Movie 5 (Cooler's Revenge) is kinda dissapointing

[SelfTrainedNamekian]

i'm kinda mixed on this one because once cooler and goku start fighting the film finally becomes interesting. the problem is that the first half of the movie is goku dying from a lousy ki blast and gohan going to korin tower. cooler henchmens searching for them, fighting with piccolo etc... the movie is 45 min already. there is no need for this stretch, that leaves goku vs cooler to be extreamly short fight and to be honest i dident get the impression that cooler is stronger then frieza. frieza still somewhat challanged goku even after he transformed. cooler couldent touch goku. of course goku is way stronger but still. since goku claiming that cooler is stronger then frieza thats kinda wierd. if the first half wasent that long we could have gotten a longer battle with cooler actually fighting toe to toe with ssj goku.

[GokuHater]

So it seems Frieza was cooler after all.....


Sorry about this, couldn't resist :p

Seriously though I do not have that much problem with the sequence. To be fair however I don't care very much for the earlier DBZ movies and always see they're content as extremely repetitive and boring.
Having said that, a situation in which Gohan has to go to Korin in order to get Senzus isn't too bad, considering what came before.
It's a fresh idea, it shows tension and the road and forest altogether are quite unique for DBZ.
The execution could be better, it is a bit contrived and drawn out.

But would you really prefer watching Goku battling baddy_no_152 again in place of this? I guess if the fight was well choreographed, interesting and tell a good story than yes but let's face it... It's an early DBZ movie.

I could think of every DBZ movie and call it disappointing as in every one of these there are some extremely boring or cheap sections.

[SelfTrainedNamekian]

So it seems Frieza was cooler after all.....


Sorry about this, couldn't resist :p

Seriously though I do not have that much problem with the sequence. To be fair however I don't care very much for the earlier DBZ movies and always see they're content as extremely repetitive and boring.
Having said that, a situation in which Gohan has to go to Korin in order to get Senzus isn't too bad, considering what came before.
It's a fresh idea, it shows tension and the road and forest altogether are quite unique for DBZ.
The execution could be better, it is a bit contrived and drawn out.

But would you really prefer watching Goku battling baddy_no_152 again in place of this? I guess if the fight was well choreographed, interesting and tell a good story than yes but let's face it... It's an early DBZ movie.

I could think of every DBZ movie and call it disappointing as in every one of these there are some extremely boring or cheap sections.

i watch movies for the villains. i love good well designed villians and i want to see them fight. turles and slug were also early movies but they were much better. the vilians were flashed out more while still having a good story around them. cooler vs goku was extreamly short fight. cooler imidiatly transformed. the movie was short to begin with, tree of might is about 1 hour. 15 min more. if the movie is short then i expact to get into the climax faster. the first half of the movie is just boring. cooler's henchmens arnt interesting. seeing goku dying from a ki blast is lame. seeing gohan trying to evade cooler's squaron and go all the way to korin to take senzu beans that would be destroyed anyway is just lame and feel like filler. whats the point even. just make goku take this ki blast and keep fighting. thats it, problem solved. its just that cooler dident get enough screen time in his own movie. his henchmens gets more screen time then him. i dont know why you dont like the "early" dbz movies but i do. movie 7 does that right. the fights against the vilians in movie 7 start almost immidiatly. thats what i'm here for in dragon ball z movies.

[GokuHater]

I respect your opinion but for me movie villains are nothing interesting unfortunately...

Cooler is not interesting for me as he is a Frieza 2.0 but somehow blander. Slug is Piccolo 2.0 but somehow blander. Turles is Vegeta 2.0 though I can at least say he's more exciting than those two and the battle is quite impressive - but that has much to do with it being a bit of replica with Vegeta fight.

The only villain I do appreciate in the movies is Broly but I still cannot call him a good character

[Rafa Fast]

I really like the movie, but I think I can understand why you feel that way about it, and I believe there's a very good way to explain, which is how the movie takes the path of "retelling" the entire Freeza saga, which is a very long arc, and the results... may not be very good for many.
All of these old Z movies are pretty much remakes, retellings, or rehashes of stuff that was recently seen in the anime at the time before the releases of the specific movies (Movie 1: Raditz, 2: Vegeta, 3: Early Namekusei, 4: Ginyu, 5: Freeza, 6: Early Androids, 7: Imperfect Cell, 8: Perfect Cell, 9: Cell Games, 12: Majin Boo/Early Super Boo, 13: Late Super Boo / Fusion. 10 and 11 are technically the Great Saiyaman and Babidi bits, but they have a problem)

If you try to think about each part of the movie independently, you'll notice that each one of them try to mirror different parts/plots of the Namekusei/Ginyu/Freeza saga.

