Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero - Movie Review

Dragon Ball Super Super Hero is the latest Dragon Ball film and of course I had to see it. I was a humongous fan of Broly, have been a fan of the series and manga my entire life. And in this film the Red Ribbon Army resurfaces, bringing with them two new enemies in the form of Gamma One and Gamma Two. Goku and Vegeta are off-world training with Beerus and Whis, leaving Piccolo and Gohan to defend the Earth. First things first, I did get a new camera. I'm still experimenting with it. It's a Sony a7 IV. So far, I really like it. But if anything isn't quite right in the presentation of this video, I apologize. I'm still sort of tinkering with it and learning how it works. But so far, I'm really enjoying the camera. I couldn't wait to see this movie, obviously. Broly was absolutely incredible. Like even as a lifelong Dragon Ball fan, that movie blew me the fuck away. I did not expect Broly to be as good as it was. I have never seen anything that good as a Dragon Ball fan. And so it's going to be really hard for them to top that. And there's a lot to love about this movie, especially if you're a fan of Gohan and Piccolo and feel that the series and movies have become too Goku and Vegeta-centereded, which in my opinion they have. Hey, I love Goku and Vegeta probably as my favorite character, but that's only because Gohan stopped being my favorite character. I'm going to get into some spoilers for the Dragon Ball Z show here, but this review will be spoiler-free for this movie. So if you haven't seen the movie yet, no spoilers, but I will be talking about spoilers for the shows. Gohan was always the secret MVP. All the way from Raditz to Frieza to of course Cell. Cell Saga Gohan is the coolest fucking shit. And then they took the character in a different direction as he got older. I enjoy the Great Saiyaman Saga. I think it's a really fun, strange John Hughes saga in the middle of Dragon Ball Z. But as soon as Gohan had his green track pants in the movies, it was just like, what are you doing to my boy? So Vegeta became my favorite character because I've always loved him and Piccolo as well. It's very difficult for me to really choose a favorite because Gohan had some fun moments towards the end of Dragon Ball Super. They actually gave him some things to do, but in general he hasn't been the Gohan that he could have been. It's like he stopped for a while and Goku and Vegeta just took over. And you can tell that the creators behind this movie recognize that because they reference it many times throughout the film. Piccolo often berates Gohan like, what are you doing? You should be training. You should know how to do these things. You should be way farther than you are right now. My favorite relationship in all of Dragon Ball is the one between Piccolo and Gohan. Piccolo really is Gohan's dad. I mean Goku's kind of a deadbeat dad and I knew that before I became a father. Now that I actually have children, Goku is a terrible father. He's a terrible, terrible dad. He's a good guy and his heart's in the right place. But he sucks at being a parent. Piccolo was always the real father figure there. And I love that this movie explores that relationship. In every way, this movie is a love letter to fans of Piccolo and Gohan. And it puts Gohan back in a place of pure fucking awesomeness. And for that reason, I really had a good time watching this movie and there were a lot of moments that made me cheer and made the audience around me clap and applaud and people really enjoyed themselves. That being said, there's a lot in this movie that I didn't love. It is by no means as good as Broly. The Broly film is just top-tier Dragon Ball. The animation, the story, the feel, the tone, the voice acting. It's fucking phenomenal and it still, in my opinion, has the best fights ever. This movie feels more low stakes and honestly, that's fine. If you really love these characters, you're going to watch them do things that aren't as interesting as other times. It's what all great episodic entertainment can do. There are episodes that are better than others for any TV show. But as long as you like the characters, you mostly enjoy the ride. The first 10 minutes of the movie are a bit rough. They're setting up the new villains, what their scheme is, what they want to do and why they want to do it. There's something very funny about it because immediately you know that they are operating under false intelligence. But the movie just did not start with a bang. It started most certainly with a whimper. As soon as Piccolo is introduced, the story just picks up immediately. And there's a lot more comedy in this film than Broly. It feels very Dragon Ball-esque in that regard. Now, I could never make this video without discussing the thing that most fans have been concerned about since the beginning and that is the use of 3D animation. They experimented a