Dragonball Z:
Resurrection “F” (2015): Written by Akira Toriyama, directed by Tadayoshi
Yamamuro. Starring: Masako Nozawa, Ryo Horikawa, Toshio Furukawa, Ryusei
Nakao, and Mayumi Tanaka. Running Time: 94 minutes.
Rating: This film
cannot be rated
I
can honestly say that ever since I started writing film reviews, I never
thought this day would come. Despite the
pretty lenient guidelines I give myself in terms of what I can count as a “new”
film for my yearly counter, and thus be able to write a full review about, not
once did I think that I would have the chance to write one about Dragonball Z, one of the foundational
shows of my childhood. And yet, here we
are. In April of this year, Dragonball Z: Resurrection “F” (from
here on out referred to as DBZ:RF)
received its theatrical release in Japan, and a mere 4 months later it got a
brief and very limited release in the US.
Limited it may have been, but it still falls under my rules regarding
theatrical releases, and therefore counts.
“Even
the complete obliteration of his physical form can't stop the galaxy's most
evil overlord. After years in spiritual purgatory, Frieza has been resurrected
and plans to take his revenge on the Z-Fighters of Earth. Facing off against
Frieza's powerful new form, and his army of 1,000 soldiers, Goku and Vegeta
must reach new levels of strength in order to protect Earth from their vengeful
nemesis.” This is, literally,
the entire title summation of this movie’s plot on Rotten Tomatoes. And it is all you need to know. There’s an beauty to be found in its poetic
simplicity. Perverse, almost. Because this is Dragonball Z, and if you need
any more reason or explanation, or any justification for why the walls of Death
itself have no meaning, you’re watching the wrong movie.
To be fair, almost none of the DBZ movies
(although some early ones are exceptions) count as films in any real sense,
hence why applying any traditional rating to them is in an exercise in
impossible futility. They are nothing
more than extended specials of the show- each assumes you already know the main
characters, their backstories, and their relationships to each other, and
simply conjures up a baddie otherwise completely unmentioned in the regular
episodes for Goku (and it is always, inevitably, Goku, because) to beat the
living shit out of before blowing him (and it is always, invariably, a him,
because) to Kingdom Come. Sometimes,
there is an army of hapless minions for the others to pick apart. Sometimes there is not.
It is a tired, staid, and sorry
excuse for a narrative…and boy, was it one hell of a sweet nostalgia bomb to
sink back into. If I hadn’t seen Spy, Inside
Out, and Trainwreck already, I
would be proclaiming DBZ:RF to be the funniest movie of 2015 to date. The baddy we get to see smacked around this
time is, as I’ve mentioned already, Freiza, which should be a joke given how
stupidly-overpowered just about everyone is now compared with when he first
appeared, but they duck around that in literally 5 seconds flat by revealing he
simply never actually trained to increase his strength before, but since he
finally knows how strong Saiyans can get, he will now do so. He does.
The results are phenomenally funny.
But wait, you say, Freiza’s dead! And not only is he dead, he was brought back
before, and Gohan punched him and he literally exploded. Remember when that happened? Neither does Gohan, apparently, nor anyone
else. But I can’t nitpick that, since
none of the movies have ever been treated as canon. Anyway…
If you need even a hint as to how
Frieza was brought back to life, I recommend you double-check the title of this
franchise. He takes control of the
remnants of his once-powerful forces and heads straight to Earth for the sole
purpose of extracting revenge on Goku.
Because that worked out so well the last time. Piccolo, Krillin, Gohan, Tien, and for some reason
Master Roshi, plus Jaco the Galactic Policeman, are on hand to basically
demolish the army while barely breaking a sweat, until Frieza finally makes him
move. He is stopped just in time when
Vegeta and Goku are brought back to Earth by Whis and Beerus, with whom they
have apparently been training since the end of the past movie.
This all happened in just over the
first half of the movie. So the rest of
it is just Goku, Vegeta, and Frieza (but mostly Goku, because fuck Vegeta,
amiright?) hashing things out with some staggeringly awful CGI fighting. There are hints of lessons that both still
need to learn as fighters, but to my disappointment, this ends up playing
absolutely no role in the conclusion of the battle. The day is saved, along with the Earth,
nothing is learned, and everyone goes about their day. And no, that is not a spoiler, because like I
said, this is a DBZ movie. They aren’t
even going to try to make you guess how things will turn out, so why should
I?
It was refreshing to see that somewhere
between the end of the Majiin Buu Saga, by which time this franchise had
officially been banned from the house by my parents, and the present day, the
DBZ franchise has attained an almost nirvana-esque level of self-awareness. The utter incompetence of Yamcha and Chiaotzu
in a fight are admitted to right at the start, and the two never even make an
appearance (while, again, MASTER ROSHI was considered strong enough to bring
into the fray). Even Frieza gets in on
the winking fun- he directly names the toy based on his new form that, I am
sure, has already been made, calling it the “Golden Frieza.” When I was a kid, we would theorize about
such forms existing for the various characters, and it’s nice to see the mind-readers
in Toei Animation HQ took notice of us humble American brats.
In the end, the question of whether
or not this film is worth your time if you were not an at least somewhat
obsessive fan of the show is a moot one- of course it’s not. What are you even doing here? For those of us who could never get enough howling
Kamehamehas, the question is- does this latest addition to the DBZ film series
hit enough of the needed adrenaline points to be worth an hour and a half of
your evening? I would say it depends on
your level of self-awareness. I had a
gay old time of it myself, but the overuse of CGI and reliance on an
already-known villain, albeit an iconic one, do keep it from rising above its
pulpy, TV-special origins. That might
make it too much for some to sit through.
Then again, for many of you, that might be exactly the point.
-Noah
Franc
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