The Weekend Review: Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods

In which I review a selection of last weekend's entertainment.

This last weekend I was finally able to conclude my peregrination to track down a copy of Akira Toriyama's latest installment to his Dragon Ball franchise - Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods.  After missing my chance to see it during its modest theatrical run stateside, I have heard nothing but overwhelming praise for the film.  Not wanting to blind buy it, I had to resort to renting it from Family Video, which was supposed to get the film in mid December.  After their shipment  was delayed until early - and then mid - January, I repeatedly missed out on checking out their one copy of the film for nearly a week.  So nearly a year after first hearing about it, Battle of Gods had to contend with the version of itself that had percolated in my mind throughout 2014.

It is the duty of the divine to keep the cosmos in check.  The Kais promote life and growth: guiding mortality along through the ages.  Beerus the Destroyer culls creation back to a manageable scale.  Yin and yang.  After nearly a generation of slumber, Beerus is roused by a premonition: a vision of an arch rival worthy of him - a Super Saiyan God.  After nearly killing Goku on King Kai's planet, he sets off to Earth to interrogate the remaining Saiyans about the God among them.

Battle of Gods is quite simply the best 90 minutes that the three Dragon Ball series and eighteen feature films have ever produced.  Going into the film, I had expected to watch 90 minutes of fight-porn broken up by the occasional power-up scene (which the series often dragged out for entire episodes at a stretch).  And while there is a brief confrontation between Beerus and Goku in the first third of the film, there is no fighting of any significant length until the final third of the film, when Beerus finally meets his Super Saiyan God.

The vast majority of Battle of Gods' run-time - in fact, its entire first hour - focuses on the antics surrounding Bulma's 38th birthday party: pairing Dragon Ball-style humor with Z's expansive cast of characters.  Series antagonist Emperor Pilaf (and cronies Shu and Mai) break into the Briefs' estate in order to steal the grand prize of Bulma's birthday bingo tournament, the complete set of Dragon Balls, in order to wish for exorbitant wealth.  When discovered in the prize room, Mai agrees to pose as Trunks' girlfriend so that he can safe face in front of Goten, and their subsequent attempts to steal the Dragon Balls (and hold Trunks hostage) are confused for, and treated as, an imaginative children's game.

Vegeta, knowing the gravity that Beerus' visit to Earth poses to the planet, bends over backwards to keep the Destroyer in a good mood, including a spirited song and dance number that is easily the most side-splitting moment of the entire film.  And when the action does get underway, it is not born of Beerus' antagonistic nature, his quest for his promised arc rival nor even the escalating antics of a pint-sized villain, but Buu's absolute refusal to share one of his pudding cups with the prodigiously hungry Beerus (insistently licking all of the pudding and screaming "Pudding is all for Buu!")

Battle of Gods is absolutely gorgeous to watch: with incredibly detailed animation that makes the rest of the series look embarrassing by comparison.  The high definition re-animation of clips from the anime series - including Goku's battle with Frieza and the Cell games - breathes fresh life into those decades old scenes.  Beerus' climactic fight with his promised opponent makes excellent use of modern 3-D rendering software, taking full advantage of the three dimensional space in which they square off.

If the film can be faulted for anything, it's that the quality of that final fight pales against the best battles of the series.  For as laughably over-long as Goku's battle against the interplanetary tyrant Frieza is, it is a viscerally thrilling and memorable confrontation.  Gohan's fight against Cell was the most inventive showdown of the series, payed out against an epic metal score.  Goku being forced into battle against Majin Vegeta is still the absolute high point of the series for me.  By comparison, a Destroyer God's brawl against Super Saiyan God in which the fate of the world hangs in the balance seems strangely tame: not bad, not dull, just a step down from the action-packed fights that precede (and introduce) it.

On the whole, however, Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods is an astounding action-comedy film that fans of the anime and fans of either of its genres should love in equal measure.  It sidesteps the innumerable issues with Dragon Ball GT by simply ignoring that show's existence entirely.  I am incredibly excited about this new approach to a childhood favorite and cannot wait for its next instalment: Resurrection of F(rieza).

Rating:  8.5/10

Worth Buying:  Hell yes!

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