James Marsters stated in an interview last month with Blockbuster that he was “counting” on a certain extended fight scene that never made the final cut of the film. Of course we all know that there is not an extended fight scene between Goku and Piccolo in the Dragonball Evolution DVD.
As Piccolo, Marsters is hidden under layers of latex and pea-green make-up, and it’s hardly the first time he’s worked under such conditions. “Acting isn’t comfortable,” he says, matter-of-factly. “It’s one of those jobs that’s never going to be comfortable, and like race car driving and mountain climbing, it’s no good whining when it’s uncomfortable.”
A Dragonball fan for many years now, Marsters says he jumped at the chance to play the role. What’s more, he conspired to make his character older and uglier than the producers had originally intended, even though that meant longer spells in the make up chair. “In the manga,” explains the actor, “Piccolo starts very old and decrepit. The reason he’s angry enough to take revenge on the Earth is because the Guardians of Earth stole his youth. If he was young and good looking in the movie, he would have collapsed into a general kind of villain that I no longer understood.
James Marsters “I was willing to be fired over that one. I believed in it that much. I was sitting with the make up guy saying, ‘Older, older, OLDER!’ And he said, ‘Dude, I don’t think the producer is going to like this.’ But I told him, ‘The producer is not here – just do it!’ In the end I got my way, and Piccolo works all the better for it.”
“I’m looking forward to the Dragonball Evolution DVD, because I’m counting on the extra package showing a lot of the fight that was cut. We shot twice as much as was used and I tore myself up for those takes, so I want to see those shots. I baked the cake,” says Marsters, wrapping up, “and now I want to taste it!”
Unless these extra cuts are included in a future re-release of the DVD or as a director’s cut, we won’t get to see them.
Click here to read the rest of the interview. Thanks goes to Steve for the tip.
