History Film / DragonballEvolution

* ActionGirl: Chi-Chi and Bulma, though the latter is a FauxActionGirl when it comes to her gun while the former [[FauxActionGirl doesn't even join the heroes during the climactic battle to decide the fate of the Earth]].
* AdaptationalAngstUpgrade: While the manga/anime Goku is consistently portrayed as optimistic and confident, this version is shy and prone to self-doubt.
* AdaptationalBadass:
** Yamcha, who isn't as prone to being defeated and actually [[spoiler:lands the finishing blow on Mai]].
** Bulma is briefly able to keep up with Goku and point her gun at his head even when he uses his speed.
*** She's even playable in the video game adaptation!
** Mai. In the manga and anime, she was an IneffectualSympatheticVillain, while in the film she's much more efficient ([[spoiler:even if she does end up being a total AntiClimaxBoss]]) and also [[AdaptationalVillainy much more evil]].
** Oddly enough, the Kamehameha Wave itself. In the series the wave was an extremely powerful energy attack limited only by the user's power, but that was it. In the movie the wave can do basically anything. It's shown putting out and lighting fires, as well as somehow healing a character from near death -- though later entries in the franchise give it a similar ability.
* AdaptationalCurves: {{Inverted|Trope}}. [[Characters/DragonBallSonGoku Son Goku]] is one of the most iconic example of {{shonen}} heroes with a HeroicBuild and his physique is often idolized by anime fans and Gym goers (to the point that the ''Goku's gym'' [[MemeticMutation meme]] exists) and he constantly suffers ClothingDamage to show off his impressive physique. Movie Goku has a very average, slim build to the point that even [[ButtMonkey Yamcha]] is more muscular than him. The story arcs the movie is adapting had a less muscular Goku, but that is because Goku was a lot younger in the source material during the King Piccolo saga. The movie gives him an AgeLift, but leaves out his muscular physique, presumably to portray him as a loner/loser.
* AdaptationalModesty: Bulma, who is a MsFanservice in the source material dresses a lot more modestly here.

* AdaptationalSkimpiness: Chi-Chi infamously wore a bikini as a kid but switched to more modest clothing as an adult. Here she wears a lot of cleavage revealing outfits.

** Zig-zagged with Yamcha. While, as stated in AdaptationalBadass, he isn't as prone to being defeated, he also doesn't seem to posses Manga Yamcha's vastly superhuman abilities.

* AdaptationDyeJob:
** Played with in terms of Yamcha. Like his manga counterpart, he does indeed have naturally black hair, but appears to have dyed it blonde InUniverse.
** Bulma's once blue and/or purple hair is reduced to a single streak on fully brunette hair.

* AgeLift:
** Goku is aged up to a teenager at the start instead of being a kid.
** Master Roshi appears to be younger and more youthful looking than Grandpa Gohan, despite being his former Martial Arts master.

* AnimeHair: Goku features a more {{downplayed}} realistic spin on this. He even tried to gel his hair down to prepare for a party.

* AscendedExtra: Mai was originally just a minor character who was a henchwoman to second-rate villain Pilaf. She also becomes an AdaptationalBadass.

* BloodMagic:
** Piccolo creates creatures from his blood.
** Mai steals a sample of Chi-Chi's blood to take her form.

* CleavageWindow: Although Mai mostly has adequate protective gear, she leaves her chest unprotected. [[FanService Huh.]]

** Goku and Chi-Chi could just as well have been called Gohan and Videl, Goku here can also be called [[ComicBook/SpiderMan Peter Parker]].
** Piccolo, on the other hand, keeps most of his traits, but also gains a few possessed by Emperor Pilaf - most notably having Mai as his assistant (in the series proper, it would be Piano), his wish to take over the world (in the series proper, it was to become young again), and being the first villain fought. On top of that, his usage of the Saibamen comes from Nappa and Vegeta from ''Anime/DragonBallZ''.

