Dragon Ball Z: The Return of Cooler (1992)

Dragon Ball Z: The Return of Cooler arrived in Japanese theaters in March of 1992, the sixth theatrical outing for a franchise that had already perfected its own grammar of escalation. Cooler, brother to the more famous Frieza, has survived his earlier defeat by fusing his brain with a spacecraft's computer, and now his vessel clamps onto New Namek and begins draining the planet and its inhabitants for fuel. Goku, Gohan, Piccolo, Vegeta, and a supporting cast of Earth's finest travel across the galaxy to intervene. What follows is ninety minutes of punching, transformation, regeneration, and more punching, resolved when two Super Saiyans release enough energy to overload a machine that had already rebuilt itself a thousand times over. It is a film about power levels, and it is content to remain one.

We come to this work of classification with a clipboard and a set of categories, and the film offers us almost nothing to write down. The Namekians suffer under an occupier, but their ordeal functions as a reason for Goku to arrive, not as a vessel for commentary on anything. Female characters are, for practical purposes, absent from the conflict. Every body on screen is an idealized engine of combat, every relationship is a rivalry, and the villain's sin is tyranny in the abstract, pursued for its own sake by a being who mostly wants to be stronger than his brother. Nobody learns anything. Nobody delivers a speech. The film ends, and the audience goes home.

There is a certain relief in a text so thoroughly uninterested in us. No messaging, no moral instruction, no invitation to examine our own conduct. Just a cyborg and two Saiyans settling a grudge inside a dying starship. We file it accordingly.