Stephen Chow is attached to the project in some capacity or other, so I have very, very minor hopes for it.
(That’s the Shaolin Soccer and Kung Fu Hustle guy, if you don’t immediately recognize the name.)
He’s a producer. And just wondering, did you see CJ7?
It’s dumb, yes, but how is this any less hokey than Cobra or the Decepticons getting away at the end of every single episode? At least the plot of Dragonball Z eventually moved forward.
This movie is going to be awesome and whoever doesn’t agree needs to grow up and get a life.
I’m assuming those characters are from the cartoon I never watched.
Shia LeBouf should’ve totally played Goku.
Wait, who’s playing Gohan? There might still be hope!
He should play both! TWICE the bankability!
Who cares? At least I didn’t have to wait five weeks for someone to throw the first punch…
Wait, did he just compare Dragonball Z to Transformers and GI Joe?
That’s because your power level was too low.
There was a time, not so long ago, that Dragonball Z was the top rated show on basic cable.
Yeah, cause kids are stupid.
“No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.”
Too uniformly distributed. You have to crunch some up, stutter it a bit, oscillate the tone - that’s how you say no like a normal human being, or a Casio keyboard.
Because you never watched stupid cartoons or, depending on how old you might be, listened to stupid radio shows.
Hell, even as a kid, I knew Transformers and GI Joe were lame - and look where they are now!
. . .
Oh wait.
What kind of stuff did you watch as a kid, then?
Star Blazers was what permanently warped my expectations for cartoons. It’s probably laughably dated-looking now, but: Earth’s a bombed-out wasteland from being on the losing end of an interstellar war, so humanity mounts a desperate expedition to save itself using the retro-fitted hull of a sunken battleship. Oh, and the main weapon is so powerful, everyone has to don protective goggles before firing it.
That pretty much blew my mind back in elementary school. I’d seen Star Wars, of course, but it never even occurred to me back then someone might try doing a cartoon like that. Somehow, “cars which turn into robots” and people who always bail out before their vehicles get blown up kinda paled in comparison. [Probably helps I never lusted after the toys, either.]
Then along came Robotech in junior high and I didn’t have to choose between space wars and transforming robots - I got both!
What was that about the golden age of scifi, again?
Don’t forget that the Wave Motion Gun almost invariably crippled their ship after firing it (or their ship was pretty much crippled at that point and it was a “last desperate attempt” type of firing). The show always seemed to hammer home how much damage the Yamato seemed to sustain in every battle, despite emerging ultimately victorious.
Also, the Star Blazers theme song is totally stuck in my head now.
[I]We’re off to outer space,
We’re leaving Mother Earth,
To save the human race…
OUR. STAR. BLAZERS!
Searching for a distant star,
Heading off to Iskandar,
Leaving all we love behind,
WHO KNOWS WHAT DANGER WE’LL FIND?
We must be strong and brave,
Our home we’ve got to save,
If we don’t, in JUST - ONE - YEAR…
Mother Earth WILL DISAPPEAR!
Fighting with the Gamilons,
We won’t stop until we’ve won,
Then we’ll return and WHEN - WE - ARRIVE,
The Earth WILL SURVIVE,
WITH. OUR. STAR. BLAZERS![/I]
IIRC, the idea was firing the WMG drained so much power it would knock out all the ship’s systems and leave them vulnerable, so they only fired it when either they had a clear shot at the Gamilons or were on the verge of losing anyway.
I also dimly remember an episode where the crew gets a chance to phone home and Wildstar avoids taking his turn until Nova forces him into it. A little later, she discovers him alone in the comm room, staring at a black screen; he tells her everyone he knew on Earth is dead and the only family & friends he has left are on the Argo. Again, for a lil’ nerd in his formative years, that was some pretty heady stuff.
The funny / sad thing is Star Blazers (aka Space Battleship Yamato, you anime dorks) did a far better job with the “lone ship in peril far from Earth” plotline 30 years ago than either Voyager or Enterprise* ever managed.
[*Well, in the episodes I saw. There’s only so much crap I can force myself to watch just to prove myself right for hating it.]
Then we’ll return and WHEN - WE - ARRIVE,
The Earth WILL SURVIVE,
I also loved how the reward for a job well done is we don’t wind up extinct. :-)
If you’re fond of living, that’s a pretty good reward.
Star Blazers rocked. It wa sa long time before I realized that I actually got to watch all of Seasons 1 and 2 as a kid.