With the upcoming opening of Avatar: The Last Airbender this month on your nearest cinema, we can review the why and what will happen in the future with pending live action anime adaptations.
We have to keep in mind that Japanese cinema is still the ideal media for live action adaptations of animes, even if audiences are reduced to locals and fans.
Dragon Ball Z: Evolution (2009):
This adaptation had James Wong as a director and a less than ideal cast to play the characters, neither Chow Yun Fat or James Marsters could save this lackluster (they didn't look like the characters anyway!). The project started with a completely wrong approach, as if they didn't understand what the manga was about at all.Even Krillin and Tien got removed from the script because they weren't considered relevant. And if we take the $100 million budget,it's difficult to know in what they spent it.
Rather than creating a solid script with specific details that was faithful to the manga and capture its essence, the film had this super tacky Mortal Kombat, Power Rangers, B-movie feel that leaves a bad taste in your brain after the credits roll . Ultraviolet was not so bad, if you look at it.
No wonder that fans of the original manga by Akira Toriyama consider it a total shame.
The images speak for themselves.
Sometimes I can't help thinking that if we had a real movie of Dragon Ball, with all the drama involved, at least half an hour would go only in the fight of Goku and Vegeta gathering strength XD. I don't know if a series or miniseries would be better in this case.