Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection ‘F’ promised to bring Frieza back, and in a way that he would prove to be a challenge for Goku and company, and in that regard the movie delivered. It’s a fun, fast-paced action film, and the returning voice acting cast does a great job portraying the heroes of Earth. But by the end, I was left wanting more as the creators ended up playing it safe, even though many opportunities to branch off from the established norm of the franchise presented themselves.

Loading

Loading

Picking up a few months after the events of Battle of Gods, the Earth is safe once more as Lord Beerus had decided to spare it (thanks to our wonderful food). Of course, this calm time is short-lived. The remnants of Frieza’s army show up and enact their plans to get Frieza back. Their plan is quite smart: use the Dragon Balls. Since first watching the show, I wondered why so few villains of the series ever tried to use them, and it’s great to not only see them try, but succeed in their plans.Resurrection ‘F’ does a great job of tying together the original Frieza Saga with the new film. What happened to the massive empire Frieza ruled over? Who took charge? Once Frieza himself shows up, the connections to events that took place in that old story arc continue. It was great watching these sometimes subtle call-outs to events that took place so long ago, such as Frieza’s insistence that there were two Super Saiyans that killed him, even though the second one could never be found.Shortly after Frieza is brought back to life, we are treated to the large battle between his army and the heroes of Earth. The non-Saiyan fighters try to hold off Frieza’s assault, and, it’s delivered quite well. The fight is fast and impactful, and much like the previous film, it uses a lot of new artistic styles to bump up the action. Best of all, we get to see characters that had fallen off due to their low power level get back into the action. Something that irked me though was the lack of a few very notable personalities, and the rather uninspired reason for them to not show up. Frieza is on Earth, so I would expect everyone to come defend their home no matter how strong the villain might be.In typical Goku fashion, he isn’t around when things start to get heated back on Earth. We find out that Goku and Vegeta are off planet training, and this sequence, although brief, is possibly my favorite in the entire film. Without giving anything away, there are several great pieces of dialogue during this off-planet training; Goku and Vegeta discuss what holds them back as fighters, and why they insist on fighting alone. It’s during this scene that my favorite line of the whole movie is dropped, as Vegeta makes a hilarious comment about Goku’s intelligence.Once Goku and Vegeta find out what is happening on Earth, they quickly find their way back and the true battle begins. The movie found an intelligent way of explaining how Frieza can hold his own against a Goku who is far stronger now than when the two first fought back on Namek, and the fighting that ensues is very satisfying. The new transformations for Frieza and Goku are handled well, with the story explaining them in a way that makes sense in how they could attain these new powers. The transformation animation for Goku in particular helped sell me on the blue look, something I wasn’t a fan of prior to watching Resurrection 'F'.There are moments in Resurrection ‘F’ where, instead of doing something new, the film plays it very safe, which makes things far less impactful. One particular scene near the end of the film felt like the creators robbed a character of a key moment that could have served as great character growth. Considering how closely tied in this movie is with the older series, it’s a shame that the creators didn’t use this opportunity to grow the characters and tie up story arcs, and then carry it forward into the new show or the next movie.