Resurrection "F"'s Biggest Missed Opportunity

I feel bad having a complaint about Resurrection "F". Freeza has been my favorite Dragon Ball villain since childhood and hearing he was going to return for a new movie had me so stoked. So my having a problem with the climax feels awful, like spitting in the face of Toriyama after he gave me a great present just because it wasn't perfect. Honestly, it is a really great film and Freeza is just as good a villain now as he was years ago, plus the switch of focus from energy struggles back to martial arts for the most part was a welcome change. I still love how they treated Freeza, but it had a bit of a miscalculation right at the climax of the film, something that I think could have been an easy fix that would have improved it overall. Since I'm mostly talking about my impressions about the climax and not a full review, be forewarned that this entire article will have spoilers and assume the reader has already seen the film.

Honestly, I think Golden Freeza was built up to the point where the treatment in the film kind of left me feeling underwhelmed. While I get the idea that Freeza is incapable of pacing himself, I think that means that early on in the fight he should have been dominating Goku far more. As a whole, the fight between Goku and Freeza was always pushing in Goku's favor from the start. Beyond God Goku fighting Freeza's fourth form is almost disappointing in how poorly Freeza performed. The closest it got to a dramatic fight is immediately after they both transform where the two are evenly matched, although it still seems to be in SSGSS Goku's favor. Combine this with there being Vegeta, Beerus, and Whis still on the bench and the return of Freeza doesn't seem to be as big a deal as I would've liked it to be. In fact, this is a recurring theme in the movie.

I get the idea that most of the Freeza soldiers haven't exactly done level grinding, but it feels off when named characters (mainly just Shisami) are taken out with less pomp and circumstance than the huge wave of grunts that comprises the first major action beat (and even then they didn't get Gohan to use Super Saiyan). One of my favorite parts about Battle of Gods was having the antagonist be so far above all of the protagonists, including Goku. It's something that hadn't really happened for an extended period since Freeza or the Androids.

The thing here is that there's an easy fix, and one that seemed to be foreshadowed in the movie itself. When Krillin arrives with the Senzu beans, Freeza is shown noticing them. I would have thought that he would get his hands on the last one and that would revitalize him, allowing him to overwhelm Goku and perhaps even Vegeta for a time. Vegeta did prevent Freeza from taking the last beam from Krillin, but they could've made it so that Vegeta's tension, his anger at Freeza or something of the like, prevented him from stopping Freeza by slowing his reaction time. It still gets the lesson that Goku needed to learn through while also addressing Vegeta's flaw, and their combined flaw of not wanting to work together if they need to collaborate to beat Golden Freeza. I get that those are likely to be addressed in Super, but considering Resurrection "F" is already kind of strapped for time, I would have preferred if those sorts of lines were put in to be a part of the film.

It rather upsets me that Freeza pushing Goku to the brink of death, something that was being shown prominently in the trailers, is less because his golden form is so powerful but actually due to Goku getting sucker punched by Sorbet. I don't know, perhaps I'm biased. Either way, 4 months of training getting him to the level that took Goku and Vegeta 10 years is rather impressive, I just wish that Golden Freeza would've put up a better fight. Early rumors had stated he might've been able to fight on par with Beerus, or at least fight Goku and Vegeta at the same time, and that's probably the minimum that I wanted.

While Battle of Gods sort of suffered from not having enough plot (although it was more than enough for the comedy-focused movie it was), Resurrection "F" goes the other direction from having too much content to stuff into the film. It's stuff like Tagoma and Shisami getting taken out so quickly in their respective defeat/death scenes that illustrates that the film might have done better as an OVA where it has more time to stretch its legs. Perhaps if they cut the Pilaf or Jaco scenes then these issues could've been addressed, but I certainly wouldn't want to cut them. I hear that Super might be redoing Battle of Gods and Resurrection "F" plots, so hopefully these issues I had might get addressed there?

If nothing else, I can appreciate how Freeza's downfall being rather anticlimactic does tie in with his major flaw - a flaw that is accentuated even more now that he's spent ten years in Hell. He's too impatient and with a little extra time, say another six months to a year of training, could have gotten to a level where he maybe could've fought two SSGSS at the same time. His confidence and lack of long-term plans has always been his downfall, so it shouldn't magically be fixed simply to make him a bigger threat in the film, I suppose.

Ultimately, it makes it seem like the film isn't about Freeza despite the title and all the promotional materials centering on his return. It feels more like the film is about Goku learning a lesson from Whis, since the main source of drama comes from the fact that Bulma couldn't get ahold of Whis. It isn't a question of "Can Goku and Vegeta beat Freeza?" since the SSGSS form makes it obvious the answer is "yes." It's "Can Goku and Vegeta arrive at Earth before Freeza destroys it?"

Also the Maximum the Hormone song didn't play enough in the film, but that's neither here nor there. Complaints aside, Resurrection "F" is still a huge treat and I'd recommend any fan of Dragon Ball to watch it, it's definitely one of the better movies you'll get out of the franchise.