Last Thursday, I had the opportunity to watch the Dragon Ball Super: Broly movie. I tried getting tickets the day it was released, but screenings were sold out over a week in advance! As a Dragon Ball fan since I was little, I felt Avengers-level hype for this film. It’s the movie that fans have always wanted, with the original Broly movies released years ago and the scale of fight leveled up from Z to Super (the original movies are available to purchase as a trilogy from Funimation).
What this movie did was remake the entire character of Broly, which I thought was a great idea. Unfortunately, like other older anime, there are many plot holes that just were never dealt with for whatever reason may be. It’s interesting as certain anime get older, fans notice the holes more and more since years go by and the creators never explain them. In this case, what’s great is that the previous Broly movies from the Z series are not considered canon so think of them as not counting towards the show.
The character of Broly was remade along with the film, and not only was Broly given much more development as a character, so were the stories of Bardock and Bardoc the destruction of Planet Vegeta. Frieza destroyed the planet, as seen a few times in Dragon Ball Z, but in Broly, further details are shown, regarding King Vegeta, Bardock’s personality, and even Goku’s mom! She doesn’t play a huge part, and obviously, she didn’t survive the planet’s doom, but at least we got something. I’ll take whatever I can!
The movie felt like two in one, with the first half spent building the foundation of who Broly is, what happened to Planet Vegeta and Goku’s parents, and how Broly got to Earth. He ends up being stranded on Planet Vampa, a deserted place full of bug-like creatures. I won’t spoil how he makes it to earth from there, but it’s pretty interesting. The film also adds two new characters that are part of Frieza’s army and play critical roles, both as Broly’s friends and in the ending.
Once the movie goes ahead back to Earth and Broly arrives, it starts to gets really good. We finally get to see Goku and Vegeta fight against the titan, and it is amazing. The filmmakers do justice to this long-awaited match. The power struggle is real, but what I really loved the most is that it was an honest fight. I say that because in the original Broly movies, nobody really even hurt him! In the first movie, he was defeated by everyone giving Goku their power, which felt cheesy. In the second movie, Gohan never even made Broly flinch, and the third movie it was a clone, so that doesn’t count. This time around though, Broly had to give it his all because Vegeta and Goku weren’t backing down.
What I really enjoyed was how Broly could keep up with each power up that the heroes did, so you saw him improve at the same time as he was taking hits. This was a little exaggerated, but was a lot of fun. In addition, just like in the Tournament of Power, this movie gives us more while closing plotholes, and references from fights in previous movies were also included. It’s clear that the movie was made for fans who have watched most of the series/movies/OVAs. During certain parts that were a “nod” to other Dragon Ball fights, the crowd at the theater started cheering; we all seemed to understand what was going on.
The ending was the best part of all. I enjoyed how everything wrapped up, as it was different than how the older movies turned out. No spoilers—that’s all you’ll get out of me! I left the theater more than satisfied—Broly is now my favorite Dragon Ball movie in the series, one that demonstrates that the creators are finally listening to the fans and giving us what we want.
