "Let's make a DBZ movie".

Some things just don't translate well to live action.

Those fight scenes in Man of Steel beg to differ. Seriously, with the right budget and people who give a shit about the source material, there’s no reason it couldn’t work.
 
The only good thing you can say about the film is that the only person whose career was destroyed by the project was the director, James Wong. Everyone else seems to have survived it well enough.

The project was sent to die. Budget, and casting sent up huge red flags. The production crew wasn't actually that bad. No reason Wong couldn't be trusted as director, he'd done some decent films up to that point, including 3 popular Final Destination flicks. However, the script was fucking awful, and then the decision to cast Chatwin as Goku almost immediately lost the entire fandom, the very people needed to drive this film's success. Tone-deaf executives killed this movie IMO. I have to now check to see if McMuscles or JoBlo have episodes covering the production of this film.
Hopefully eventually, his episode on street fighter the movie the game was epic lol
 

chromhound

Member
that movie was straight garbage and it was free...
vietnam GIF
 

Madflavor

Member
Those fight scenes in Man of Steel beg to differ. Seriously, with the right budget and people who give a shit about the source material, there’s no reason it couldn’t work.

It's not just about fight scenes. The hairstyles, having actors scream endlessly in a "power up" stance, firing energy beams in front of green screen, those costumes, try to make any of these things not look completely ridiculous. You're also talking about a show/manga who told their stories over the course of dozens up dozens of episodes. Try to fit the Saiyan Saga into a two hour film. Good luck. The film would be made for fans, and fans would probably be the only ones who could watch something like that and not laugh their asses off and be confused. But it wouldn't resonate with general audiences, and no studio is going to through $250 million dollars at film that's not guaranteed a huge success.
 
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