[Fish Sandwich]

Just watched the Ghost movie myself. It was... good? Just mediocre?

I'm not really sure, actually. I mean, for the most part it's a fine enough film. The only thing I ever really expect out of a Rider movie is some nice over-budgeted action, and it delivered that much. A coherent and/or interesting story is something I consider a bonus at that point and this one is like, 90% there. It's really frustrating.

For one, the movie's biggest strength is also a glaring flaw. The concepts presented here are all really neat. Too neat. Neat enough it sort of feels like they REALLY could've used some of this stuff to fill out the quarter or so of the actual show that was airing when this came out. A quarter that, as I definitely don't need to explain to anyone but am going to anyway, was full of "filler" MotW plots loosely strung together by an ongoing plot that seemed to be on vacation most of the time.

The stuff with Makoto's dad especially is just BEGGING to be brought up in the show more. The series made it clear early on that Takeru's dad was a surrogate parent to him and delving into why that is would've probably been a way better method to keep Makoto interesting than a plot thread about an evil clone that, even though I think the payoff ended up being good, spent most of its time just sort of being a thing that was happening. As it is, his daddy issues got brought up once or twice in throwaway lines specifically to tie in to the movie just before it came out. Again, this movie is frustrating.

The stuff with Dark Ghost can stay here fine enough though. He's a cool character with an interesting backstory and a consistent presence throughout the film, and his evil plan ties into the themes of Ghost well enough. I think he works better here than he would've in the series, especially since the show already had a bad guy with a big evil plan.

But as for the movie itself, I think it's a pretty dang solid story as these things go right up until the climax. It doesn't make much sense. And if I'm saying something in Ghost doesn't make much sense, that's not a good sign. So first of all, the big crux of the ending is that Dark Ghost's plan involves using Takeru's body. There's only one problem with that: Takeru didn't leave a corpse. Now given that the movie's primary setting is some weird pocket-dimension place, this might actually be explicable, but if it is, the film sure wasn't interested in explaining it.

It doesn't help that the whole purpose of this is simply to once again kill Takeru (who by the point of the series this takes place had basically already transcended death, so...), leading to another sappy scene when he inevitably comes back. Normally I'd be all over that but much like how the way it happens is confusing the way he comes back is kind of vague and weird. The only thing I can tell you is that the Heroes did it.

So yeah, basically the movie's connection to the show is what's hurting it more than anything. Taken as its own thing, maybe these wouldn't be huge issues, but it simply doesn't have that luxury.