Dragon Ball/DBZ Movie Reviews

[Let's Go Fearless!]

Fearless Review of BoG:

Movie is great without the doubt is the second best movie IMO. I love how it took place after Majin Boo Arc because that's the prime of the series. The concept of Hakaishin is such a unique for a DB standard since they're neutral unlike most of the villains. I didn't like the concept of SSjinG since the true form of Saiyajins is the SSjin IMO. But with tons of comedy, great fights and YUGE creativity from Toei and Toriyama made the movie watchable. What's more, its impact gives us the series that we've been waiting for a long time aka Super.

Rate: 7/10

 

[Let's Go Fearless!]

CC, how about the Golu Jr's movie and other specials?

 

[Captain Cadaver]

CC, how about the Golu Jr's movie and other specials?

The specials will be done after FnF if enough people care to do so. The GT Special on the other hand is a pointless endeavour unless we want several posts of it getting shat on more than Swamp Ass Broly.

 

[Captain Cadaver]

Well, now it's time to Resurrection F/This isn't even my Final Form: The Meme turned Movie (Feat. Colour Swaps)

Not much to say that hasn't already been said about it's flaws, so I'll just breeze through the obvious. Freeza's gains were illogical, the main fight was just notalgia milking and the transformations were lazy. Whis being able to rewind time gives little tension to practically anything that could happen, as do Beerus and Whis being there, which makes the conflict meaningless even if Freeza were to win.
Now to go over the overlooked positives. It was nice to see a film that at least expands on the continuity more, though nowhere near as well as BoG. Jaco was a nice addition and the animation for the most part allowed for the otherwise pointless fodder fights to be enjoyable. Having "F" as an insert song was cool as well and Freeza's characterisation was pretty interesting in the film due to him showing absolute fear at Beerus, as well as him being angered by the cuteness of Hell being pretty funny.
These positives in no way override the negatives, however. Overall, it's a 2/10 at best, though would be a 1 if not for the enjoyment factor of it. Despite having worse animation, the arc in Super was somewhat better as far as writing goes due to having more explanation for it's lack of logic.

 

[Let's Go Fearless!]

That movie sucks. 0/10

 

[Let's Go Fearless!]

Since we're likely done reviewing all the movies, i'm gonna share what I found on Kanzenshuu and that's the box office collection of the movies.

Curse of the Blood Rubies - ¥1.25 billion ($7.8 million)
Sleeping Princess in Devil's Castle - ¥1.33 billion ($8.9 million)
Mystical Adventure - ¥1.02 billion ($7.7 million)
Dead Zone - ¥1.25 billion ($8.9 million)
The Worlds Strongest - ¥1.57 billion ($10.2 million)
Tree of Might - ¥1.25 billion ($8.4 million)
Lord Slug - ¥2.05 billion ($14.9 million)
Cooler's Revenge - ¥2.2 billion ($16.2 million)
The Return of Cooler - ¥2.48 billion ($19.2 million)
Super Android 13 - ¥2.35 billion ($18.9 million)
The Legendary Super Saiyan - ¥2.12 billion ($20.4 million)
Bojack Unbound - ¥2.05 billion ($18.7 million)
Broly Second Coming - ¥2.24 billion ($22.2 million)
Bio Broly - ¥1.75 billion ($18.0 million)
Fusion Reborn - ¥1.98 billion ($22.7 million)
Wrath of the Dragon - ¥1.1 billion ($12.2 million)
Path to Power - Unknown
Battle of Gods - ¥3 billion ($31.1 million)
Resurrection F - ¥3.74 billion ($31.1 million)

http://www.kanzenshuu.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=29287

 

[Papasmurf]

Movie is shit, disappoints on a biblical level. 1/10

 

[Let's Go Fearless!]

It seems that M3, M7, M9, M11 and M13 had a lower box office compare to the each previous movies lol.

 

[SSJ2]

FnF is in the integers.

 

[Let's Go Fearless!]

FnF is in the integers.

Hah! FnF is the highest box office ever in the DB history and beats Battle of the Gods too which resulted Super!

 

[Papasmurf]

FnF is a 1/10 at best

 

[Let's Go Fearless!]

FnF is a 1/10 at best

Quality? Yup, but money?

 

[Captain Cadaver]

I'll bump this topic for those who wanted to review the Specials.

