YMMV / Dragonball Evolution

• Accidental Aesop: The movie's main moral for Goku is to "always have faith in who he is". However, most of the movie's situations are based more on the people he knows and cares for. His leaving the house without telling his grandfather and finding him dying, his attraction to Chi-Chi and his regaining control over himself after choking Roshi to death play more importance than Gohan's message to him. The movie's moral feels less like Be Yourself and more of "think of your loved ones".
• Ass Pull: Sure, we understand that Goku is not of this Earth, but The Reveal that Goku is Ozaru comes directly out of nowhere. After Piccolo's reign ended, how can Goku still be alive and who sent him into space only to send him back to Earth? And even then, there is no explanation for why Piccolo went to such lengths to have him killed if he was so critical to his plans. Ironically enough, this is one of the things actually close to the source material, as it's a clear indication of Goku's Saiyan nature.
• Awesome Music:
  • The choice of Japanese singer Ayumi Hamasaki for the theme song was one of the best decisions the movie makers made.
  • Brian Tyler's musical score also gets a lot of praise. His main theme has a few notes in it that sound like the Iron Man 3 theme he would compose years later.
• Bile Fascination: The film's bad word-of-mouth is precisely why people choose to watch it out of reluctance.
• Broken Base: Whether the casting of Justin Chatwin as Goku constitutes as whitewashing or not.
  • For: Goku is based on Sun Wukong, a Chinese character, and Toriyama stated that if anyone could play him, it would be "a younger Jackie Chan".
  • Against: Even people who have never seen the show can tell you that Goku is an alien (Saiyan), so he doesn't really have a race. Mother's Basement also said that because of this, he can be played by anyone regardless of race.
  • There are some people who assert that while the casting isn't a case of racial whitewashing, it is a case of cultural whitewashing because the original character had a lot of Chinese influences.
• Cliché Storm: There's an eclipse, an apocalyptic showdown, ancient sealed powers, an Ordinary High-School Student hero who wants to fit in but realises that he's amazing, loads of stock phrases, bullies, a Chosen One prophecy, a generic Action Girl in addition to a tragically dead parent figure. This isn't all the fault of the adaptation; some of these tropes can be found in the original series as well. It's just that it didn't attempt to squeeze them all in at once (or during an under two hour runtime- you could theoretically point to one point or another in the series that has one or more of these tropes, but were spread out over years of publication and production).
• Complete Monster: King Piccolo is an evil Namekian who attacked Earth alongside Oozaru, bringing the human race to brink of annihilation before he was sealed away by seven mystics. Returning 2,000 years later, Piccolo decides to seek out the seven Dragon Balls with the intention of wishing for eternal youth, and then eliminating the human race in revenge for his imprisonment, beginning his search by destroying a village filled with innocent people. Piccolo would then attack Goku's grandfather, Gohan, in his home, before killing him by crushing him with the house's rubble. After Goku and his friends manage to retrieve the Dragon Balls, Piccolo has Mai steal them, nearly killing Goku in the process. When Goku transforms into Oozaru during his final confrontation with Piccolo, the latter has Goku attack his own friends, while also having him choke Master Roshi to death before he could re-seal Piccolo.
• Critical Dissonance: The movie has gotten extremely negative reviews, with a 15% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 2.5 on IMDb with it being #17 on the Bottom 100 Rated Movies, yet somehow has a "mixed" Metacritic score of 45 based on 10 reviews.
• Ending Fatigue: While the movie itself is considered mercifully short, it takes over a minute to reveal The Stinger.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • General agreement among fans is that one of the best qualities of the film (other than Brian Tyler's epic score) is the delightfully hamtastic Roshi (as played by Chow Yun-fat).
  • Chi Chi too, especially after Jamie Chung received Retroactive Recognition in other works.
• Fan Nickname: "Noku", "Ukog" and "Kaka-not" to distinguish Goku from his canon counterpart.
  • Many have also taken to using the nickname Goku was given to him by his bullies, "Geeko", or the slightly altered version, "Geeku".
• Fan-Preferred Cut Content: According to Ben Ramsey, his script is more faithful to the source material than the final film. Needless to say, many wished the film would've been made with that in mind, given how much of a trainwreck the final film was.
