Everyone hated 2009’s Dragonball Evolution, a movie with well OVER 9,000 things wrong with it, and which Anime News Network deftly described as “a clunky, tiresome, badly executed, horribly written pile of shame that deserves no quarter.”
And when we say “everyone” hated it, that seems to include the film’s screenwriter, Ben Ramsey. When Dragonball fan Derek Padula asked to interview Ramsey, he received an apology letter to all of the fans, now published on The Dao of Dragonball:
I knew that it would eventually come down to this one day. Dragonball Evolution marked a very painful creative point in my life. To have something with my name on it as the writer be so globally reviled is gut wrenching. To receive hate mail from all over the world is heartbreaking. I spent so many years trying to deflect the blame, but at the end of the day it all comes down to the written word on page and I take full responsibility for what was such a disappointment to so many fans. I did the best I could, but at the end of the day, I ‘dropped the dragon ball.’
I went into the project chasing after a big payday, not as a fan of the franchise but as a businessman taking on an assignment. I have learned that when you go into a creative endeavor without passion you come out with sub-optimal results, and sometimes flat out garbage. So I’m not blaming anyone for Dragonball but myself. As a fanboy of other series, I know what it’s like to have something you love and anticipate be so disappointing.
To all the Dragon Ball fans out there, I sincerely apologize.
I hope I can make it up to you by creating something really cool and entertaining that you will like and that is also something I am passionate about. That’s the only work I do now.
Best,
Ben
That’s one hell of a mea culpa, but let’s be honest. A screenwriter early in their career has very little say in how a movie turns out, especially when Fox decides to do whatever the hell is going on here:
Why is a white guy eating a comically large turkey leg on an ATV parked on a paved street? Oh, that’s supposed to be Goku? Did somebody just cast Kuchi Kara no Kaen? Because my eyes are burning.
(Via The Dao of Dragonball and io9)
