I would not call that a disaster. Some of us are fan of that look. Personally, I would not want those scenes in any other style. It just showed the fight as an all-out otherworldly thing between two demonic creatures.
Back to the topic on hand, I was not at all excited by the news of Toriyama continuing the DB franchise. And after watching the first episode, I can safely say that I'll prefer the GT series to this useless reboot. I think GT had a better setting about Goku returning to childhood. It tried to bring back the original adventure feeling of Dragon Ball and introduced a few new characters. The fact that was Goku had turned into a kid was also a very good way to limit Goku's ridiculous Superman-like powers. Sure the execution could be better but l prefer the Super Saiyan 4 look to any stupidly named Super Saiyan God transformation. And you have to agree that ever since you were a kid, you always wondered what a Super Saiyan would look like in ape form. They just made that into another level of Super Saiyan. I would actually even claim that the fact that GT turned out the way it did had more to do with Toriyama's distancing from the series than any fault in its actual setting. If they had had proper direction and guidance from Toriyama instead of being quickly disowned by him, it could have turned out much better than it did and could have finally closed the Dragon Ball chapter once and for all.
Also, Toriyama is not a very good character designer. Most importantly, look at his human characters in all his works including Chrono and Dragon Quest series. They all look like they were taken from one of the commoners in the DBZ world. It's actually boring to me now. If you look at the male character in the PS2 Dragon Quest game, you'll find Trunks there.
Regardless, the Dragon Ball series has already finished for me. NO silly reboot is going to work especially seeing how Toriyama lacks any variety in his designs now and may even be having writer's block.