• Ham and Cheese: Despite how the film turned out, there is widespread agreement that James Marsters as Piccolo and Chow Yun-fat as Roshi were awesome casting choices.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • As pointed out by Team Four Star, Goku's outfit in this movie is similar to what Goku Black would wear in Dragon Ball Super. Likewise, this wouldn't be the last time James Marsters would play a villain in the franchise. Nor will this be the last time the heroes will use the Mafūba (Evil containment wave) technique on the character played by him.
  • Even funnier, the character James Marsters voices is Zamasu who even has green skin just like Piccolo. Goku Black is Goku possessed by a version of Zamasu. This was intentional in fact, as Marsters willingly agreed to return to the anime (working without pay), in order to redeem himself within the Dragon Ball community.
  • Additionally, Goku in the Japanese dub of the film is voiced by Kappei Yamaguchi. Yamaguchi would later voice Fu in Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2, who opposes Zamasu and even prevents the Downer Ending Zamasu causes in the original story.
  • Throughout the franchise, including this movie, Goku and Bulma were Platonic Life-Partners, so it's hilarious to see Justin Chatwin and Emmy Rossum play a sexually active couple in Shameless (US).
  • Master Roshi's house in the middle of a huge metropolis may bring to mind Carl's house from Up, released the same year.
  • Using the kamehameha to resuscitate someone was an odd choice. A ki shot on the other hand was considered much more sensible by the fans.
  • Bulma and Mai's Designated Girl Fight becomes this when in Dragon Ball Super, Mai dates her son in the Future Trunks arc.
• Just Here for Godzilla:
  • Many people in Latin America only saw the movie because Mario Castañeda and Carlos Segundo were reprising their roles as Goku and Piccolo respectively.
  • Similarly, almost everyone from the Brazilian Portuguese dub (except for Roshi) returned for the movie.
• Memetic Mutation: A common joke nowadays is to credit this movie with saving the franchise because Akira Toriyama hated it so much that he returned to active development of the series solely to right the wrongs of this film. It's also been repeatedly claimed that the movie was one of the six universes erased by Zeno before Dragon Ball Super.
  • An edit of a car slide scene also makes the rounds every once in a while.
• Memetic Loser: Goku "Geeko" is an angsty teen who whines about not being "cool" enough at his school.
• Narm:
  • The line "The first rule is… there are no rules." is absolutely laughable for some because it didn't convey any sense on what is said.
  • It is difficult to take the dramatic scenes seriously because of Justin Chatwin's horrible underacting.
  • The bullies' insult of choice: Geeko.
  • Justin Chatwin's face whenever he's looking dramatic just makes it look like he's having a painful bowel movement.
  • When Goku meets Bulma for the first time, Bulma refers to the Dragon Ball as a "Promethean Orb", to which Goku calls it a Dragon Ball. Not only is the line "Promethean Orb" really funny, but the way Justin Chatwin says "It's a Dragon Ball" is done in a deeper voice then normal, making it far more funny then it should have been.
  • When Roshi attempts to use the Mafuba on Piccolo, the latter lets out an overly-hammy barrage of goofy yells as he is swirled around in the Mafuba's sealing energy like he's caught in some sort of tornado.
  • Once Piccolo breaks free of Roshi's attempt at using Mafuba, he drops down to the ground and creates a gigantic crater on the floor in an outrageously cartoonish and quick fashion.
  • The brief clip of Grandpa Gohan laughing as Goku finds his gi. It actually sounds like a spiteful laugh at how stupid Goku will look in it.
• Older Than They Think: The whole idea of "Dragon Ball but in High School" is not that dumb, taking into account that although Goku never went to school, this is part of Goku's son Gohan's story (some might say it is dumb, but the right kind of dumb).
• The Problem with Licensed Games: Rather fittingly, the movie's tie-in PSP game was lambasted by critics, and is considered one of the worst Dragon Ball games of all time, attempting to copy the Dragon Ball Z: Budokai series' formula but dumbing it down severely — just like with the movie itself. It attempts to be more loyal to the manga by giving Piccolo a new form (Neo Piccolo) reminiscent of Lord Slug, and having him reveal that Goku is a Saiyan and calling him "Kakarot" without explaining how Piccolo knows this. Interestingly, the game is currently the only one in which you can choose Bulma as a playable fighter.