few times during the Broly movie with 3D animation and I remember seeing it in the theater and thinking, ooh, that really stood out to me and I hope they don't do that again. And then they made a whole film like that. I won't lie. It feels like a very strange choice. I have things I'm going to say about it, positive and negative, but it just feels like a strange risk because everyone loved Broly, including film critics, and it made a ton of fucking money. It was actually in the top 10 of the box office, which is really cool for an anime film to do that well. And I don't understand why they were like, oh, well, we should probably change everything. We should get a new director who doesn't have a lot of credits and just go a different direction. Everybody liked Broly, so let's do something else. That's a strange choice in my opinion. And in some ways it pays off because this film does feel very different than Broly and it doesn't feel like a retread or a copy of Broly, but it also isn't as good as Broly. And this to me is the biggest issue with the 3D animation is that you would think going from 2D to 3D that you would have exponentially more options with your camera. And yeah, there are times where the camera spins around someone 360, which is very difficult to do in 2D and you have to draw so many different layers of a character to accomplish a 360 move in a 2D animated film. But thinking back on the fight scenes in Broly and in the tournament arc of the Super Show, it feels like they had far more interesting things to do with the camera than they did in this film with the freedom that 3D animation provides. This film's challenge is to sell me and hordes of Dragon Ball fans on 3D animated Dragon Ball. And I don't think it did. But I also don't think that it turned me off from it. I didn't watch this and think, oh, well, this is irredeemable. I can never watch this again. And that's the problem. I don't think the 3D animation in Dragon Ball Super Superhero is so great that it's irrefutably good. And I don't think that the animation is so bad that it's irredeemably bad. And that's why I think a lot of people will be mixed on this. It didn't blow me away, and I didn't hate it. It's somewhere in the middle. It feels like they almost achieved success. But I'm certainly not going to be a fan that sits here and rages against the 3D animation choice. And I'm definitely not going to say it's bad. It just isn't what I prefer, and they didn't sell me on it. But man, did I love the choices they made with Gohan and Piccolo, as well as Pan. Pan is very entertaining in the movie. Every choice they made with the characters worked for me. And that's really what it all comes down to. The Dragon Ball characters. How are they preserved? The things they do. Do the relationships make sense? Is it funny? Is it dramatic when it needs to be? There's also a phenomenal end credit scene. So stay for that. The entire theater cheered. It was really fun to experience that with the crowd. I also surprisingly really liked Gamma 1 and 2 as characters. Didn't expect to like them so much. I'm not going to get into story elements, but I would love to see more. There's something else I want to talk about. I don't know what it is about box office analysts and people professionally looking at the box office nowadays. But every single time, without fail, an anime film is successful at the box office, it is always described as a surprise. In fact, a couple weeks ago, I saw an article on one of the box office websites that described Bullet Train as the last movie of the summer. Look, this theater tonight was fucking packed. People come out for anime. And at some point, the industry is going to realize that. I don't know why they haven't yet. It's very strange to me. So the 3D animation didn't wow me, but it didn't bother me so much that it took me out of the movie. In fact, there were a lot of really great fight sequences and scenes that I've wanted to see for a long time, especially with Gohan. And there were also some surprises in the movie that I didn't expect. Piccolo does some amazing things. Gohan does some amazing things. And as a longtime fan of Gohan, wanting to see him back to the way he used to be, I was extremely satisfied with this movie, and I had a great time in the end. Even though the first 10-15 minutes, it's a bit of a rocky start. It takes some getting used to this new look. And I will say that I hope that the next movie is back to 2D with some 3D utilized, or that they experiment more with it and try to find a healthy middle ground. But I will watch this movie again. In fact, I am going to see it again tomorrow with my wife, and it's going to be fun. So guys, if you're a big Dragon Ball fan, check it out. It's a lot of fun. I hope you guys enjoy it. Thank you so much as always for watching. I'll be back with more videos very soon. And as always, if you like this, you can click right here and get Stuckmanized.