Coola has his own Ginyu Tokusentai, the parts with Sauzer, Naise and Dore are a obvious retake on the parts with the Ginyu and his crew, with Goku dealing with both, and the other Z warriors losing to them (except for Piccolo)
Them hunting Goku and the others can be seen as a parallel to the search for the Dragon Balls, speaking of which
The part with Gohan going to Karin's tower, don't it reminds you of the parts where they go to the Grand Elder's house?
The parts where him, Kuririn and Goku are hiding from Coola's crew, a clear retake on Bulma and the others hiding from Freeza's army.
Oh, of course, the whole concept of Goku being extremely injured, not being able to fight and having to recover, completely copied from what happened to him after the battle against Ginyu.
And oh yeah, Goku recovering and getting ready to fight against the final villain, I don't need to say anything, you can even see Goku getting angry at Coola "killing" Piccolo as a parallel to him getting angry at Freeza killing Vegeta.
The battle against Coola follows this order: Goku base form > Kaioken > Super Saiyajin, the same order from Goku's fight with Freeza, both of them beats up Goku, they even survive Goku's strongest Kaioken Kamehameha (I know Freeza struggled and Coola didn't, but still)
And then, Goku transforms in SSJ through his anger and gives Coola the same treatment he gave to Freeza, with animation frames that are even a completely copy of SSJ's introduction and Freeza's death (and don't forget that both try to kill Goku by tricking him with surprise attack, but Goku reflects with stronger attack that "kills" them)
(Extra) the movie also tries to make it parallel to the parts where Freeza and Vegeta talk about the Saiyajins' past by showing Bardock's death and talking about the destruction of Planet Vegeta in its opening, also, Coola's final monologue.

That's pretty much the main problem with it, it tries to do way too much in just 40 minutes, the Freeza saga is too long, and the climax, which is a mirror of one of the longest battles in anime history, barely lasts 5 minutes, a lot happens in that saga, there's exploration, lots of talk and interaction, chase and chase, multiple characters and villains, battles, it was expected that remaking all of this in a 45 minutes feature would be a challenge.
I think this is the same problem that the first and third Dragon Ball movies went through, the former tries to retell the Pilaf arc, but a lot of things happen in that arc (and it's a short arc!), it's too much for a 40 minutes story, so that makes the movie feel rushed in a lot of parts (specially when introducing the characters), Movie 3 is even worse, as it tries to retell two sagas, Red Ribbon and 22nd Tenkaichi Budokai, again, in only 40 minutes, so the entire movie just feels rushed as hell, lots of things and different plots happening one after the other, they don't give us time to breathe, not even for these particular scenes (seriously, it's just funny how the "training" with Karin was reduced to nearly nothing)

The same happened here in Z Movie 5, except that they decided to slow down things, after all the Freeza saga itself already has the slowest pacing of all of the sagas, but still, they just somehow made the movie feel slow even with the lots of stuff that it has to show, so unlike the two DB movies where you don't have enough time to process what's going on, Z Movie 5 can end up being boring for you, it borrows way too much from the saga that just ended, including its slow pacing problems, but for a TV show that is quite normal, in a 40 minutes movie it can feel weird.
Well, It seems that Koyama and the rest of Toei's team learned from this, so that doesn't happen in any of the next movies, Movie 8 has a similar first half, but a good time of this first half is spent with Broly, and once he transforms in LSSJ, you have long minutes and more minutes of him beating up everyone.

Also, Movie 9, it was also released in the ending of a arc, but instead of repeating what Movie 5 did, they decided to not retell the entire Android / Cell saga in 45 minutes, as Movies 6, 7 and 8 already made their own versions of each part of the Saga's storyline, so Movie 9 retells Cell Games only, and the pacing works much better, so for these reasons, these movies can be a lot more entertaining than Movie 5.

And to finish it, yeah, there's also the problem that the movie lacks originality, even though all of these movies are rehashes of parts of the anime sagas, they still try to be original, you can say that Turles and Slug are copies of Vegeta and Piccolo Daimao, but they are still more original than Coola, other villains like Garlic Jr., Dr. Willow also were much more original, even Coola himself in his metallic return is more original villain, and the other ideas and concepts in the movie such as Coola Tokusentai don't feel any original either, so the movie is a very shortened version of a story you already saw, and it's not better. Movie 5 is probably one of the laziest of all of these 13 movies when it comes to originality, with surprisingly even Movie 11 being more original, despite how infamous that movie is, they still had to create new ideas in that movie that weren't seen in Boo saga, the new characters and genetic stuff, Movie 5 is completely copy and paste of Freeza Saga, maybe only Movie 10 competes with it in lack of originality, and that movie came out in a very bad time where the anime wasn't offering them enough content to rehash (same for Movie 11).

Also, I personally don't think the "early" and the "latter" Z movies are much different, for me they all follow the same formula, I believe the major difference between them is that the first 9 had secondary/minor villains and more characters in overall, the last 4 only have the main villain and less Z warriors and Goku's friends showing up, I know 11 and 12 have the bio warriors and the past villains returning, but they barely last a minute, the secondary villains in the first 9 last almost the entire story, I believe that is mostly because of the Boo Saga ditching the "minor villains/henchmen" formula very early (you only had it for the Babidi part, after Dabura is defeated, it ends and then it's only Boo), you have less Z fighters fighting (including Piccolo, which explains why he's not seen in any of these last 4 movies but he's in all of the first 9)
The first Broly movie would be the only exception of the first 9, but you still have a lot of characters there (even Bulma's parents)