* DeadPersonConversation: [[spoiler: Goku has a conversation with his grandfather after Mai shoots him with a ray gun and leaves him near-death.]]
* DeadlyDodging: When Goku is confronted by a couple of bullies at the big party, he informs them that he promised he wouldn't fight them - before smoothly allowing the bullies to beat the crap out of each other and the head bully's very expensive car.

* DeathByAdaptation: In the original manga and anime timeline, Mai lives. But she dies in the movie.

* FightingFromTheInside: After being transformed into Oozaru, Roshi, with his dying breath, manages to get through to Goku and get him to change back to his old self.
%%* FirstGirlWins: Chi-Chi for Goku.
* ForgotAboutHisPowers: Piccolo demonstrates telekinesis powerful enough to crush a house, but never uses it again, even to try to retrieve a Dragonball that's rolling away.

* GratuitousJapanese: Mai has a scene that's all in (subtitled) Japanese.
* TheGreys: Demon King Piccolo more resembles a green colored one of these than the sluglike Namekian of the manga and anime
* GunsAkimbo: Bulma. Shame she [[ATeamFiring misses everything]] [[FauxActionGirl she shoots at]].

* IJustWantToBeNormal: At the beginning, Goku cares more about dealing with bullies and getting with Chi-Chi than with his kung fu-ing, which is a complete 180 to the source material, where Goku cares only about fighting and can barely comprehend the fact that he's engaged to Chi-Chi without her sitting him down and explaining it to him.

* JerkJock: Carey Fuller, one of the guys who bullies Goku at school.

* KidsAreCruel: Carey Fuller tries to run Goku down with his car to spite the latter.

* LittleMissBadass: Chi-Chi is a teenaged girl who takes part in martial arts tournaments.

* MaliciousMisnaming: The school bullies call Goku "Geeko".
* NamedByTheAdaptation: The video game adaptation gives Chi-Chi the last name of ''[=McRoberts=]'' of all things.
* NecessaryDrawback: Roshi tries to seal Piccolo again, even though it sucks out his life force. [[SenselessSacrifice It doesn't work]].
* NoSell: When Mai takes on Goku, she lands a solid punch to his face. Goku [[MadeOfIron doesn't seem to notice]].
* NotQuiteDead: In the post-credits SequelHook, [[spoiler:Piccolo is revealed to have survived]].

* ThePowerOfLust: Goku has trouble controlling his ki, and Grandpa Gohan's guidance doesn't help. It isn't until Chi-Chi, his eventual LoveInterest, begins to motivate him that he gets the hang of it.
* RedEyesTakeWarning: Goku's eyes keep changing color [[spoiler: after his transformations into Oozaru form]].

* SealedEvilInACan: Piccolo is originally bound up in a jar, but escapes offscreen.

''Dragonball Evolution'' is an American LiveActionAdaptation of ''Manga/DragonBall'' produced by Creator/TwentiethCenturyFox and directed by James Wong. It stars Creator/JustinChatwin, Creator/EmmyRossum, Creator/ChowYunFat, Creator/JamesMarsters, Creator/JamieChung, Joon Park and Eriko Tamura.

* CoolLoser: Goku is supposed to be a SociallyAwkwardHero and a freak. He is still a PrettyBoy, has good dressing sense, has great ShonenHair (considerably less [[IdiotHair weirder]] than his manga, counterpart at that) with martial arts talents. Although, he is still an IdiotHero who [[OpenMouthInsertFoot often embarrasses]] [[DiggingYourselfDeeper himself]].

** Goku and Chi-Chi could just as well have been called Gohan and Videl, Goku here can also be called [[Franchise/SpiderMan Peter Parker]].

