To my surprise, one of the more heated debates we hear
about at The Big Picture is over
Dragonball. The movie is slated to open
next April, and of course, it's a live-action version of the anime classic.
Well, it's sort of a live-action version, anyway. It's definitely got living,
breathing actors, but some of our readers don't like the direction they think
the movie is heading, insisting it won't be a true version of the story.
James Marsters, who plays the villainous Lord
Piccolo in the movie, recently told the Japanese magazine Jump Square
(via the
Dragonball movie site) that there are plenty of
changes. "Definitely the story of this movie is different from the original." Uh
oh. "But it’s a necessary change," continues Marsters, "because we need to
condense the long story of the original for a movie."
Another bad sign for the purists is Marsters' admission
that "some characters in the original don’t appear in the movie."
It is next to impossible to communicate everything
everyone thinks is important from an original text, no matter the medium, in a
film. The primary reason for that, of course, is the time constraint. But what
about a trilogy? OK, maybe, but that's usually going to be predicated on the
success of the first film. Even then, with a case like Dragonball, where
you have I don't even know how many years of comics, three TV series, a bunch of
animated flicks, and even video games to draw from, you still won't get to
everything.
Plus, even though this thing has millions of fans, at
least part of the movie will be dedicated to the new audience. And don't bitch
about that, Dragonball devotees, because if not for the casual fan or the
uninitiated, most movies wouldn't be successful. Do you really think Iron Man
only made money off readers of the comic? Do you really think 30 million
Americans - or one in ten - have read a lot of the comics? So, financially, the
movie is too big to make just for the usual suspects. If it can't broaden its
scope, there's no need to make it into a movie.
Besides, as Marsters points out, "Though there are
differences between the two, I think it is all right if the core part of
Dragonball remains."
Hopefully, that'll be good enough for the diehards and
the newcomers, as well.
In the meantime, please enjoy this hip Japanese teaser
poster for the film, with our compliments.