In 1984, Toriyama Akira created a set of cartoons called "Dragon Ball" based on ancient Chinese legends about dragon balls and the character prototypes in "Journey to the West". Seiya and Rumiko Takahashi's "Ranma One Half" were regarded as "Bibles" by the students of that era. Afterwards, "Dragon Ball" was made into an animation by Toei Company of Japan. We also follow the Monkey King and his partners on the journey of searching for the seven dragon balls, experiencing dangerous adventures from the earth to the aliens, from now to the future.
Adapted from the best-selling comics, "Dragon Ball" itself has been supported by a group of diehard comic fans like me. The film is based on the clues in the original book about finding the seven dragon balls to summon the dragon, and tells a typical "no evil" The story of the American spirit of "pressing right". However, the intention of the movie version of "Dragon Ball" is very simple. On the basis of maximizing a group of young people, it focuses on young people and a small audience. Therefore, it is not surprising that characters such as Monkey King and Qiqi are placed in an American high school, because This was originally a "YA movie" (Young Adult) aimed at attracting young audiences.
When I was still immersed in a deep sleep, the subtitles of the film slowly appeared, and I suddenly asked: "This is over? The Big Devil is too impatient to fight." Like the pouring rain in Shanghai yesterday, it completely wiped out my expectations for this film. Regardless of whether the film is faithful to the original, the whole story structure is nothing new. After watching it, I don’t think there is any difference between this "Dragon Ball" and last year's "Kung Fu King", the king of bad movies. It just tells the story of the ambitious young man crushing evil forces and finally saving the earth and saving all mankind. . Maybe the film itself is not long, or maybe the comics were too long at that time, so I think that in this more than an hour, I have to render Piccolo's attack, explain the background of the Dragon Ball legend, and tell a bunch of excess hormones. In the life of high school students, there are also characters such as Bulma, Leping, Tortoise Immortal, Kiki, the Demon King Piccolo and the beautiful killer, etc. The whole story makes the first half of the story drowsy, and just about to be excited. When people's minds watched a peak confrontation between Monkey King and Big Demon King Piccolo, the film ended in a hurry, and one had to suspect that at the beginning of the film, the Big Demon King Piccolo, who was so powerful that he could easily put the Monkey King to death, suddenly fell. Turned into a soft persimmon, he was defeated by Monkey King after his hard work.
The characters in Akira Toriyama’s "Dragon Ball", including Monkey King, Vegeta, Piccolo, etc., embody a spirit of compatibility between Chinese Confucianism and Japanese Bushido. The characters of "righteousness, courage, benevolence, courtesy, sincerity, fame, and loyalty" are well reflected in these characters, and these oriental spiritual and cultural symbols are transplanted into Hollywood movies, and they undoubtedly become a kind of promotion. The American spirit of American mainstream ideology. What is the American spirit? I think that if you put it in one sentence, it is the phrase "As long as you work hard, everything is possible." In these typical Hollywood themes, the power of personal struggle is infinitely amplified, making it a constant struggle for people to overcome one by one. Spiritual essence. In "Dragon Ball", why did Monkey King look for Dragon Ball? What can he do if he finds Dragon Ball? In fact, these motives have been weakened since the start of the adventure, and the important emphasis of the film is that this group of people immediately became super heroes with a sense of justice, and the confrontation between justice and evil was infinitely magnified, thus a The story with the clues of filial piety and loyalty became a battle between the lone hero and the big devil. There is no suspense that Wu Kun eventually defeated the evil Bick the big devil. This is a typical Hollywood story. Template, and the spirit of personal heroism embodied in Wu Kun is exactly the spirit of “personal struggle turns the ugly duckling into a swan” advocated in many young youth films. An ordinary high school student becomes The hero who saves the world fully satisfies our imagination of the hero myth.
The film will be released nationwide on March 14. I think there may be a lot of viewers who will go to theaters to join in. In a period of blockbuster movies like mid-March, the box office of the film may be very high, but I’m sure it’s The film's verbal criticism and writing will also one after another. Because such a film that has no substance and just followed the shell of "Dragon Ball" to trick us young people into the theater is a lesson learned, but the problem is that even if we know that the film will suck, we will do it after we watch it. Swearing, but in order to remember a good childhood memory, I will still pay attention to this film.
Perhaps our own expectations for this film are too high.
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