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duhragonball · 1 year ago

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Dragon Ball Super Movie 1: Broly (3/3)

Sounds like there's been enough talk. It's time for the main event!

So I said that I was going to cover this movie in three parts, but this third part is actually half of the film, and it's almost non-stop fighting. DBS: Broly isn't a perfect movie, but it has a lot to offer. Strong character development, tight plotting, exploration of the series lore, and then we come to this absolutely indulgent fight scene that's longer than a lot of the classic DBZ films' entire runtimes. Does this fight need to go this hard? Maybe not. The basic narrative of the battle is pretty simple, and it could probably be accomplished in half the time, with fewer twists and less ambitious choreography. But the fight does go this hard, and it's a visual feast.

I can't do it a lot of justice with words and still images, so if you haven't seen this movie, do yourself a favor and check it out. But I'll still be here, describing this thing with words and still images.

Okay, so the basic narrative is pretty straightforward. Broly's got a ton of power, but this is the first real fight he's ever been in. He struggles at first, but keeps getting better and better as he goes, forcing Vegeta and Goku to raise their own game higher and higher in order to keep up.

We know Broly has the power to win this thing. Frieza could tell just by meeting the guy that he could take down Goku and Vegeta, which is why he offered to help Paragus with his revenge plot. King Vegeta III might be dead and gone, but Prince Vegeta IV is alive and well on Earth, so Broly can kill the son for the sins of his father. But as the fight goes on and Vegeta turns Super Saiyan, Paragus is completely surprised, since he never imagined such a think could happen. And yet, Broly manages to keep up anyway. Then Vegeta turns Super Saiyan God, and seems to shut Broly down.

When this happens, Paragus admits that Broly is outclassed, and Frieza decides to withdraw, but Paragus can't call Broly off, because he doesn't have his remote for the shock collar he uses to control Broly. Cheelai swiped it earlier in the movie.

Broly is so frustrated that he begins to lose control of his power, the way Paragus described before. Normally, this is where Paragus would use the shock collar to de-escalate, but instead Broly powers up with this minty green aura. The funny thing is, this allows Broly to stand up to Super Saiyan God Vegeta.

As they continue fighting, Paragus explains to Frieza that Broly has somehow internalized the power of the Great Ape form, without actually turning into a Great Ape, so he has the power-up without the bulky monkey body to hinder his movements. I'm a little unclear if Paragus is seeing this for the first time or not. I always interpreted this scene as Paragus witnessing some new depth of Broly's power, but on this viewing, it seems more like he's dealt with Wint-o-green Broly before, and this is just the first time he's seen this form play out, since he always cut it short with the shock collar in the past.

So then Goku tags in and fights Broly for a while. It's not that Vegeta was in trouble, exactly, but he wasn't steamrolling Broly like he had been and Goku wanted a turn. He fights for a bit in base form, then in vanilla Super Saiyan, then finally turns it up to Super Saiyan God. I question the wisdom of using the lower forms when they clearly didn't work for Vegeta, but that's just Goku's style. He lasts longer than you'd expect him too, but it's not because Goku's that much stronger than Vegeta. It's the difference in their tactics. Vegeta was toying with Broly at first, then he started powering up to try to overwhelm him. When Goku takes over, he fights defensively, coping with Broly's offense without getting many hits in of his own. It's all intended to probe Broly's power, and take his measure.

Goku finally gets serious and manages to immobilize Broly in his red God aura, but then Broly freaks out some more and cancels it with his green Maniac aura. So Goku's attempt to reason with the big guy end up falling on deaf ears. Broly's too upset to listen.

From Frieza's ship, Cheelai and Leemo watch the battle, and pity Broly. Sure, he's winning, but they're still disgusted with the way Paragus controls Broly and forces him to fight at his command. It doesn't matter if Broly wins or loses, because he's fighting Paragus' battles, not his own.

Goku takes a pounding and then Piccolo contacts him telepathically to ask what's going on down there. Goku tells him he'll teleport to Piccolo if they need support, then he turns it up to Super Saiyan Blue. I think this might be the first time we've seen Goku switch from God to Blue, and for some reason his aura goes green while he does it. Maybe this hints at what sort of power Broly is operating on. Like he's using divine ki but it's sort of a bastardized version of Super Saiyan God and Super Saiyan Blue. I dunno.

Then the fight turns into CG for a bit. I've written about this before, but it always irritated me how Battle of Gods, Res F, and this movie worked in some CG actions sequences, not because they look bad, but because they look really conspicuous when they're surrounded by traditional animation. The figures just look a little stiffer and dead-eyed, and I wouldn't mind watching an entire movie in this style, but switching back and forth is just really disruptive. And then they made Super Hero and finally got it right. I'll get into that later, but DBS: Broly's CG walked so DBS: Super Hero could run.

Goku Blue seems to have the upper hand, and Paragus concedes that there's nothing more Broly can do. But he still hasn't turned Super Saiyan, so Frieza things back to when Goku turned Super Saiyan and tries to see if he can make that happen again...

So he Death Beams Paragus and calls out to Broly to tell him that Paragus was killed by a stray ki blast. Oh, and the ground is lava because Broly wrecked the Earth's surface around this area. Paragus was beginning to wonder if maybe King Vegeta had been right all along about Broly being too dangerous, but what he really needed to be worried about was the same treachery he used on Beets forty-odd years ago.

So Broly flips out even more and turns Super Saiyan, which stacks on top of whatever Wint-o-green form he was using before. This is enough to make Vegeta nervous, so he turns Blue and tries to help Goku with a double-team, but it does no good. So instead they lead Broly on a merry chase...

