r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Chill0000 • Aug 21 '26

Hated Tropes [HATED] Adaptations done intentionally without help from the source

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Halo TV show: Before the show came out, the writers were praising their decision to not look to the games for inspiration when making the show

God Of War TV show: Chris Judge, the actor of Kratos in the games from 2018-Now, spoke up about his dislike on the show not hiring anyone who worked on any of the previous games. One of the original creators of Kratos also spoke up about them not having faith in the adaptation.

Supergirl 2026 film: the director for the film not only said he decided to not read Woman Of Tomorrow, the comic the film is adapting, because he wanted to do his own thing, he also didn’t look at comic art for inspiration to design Lobo and instead used an AI image generator to design Lobo’s look for the film

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u/Easy_Action_1380 Aug 21 '26 edited Aug 21 '26

Dragon Ball Evolution

If there is one unintended positive to come out of this disaster, Toriyama was so pissed off at being cast aside and watching his creation be fucked up by idiots who had no idea what they were doing, that he came out of retirement and revived the entire Dragon Ball franchise out of spite.

Dragon Ball is now a bigger success than it had ever been before.

475

u/AznOmega Aug 21 '26

It also had Cinemasins who typically don't review the source material do a bonus round that this movie deviated from the original Dragon Ball series.

Yes, Cinemasins did research on Dragon Ball for their video on this movie.

281

u/elderlybrain Aug 21 '26

For the first and last time they'd ever do it.

3

u/SlitThroatCutCreator Aug 22 '26

I remember trying to watch their videos and being confused when there was a critique or a joke. I just didn't find them funny, I guess. 

3

u/Typhon2222 Aug 22 '26

Cinemasins worked when their videos were like 3-5 minutes and poked fun at actual sins and plot holes. Once their videos hit the 8-10 minute mark, they lost the plot by getting wayyyy too nitpicky. Now their videos are anywhere from 25-40 minutes.

36

u/RSquared Aug 21 '26

Honest Trailers getting the Abridged crew to comment on it in character was pretty great too. "You make a movie and you don't have the great Vegeta?! Wait is that the Namekian, oh, well, bullet dodged."

1

u/Cherry_BaBomb Aug 21 '26

I need to watch this

174

u/ThatMerri Aug 21 '26

James Marsters, who played Piccolo in this dumpster fire, is actually a big DBZ fan and was fighting tooth and nail to get the movie to be even tangentially near any trace of source material, including Piccolo's appearance. He discusses in interviews that he and the other actors were bascially tricked by the studio and that production was nothing like what they'd been promised ahead of time. Which reminds me of what Bob Hoskins talked about following the Super Mario Bros. movie back in the 90s.

46

u/UnRealmCorp Aug 21 '26

HEY! The 90's Super Mario Bros might be a dumpster fire, but countless 90's kids loved the movie. I still to this day want the Stompers from that movie

20

u/KDBA Aug 21 '26

I genuinely think it's a good movie. As an adaptation it's awful, but on its own standalone merits as a grungy scfi-fi pulp flick, it's solid.

10

u/LordKaelas Aug 21 '26

Without the Mario shit it would have been pretty alright on it's own.

5

u/UnRealmCorp Aug 21 '26

Effort was put into the set design, wardrobes and props. It shows. It's just a shame the Mario IP was attached to it. It's just a Variant Mario story

4

u/Dale_Carvello Aug 21 '26

Is it too late to re-title it? I want to start with Meteor Dino-City and kick that around until something sticks.

4

u/LordKaelas Aug 21 '26

My Girlfriend is a Mushroom from another Dimension maybe?

2

u/Britishbreadish Aug 21 '26

Stomping company was something i thought of a year ago

2

u/Dale_Carvello Aug 22 '26

Great international market title.

