Some photos from the upcoming Dragonball movie surfaced on the internet last week, and I'm sure it's got a lot of fans pissed off: New Dragonball Photos Online. It's a scan from the Japanese magazine Weekly Young Jump.
I think many people have always had it in their minds that the characters were Asian, being a Japanese cartoon and all. (Turns out, they're actually aliens—but that's a long story.) So I heard from a lot of people who were upset when it was announced last fall that many of the movie's characters would be played by white actors—including Justin Chatwin as the hero Goku. I've never been a big fan of the original series, so I haven't been exactly following the Dragonball news very closely... but you've got to admit, something about this photo is kind of ridiculous. The Asian characters on his t-shirt are a nice touch though.
Written and directed by James Wong, and produced by Stephen Chow, the big screen adaptation also stars James Marsters, Jamie Chung, Eriko Tamura, Joon Park, Chow Yun-Fat, Texas Battle, Randall Duk Kim and Ernie Hudson. It opens on April 10, 2009. I'm not getting my hopes up.