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DRAGON BALL SUPER: BROLY
Director: Tatsuya Nagamine Cast: The voices of Sean Schemmel, Christopher Sabat, Christopher Ayres, Dameon Clarke, Monica Rial, Erica Lindbeck, Vic Mignogna, Bruce Carey, Ian Sinclair, Jason Douglas, Sonny Franks, Veronica Taylor MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:40 Release Date: 1/16/19 |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | January 16, 2019 Going into the movie without any knowledge of the series' 35-year history across various media, I tried to meet Dragon Ball Super: Broly halfway. For a while, the movie seems to want to include those who have limited or even no awareness of the material. The screenplay by series creator Akira Toriyama gives us a very lengthy prologue, detailing the origin of the story's conflicted antagonist, and then, it follows up that prologue with yet another one, in which we learn the origin of the series' central hero. This seems like a no-win scenario. Surely, anyone who knows the ins and outs of this series will find this introduction redundant. Meanwhile, anyone who hasn't cared much or at all about Saiyans, Dragon Balls, a galactic villain with a Napoleon complex, or any of the mythos of Toriyama's creation probably won't find much in which to become invested here. This is especially true once one realizes that the movie's extended introductions only serve to establish an even lengthier final battle, in which the brawlers punch, throw, kick, fly, and yell (They yell a lot, even when they're not fighting) against backdrops that range from icy mountains, to a barren desert, and to a laser-light show (The accompanying music has a singer shouting the characters' names). The final battle takes up the entirety of the story's second and third acts—if the movie even possesses a third act. That determination depends on whether or not one believes a short dancing-for-power montage is enough to justify a shift in the drama. By that point, though, you don't care. There are two possible reasons for the lack of caring: 1.) because the movie is showing you the epic battle between a pair of Saiyan fighters—Goku (voice of Sean Schemmel) and Vegeta (voice of Christopher Sabat)—and Broly (voice of Vic Mignogna), a Saiyan who was exiled from his home planet as a child and raised by his father Paragus (voice of Dameon Clarke) to become a vengeance-fueled warrior and manipulated by the recently resurrected villain Frieza (voice of Christopher Ayres) to kill the other Saiyans, or 2.) because you still don't care about a single word in the previous reason. To Toriyama's credit, he does try to get the uninitiated involved with Dragon Ball Super: Broly. Ignorance was such bliss. Copyright © 2019 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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