6

u/DizslecksickMoael Aug 21 '26

It's genuinely an interesting movie in terms of plot. Two plumbers from Brooklyn get sucked into the dimensional center-of-the-Earth where dinosaurs not only survived the mass-extinction event, but evolved alongside humans in their own parallel world. They get pulled into fighting a Corpo who turned their world's monarch into a an ever-creeping mass of mold after being forcefully de-evolutionized in this insane cyberpunk world. After learning to trust the fungus, they save the day using the power of timed explosives and rocket boots.

I'd take this over the one with Rogan Kong.

2

u/TokeDraws Aug 21 '26

Some of those sets were bangin

4

u/megapenguin88 Aug 21 '26

Marios been my mother my whole life.

3

u/Dale_Carvello Aug 21 '26

Sir, your pizza's here.

3

u/ThatMerri Aug 21 '26

Oh, don't get me wrong, I adore the Mario Bros. live action; it's hilarious and even more impressive finding out that Hoskins and Leguizamo spent a lot of filming drunk and angry. But Hoskins was pretty damn pissed that what the movie ended up being was not at all what he was promised in the first place. He also didn't even know Mario Bros. was a video game, so he was blindsided by the whole thing.

1

u/Certain_Ring8907 Aug 23 '26

It’s also the reason why the Bros’ name are Mario Mario and Luigi Mario

17

u/n4zarh Aug 21 '26

Iirc whole script was changed time and time again (for producers' sake) to the point where it no longer resembled original script, and then writer took the blame for that.

3

u/SuperBackup9000 Aug 21 '26

Yup. The writer got all the blame for it because he was the only one who came out and apologized, which he later took back because he didn’t really have a reason to apologize since the director took over his job

7

u/jshrike Aug 21 '26

He's also the English dub voice of Zamasu so he clearly came out of that experience still loving it

75

u/Deuce_GM Aug 21 '26

What's even worse is the cast is stacked

Chow Yun Fat, Emmy Rossum, Justin Chatwin (Fiona and Jimmy just can't stay away from each other), Jamie Chung, James Marsters

What a waste of talent

132

u/Golden-Sun Aug 21 '26

Also James Masters went on the voice Zamasu in the actual show.

65

u/Easy_Action_1380 Aug 21 '26

Extra fun fact about that. There's a DLC for Xenoverse 2 that essentially tells a what-if where Goku wasn't immediately murdered by Goku Black after getting his body swapped with Zamasu.

So we get a whole mission with James Marsters doing a Sean Schemmel Goku impression and it's pretty good.

11

u/tinyrottedpig Aug 21 '26

For FREE no less, because he felt guilty about being this dogshit movie, his voice work for Zamasu is absolutely incredible and is literally his most memorable aspect.

15

u/Alarming-Basil2894 Aug 21 '26

I don’t think any adaptation has ever swayed further from the source than this one. Truly the fucking worst and a complete disgrace to toriyamas work.

2

u/TitusEmperius Aug 21 '26 edited Aug 21 '26

The fucking Kamehawave defibrillator to bring back Roshi. That movie was an absolute piss take

2

u/Ameph Aug 21 '26

The show or the movie because Goku not only does that to Roshi in the Tourney of Power but to himself in a filler.

1

u/TitusEmperius Aug 21 '26

Yeah the movie lol didn't mean to say show. In the movie when he uses the kameha to revive roshi. In the show its just an energy defib/transfer

1

u/[deleted] Aug 25 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Alarming-Basil2894 Aug 26 '26

Theres a KoF live action? Yeah I think I’m gonna avoid it lol

11

u/syd_goes_roar Aug 21 '26

That cover reminds me of the Netflix Death Note movie - white city boi with a "normal" American family that somehow has Yagami for a last name ???

😭

13

u/Darkahnott Aug 21 '26

That "Toriyama hated DB evolution so much he went and made the new Dragon Ball himself" it's straight up fake.

Here, take a look: Kanzenshuu

A very simple factor everyone seems to forget about him was that he never was fully involved with DB after the original ending. He was a consultant for a few things. Toei and others were doing their own shit during the period after the original ended, they somehow got him to draw or give them a little draft of how things could go and then they'd use it as a publicity factor, hence why there's so many: "From Toriyama's original script" or "With designs by Akira Toriyama". Even those products which claim to have "An original story by..." were mostly short ideas, designs or short drafts for the story.

