Movie Review: Dragon Ball Z - Cooler's Revenge

Dragon Ball Z: Cooler's Revenge [1991]

Otherwise known as "Dragon Ball Z: The Incredible Mightiest v.s. the Mightiest" in Japanese. Man, Japanese DBZ movie is straight-up dumb, isn't it? 

Anyway, I reviewed the sequel to this movie, the Return of Cooler, a while back without watching this movie first -- I got a stack of old anime movie DVDs and I just booted it up with the knowledge that Cooler was Freeza's movie-exclusive brother from a quick google search. I didn't quite manage to track down a Cooler's Revenge DVD, however, so I had to look a bit harder for this one, eventually deciding to just watch a streamed version online.

Cooler's Revenge is the fifth DBZ feature film and it's... well, let's not mince words, yeah? The setup is slightly different, and Cooler is given that extra bit of gravitas due to his familial connection with Dragon Ball Z's very first Big Bad villain, the galactic emperor Freeza... but in execution the movie's more or less the same. We start off with the backstory of the villain, then Goku and his friends go on some generic hijinks, then the villain and his quirky miniboss army shows up and allows the supporting cast to do stuff, and ends with a final battle between Goku and the villain. It's the same basic premise that the other DBZ movies starring Broly, Bojack, Janemba and Metal Cooler did, and it's the same premise being followed here.

Execution-wise, though... the movie's actually pretty neat. There are some really nice design choices that makes me end up being relatively entertained. Cooler himself is just a cooler-looking (heh) version of Freeza, and he never really exudes the same threat level that Freeza does, as much as Goku and Cooler both insist that Cooler is stronger than Freeza, from an execution standpoint he absolutely fails to kill anyone, and the lack of the same melodramatic over-the-top card-carrying villain deal that Freeza has ends up acting to Cooler's detriment for the simple fact that, well, it kind of just makes him somewhat boring. It's not as bad as either Bojack, Janemba or his sequel self, Metal Cooler, was, but he is essentially just alternating between lines of "stupid monkey, die now!" and "I am stronger than my brother!" It's dry, but a combination of his design and his connection to Freeza does serve to make him memorable, and it's no surprise that he and Broly are the ones that video games and other extended media really love. 

Add that to the fact that Cooler's displays of power is a far, far cry from his brother's "crack the planet apart and cause an apocalypse" deal, and it's just waiting for Goku to go Super Saiyan and kick Cooler's ass. But the brief backstory given to Cooler's status as a more no-nonsense version of Freeza, then realizes near the point of his death that he's just as bad as Freeza was -- refusing to blow up the planet immediately, and dicking around with Goku and letting his ship escape in the first place -- gives him something.

Plus, y'know, his 'final' form, presumably a fifth form if he follows Freeza's transformation sequence, is pretty dang cool. From the mainly-purple colour scheme, to the longer legs,  to the elbow-claws, to the spiky ridges on his head and that Optimus Prime-esque faceplate, final form Cooler does look pretty dang 'cool'. 

That said, though, while the final fight with Goku is serviceable and actually has some neat sequences like the bit underwater, and Cooler blowing up that river and splitting the gorge apart is pretty damn awesome... the middle portion of the movie drags on a little. We get a relatively long talk of Goku, Krillin, Gohan and Oolong going to a camping party, with yet another example of how shit Chi-Chi is treated and written in these older DBZ material as the nagging wife/mother. Oh, and there's this purple random dragon thing that acts as Gohan's sidekick which I understand is a movie-exclusive creature that... honestly adds nothing to the movie and they try so desperately to pretend that its ability to allow Gohan to fly without showing any ki is important. Known as "Haiya Dragon" in the original Japanese and christened "Icarus" in English, this dragon is... definitely pretty shit. It helps Gohan on his weird subplot to go get Senzu beans from Karin's Tower which I did feel pretty unnecessary.

Cooler's army of wacky minions, known as the Cooler Armoured Squadron, is a Ginyu Force ripoff, with, as with most DBZ movies with wacky minions, a cool, pretty one (Salza), a brute (Dore) and one with wacky powers (Neiz). Although to be fair, between the three-way energy blast from Goku and their three-on-one bout on Piccolo, we actually get some really awesome scenes between them, and unlike Bojack's silent, sneering crew, we actually get some neat banter out of them. Salza perhaps gets one of the best action sequences fighting Piccolo in the jungle as the two speed through it, Piccolo unleashes his stretchy arms, and Salza covers his arms in a Zamasu-esque energy blade. Pretty neat stuff.

Overall, though, it's a pretty solid movie. Like most DBZ movies, it sort of lacks substance and at the end of the day Cooler's still a bland villain, but it's definitely better than the Metal Cooler movie, and it has some pretty neat visuals and fight scenes. Definitely enjoyed myself through this.