First, A Solitary Final Battle/Bardock: The Father of Goku

This has a lot to offer to a DBZ fan. The kind of plot it has is something not seen in the series as a whole, due to having a far more morally grey protagonist and death actually having meaning due to not being reset by the Dragon Balls. Bardock is far from being an outstanding protagonist, though compared to Galu, he definitely seems refreshing and enjoyable. Also, Solid State Scouter is one of the best osts in the franchise by far.
There were problems I found with the plot, however, mainly due to the Kanassans'/Bardock's prophetic visions. If all the Kanassans could see the future, why did they simply not flee from the Saiyans before they arrived? In Bardock's case, it ruins the plot due to it presenting an obvious use of fatalism, one of the worst tropes a writer can bring in. We know the outcome before it happens not only due to the series, but due to a plot device that has hardly any benefit to Bardock. I guess you could say that it doesn't matter since we knew the outcome before viewing it, but that still gives no reason to add something so pointless, as Bardock rebelling against Freeza would've happened regardless of his visions.
Still, it's one of the far more enjoyable experiences in terms of feature length stories due to how it subverts from DB's typical narrative. 6/10

 

[Let's Go Fearless!]

I haven't watch that movie in a long time. Tonight!

 

[Fantastische Hure]

I still can't believe the fellow who wrote the shit DragonBall Z movies, wrote this TV-Special too. Where did all that go when he was writing those stupid movies? I guess he was content rehashing the Story-Arcs in soulless shit movies. Even-though he did have some help, it seems since someone co-wrote the Special with him, so that maybe it. Also directed by someone-else than the person who directed the movies of this era I think (actually he did direct some movies, but still).

That ending was so beautiful, with the montage of Goku growing-up and the song was perfect for that. One of my favourite songs ever. The director did gr9 (assuming the ending credits and the ending all together and the way it was presented was his vision).

 

[Captain Cadaver]

I still can't believe the fellow who wrote the shit DragonBall Z movies, wrote this TV-Special too. Where did all that go when he was writing those stupid movies?

It's likely due to the tonal differences between movies centered on the main cast and specials centered on other characters. The former have too many conveniences to aid the protagonists such as the DBs being the ultimate plot device and the cast tending to have a large web of alliances with useful side characters to advance the plot. By comparison, characters from the specials such as Bardock and Future Trunks have no such conveniences due to their environment and lack of sufficient aid in their troubles.

 

[Fantastische Hure]

I still can't believe the fellow who wrote the shit DragonBall Z movies, wrote this TV-Special too. Where did all that go when he was writing those stupid movies?

It's likely due to the tonal differences between movies centered on the main cast and specials centered on other characters. The former have too many conveniences to aid the protagonists such as the DBs being the ultimate plot device and the cast tending to have a large web of alliances with useful side characters to advance the plot. By comparison, characters from the specials such as Bardock and Future Trunks have no such conveniences due to their environment and lack of sufficient aid in their troubles.

True. And I guess the specials are also better material to write because they don't have to depend on the manga as much. New transformations and stuff aren't things movies can really do and they are too short, so they come-off weird but here they already have some good things to work with but they made that even better. Still though, you'd think he could have at-least tried with the movies, instead of rehashing the manga's arcs in a much worse way. They come-off as rip-offs. And even then the writing in the specials just seemed way out of the league whatever he did with the movies. An example being that the main-character in this special like you said being more of an ambitious character, in-terms of whether he's good or not. They could have just said, "fack it. it's goku's father! he's the exception and is a good saiyan."

 

[Papasmurf]

DBZ movies pre-BOG were pretty much aired like the Tarble special for Toei anime fair events though. They generally had 2 of them per year so the writing would be far more rushed than the average hollywood flick

 

[Fantastische Hure]

DBZ movies pre-BOG were pretty much aired like the Tarble special for Toei anime fair events though. They generally had 2 of them per year so the writing would be far more rushed than the average hollywood flick

That didn't stop the TV-Specials from being great and they had about the same run-time. But I get it. Also the Specials already had the source-material to back them up. What I mean is that the characters were in a predicament and we cared because we know them from the manga. Same can go for me movies, but the movies had too much deux ex machina going-on and time-line and stuff didn't make sense so no-one could care less. The specials were stories to the original DragonBall story though.

Also I kind-of got confused with the Toei-Anime-Festival. I read somewhere it sounded like something of a double/triple/whatever feature aired in regular cinemas like movies. Other times it sounds like a special-event held and hosted by Toei every year, not for regular cinemas.

 

[Papasmurf]

I don't really mind the timeline not making sense unless it's absolute garbage like a rehash of Piccolo Daimao suddenly popping out of nowhere. Its kind of hard to make entirely new stories fit in canon since most of the arcs take place within a few days (Namek was only a week or so long after Bulma and the others landed, Boo arc from Kaioshin's appearance and onwards was like 2-3 days long and all of the tournament arcs aren't even a day long in the manga). Even a show like Inuyasha where a bunch of irrelevant filler demons appear between the times Naraku actually shows up has movies that break continuity