Dragonball

The judgment upon Dragonball: Evolution is greatly dependent on the audience’ background. To a western viewer with no idea about the original comic, or the “Wuxia” culture in China, Japan & Korea (the so-called “CJK area”), or the RPG game culture in this area, would find this movie quite interesting. But on the contrary, if you grew up with such culture like me, you would find this movie just another lousy try of “translating” the Eastern world to Western.

The story is really nothing new to any CJK ppl born after 1980’s (actually we have a special name for them, “post 80’s”), even he or she never read any single page of the original comic (which is, actually quite unlikely). There are a whole bunch of other comics, games and even novels following the same pattern: a “normal” kid, some day found out that he (yup, most likely to be a “he”) was actually very “not normal”, and got a big task to accomplish (like, save the world); so he set off for the adventure, and got some team members gradually on the way; they practiced their kongfu or chi or magic or all of them, and beat some bad guys or monsters of ghosts or all of them, bought or found or even robbed some brilliant weapons or armors or tools or all of them, and finally there would be a dual with the biggest bad guy (we have a nickname for those guys, “boss”, quite funny, huh?). OK, even if you are not a CJK kid, as long as you are a kid, or once to be a kid, that got some experience in the game world, you will know what I’m talking about.

The task of making a Dragonball movie with human actors is not like that of making a Harry Potter or LOTR movie. In the later ones, there were only books of pure words available, so using “live” landscapes and moving ppl and animals was good enough to milk the cash cow of the fans. But for Dragonball, there had been the popular comic books, TV and all other related commercials, and if you had nothing new or very impressive, you were doomed. Take the Batman series as an example: The original comic book and TV were there, so the first movie version got some new weapons for the dark knight, and the following sequels got either some new stories, or new roles, or upgraded vehicles and weapons, even the mask was designed to follow the latest fashion trend! Unfortunately, I couldn’t see such effort in this Dragonball movie. It’s more like a “recession version”: The total length of the movie is even less than 90 min!

Another big problem with this movie is very common to any Hollywood movie that trying to use some “Eastern elements”: Those “Eastern elements” are just not “Eastern” to real eastern ppl, but to Hollywood only. Like Lucy Liu is the China Doll forever to Hollywood, Jamie Chung (As Chi-Chi, a.k.a., girlfriend of the leading role, Goku) was cast to be a representative of eastern beauty, but trust me, no CJK boy will really thinks that she is prettier than most girls in his classroom. Don’t even mention Justin Chatwin as Goku – We just cannot imagine why Hollywood producers could not accept a really Asian-blooded boy (preferably CJK blood) to play this role. Although Goku was actually the reincarnation of Ozaru (literally “big monkey” in Japanese), which means he could be any race, the minds of most fans have been already set. I mean, can you imagine that we got Jackie Chan to play Spiderman?

There are also other problems with the details, such as the “Kame-Ha” looks more like Tai-Chi for old ppl, and the dragon in the final scene seems to be pregnant. Don’t wanna list them all here. The point is, is it really that hard to ask every staff of this movie to read just one volume of the original comic?

BTW there are some “hidden scenes” after the list of the cast and staff, which are the “triggers” of the sequel. I missed it, cuz the movie was so not exciting, that I just wanted to leave as soon as the first name came out on the screen.

The Fatal Smile – Watchmen

Honestly, I never read the original comic, or even heard about it before the ad of this movie began to appear everywhere. The first promotion poster appeared in Singapore media (the movie magazine First) shows only a huge “smile” badge, with a drop of blood on it. Back then I know nothing about the Comedian, so the first thing came to my mind is “Murder in Carrefour”… (Employees in Carrefour here sometimes will wear that badge to show their commitment to “smiley service”.)

It was said that this comic was too complicated to be filmed. Although it was finally filmed after more than 20 yrs, the movie itself IS very complicated. From 1940’s to 1985, including so many big event in the world like WWII, Vietnam War, Nixon all the way to the Afghan crisis, plus the love affairs, mid-life crisis, friendship, etc. of the Minutemen, -- this is not an easy job for any director.

The beginning is actually pretty good: the 300 style of slow motion and hardcore fighting for the death of the Comedian, and the “flash back” of those important incidents happened from 1940 to 1985. My personal favorite is the “remake” of the “V Day Kiss”. But when the storyline spreads out, it seems that the director doesn’t want to (or dare to?) discard any detail from the comic. Too many names and stories keep popping up from ppl’s memory, so sometimes it even looks a bit messy. And the total length of the movie is, naturally, very long, -- 2 hrs 45 min according to my watch.

To prevent ppl from leaving the cinema in the middle of the movie, the director shows you some bloody or sexy or both bloody and sexy scenes almost every 15 min. Whether these scenes are really necessary, or really necessary to make them like that, is arguable to me. Anyway finally the movie got a M18 rate in Singapore.

Compare to those bloody and sexy scenes, the fighting scenes are not that cheering up. Although the previous 300 is a whole hardcore stuff, this Watchmen looks like a 1980’s Hollywood style of stunt most of the time. Come on, where are those Hong Kong guys?!

Due to the long-term lawsuit around the copyright issue, the cast had almost “traveled around” all stars of Hollywood. Finally the selection was a surprisingly B-class group. Maybe the production company wanted to save more money for the special effects? Fortunately the special effects did a pretty good job, especially the Dr. Manhattan’s “blue ray” body. The fact that the actors didn’t have the burden of fame might actually do sth good for the movie: So they could act as actors, not stars. The almost only leading actress, Silk Spectre II, was not quite exciting on the contrary, except for her sexy body.

The ending is the best part of the whole movie. A trillion-dollar question was raised: Is it correct to sacrifice millions of ppl’s lives to save billions’? If the number is just 15, 150, or even 1500, I believe that most ppl will answer “YES!” without hesitation (remember United 93?). But when this number turns to 15 millions, I don’t think that anyone can give an answer that easily. And the worst thing is, you even need to protect the “bad guy” behind the scheme, cuz if he is exposed, the whole world will be back to war again. It’s really cruel that a “good guy” has to die to keep this secret. That reminds me the old “hara-kiri” tradition in Japan: Sometimes you need to kill yourself (or let someone help you with that) to protect certain things like justice, dignity, etc. Although it seems to be a “happy ending” in the end, I don’t think anyone really feels happy when stepping out of the cinema.