Turles was, oddly enough, one of the most memorable Dragon Ball Z movie villains to me. I’m guessing the art department really didn’t want to do any real work, because they made a bad guy who looked exactly like Goku, after already making his dad, Bardock, look exactly like him as well. He’s far from the greatest movie villain or Dragon Ball Z character, but he’s at least memorable enough to stick in your mind.

Turles plays into the lost Saiyan warrior trope, but we saw that a little too often. Much like the Jedi in Star Wars, the group was originally extremely small after surviving an apocalyptic event, but they expanded the circle to the point where it no longer felt special anymore.

He comes to Earth looking to conquer it, which I imagine is just kind of what Saiyans do. Earth was apparently the perfect environment for the Tree of Might, which grew the fruit he was looking for in order to become much stronger than he actually was. Which is funny, because he was supposed to be a low class Saiyan like Goku, yet he somehow had powers that could rival Vegeta.

In the movie, Goku has most of the abilities he acquired through his training with King Kai, but he still struggles against Turles in their battle. That part definitely didn’t make as much sense as the writers were probably hoping.

He’s defeated once Goku realizes he can form a Spirit Bomb from the Tree of Might itself, especially since the enormous tree was draining most of the life force from Earth. That sounds like an epic defeat on paper, but I didn’t find it all that exciting, mostly because I had forgotten the majority of it over the twenty years since I last watched it.