* AdaptationalMundanity: It is justified, since it would have been very difficult to make this film 100% faithful to the manga and anime, since on Earth from the world of ''Dragon Ball'' is inhabited by anthropomorphic animals, dinosaurs, humans with unusual characteristics, demons and talking monsters, in the manga and anime the ''Dragon Ball'' chronology goes back to the 700s, while in the film it seems to happen in the present 2009. Goku is an average high school teenager rather than a kid raised in the woods and most of the cast, notably the dwarf Krillin, were left out.

* AdaptationalVillainy: The Namekians are described as being conquerors from across the stars, when in the source material, they are mostly peaceful, with Demon King Piccolo being an exception.

[[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/dragonball_evolution.png]]
[[caption-width-right:250:Left to right: Mai, Bulma, Goku, Master Roshi, and Chi-Chi. [[InNameOnly Allegedly.]]]]

** Mai. In the anime and manga, she was an IneffectualSympatheticVillain, while in the film she's much more efficient ([[spoiler:even if she does end up being a total AntiClimaxBoss]]) and also [[AdaptationalVillainy much more evil]].

** The Oozaru in the manga is [[AttackOfTheFiftyFootWhatever King Kong like beast]]. Here, as an Oozaru, Goku grows around two feet taller than his base form.

* AgeLift: Goku is aged up to a teenager at the start instead of being a kid.

* AdaptationalWimp: Zig-zagged with Yamcha. While, as stated in AdaptationalBadass, he isn't as prone to being defeated, he also doesn't seem to posses Manga Yamcha's vastly superhuman abilities.

** In addition to Creator/MarioCastaneda and Creator/CarlosSegundo returning as the respective voices of Goku and Piccolo, Creator/IrwinDaayan, the original Dende, voices Agundas; Paco Mauri (Gara in ''Dragon Ball'' and Mr. Lao in ''Z'') is instead the voice of Master Roshi; José Arenas (who played various roles in ''Z'' and ''GT'' as well as Jeice in ''Kai'') is the voice of Fuller; Hermán López (the original Turtle) voices Mr. Kingery (the teacher who appears at the beginning of the film); and Creator/ArturoMercado, the voice of Karin, Zarbon and Babidi, voices Grandpa Gohan.

* StockFootage: [[FreezeFrameBonus Paying close attention]] during Goku's "premonitions" whenever he acquires a Dragon Ball reveals that the movie uses a fair amount of stock footage. Examples include ''Film/{{Armageddon}}'' and ''Film/IndependenceDay''.

* AdaptaionalSkimpiness: Chi-Chi infamously wore a bikini as a kid but switched to more modest clothing as an adult. Here she wears a lot of cleavage revealing outfits.

* BetaCouple: Yamcha and Bulma.

* FirstGirlWins: Chi-Chi for Goku.

* LargeHam: Master Roshi and Piccolo.

* NotWhatItLooksLike: All Goku can say when Roshi catches him in his house.

* StockPhrases: Uses a whole bunch of them.

* TakeOverTheWorld: Piccolo's EvilPlan.

* ForgotAboutHisPowers: Piccolo demonstrates telekinesis powerful enough to crush a house, but never uses it again, even to try to retrieve a Dragonball that was rolling away.

* ISurrenderSuckers: Bulma tries this with Mai.

* PlotInducedStupidity
** Piccolo is shown crushing a ''house'' with his mind. Later, when a Dragon Ball rolls out of his grasp, why doesn't he mind-grab it?
** It also doesn't make any sense as to why he dropped a house on Gohan instead of questioning him about the Dragon Ball.

* RedEyesTakeWarning: Goku's kept changing color [[spoiler: after his transformations into Oozaru form]].

* StockSubtitle: "Evolution".

* AdaptedOut: The movie seems to be mostly an adaptation of the Demon King Piccolo arc of the manga with a little bit of Goku's backstory added in, so they could safely excise any of the bit characters from the other arcs. But still some major players in the DKP arc are still left out, Like Tien Shinhan and Chiaotzu, and perhaps most egregiously, Krillin.