You can also read Super'd Manga and confirm most of what I said.

4

u/Substantial-Ad2200 Aug 21 '26

So funny these two then got cast in the US version of Shameless together. 

2

u/ForbiddenSirenz Aug 21 '26

I’m pretty sure the actor for Goku apologized it being so shitty lmfao. But dragon ball super was pretty dope. So it wasn’t all bad haha.

1

u/Garlador Aug 21 '26

I went to a convention where some of the anime dub voice actors were hosting a screening of the film, exclusively to provide a riff-track on it and mock it from start to finish.

“This time, on DRAGON BALL EVOLUTION!… will the studio listen to anyone who made the manga? Will they listen to anyone who made the anime? Will they listen to anyone who dubbed it for 15 years? Or will they ignore us all and create a legendary piece of crap instead?!”

1

u/Careful-Positive-710 Aug 21 '26

It fails on every level. It barely adapts the story from the series, all the characters dont feel like the ones from the series, the acting is bad, the script is bad, the special effects are bad, the action is bad, ect.

If they wanted to make their own adaptation of the series then they failed at making it anything that anyone would want. My friends and I have debated whats worse DBE or M Nights Avatar. DBE is, imo, far worse. Avatar atleast tried to tell the story from the show, it just sucked. DBE did its own thing alienating long time fans and it was so bad that newcomers who werent fans hated it too. Its a movie for no one.

1

u/MithranArkanere Aug 21 '26

He even got Toyotarou as a protege that he trained to maintain the series like Marvel does with superheroes.

1

u/darkbreak Aug 21 '26

I think I heard that everyone at Funimation was embarrassed by this movie. It was just catastrophic all around.

1

u/HenoWhitt Aug 21 '26

The adaptation is so unfaithful that it actually makes it less offensive. It is unrecognizable as Dragon Ball, which makes it much easier to stomach. This movie actually got me into Dragon Ball. With context, it’s even funnier to me.

1

u/FishWithLegsAndArms Aug 22 '26

I love how theres just a random kid named Goku and nobody questions it

1

u/RedGuyNoPants Aug 22 '26

This thing was so bad they couldnt even get roshi to be bald with a beard. There was literally no reasonable issue with making chow yun-fat bald and bearded and they still didnt do it. THATS how little they cared about the source material, they wouldn’t buy a bald cap and a fake beard.

1

u/Plenty-Duck-3329 Aug 23 '26

This rumor really needs to stop spreading. It isn't true

0

u/Responsible-Creme-57 Aug 21 '26

The only good thing about this movie is that Toriyama hated it so much, that he wrote DB Super

0

u/highfly117 Aug 21 '26

Such a shame that super was terrible from start to finish

-5

u/MoxieSP Aug 21 '26

Only if you consider Super a positive. Personally I do not.

-13

u/Maxentirunos Aug 21 '26

I'm not sure its really better than everything DB related since Super is spit and piss on the original work made for a new generation of kids with brain rot.

3

u/Mussieu_Froger Aug 21 '26

It's way closer to what Toriyama wanted to do, not what you american fans who just liked a truncated, badly dubbed version of a part of an adaptation of an gag manga that was originally a parody of action/battle genre.

2

u/Maxentirunos Aug 21 '26

1) Not an american, never heard the dub, directly read it as a manga

2) Doesn't matter if its closer to what Toriyama wanted. Without the shift toward martial art and fighting, DB would have been forgotten like Arale in the massive pit of hundreds of gag manga of the time. DB became this massive genre defining franchise only because of that shift.

3) It doesn't change the fact DB super and afterward were not done by Toriyama, nor did he really participated in it. And when seeing the interviews he gave around that time, its clear he had no investment at all in those projects. He clearly cleaned his hands of the whole franchise.

4) Nothing you said contradicted a single bit of what I said. Your only argument being to attack me instead of actually responding to my point.