Dragon Ball Z: Bio-Broly
So I decided to watch this because we're getting that new Broly movie at the end of this year. Everyone's warned me about this movie and... Wow, yeah, this is pretty bad. The eleventh movie for Dragon Ball Z, and a direct sequel to Broly: Second Coming, this particular mess of a movie somehow manages to be worse. Well, I dunno... they're kind of on different planes of stupidity, really. Second Coming is just half-obnoxious and half-boring. This one is actually really dumb, and while the surprisingly decent amount of focus given to Android 18 and Mr Satan, the main plot ends up feeling dumber and so, so much less interesting.
The opening of Bio-Broly is at least somewhat fun, with #18 trying to get that money back from Mr. Satan from that tournament at the beginning of the Buu Saga (so this takes place... during the Buu saga? Slightly after?), but is interrupted by Lord Jaguar, his old rival, who has built an army of mutant bio-warriors, which are just humanoids covered in goop, far, far less interesting than any of the many previous evil minion seen in DBZ movies. Because Satan is the champion of the world, Jaguar sends for Satan to fight the Biowarriors, but they get thrashed by 18, Goten and Trunks, who tagged along.
And that's honestly the interactions of 18 trying to hustle money from Mr. Satan, and Satan's general pontificating, are the only real good parts of this movie. I guess Krillin gets to do a cool thing in swooping in and rescuing 18? And Goten and Trunks are less annoying than they were in Second Coming?
The rest of the plot is dumb, though. Jaguar and his cronies are very flat characters, and the random jackass faux witch doctor from Second Coming shows up and provided Jaguar with a vial of Broly blood, leading to them cloning Broly. Who proceeds to break out of his test tube, get covered in goop and ends up looking like Swamp Thing waded through a septic tank. It's a very unimpressive villain, and most criminal of all -- it's a pretty horrid assassination of Broly. While I'm not the biggest fan of Broly, at least the character was kept somewhat consistent in Second Coming, as shoehorned as it is. This one? You could call the resulting Bio-Broly "Bob" and it wouldn't have changed a thing. Bio-Broly looks silly, and the main threat comes from the actual purple goop that dissolves a lot of Jaguar's minions (including fortuneteller man), while Bio-Broly once more fails to really do any damage to any of our main characters... and honestly fails to do anything but look dumb. It's the best example of a 'villain decay' in the most literal sense. Bio-Broly has nothing in common with the unstoppable legendary Saiyan juggernaut everyone is familiar with, and the justification for his return and what they do with him are all pretty fucking dumb.
And then they beat him with sea-water, which is a plot point that comes out of nowhere and makes no real sense. Poor Broly. I'm not his biggest fan, but he deserved better than this. Overall, a horrifyingly messy and stupid film -- and since I've watched all of them -- definitely ranks lowest amongst the DBZ movies. Ugh. This entire movie is just so dumb.
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