DBS Super Hero Critique (Spoilers)

Discussion specifically regarding the "Dragon Ball Super" TV series premiering July 2015 in Japan, including individual threads for each episode.

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Unkikonki
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DBS Super Hero Critique (Spoilers)

Post by Unkikonki » Mon Jun 27, 2022 7:32 pm

I believe this movie signals the beginning of the end for the Dragon Ball Super franchise. The movie is terrible at all levels and is really hard to find anything positive at all. It feels like a cheap cash-grab. Everything people hate about DBS, this movie takes it to the extreme: lazy plot, boring fights, easy power ups, degradation of the power levels scale, cliched personalities. If feel as though DBS has turned into a parody of itself. Note that CGI doesn’t even top the reasons why this movie sucks. That’s not to say that CGI was good, but the medium doesn’t matter much when all other decisions on writing and direction fail.

For starters, the plot is extremely lazy. Basically, Androids Saga 2.0 but bad, very bad.
Now, a bad idea doesn’t necessarily mean a bad movie. I believe that execution is more often than not more important than a good idea, or at least it can help turn a mediocre idea into something enjoyable. Unfortunately, that is not the case with this movie. The direction is as terrible as the writing. Everything feels rushed, with no sense of flow. If you despised how DBS turned everyone into uni-dimensional characters, this movie goes one step further and squeezes the juice out of every single cliche possible. The same happens with fan service: they keep squeezing the piggy bank of nostalgia and use those memories to make up for the lack of ideas under the guise of respect and acknowledgment of the past, though they can’t even get that right.
It just feels so cheap and lazy that one cannot help but to roll your eyes in disbelief. And the movie is full of similar examples.

A DB movie is all about building hype and anticipation for the final fight. One key element to that is to create interest in the main antagonist. This was done relatively well in the previous DBS movies.
It’s almost as if they found inspiration on Bio Broly, possibly the worst DB movie ever. And I won’t even get into Cell Max’s lazy character design, in line with all other new characters. Oh, but they were all designed by Toriyama himself, right?

Finally, we get to CGI, the aspect many of you were probably waiting for. To put it simply, it didn’t work. Although not terrible, the fights felt slow and underwhelming, far from conveying the amount of power that the characters should be capable of exerting. If there is one thing I liked about CGI though, is how it gives more depth to the DB world as it allows for more detail. But this alone doesn’t justify its implementation, especially when adding more depth seems opposed to the childish approach chosen for all other aspects.

In conclusion, DBS Super Hero was terribly boring and disappointing. So boring indeed, that I fast-forwarded most of the final fight because I couldn’t wait for it to end. The franchise has made it clear the direction they want to follow is all about lazy cheap production aimed to a younger audience. Time will tell whether this works or ends up diluting the hype built by DBS.

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Re: DBS Super Hero Critique (Spoilers)

Post by VegettoEX » Mon Jun 27, 2022 8:31 pm

This seems like something appropriate for the existing, ongoing thread about the film-

viewtopic.php?f=25&t=46277

… where many of the things you bring up have already been and/or are already being discussed.
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