''Dragonball Evolution'' is an American LiveActionAdaptation of ''Manga/DragonBall'' produced by Creator/TwentiethCenturyFox and directed by James Wong. The trailer can be viewed [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yo4t8PeqJ6E&fmt=18 here]].

Goku is a young high school student who must battle the evil space overlord Piccolo and retrieve the Dragon Balls in order to stop Piccolo's massive ape servant, Oozaru. Along the way, Goku loses his grandfather and meets an inventor named Bulma, an aging martial arts master named Roshi, and a bandit named Yamcha.

Creator/AkiraToriyama reportedly [[DisownedAdaptation hated this movie]] so much that he returned to work on the ''Franchise/DragonBall'' franchise to redeem his creation. This was one of the factors resulting in ''Dragon Ball''[='s=] revival in the mid-2010s, starting with ''Anime/DragonBallZBattleOfGods''.

* YouGottaHaveBlueHair: Surprisingly averted, as Bulma in the original story was conspicuously a blunette. In some scenes she's got one lock dyed blue, likely as a nod to the original.

* AdaptationalMundanity: It is justified, since it would have been very difficult to make this film 100% faithful to the manga and anime, since on Earth from the world of ''Dragon Ball'' is inhabited by anthropomorphic animals, dinosaurs, humans with unusual characteristics, demons and talking monsters, in the manga and anime the ''Dragon Ball'' chronology goes back to the 700s, while in the film it seems to happen in the present 2009. Goku is an average high school teenager rather than a kid raised in the woods and most of the cast, notably the dwarf Krillin, were left out. This is one of the reasons it's not looked upon favorably.

* EverythingsBetterWithMonkeys: True to the source material, Oozaru is a giant monkey.

It has a tie-in video game on the UsefulNotes/PlayStationPortable. Not to be confused with the two unofficial live-action movies based on ''Dragon Ball'', ''Film/DragonBallTheMagicBegins'' and ''Film/DragonBallFightForVictorySonGoku''.

* ArtisticLicensePhysics: At the end of the BeamOWar between Goku and Piccolo, Goku somehow uses the Kamehameha to propel himself towards Piccolo, somehow acting like a reverse tractor beam that draws them towards eachother, despite the fact that, if anything, it should push Goku away from Piccolo since it's just a blast of energy and nothing more.

* AdaptationalMundanity: It is justified, since it would have been very difficult to make this film 100% faithful to the manga and anime, since on Earth the world of ''Dragon Ball'' is inhabited by anthropomorphic animals, dinosaurs, humans with unusual characteristics, demons and talking monsters, in the manga and anime the ''Dragon Ball'' chronology goes back to the 700s, while in the film it seems to happen in the present 2009. Goku is an average high school teenager rather than a kid raised in the woods and most of the cast, notably the dwarf Krillin, were left out. This is one of the reasons it's not looked upon favorably.

* AdaptationalMundanity: It is justified, since it would have been very difficult to make this film 100% faithful to the manga and anime, since on Earth the world of ''Dragon Ball'' is inhabited by anthropomorphic animals, dinosaurs, humans with unusual characteristics, demons and talking monsters, in the manga and anime the Dragon Ball chronology goes back to the 700s, while in the film it seems to happen in the present 2009. Goku is an average high school teenager rather than a kid raised in the woods and most of the cast, notably the dwarf Krillin, were left out. This is one of the reasons it's not looked upon favorably.

''Dragonball Evolution'' is an [[InNameOnly incredibly loose]] American LiveActionAdaptation of ''Manga/DragonBall'' produced by Creator/TwentiethCenturyFox and directed by James Wong. The trailer can be viewed [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yo4t8PeqJ6E&fmt=18 here]].

Creator/AkiraToriyama reportedly hated this movie so much that he returned to work on the ''Franchise/DragonBall'' franchise to redeem his creation. This was one of the factors resulting in ''Dragon Ball''[='s=] revival in the mid-2010s, starting with ''Anime/DragonBallZBattleOfGods''.