[Switchblade]

Just watched this and holy crap, I goddamn loved this movie. I like the new format of telling one story with both casts as opposed to the older split story approach; it makes for a more cohesive film and gives the casts some ability to interact (I really like the subplot about Banjou trying to figure out why Kamen Riders fight). The Ex-Aid stuff felt a little weird since I had recently finished the Another Ending trilogy before watching this, which made some of the Kuroto scenes feel a little weird, but it wasn't too bad.

What I really loved about this film was how it used the previous Riders. You could really tell that the writers went out of their way to really bring those characters into the new story while respecting the original series. With Gentarou and Eiji, in particular, you could really tell that the writers knew Fourze and OOO and wanted to build on some of the events of their stories. I thought all the stuff with Ankh was especially good. I'm even more impressed because - and I checked on this while watching - this movie was written by the Ex-Aid and Build writers and directed by someone whose only been with the franchise since Ghost. I would not have expected these guys to devote time to explaining where Gentarou's supporting cast was or to directly reference the Kamen Rider Aqua movie, but they did. Hell, they even managed to write what was, hands down, the best Onari scene ever (yes, low bar, I know) during his interaction with Kuroto. I think the only character that felt a little shafted was Kouta, but it can't be easy to figure out what to do with a Kamen Rider who is a literal space god.

But yeah, I really liked this movie. The story was good, the continuity was surprisingly tight, the directing was great (we got a Snipe scene shot in FPS perspective - that was brilliant and I can't believe it hadn't been done before), and I honestly can't think of anything I didn't like about this. Hell, I was audibly cheering at a couple of points and there's a non-0% chance that I may have done the henshin motions alongside Gentarou and Eiji. I had so much fun with this one.

Also, the moment when everybody tried doing their catchphrase at the same time and got pissed at the others for stepping on their line? Fucking hilarious.