[Fish Sandwich]

Faiz: Paradise Lost

Good to see this movie. Going back through ALL of it... is also part of this rewatch.

No but seriously, you guys have no clue how much I LOOOOOOOOOVE Paradise Lost. This is without a doubt my favorite Rider movie, bar none. It's too freakin' good, man. I don't even which nice things to say first.

I guess starting with the broad concept is logical, right? I've always been fond of the Rider movies like this that were explicitly off in their own world, and Faiz took it the farthest. It's like the show, but if things took a bad turn at some point. It's got a post-apocalyptic flavor you don't see often from this franchise, and yet, watching it again coming straight off of the show, what struck me was how well the narrative condenses so much of the series into a movie-sized package.

Actually, the narrative is general is really good in Paradise Lost. The only hint of Rider movie nonsense is the weirdly elaborate explanation that has to be contrived for Takumi to not have his memories for the first half, but even that exists to serve an actual plot, rather than some pointless crossover or something. Aside from that, it's basically a bunch of character arcs more or less straight out of the show wrapped around a new context, resulting in something that, despite the huge difference in scale, stays true to the premise, themes, and characters of the source material. It's almost bizarre, in that it's the exact opposite of so many other Rider films. Instead of watching characters you barely recognize in a world that's allegedly the same as always, you see exactly the people you know and love, in a world you barely recognize.

There's also an extremely tight focus on Takumi and Mari, further adding to the cohesion and giving things a clear emotional core. The decision to hold Faiz back in the Faiz movie was also just genius. It's like I'm always saying about the show not giving a crap about what you expect. You get Takumi in one fairly quick flashback where he gets horribly defeated going up against an army (the kind of absurdly huge scenario made for the big screen), and then it's not until almost exactly the halfway point (although it's less close in the theatrical cut) he properly enters the story. It's like the most hype thing ever.

Or at least it would be, if all the action in this movie wasn't so amazing. You've got everything here. Faiz doing cool hero stuff while glowing in the dark. Faiz doing cool hero stuff in a big arena under a spotlight. Resistance dudes with machine guns going up against Orphenochs and squads of Riotroopers on dirtbikes. Kaixa's doing his thing. Psyga's there. Oh man is Psyga there. Is it any wonder this guy is my favorite movie Rider when he just strolls into scenes flying around on his jetpack shooting the place up?

The direction throughout is also pretty stellar. It was directed by Ryuuta Tasaki, who's basically the director for Heisei Kamen Rider, and while I find a lot of his work on TV to be workmanlike and good without being particularly remarkable, a lot of the shot framing and everything here very much jives with me. If two people holding hands in the mud isn't the perfect summation of what Faiz is about, I don't know what is.

The whole thing also screams production value, as all good Rider movies do. The movie sells the atmosphere of the bold new, Orphenoch-dominated world quite well, and of course, there's a climax that even Momotaros would be jealous of. The obligatory fight with a big stupid CG monster is one of my least favorite Rider movie tropes, because outside of a few exceptions, like True Ending and... uh, actually maybe it's just the one exception. The point is, I find this stuff drags things down, because it always ends up looking cheap, and less impressive than just two dudes in suits punching each other would be. So Paradise Lost wins major points for having its dumb CG monster be one of like half a dozen threads going on during the ending, which includes Faiz taking on two different Riders in separate fights, him trying to protect Mari (making the stakes much more immediate and tangible than usual), and of course, it's all happening in front of a crowd of 10,000 actual people, who I'm kind of jealous of for having the opportunity.

Working in crazy amounts of extras, in contrast, is one of my favorite tropes in Rider movies, and I don't think they've ever quite topped this first go at it. It counteracts the cheapness of the dumb monster amazingly well, especially since at points Faiz is right up against the crowd. It just looks good.

This movie basically has it all, with the notable exception of Delta, who isn't given so much as a cameo, despite being on TV by the time this originally came out. The belt, anyway. Mihara didn't exist quite yet, which is a shame. There IS a Mizuhara, but, pfffttt, come on, that guy's a total chump.

Anyway, yeah, Paradise Lost is the bomb. I actually use Kaixa Day as an excuse to watch it at least once a year. No joke! Although I didn't quite make the time the past year or two...

After all, I'm only human.

もうかなり長くなってんだけど、劇場版でもファイズ翻訳ミスコーナーです～！今日の翻訳ミスはこれだ！



「オルフェノク全体を憎むのは、おかしいよ」

As usual, a lot of sloppy and occasionally straight up backwards lines abound here, like this one, where Mari is supposed to be saying it's wrong to arbitrarily hate all Orphenochs. She's sticking up for Yuuji in this scene and saying it's okay to trust him. The idea that Orphenochs exist who don't hate humans is not a hypothetical to Mari when she's friends with no less than three of them, all of whom are currently in the room.

W Forever: A to Z / The Gaia Memories of Fate

This one is also the bomb. It's right up there with Mega Max in terms of legendarily awesome Rider films. It totally rewrote the book on what the summer movies could be, and being Double, did it by being simple, clean, and effective.

And also high-impact, in this case, because this is the movie where Koichi Sakamoto decided cameras don't need to be stationary. Like, ever. I think there might've been a couple entirely still shots, but even in the ones that are largely stationary, the camera is still subtly bobbing about. The sense of energy the entire movie has is nuts, even outside of the action scenes, which are all completely spectacular. Any Rider movie that has some good bike action is a win in my book, and that's only the tip of the iceberg here.

It's all in support of a story that avoids overcomplicating itself so hard, it's basically a video game. I know when people say that, it's usually not a compliment, but hear me out. The strength of any given Double arc in the show is always directly tied to how interesting the villain is, so the movie takes it to the next level. We've got the final boss, and his gang of goon mini-bosses, who are introduced at the start, and spend the first half of the movie tearing up the place, before the heroes turn things around and start working through them one by one until the movie ends. It doesn't need to be any more complex than that in terms of structure, especially when Eternal is such a memorable bad guy.

The emotional core of this movie revolves around Philip, taking his family woes straight out of the show and delivering a sort of extra chapter that doesn't change anything, meaning you aren't "forced" to watch the movie, yet on its own merits explores the characters in an interesting way. The parallels the movie draws between Philip and Daidou aren't particularly deep, but they work, and it gives the story a good hook.

Shoutarou isn't left out either though, getting to do a ton of the heavy lifting in the back half as he single-handedly starts turning the tables back over after the darkest hour. The way the movie almost immediately presents you with that hole in the ceiling is some great foreshadowing, and even makes up for the fact that his new belt is given to him by a ghost (and you thought Faiz Accel's debut made no sense!), but really, even then, Kamen Rider Joker is just plain awesome.

As is this movie, if you somehow aren't getting it yet. Like the show itself, it's the gold standard every other summer movie should be trying to live up to.

Oh, and on a side note, it's hilarious to think people say Kamen Rider has gotten less dark over time when this movie's villain shoots his own mother to death with a handgun, onscreen.