• Questionable Casting: Pretty much all the casting choices (excluding James Marsters and Chow Yun-fat) in this movie are bad, but one weird example is Ernie Hudson as a movie exclusive character, Sifu Norris. Although some point out while Justin Chatwin and Jamie Chung don't exactly bring to mind Goku and Chi Chi, they absolutely scream Gohan and Videl (to the point that Chi Chi flat out wears Videl's high school outfit in the second act of the film).
• So Bad, It's Good: Most of the reactions were negative, even from those who never saw the animated series. That said, it can be enjoyable. A small minority think it was a decent film in its own right, to the point it could be considered an okay film had it not had the Dragon Ball name.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • See what Goku's head collided with when Grandpa Gohan knocked him off? Sure, he was falling pretty fast, but melons shouldn't be THAT soft, should they? Also in the previous scene, one of Goku's kicks didn't even touch his grandpa. Force Kick in effect? The 2 consecutive failures can be seen in one video.
  • There's also that one scene with Goku and Piccolo in a Ki blast struggle… that ends with Goku shooting himself towards Piccolo with no propulsion whatsoever and in the same Kamehameha firing pose.
  • There's also a bad case of Styrofoam Rocks towards the end of the movie. You'll know it when you see it.
  • And let's not get started with either the obviously fake ape suit substituting for Oozaru or the wretched CG used throughout, like for Shen Long.
  • When Goku transforms back into his normal self after becoming Oozaru, it's very obviously just a reversed version of his initial transformation scene, given how his unbuttoned gi magically ties itself back together.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: It is perfectly understandable that changes have to be made when adapting an manga and anime to the big screen, but most of the changes only serve to make this adaptation more generic. For instance, by making Bulma an Action Girl, Chi-Chi a Love Interest and Goku an angsty teenager, they just make classic characters more forgettable. In fact, the changes were so numerous and so arbitrary that Chris Stuckmann claimed that even when the film does follow the source material, it seems weirdly out of place. When CinemaSins reviewed the film, due to just how many requests they'd gotten, they made an exception to their rule about not doing research about the source material, resulting in the film's sin count going from 177 to 9518.
• They Copied It, So It Sucks!: Another reason the movie was critically panned was because of how elements are blatantly ripped off from Spider-Man.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Some reviewers have noted that the film does have some good ideas to make a competent, well-made action-comedy, but fails to capitalize on them because of a toxic mixture of Executive Meddling, shallow talent pools, and an anemic lack of ambition.
  • For that matter, if they were trying to make it a Dragon Ball movie, there's several places that they could've used actual elements from Dragon Ball - i.e., reviving Goku with Sensu Beans instead of the Kamehameha (which isn't even a healing technique in the source material), using the Power Pole to get out of the hole Yamcha had trapped them in, and so on.
• Took the Bad Film Seriously: James Marsters didn't appear to take his role of Piccolo too seriously in practice; however, he did give several long-winded speeches on the character's motivations, referencing William Shakespeare in one of them and treating the role as a Composite Character of Piccolo and Kami (who were technically the same being anyway). It's obvious he's referring to the original script before Executive Meddling tore it all to hell. Still, he gives a downright subtle and restrained performance compared to most everyone else in the film.
  Marsters: He used to be a force of good, but he was imprisoned, making him very angry, and then he escapes... The cool thing is anybody who's seen Dragon Ball knows that Lord Piccolo transforms into THE Piccolo, and that is a whole other ball of wax; heroic wouldn't be the wrong term, but it's a long journey.
• Uncertain Audience: Executive Meddling, in an attempt to appeal to larger audiences, would end up turning against the movie. The movie fails to appeal to fans of the Dragon Ball series due to extremely drastic changes from the source material (such as Goku going to high school and him connected to Piccolo). It fails to appeal to Martial Arts film fans with its editing. The film clearly borrows more from movies at the time like Spider-Man and Transformers (2007) but lacking the elements that made them work. Ultimately, this made the movie fail to find any audience and was a massive box office bomb.

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