Movie Monday (Tuesday Edition) - Dragonball Z: Resurrection 'F'
It’s hard to grow up when pieces of my childhood keep returning in new ways. Like many American children, my gateway drug into the world of anime was Dragonball Z. The overpowered antics of Goku and his cast allies and villains, lovingly crafted by Akira Toriyama, gave young minds a universe exploring power fantasy that had just enough touches of the mythological to have cross-cultural appeal. The numerous series that make up the Dragonball saga have become either fiercely loved or hated. Dragonball is one of the hardest properties for those who aren’t existing fans to understand. Energy blasts flying everywhere, hyper-fast martial arts, floating in the sky, and endless amounts of charging up of lasers can make it hard to penetrate. It’s absolute madness and I’ll tell you right now that Dragonball Z: Resurrection 'F' does little to address these concerns. It embraces them with lip-smacking relish that screams off the screen demanding the dedicated fan’s attention.
Resurrection 'F' is a self-referential romp that exists only for existing fans. There are no provisions made for newcomers to the universe and there’s little in the way of exposition or explanation of previous events. There are no flashbacks to be found in this movie. That’s saying something, for a series that infamously had its share of filler, and a good portion of that filler was flashback. Resurrection 'F' finds the fabled Dragonballs in the first five minutes of the movie and the plot is flies from there.
Toei Company/20th Century Fox
The biggest bad guy the universe has known, Frieza, is back and he wants blood, and if you don’t know who he is, this movie is probably not for you. If the name Frieza makes you roll your eyes at thought of a Namek Saga full of filler episodes waiting for the manga to catch up to the series, don’t let that hold you back, there is no waiting for the Spirit Bomb. If the name Frieza gets you excited for an epic battle between good and evil, you are in luck.
The excitement around Frieza is well-deserved. Fans can argue about power levels and throw around names like Cell, Majin Buu, and Lord Beerus, but those numbers and fights are ultimately meaningless. Ever since Vegeta broke his scouter screaming, “It’s over nine-thousand!” the statistics have been rising exponentially at a pace that leaves most viewers numb to the long strings of zeroes. Resurrection F smartly makes an emotional appeal to fans by asking a question, “What if Frieza was as strong as Goku?” Goku’s fight with Frieza has always seemed like the pinnacle of the series because the show itself was at the peak of its stakes and powers before it declined into the formulaic. Frieza is the true villain of the show who killed Goku’s best friend, blew up the planet Namek, and kept fighting when he was missing his legs and an arm. Frieza is what every Marvel Cinematic Universe villain wishes they were. He is villainous in both word and deed. He has a goal and is ruthless in pursuing it, killing henchmen, torturing his enemies, and throwing confident verbal jabs in ways that James Spader’s Ultron dreams of. But now, Frieza comes packing a bigger punch and a nice new golden form that accentuates his sinister nature.
Toei Company/20th Century Fox
That’s not to say that Resurrection 'F' is all doom and gloom. Toriyama is smart about his use of comedic relief. While this movie doesn’t have the comedic focus of Battle of Gods, it still finds ways to sneak in quick laughs without having Vegeta do a song and dance on stage. All the jokes seem to come with a wink towards longtime fans of series and most of them might seem like in-jokes to a newcomer. But the humor in Resurrection 'F' serves the plot and characters better than what was featured in Gods. Viewers should expect a few leftover food jokes from Beerus, but most of the laughs come from the characters being themselves, including a golden exchange between Krillin and his wife.
But that’s not why you go to a movie with “Dragonball Z” in the title. Somewhere in that ninety-three minute runtime, someone is going to have to fight someone else and it’s going to be over the top in the extreme. This was my biggest point of concern going into this movie. How, after everyone he’s beaten, after all the different levels of Super Saiyan he’s reached, and how many times he’s died, can Goku be challenged by anyone? A better question might have been: how could Toriyama and company possibly top everything they’ve done before and give paying customers their money’s worth when they sit down in that darkened theater?
Toei Company/20th Century Fox
They show us something we’ve never seen before. Resurrection 'F' sees the heroes of Earth take on the Frieza Force. The entire Frieza Force at once. Even Master Roshi gets in on the action while the traditional one-on-one fights are put aside to show viewer what a war might look like in the Z universe. Piccolo dodges through battle dispatching foes three at a time, Krillin throws Destructo Discs into clouds of enemies, and Tien shows off some old tricks. While none of these sequences are as satisfying as Aragorn carving a path through a mob of Uruk Hai in Lord of the Rings, it’s still something fans have never seen and a clear display of the budget behind this movie.
More impressive are the one-on-one sequences that feature an almost seamless mix of computer and hand drawn animation. These moments are the most beautiful animation that the franchise has seen. Distilling down the clash between two hyper-powered demigods to the simplest martial arts exchanges, time slows enough to follow the action, the impacts boom from the speakers reminding us every blow could level mountains, and the camera orbits the combatants with just the right pace to take the audience’s breath away. It’s the kind of shot you would expect from a summer blockbuster, but seeing Toriyama’s characters come to life in this way is sometimes I never expected to see and was worth the price of admission alone.
Toei Company/20th Century Fox
I went into this movie expecting little more than a guilty-pleasure evening with a piece of childhood nostalgia, and the movdie deliver. What I didn’t expect was for this movie to hold up when compared to the other standard summer blockbuster fare this year. It’s hard to explain the sheer exhilaration I felt at moments during this movie without spoiling some of its best moments. Dragonball Z: Resurrection 'F' is a far more dynamic movie than it has any right to be. It balances humor and action in ways that make a viewer question the competence of its larger budgeted brethren in theaters this summer. If the name Garlic Jr. means anything to you or it’s been a while since you’ve munched on some senzu beans, you need to see this movie.