[Sh Ranger]

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

"KAMEN RIDER KABUTO" - GOD SPEED LOVE

So, here’s two positive things.

First, man, the director did an amazing job with this movie. Tons of inventive shots, great use of lighting, the dramatic scenes look properly cinematic and emotional (maybe could’ve toned down that gauzy filter), the fight scenes have heft, and there's a constant plussing of the material. Can’t really knock the visuals in this movie.

Second, there’s a point in the beginning where ZECT and Neo-ZECT are facing off in the desert. Kagami pleads with Yamato to spare Oda and the rest of Neo-ZECT, since the real fight is against the Worms. And Yamato agrees. He bows down to Oda, begs him to come back to ZECT, offers to suffer any humiliation. And then Oda just kicks him and says something stupid about freedom (stay positive, stay positive, you’ll get a chance to be negative, just finish this last positive paragraph, you can do this) but the conception of Yamato here, I thought, was pretty interesting. I liked that he seemed to be someone who’d jump at the chance to bolster his forces, who didn’t let a dispute over ideology stand in the way of defeating a greater enemy. That’s a cool idea, even if it’s only for part of a scene. That was neat.

What about the debut of Hyper Kabuto though, that was pretty awesome right? What do you think of the suit and the ability to fly and move so fast that time goes backwards?

I was really surprised by the part where Caucasus killed Kagami and Hyper Kabuto just went back and changed the outcome. Sure, it was kind of pointless since that version of Kagami ended up being negated by the next timeline change but I think it was a cool way to show off Hyper Kabuto's ability.

This movie is also the debut of the Natives, those Worms with the large horns who fought Kabuto on the bridge.

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

The rest of the movie was probably the worst Kamen Rider thing I’ve ever experienced. It’s more awful, for a more sustained time, than anything I’ve ever seen from this franchise. The only delight it brought me was when I was howling in laughter at certain scenes (everyone humming God Bless America as Hiyori died of Narratively Convenient Illness, while wearing her wedding dress, was definitely in So Bad It’s Good territory), as well as the aforementioned directing. It’s astonishingly bad, a misfire on every single narrative level.

Wow, you laughed at Hiyori's death?

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

why would I want to watch a Kabuto movie that doesn’t include anything I love from the TV show?

Replace "Kabuto" with "Hibiki" and I feel like we had this exact same conversation about that movie except our roles were reversed. I find it humorous that you critique God Speed Love for the characters acting like different people but not Hibiki's movie where the characters were literally different people. Can you identify anything specific to God Speed Love that elaborates on why it didn't work for you by comparison?

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

A QUESTION

Please remind me of happier times. What’s your favorite Kamen Rider movie? (Please, no spoilers if it’s from Den-O through Decade or Zi-O up.)

My favorite summer movie is Surprise Future but my favorite Movie War and movie overall is Movie War Ultimatum!

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Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

Of all the alternate universe Heisei Rider summer movies, this is probably the one that most actively revels in the fact it takes place in an alternate universe. The characters are, by and large, wild offshoots of their television counterparts, but I can see the consideration being given to why and how they differ? Tendou is the easy example, so I'll focus on him. He's a lot more openly emotional, downright breaking down after Hiyori passes away, but, that's exactly it – he's in a scenario where he one of the people he cares about most is beyond his power to save, and that's something TV Tendou has never had to deal with.

There's a great moment, when Kagami is despairing after he learns about Hiyori's illness, where Tendou gives him a classic Yonemura slap to the face and yells at him. Just, maximum volume, zero subtlety screams to ask him if letting himself get caught up in his own misery will help Hiyori. It's macho melodrama taken at face value, but it's precisely because I know how Yonemura usually writes this guy on the small screen that I know for sure the whole point of that outburst is how unable Tendou is to process his own feelings of helplessness in this cruel joke of a world he's stuck in. He's still always on the move, always trying to make some plan, but he barely even knows why anymore, and it all comes out in that moment. How much he has force himself just to be Tendou.

Yeah, I think the fact that everyone is just so different, especially Tendo and Hiyori, is there to highlight how everything in this timeline is not how it should be. Seeing Hiyori being more open and Tendo being not just slightly emotional but out of control emotional as if he was suddenly a normal human being, it all just gives this feeling that the world is terrible and they're acting OOC out of desperation, with Hiyori's imminent death making her afraid of being alone with nobody by her side and Tendo faced with a scenario he can't make better. These are characters pushed to their limit.

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Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

There's a visual that reoccurs a few times throughout the film, in the backgrounds. It's Tokyo Tower, an iconic part of the show's imagery, reduced to a colorless, horribly bent mess, and I think that about sums it up. It feels wrong, and uncomfortable. Everything about this movie feels wrong and uncomfortable, and it's all 100% intentional. These lonely, miserable characters with pointless lives and even more pointless deaths, in a world that offers no hope of salvation.

The dilapidated Tokyo Tower could also be a metaphor for a wilting flower, starved of water due to a world with no oceans, which symbolizes that the world is on the verge of death and the comet being destroyed by the second meteor completely destroys all hope of saving it.

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Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

I had a great time with this movie. It's no Paradise Lost (nothing is), and I can totally sympathize with Die's problems, but man, I think it has some redeeming qualities, for sure. I mean, how can a movie where you get to see a Kamen Rider die from atmospheric reentry while using his last breaths to proudly declare his loyalty to a militarized organization of nebulous authority be a total wash, right?

Ketaros' death scene is easily the most humorous moment in the movie for me, especially with how it happens immediately after Neo-ZECT Girl says to Hercus "We still have Yamato!" I mean, talk about irony!

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Originally Posted by Switchblade

The AU-ness of this one is sometimes debated. It's occasionally argued that the movie is a prequel to the series, with Tendou's time travel gimmick being where the belt came from on the show, too. Avoiding any specific spoilers, there are multiple inconsistencies between what we see in the film and the eventual backstory we'll get on the show. It's a bit like Ryuki's movie in that sense - arguably but not explicitly canon.

Yeah, it's kind of hard to even talk about canon when time travel is involved. But I think of God Speed Love as being like a prequel to the show and setting up the canon while technically being non-canon itself except for the belt which is an artifact, kind of like Sento and Ryuuga in the last episode of Build.

Anyway, when I watched Dinosaur Panic last year, I thought the whole breaking a giant meteor in to a smaller meteor in the past thing seemed familiar and after rewatching God Speed Love, well now I get it. The major difference is that Dinosaur Panic exists in a causal loop whereas God Speed Love is literally removed from the main timeline.