... to Frieza, so Broly attacks him for a while as Goku and Vegeta teleport to safety.

Goku's plan is simple: He asks Piccolo to coach them on the Fusion Technique so that they can become powerful enough to defeat Broly before he kills Frieza and blows up the whole world. Vegeta despises this idea, but he can't offer a better one.

But this takes like.... an hour, and Broly keeps clobbering Frieza the entire time. Frieza turns into Golden Frieza to stand up to Broly, but he doesn't really get very far. Then again, it says a lot about how powerful Frieza's become since he last tussled with Goku and Vegeta in Resurrection F. In that movie, he ran out of gas before he could properly leverage his Golden form, but here, he's getting beaten up for a solid hour and he's really not that badly hurt.

Then Goku and Vegeta finally get it right and return to the battlefield as Gogeta. And from here on, Broly's power begins to level off.

Broly seems to do reasonably okay, but then Gogeta turns Super Saiyan and the tide turns. Then for some reason, the entire background changes during the fight.

Like, where the hell are they? Is this supposed to be another dimension, or is it just an aesthetic choice? Anyway, during this part of the battle, Broly's Super Saiyan hair turns that "Legendary" shade of green-yellow, and Gogeta goes Super Saiyan Blue.

Things get back to normal, but by now it's clear that Broly isn't winning. He's still putting up a fight, but he can't do anything to stop Gogeta Blue.

And then the Dragon appears, because...

Cheelai has decided that the only way to save Broly is to use the Dragon Balls. And this is the part of the movie where it suddenly becomes clear that Gogeta really isn't having any trouble with Broly at all.

This is kind of what makes this fight so special, because it starts out with Broly powering through Goku and Vegeta's best stuff. They use all their transformations and special attacks and it does nothing. They double-team him, and it gets them nowhere. They even trick Frieza into helping them, and it doesn't seem to make a bit of difference. Then they fuse into Gogeta Blue, and while he's doing very well, it says a lot that Broly's been fighting Gogeta Blue for several minutes and he's still in this thing. Broly is a very dangerous threat, and this is a pretty standard formula for Dragon Ball villains.

And yet, by this point in the fight, it's clear that Gogeta has it won. He's just teeing off on Broly at this point, and there's not much he can do except scream and try to fight back. At first, it seemed like the suspense was over whether Broly could be defeated at all, but now it's clearly become a question of whether Broly can survive this. He took on Goku and Vegeta because Paragus forced him to, and now he's completely in over his head and no one can save him. No one, that is, except...

... Cheelai, who asks Shenron to take Broly back to Vampa. Shenron zaps him back home right before Gogeta's Kamehameha can finish him off.

Back on Earth, Leemo pulls up in his ship and picks up Cheelai so they can flee into space. Frieza had been planning to use the Dragon Balls himself, so he's all set to shoot down Cheelai and Leemo. This is one of my favorite shots from the movie. I just like the colors. It has nothing to do with the upskirt angle view of Golden Frieza's ass. That's just a happy coincidence.

But Gogeta spoils his shot and Frieza stands down and withdraws. Gogeta just lets him go because...................... Yeah, I still don't get this. I guess Frieza never actually hurt anybody this time. Well, he killed Paragus, but I'm not sure anyone knows he did it, and besides, Paragus was a jerk. Maybe Gogeta doesn't feel right about killing Frieza since he's not doing anything aggressive.

Bulla update: She's doing just fine with Uncle Beerus. Still don't understand why he was even in this movie, but Bulla's cute, so it's fine.

In space, Cheelai says she wants to meet up with Broly on Vampa, and Leemo decides to stick with them, since he'll be on the run from the Frieza Force no matter what he does. At least this way they'll all be together.

Three days later, Frieza's intelligence agents have confirmed that Cheelai and Leemo are with Broly on Vampa, and this suits him just fine. He believes that they'll help him learn to control his powers, and when that happens, he'll become the strongest fighter on the board. He hopes for this, because even though he's getting stronger, his foes are still Goku and Vegeta, and he'd like to have one other big shot in the game. I think the idea here is that Frieza thinks he can team up with Broly again some day, but this seems like a pipe dream. Oh well.

On Vampa, Cheelai and Leemo aren't exactly thrilled about the living conditions on Vampa, but then Goku suddenly shows up and gives them some extra supplies and provisions. None of them know anything about Goku, so they're confused about how he found them so quickly without a spaceship. They don't trust Goku, but he doesn't care, since all he wants to do is fight with Broly in the future, since he enjoyed their battle on Earth, and he admires a Saiyan opponent with so much power. He also wants to teach him some things to help him improve even further, and Broly seems to find this idea appealing.

Before he leaves, they ask him his name, and he says he's Son Goku, but also... Kakarot. I like this bit a lot, because it shows how much Goku has changed since he first learned he was a Saiyan at the beginning of DBZ. At first he despised his alien heritage, then he started to embrace it, calling himself a "Saiyan raised on Earth". In the 1993 Broly movie he angrily insisted that his name wasn't Kakarot, but here he is introducing himself by that name. By now, he's met a lot of other Saiyans, and he's learned that there's more to them than the despicable evil that Raditz described when he first came to Earth. Goku's embraced his Saiyan identity and expresses it on his own terms. He's always going to be Son Goku, but he doesn't mind Vegeta calling him "Kakarot" and now it seems like he wants Broly to call him that too. It's nice.

And that's the end of the movie. Again, it's good good stuff. Check it out if you haven't seen it, but that's about all I can think of to say. And with Broly out of the way, we just have one last story to cover, and we'll get into that very soon...

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