Hot on the heels of the recent name change from ‘Dragonball’ to ‘Dragonball: Evolution’ (a change which seems to say; ‘This is not your Grandfather’s Dragonball, it’s a hip and happening update that’s dragged Dragonball kicking and screaming into the noughties’) an international trailer has emerged.

Has anyone actually got any hope left at all for this project? I was quite excited back in ‘06 when this film was announced but every piece of news that I’ve heard since has slowly but surely sucked out all my enthusiasm and good will until my only thought is that this movie will most likely offend me in a profound way.

However…

These trailers have the tiniest of sparks of fun and creativity (you know, despite the presence of annoyingly-pretty, teenage, white actors in all the major roles) so I am tentatively allowing myself a glimmer of hope.

Even if this film turns out to be tripe (don’t get me wrong, I’m fairly sure it will) I’d still like to storm the box office for the reason that I want to see more big-budget adaptations of anime. Transformers already got the ball rolling but we need another mega-hit to really cement the idea in Hollywood’s collective consciousness (in much the same way X-Men/Spider-Man did for comics). Granted, we’ll have to sit through dozens of ‘Dragonball: Evolution’s and ‘Gatchaman’s but eventually they’ll work their way down to the really meaty stuff and we might see some brilliant pieces of work.