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Thread
:
What are you watching? (Kamen Rider Edition)
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11-15-2019, 10:05 PM
#
15678
Fish Sandwich
The Immortal King Tasty
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Every diner you've ever been to.
Posts: 3,833
Kamen Rider Taisen:
This is not a great movie, but I've always liked it a fair bit. It's like the awkard halfway point between the generally quite awful Super Hero Taisen films, and the generally quite good Heisei Generations movies. Something that exists right in this period where Toei was clearly
trying
to get their crap together when it came to doing these big fanservice events, but still hadn't really figured it out.
There's a lot of the usual pointless glorified suits with unfitting voices, on one hand. OOO's habit of whiffing on Rider Kicks hits a new low when he gets Rope Armed out of the air by Riderman and then explodes. Black and Black RX are apparently partners now. Kenichi Suzumura is voicing Fourze for some reason. J is boiled down to being "that big one"
again
. It's got all the hallmarks of the era of movies that started during Decade.
On the other hand, it's also got, for one of the first truly notable times, returning actors who are actually allowed the screentime to matter. Hiroshi Fujioka is back,
in person
, and while he only gets two scenes, he owns every second he appears, and the fact that he was there at all legitimately had a
huge
amount of novelty to it at the time. Then, of course, you have Takkun, who's the reason I'm doing this right now. He gets by far the meatiest part of all the guest actors, especially when he gets to share the spotlight with X for the 13 minute segment of this movie that plays out like some lost episode of Faiz. Which is awesome! Going that length of time with what is largely just human characters talking, with no absurd doomsday devices or overly complex plans getting in the way, does
not
happen in movies like this, and I savor every minute of it. Takumi is great here, and just on a side note, I appreciate the detail of him going from his initial necklace from the show to the on-brand phi one from later once he becomes a Rider again. I appreciate little touches like that. I also appreciate that Haruto was also in this movie and got to tell Takkun he'd be his hope. I appreciate that
a lot
, actually. You gotta understand, back in 2014 I thought it was going to be cool just to have my two favorite Rider protagonists in the same movie. I scarcely expected them to even interact, let alone what I got. I'm probably the only one who cares, but that's exactly why I love that moment so much. I swear they actually made it specifically for me.
The story that holds all of this together is unfortunately leaning a lot more towards typical crossover nonsense. I actually like Fifteen quite a lot. A cool looking skeleton guy who can use all the heroes' powers. That's neat. As an actual character, though, he's a little underbaked. Which isn't even the movie's big problem, which is instead that it makes the Showa Riders look like huge jerks. Hongou must've got up on the wrong side of the bed that day. I'd joke that the overly complicated plan he comes up with to stop Badan was just a pretense to wail on the new generation, but it stops being a joke as soon as he drops even the pretense, and just sicks his crew on the Heisei Riders for no reason whatsoever. The ending to this movie is the stupidest and best thing ever. The real one I mean. Not the Showa one that's basically a lamer version of the same thing. No, I'm talking about Kouta's legendary defense of some random flower on some beach. It's such an over the top, absurd way for the conflict to resolve, I can't help but love it. I mean, I've got to agree with Hongou on this one. If your dedication to protecting life is hardcore enough that you'll try tanking a Rider Kick to save foliage, I think it's safe to say your kindness isn't making you weak.
So I don't know. It's the usual noisy mess for the most part, and it doesn't make much sense, but by the time it wraps up, and that new version of Dragon Road starts playing, it feels like it comes together into something that's maybe more than the sum of its parts.
Kamen Rider 3:
Toei's next attempt to get their crap together went even better, because they remembered they already did this right once, and just decided to make Let's Go Kamen Riders again. Don't you dare think I'm knocking it for that either. I love Kamen Rider 3.
And what better place to start than with... Kamen Rider 3! They really went all out to make this a character deserving of such a big part. Digging up an obscure bit of Rider lore, and basically totally retrofitting it into this new thing. His suit design is stellar, being agressively modern, yet mixing in so many classic design elements, as well as its own inspired new ones, like the straight up broken shackles on his wrists and ankles. Kuroi as a character is fleshed out enough to be legitimately interesting, with a proper arc, and the clever spin on the "friend or foe" angle where you're fed so many mixed messages it legitimately becomes hard to guess exactly what his deal is, all backed by a pretty strong performance. I especially love the emphasis on the body language of him clenching his fists throughout. Plus, his theme song is great, and he's got a sweet car.
