Akira Toriyama’s version of the legendary Super Saiyan blew away the competition as Dragon Ball Super: Broly dominated theaters across Japan over its opening weekend. Dragon Ball Super: Broly stands as the only film thus far to carry the Dragon Ball Super branding.
The Dragon Ball franchise has been going strong for years. The first film, The Legend of Shenron (renamed Curse of the Blood Rubies for North American audiences), released in 1986. Since then, we’ve received more than one Dragon Ball movie every two years. These have all varied in quality, but generally improving in animation and storytelling quality with time. Dragon Ball Super: Broly is the twentieth film in the Dragon Ball series, and the numbers indicate that it might be one of the best (or at least most anticipated) Dragon Ball films of all time.
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According to Mantan Web, Dragon Ball Super: Broly brought over 820,000 people into theaters and earned roughly $9.26 million in the first weekend following its release. Dragon Ball Super: Broly beat out Bohemian Rhapsody, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, and the opening of Yokai Watch: Forever Friends. For comparison, the previous Dragon Ball film, Resurrection 'F', debuted with about 716,000 ticket sales and $8.1 million in sales.
After having relatively little to do with the films of the Dragon Ball series, Akira Toriyama has been more involved with the last three films: Battle of Gods, Resurrection ‘F’, and now Dragon Ball Super Broly. Toriyama seems to have taken Dragon Ball Super: Broly as an opportunity to make genuinely compelling movies. To that end, the film has a story and screenplay both written by Toriyama himself, as well as his character designs. That work has reaped benefits with trailers earning praise for the revised looks of the characters, quality animation, and the potential to rework and improve one of Goku's most famous and least canonical antagonists. To the Dragon Ball fandom, Toriyama deciding to officially bring the character of Broly into the Dragon Ball canon despite his absence in the manga was - and is - a big deal.
After the conclusion of Dragon Ball Z, the series seemed to lose its way until the advent of Dragon Ball Super. Now, with Toriyama leading a renaissance in the Dragon Ball film space, things seem to be on track for something really special. What that something might be is anyone’s guess, but for now we can content ourselves with poring over new television spots for new information and ogle the spectacle of the film's expressive combat. Given that Goku has fought with gods, it's hard to imagine what Broly has in store for Earth's strongest hero. With an enjoyable anime series still going strong and progressively better movies, it’s a great time to be a Dragon Ball fan.
More: Dragon Ball: 17 Most Powerful (And 8 Weakest) Super Saiyans Of All Time, Officially Ranked
Dragon Ball Super: Broly releases in North America on January 16, 2019.
Source: Mantan Web