[DreamSword]

The Guyver 2: Dark Hero

The first live-action Guyver movie had its issues.

But you know what it wasn't? It wasn't boring. As dumb as some of the jokes could be and as jarring as some of the gore was, it was never boring.

This movie though? This movie is almost impressively boring. The pacing is sluggish, the movie is full of padding, and almost every scene drags on for way too long. The film could have easily been a half hour shorter.

I had read claims that this movie was more faithful to the anime than what the first movie was, and let me just say, that claim is utterly false. Outside of some very loose references, Guyver 2 has almost nothing to do with the other story beats of the Guyver franchise. Heck, it barely has anything to do with the first movie. And frankly, I feel like that's where it fails most.

Because here's the thing. This movie is, first and foremost, meant to be a sequel to The Guyver from 1991. And instead, Dark Hero does its best to utterly distance itself from said film. Sure, the tone is more consistent, but alot of the stuff that I enjoyed from the first movie is now gone.

The biggest thing being that this sequel has basically no likable characters. Mizki is thrown out of the film, Sean lost alot of the characteristics that made him likable, and all of the new characters introduced are very one note and very boring. Sean's' new love interest in Cori is someone of whom he has basically no chemistry with. And the new cop character? Let's just say that he's no Mark Hamill, alright?

But hey, maybe the plot is solid? It's not. The most infuriating thing being that the entire story relies on almost every character having absolutely zero depth perception and also being deaf. There were so many times that characters just utterly fail to check their surroundings, let alone notice anyone else in the area.

Case in point: There's a scene where Sean is trying to communicate with an alien ship upon discovery that it's alive, and one of the researchers has been tailing him. We hear the audience hear that their shoes clank against the floor as they walk. The room Sean enters before he begins talking has only one entrance. Yet somehow, someway, science chick manages to sneak in undetected, and make it underneath the floor of said room. Did she teleport?

If there's one thing I can give the movie credit for, it's that most of its stunts were directed by a young Koichi Sakamoto. While it's very clear that he's still finding his style, and thus doesn't give us anything remotely close to the greatness he'd later bestow onto Power Rangers, some of the stunt work is still quite solid. With the final battle in particular being actually pretty good.

I just couldn't get into this movie at all. And it makes me think that maybe the Guyver franchise just isn't for me. Gonna take a week long break before going into the 2005 anime to detox a bit. See you then.