The plot surrounding all this is, as I suggested at the start, a blatant reuse of Let's Go Kamen Riders' central concept of Shocker winning, and the altered timeline that would create. It's hard to call this a bad thing. It wins some points right away by having an opening done in 4:3, and in general, the attitude the movie has towards the franchise lacks that weirdly detached, borderline cynicism that defines your average spring movie. The different cast, and unique angle of Rider 3 also prevent it from truly feeling like a bland repeat of Let's Go, too. But like that movie, the plot is actually fairly digestible. Not
as
much, mind you. There's still a fair amount of weirdness, to be sure, but you won't be scratching your head constantly trying to figure out what's going on, and who thought it was a good idea. It's a focused enough story that the thing that stands out most is how pointless and random Ninninger's inclusion in the climax feels, and at least the reason why they put that in the movie is obvious.
The guest stars here are all pretty good again too. You've got all the Riders from Blade back (mostly as voices, but still), Zeronos as the obligatory Den-O representation, Black, who actually evolves
into
RX as part of the narrative, in case you needed proof how much tighter this movie is compared to normal, and of course, Takkun. He isn't very important this time, but it's always a joy to see him, and he says something about protecting childrens' dreams at one point, so what more do you want?
Kamen Rider 4:
Hey, hang on a second. I think my brain just got in top gear! Takkun was in Kamen Rider Taisen, where the Showa Riders had beef with the Heisei Riders for being hung up on people they care about dying, saying that was leading to the bad guys' plans succeeding. A year later, Takkun is the focal point for Kamen Rider 4, a story about how the Heisei Riders being hung up on people they care about dying nearly allows Shocker's latest plan to succeed. Do you guys realize what this means?
The Showa Riders were right the whole time! And here I was saying they're jerks a second ago! I guess it was just tough love.
Anyways, I don't actually like Kamen Rider 4 that much. There isn't much in the way of memorable action, the plot kinda drags in spots, Rider 4 himself feels like an afterthought with zero actual relevance to anything. Both times I've watched it now, I mostly just feel bored the whole way through. The most fun I had this time was when it hit me that the fact he only appears in suit, combined with the history rewriting nature of the plot resulted in my newest fan theory, that Rider 4 actually just
is
Katsumi Daidou, remodeled by Shocker, and that's why he's voiced by Mitsuru Matsuoka. The fact that my mind was wandering enough to think this up should tell you a lot about how engaged I felt by the story.
Which, you know, I don't want to just crap on this thing like it's some pile of trash, either. That's really not my style. A lot of the ideas here are extremely creative and interesting, but there's so much that confuses me, I just can't get into it. A lot of the details of the plot seem kind of sketchy to me, and I gotta say, watching this right after going back through Faiz, I actually like it even less now.
I remember being impressed by, if nothing else, how Kamen Rider 4 really went for it when it came to bringing some further closure to Faiz, but in retrospect, I'm not sure how good a job it does at that. On a basic character level, the way it digs into Takumi's head is fairly servicable, but I don't even know if this is supposed to be the same character from TV. I think the immediate assumption about that flashback in Kamen Rider Taisen was that it was simply showing things
figuratively
rather than literally, but the timeline might just be that messed up. Because Kamen Rider 4 digs itself deeper by showing edited bits of the final scene from Faiz, to make that show's ending look more tragic than it was. It's totally, completely, irreconcilably at odds with what happened, and a lot of the implications it makes about what happened
really
rub me the wrong way as a Faiz fan, all the more so because it still skirts around giving proper details. Maybe these ones are meant to be figurative too, but I can't tell you.
So, yeah, it turns out this one might've legitimately upset me a bit. I don't like being so negative, but I just can't think of anything nice to say here. It was cool seeing a bit of the Murmur Mansion movie mentioned in episode 20 of Drive. It doesn't have voice acting either, so Roidmude Kyuu's attack on that press conference must've got the job done. I guess that's the moral of the story? Terrorism works? Man, every way I look at this thing, it's bumming me out.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Kurona
Eternal was never a movie I found myself enjoying a lot, and it certainly didn't help having that character at the end go "and the moral of the story is: these terrorists were nice, actually, and you shouldn't think badly of them".
Eeeeeh
, that's a pretty extreme exaggeration of what actually happened. I don't know how much clearer the movie could be than "I know Katsumi was a bad person. But he wasn't just that."
I get where you're coming from here. I kind of had it in my head that might be the movie's big problem going in this time. But I honestly think it walks that tightrope quite skillfully. Nowhere in the movie does anyone forgive or excuse Katsumi's actions. I think the point is more just to do an "evil isn't born, it's made" kind of deal. It adds complexity to
how
he got there, but it never tries to deny the fact that he
did
.
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