Anime fans around the world still have nightmares when they recall the gruesome live-action movie based on the hit Dragon Ball franchise, which was titled Dragon Ball Evolution and premiered in 2009. Bitter memories like these are the reason why Sony's recent announcement of a live-action film adaptation of the One Punch Man franchise with scripts written by Scott Rosenberg and Jeff Pinkner, is not taken seriously and is, in fact, ultimately expected to be a bad joke, As fans are sure this will be the undisputed new worst Hollywood adaptation.
Although Dragon Ball Evolution is just the movie that started the decline (if it hadn't already started), in reality most (if not all) of the live-action adaptations Hollywood has made have never been so well received by Veteran fans like rookies alike. One of the worst (and unfortunately common) mistakes that these productions make is to stray too far from the original material and, therefore, from the central ideas of the work they are trying to adapt. This results in destroying the base that generated the fans to be, worth the redundancy, fans of the franchise and also becomes the easiest and fastest way to lose that audience.
There is a collective sob around the world every time a live-action adaptation is announced in the West (those in Japan, although they are also usually a bit bad at least respect the original material) due to the little interest that the productions show to replicate what that the community loves. Most of the time, and for obvious financial reasons, the producers are targeting a wider audience instead of targeting the seasoned fans of the series they plan to adapt, who week after week were glued to their screens waiting for a new episode and that they managed to create a bond of affection with their favorite characters, even taking the trouble to learn the “lore” of the series almost from memory. These are things that studios typically overlook when they completely rewrite a work.
The big failure
Lifelong fans who had followed the animated Dragon Ball series since 1986 filled theaters in 2009 in hopes of seeing a faithful adaptation of their favorite franchise. Although we all know what happened, it is worth remembering the mistakes that this adaptation made. Goku never went to high school and Ozaru was never a servant of Pícoro Daimakú, but a transformation of the Saiyans when they observed the full moon. Mai was also never a servant of Pícoro Daimakú and her true comrades, Pilaf and Shu do not even appear in the film. Goku transforming into Ozaru due to an eclipse ended up proving that the film made no effort to respect the work of Akira Toriyama. Sadly, the mistakes I wrote in this paragraph don't even represent the slightest part of how far 20th Century Fox writers went to slaughter the Dragon Ball story.
But let's leave 2009 a bit and travel a little more to the present, with a recent representative of the terrible adaptations to live-action, that's right, I'm talking about Netflix. In 2017, the platform decided to take the risk of producing a live-action series based on the Death Note manga. Light Yagami was renamed Light Turner, transforming him from a bright and obsessed teenager to a weak boy and victim of bullying. The epic relationship that L and Light build in the original work went on in this series to present the least possible interaction, leaving aside what could easily be considered the basis of much of the original manga's history.
Light's awful and disastrous portrayal in this live-action series was so disrespectful to the original material that the writers had Light reveal the location of the Death Note to L. Even worse, the rules of its use were conveniently changed to favor the laughable plot. Since the original rules of the Death Note were a fundamental axis in the development of the original work, forcing Light to plan ingenious strategies to go unnoticed, the change in them did nothing but sink this adaptation further.
Hollywood's problem
One Punch Man could fall for the same heinous script alterations. Sometimes the original series can be completely absurd and pointless, and still it's always well received in the fan community, so much so that even in the face of the distinct drop in quality shown in the second season by the animation studio change, the Fans are still waiting for a third season. There are things in the manga and anime that don't make a bit of sense, and are actually things that fans appreciate and that identify the franchise itself.
Historically, Hollywood has had a big problem dealing with the latter, always adding some kind of "forced explanation" that fans never asked for. Going against the things fans love and changing them to make sense to viewers unfamiliar with the franchise is a death sentence for any script based on a manga or anime.
The idea of a live-action movie based on One Punch Man is a good one ... if the writers really come to respect the story and produce something that is completely faithful to the original material. But given Hollywood's record of resounding failure, this effort will surely end like all the others, as a major disappointment.
Source: CBR
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