And so, we arrive at the final ‘Original era’ Dragonball Z movie…and; well…its something I guess.

The plot here is set some time after the Buu Saga concluded, with the gang chilling and just…doing what they’ve always done, when a mysterious Warlock appears with a music box, claiming he DESPERATELY needs it opening in order to release a long trapped hero that will save the earth from an incoming threat. The gang try their hardest to open the music box before realising that its sealed magically, and will need the help of the Dragonballs to break the seal.

Naturally; they do this, and it turns out the Hero was sealed in there for a good reason, as the Warlock is revealed to have alterior motives and a curse that was sealed away with the hero ends up unleashed threatening the entire planet with annihilation.

Theres a fundamental issue with ‘Wrath of the Dragon’ as a film, and its an issue the film makers were clearly aware of, because they make it a mission to try their absolute DAMNEDEST to try and make you forget about key plot points from ‘Dragonball’.

Because you see, the ancient evil thats unleashed is some kind of ‘legendary’ demon beast from hell that annihilates planets when its awakened…and if youve ever watched the original run of ‘Dragonball’ you’ll know that a key plotline of the back half of that series is around a demon ressurected and rejuvinated, attempting to destroy the planet, and Goku, Master Roshi and the teams attempt to seal him away using the ‘Evil Containment wave’ technique. Which is LITERALLY a move designed to capture ancient evil entities and contain them near permanently in a jar or rice cooker…NEVER to be seen again.

Funnily enough, the Evil containment wave technique doesnt get a single mention in this film, so how do I know that the film makers were aware that it existed and would be THE biggest solution to this problem? Because Piccolo is totally and completely missing from this film. And, in fairness, it would be impossible to include him in this plot without the ‘Evil Containment Wave’ technique cropping up in conversation, given thats literally the reason he’s a friend and not a foe by this point in the series.

Now, I know that the ‘Evil Containment Wave’ could have been used at many MANY points in this series. But for the vast majority of cases there IS actually an in universe reason as to why they couldnt REALLY use it…Not in this movie though! they just bashed out a half assed Kaiju by way of Evangelion plotline and then realised at the end of pre-production that they actually had a major issue on their hands, so they had to hide all evidence of the quick fix as QUICKLY as possible.

As such, whats left is a…slightly bizarre alternate origin story for how Future Trunks wound up the way he is…and outside of that its basically just ‘The gang fight a big scary monster’ thats somehow stronger, and more dangerous than ‘Kid Buu’…a character that could literally destroy galaxies in a couple of hours and could rip a hole in reality into hell to go destroy that too!…But at the same time, the new threats not SO strong that he can really even destrou a city in a couple of days…

This whole things a great big convoluted contradiction of the shows own rules on power scaling. And while it is nice that they focus a bit more on Trunks here and give him more of a fleshed out character, it pushes everyone else into the fringes of the story and makes it all feel a bit flat ultimately.

I didnt actively hate this one, but the pacing is so lumpy, the tone is just weird…it tries humour, but it just doesnt work quite right here, and the serious moments arnt nearly played serious enough to make me invested, as such it falls between two chairs ultimately, leading to the feeling of ‘Dragon Ball Z…if it was made by Temu’

As is the case with all of these, I cant really fault the art direction, cine or storyboarding, this looks pretty awesome in places…But the story is such a mess and the characters are so…out of character for most of the runtime (not to mention they do that GOD awful thing of giving key core characters 3 minutes of screentime before locking them up away…I WANT MORE ROSHI AND VEGETA GODDAMNIT!…it all feels quite hollow.

Ultimately; this one is a film that I feel I’ll only watch again if im going through all the movies. Its not good enough or ‘Vibey’ enough for me to just put on on a whim.

I cant recommend this one, even if your curious about the alternate ‘what if?’ factor of, what did the gang get up to after the anime ended…Very much a movie led by ‘Nice Video; Shame about the song’.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/dragon-ball-z-wrath-of-the-dragon/