Ask John: Can a Live Action Dragonball Z Succeed?

Question:
I heard some news that has made me doubt humanity. Fox has acquired the rights for a Dragonball Z “live action” movie!?! My question is, has a live action movie based on an anime series ever been done before, and why do they do this?

Answer:
Of course the reasoning behind Twentieth Century Fox choosing to license film rights to Dragonball is money. The series is popular in America and is making a lot of people rich, so Fox, of course, wants to cash in as well. Keep in mind, though, that just because Fox has obtained the film rights doesn’t mean that they’ll actually use them. Fox has also owned the rights to produce an American “Battle Angel” movie for over a year now but doesn’t seem to be interested in actually exercising these rights. However, it does seem as though Fox intends to “fast track” production of a franchise of Dragonball Z live-action films.

Whether a live action Dragonball Z film would be successful in America is a matter of speculation on which I’m no more qualified to predict than anyone else. Especially with advances in digital cinematography and special effects, and Hollywood’s recent love affair with Asian and Chinese martial arts and actors, there should be little doubt that it is theoretically within possibility that an American studio could conceivably create an impressive Dragonball Z film. However, my speculation urges me to keep my expectations very low. It’s not what Dragonball Z would look like in live-action that fans should worry about because current film technology should be able to do an adequate visual job. What should worry fans is whether or not it’s possible to convert Dragonball to live action and retain the style and spirit of Dragonball intact.

While the Dragonball Z animation was created for a young audience, I don’t think it’s possible to re-create the sort of pugilism found in Dragonball Z in live action and still manage a PG or PG-13 rating. While it may be acceptable for cartoon characters to hit someone hard enough to send that person through a mountain, this sort of intense physical violence in live-action virtually guarantees an MPAA R-rating, which automatically alienates Dragonball’s young target audience. This necessitates some sort of compromise that’s bound to offend and upset purist Dragonball fans. Even a layman’s knowledge of the Hollywood film industry confirms that turning a children’s franchise into a R-rated film is virtual commercial suicide. Toning down the violence in Dragonball Z to a PG friendly degree either eliminates much of what makes Dragonball so distinctive, or changes the martial arts of Dragonball so drastically as to be unrecognizable as Dragonball Z any longer.

There are numerous live-action adaptations of anime, but virtually none of them are adaptations of fantasy series like Dragonball. Japanese live-action anime and manga adaptations like Golgo 13, 8th Man, Makai Tenshou, Video Girl Ai, Kekko Kamen, Cat’s Eye, Tokimeki Memorial, Sanctuary, Otenki Oniisan, Lupin III, Maison Ikkoku and Hana Yori Dango are all relatively “realistic” and don’t require physical changes in actor appearance or extensive visual special effects. Similarly, Hong Kong produced anime adaptations are either reasonably “realistic” or are low budget silly comedies that don’t attempt to present an authentic live-action re-creation of the source. Those few that have attempted to do so, namely Wicked City and Story of Ricky, have turned out as low budget, cheesy and outrageously over-the-top violent camp films. (I won’t discuss live-action sentai and tokusatsu films here such as the Zeiram or Ultraman movies because they’re not based on manga or anime and are not exactly intended to re-create the atmosphere of manga or anime. Sentai is a class all by itself.)

Among the best examples of “live-action” anime, and the films that provide encouragement to believe that a live-action Dragonball Z film is actually possible- are actually not films based on manga or anime at all. The 1992 Hong Kong film Saviour of the Soul is not a “good” film by any margin, but is one of the best examples of a live-action film re-creating the superhuman yet wildly believable atmosphere of the best action anime films. The 2000 Japanese action/horror film Versus also does a masterful job of creating the tone and style of adult action anime with real human actors by presenting superhuman fighting and violence while never loosing a grounding in “reality” and a sense that everything on screen is plausible and “real.” Finally, perhaps the very best reason to believe that it is possible to create an accurate and entertaining Dragonball Z movie is actually two films. The 1998 Chinese martial arts fantasy film The Storm Riders and its follow up film from the same production staff, the 1999 martial arts epic A Man Called Hero (itself a live-action adaptation of a Chinese martial arts comic book series) employed extensive computer effects to allow heroes and villains to fly; control fire, water, wind and earth; perform martial arts in mid-air; shape-shift; and hurl beams of magic energy and “kame-hame-ha” style energy blasts from their palms. Naturally, none of these films is exactly equivalent to a live-action Dragonball Z, and the digital effects in Storm Riders and A Man Called Hero are relatively primitive compared to the seamless computer effects fans of Hollywood films are used to, but the fact that these films exist and have been immensely successful in Asia suggest that, with competent American production, similar but far more impressive results could be achieved for an American live-action Dragonball Z film.