Dragon Ball Super: Broly review

Rating: 9.5/10

Movie information:

A planet which was destroyed, a peaceful race turned to dust, after the destruction of Planet Vegeta, three Saiyans were scattered throughout the universe, who were destined for different fates. While 2 had found a home on earth the 3rd was raised with a burning desire of vengeance and developed an incredible power. The time for revenge has come, destinies will collide in a battle that will shake the universe to its centre!

Genre: Animation

Directed By: Tatsuya Nagamine

Written By: Akira Toriyama

In Theatres: January 16th, 2019 (Limited)

Runtime: 115 minutes

Studio: FUNimation

Dragon Ball Super Broly is a massive hit, as when released it earned $7.06 million on opening night. The anime film paced to take in around $22.7 million through the week of release which will be added to the $57 million pile of money that it has taken from international releases since the middle of December.

The film premiered in 1,250 theaters, Broly’s massive success out of the gate can be chalked up to its “fanboy nature”. People were excited to hear that a Dragon Ball movie was going to be released globally, which isn’t a surprise after thonline hype when super Saiyan blue was announced. Akira Toriyama has taken his most active role in a Dragon Ball movie production in years by creating the storyline that is now being treated as canon, which is a massive deal considering Broly, The Legendary Super Saiyan has been in 3 other non-canon movies.

I recommend anyone to see this film as you don’t need to have a big background understanding of the Dragon Ball extended universe to be able to sit through the English-dubbed movie and be able to still walk out and have a great time.

Dragon Ball Super: Broly is essentially an extended action sequence as the fight scenes fill up near enough 2/3rds of the full runtime with physics-defying martial arts and glowing muscle men getting punched through arctic mountains and shooting energy balls from their hands and yelling “gwAAHHHHH!!!!” when they are changing forms. This would be hard to concentrate on if the animation wasn’t up to speed, which it is. The animation is phenomenal and there isn’t anything like it.

My only issue with the animation is that there are some points in the fight scene where the characters look like they are from a game and not the movie but that doesn’t take away the fact that the story line is well improved compared to the original Broly movies.

The art is a lush, rich and neon-tinged which has translated the hand-drawn feel of manga into a nice fluid, kinetic landscape where everything works.

The camera angles are very creative as well, there is a range from high to low that takes the animation to a whole new level, but that isn’t all. They also have a 1st person view in the mix, showing what it looks like from Broly’s eyes during the fight.

The movie gives us a brief history into the Saiyans past and more importantly where Broly has been all these years, the movie begins 41 years prior to Dragon Ball’s present day on Planet Vegeta, home of the Saiyans, a warrior race that was enslaved by the king of the universe, King Cold, who hands down his army to his son, the eminently recognizable antagonist Frieza. This is all new as we have never seen such a detailed past of the Saiyans, how their home was destroyed and why Frieza chose to destroy Planet Vegeta. Of course, our main focuses, Goku who is also known as Kakarot from his home world, Vegeta and Broly, they survived the destruction of their home for different reasons and fate has brought them together. Broly was sent as King Vegeta seen him as a fret so he was sent away to a distant planet where there was a small chance of him surviving. Goku’s father, Bardock, sent Goku away as he had a feeling something wasn't right and hoped Goku would be safe on a small planet called Earth and Prince Vegeta just happened to be off planet at the time.

We get to see the horrible conditions that Broly is brought up in, it was stated that planet Vampa was “repugnant”. Where as Goku and Vegeta live on earth, Goku was brought up there and Vegeta was brought up in the Frieza force but eventually made Earth his home. Frieza also plays a big part in the movie as he wants to obtain the Dragon Balls.

Right from the beginning all the way to the end, Dragon Ball Super: Broly is filled with tonnes of action packed scenes. I went to the first showing in Falkirk Cineworld and the cinema was packed for the film, many people hyped to finally see Broly on the big screen.

I wont reveal anything else about the movie so that anyone reading this that hasn’t seen the movie can go and enjoy it. It is truly worth a watch as it’s filled with lots of awesome battling scenes and a few very humorous points aswell all together within a great storyline which in my opinion is an improvement to the original Broly movie.

Enjoy!