I, along with my editor, had the opportunity to view a screening of Dragon Ball Z The Fall of Men at Stan Lee’s Comikaze last weekend. Talking about it without spoiling it is going to be a challenge, but I’ll give it the old college try.
Notably, I was unaware that they would be asking those who attended what they thought of it on the way out, recording it for what could very well be promotional reasons. My reply was that “It was the best live-action Dragonball Z movie I had ever seen”, which, as anyone familiar with the state of live-action Dragonball movies can attest, is an overly narrow superlative. One which, in the back of my mind, I almost immediately began to regret, because The Fall of Men is actually quite good.
The film comes off as very similar to The History of Trunks, in that it features a future in which all of the Z fighters are dead. The difference? It’s not the Androids that did the killing; it’s Cell. And he looks appropriately freaky. His eyes are cold, insectoid. He is neither perfect nor imperfect in form, but something mouthless and creepy in between the two.
The fight between Trunks and Cell is exactly the sort of thing you’ve always wanted from a DBZ movie, but never got. It almost brings to mind the end of Man of Steel, if you’re familiar with it. Which, as bad as it is for a Superman movie, totally works for the setting of a mostly dead future ravaged by Cell. Piles of clothing litter empty streets. Dilapidated buildings loom over cities slowly being reclaimed by nature, setting the stage for an excellent battle.
The entire film features a narration, only vaguely connected to what’s happening onscreen. This is one area that might stand out; as all of the actors, including the narrator, are French, the accent may throw you for a loop. As the narrator has the only real lines, it’s not much of a problem overall. While no one who worked on the film was a native English speaker, they were all clearly quite good; impressive, since English, unlike almost every other language on the planet, has a very large number of esoteric rules thanks to being comprised of a blend of loan words and latin roots.
You can see me at the end of this featurette giving my two-cents on the film:
I must also mention the effects. They’re spectacular for a fan film. Doubly so when you consider that it was a labor of love, and they were doing all of them on what must have been a fraction of a fraction of the budget the infamous Hollywood turd had. Obviously, they spent it primarily on effects, because Ernie Hudson is nowhere to be seen. Even taking the budget out of the equation, the movie looks damn good, comparable to a number of effects driven action movies. Technology has come a long way.
There is an excellent twist here, and it’s really difficult to avoid spoiling. Needless to say, as the film is free to watch and may well be up on YouTube soon, if not now, I’d argue it’s much better to experience for yourself. I’m willing to bet you’ll be as surprised as anyone was at the screening. Just… avoid the comments section until you’ve actually watched it.
Check out the entire short film below:
About Author
The film was impressive from start to finish. Adapting anime to live action is incredibly hard, so making a live action film your going to have to work with contrast, blending the two is the hard part, otherwise your going to have another Sreet Fighter/Power Rangers ranking. (The effects might look corny, and not ment to be taken seriously.) This film presents some great scenery, taking us to heavily wood areas, to Kami’s lookout, and to Capsule Corps. to the ruined city. It has a lot of diversity. Now comparing it to the anime is difficult, due to the fact that its retelling the story of Future trunks. The music was phenomenal and added a creepy and erie undertone, and sometimes a soft emotional piece. Now the fight choreography could’ve been better in my opinion, thought it was a little slow, when compared to the fight in the last Matrix film, its choreograpghy was lacking, but none the less was visually appealing. (The beam struggle was so awesome.) 7/10 in my book. This needs a sequal.