[Locke]

So I finally got a chance to sit down and watch the Wizard movie, as most people know bar the pretty shitty ending Wizard is one of my all time favourite Rider shows - and Riders - so luckily for me, this movie really captured the casts great chemistry, and the general sense of humour that I loved so much in the show.

I dunno, I just get a lot from a cast that seem to be genuinely having the time of their lives playing their parts. I guess that is part of the reason I just can't hate Decade. Perhaps the character who made it out the best in the film was Nitou. I was never much a fan of him in the actual show - well until the last ten or so episodes when he suddenly stole the spotlight and became EPIC but sadly at Haruto's expense - but luckily pretty much all of what made him great in those last ten episodes were what they built his Magic World counterpart out of.

Magic Land takes a while to warm up the action gears, which is surprising considering how consistently wonderful the action was in the actual show, but around the time Gremlin, Medusa and Phoenix turn up the movie throws us wildly fist pumping from one stunning and epic set piece to another. By the end the movie feels less like it's trying to tell a story and more just trying to outdo its own craziness, and if you're in the right frame of mind for that kind of viewing it's very satisfying.

I will say though that I liked that they focused a lot of their budget into just having fun with Wizard's mythology, it sorta felt like a new episode of Decade in some ways and watching it with that in mind made it really fun for me.

In terms of our new Rider for the movie...his suit...doesn't translate to the screen well. In motion it's just way too busy to be really appreciated, it just looks a bit of a mess honestly, especially in action sequences. That isn't to say the fights with him are bad, he's just a suit that is much better suited to dramatically standing in the shadows.

Sadly the character in the suit most certainly is bad, no scratch that, he's awful. He was basically just a poor man's Fueki, and I mean... couldn't they have created a more original character or at least made a character that actually makes sense?

My only real complaints with the film itself is how short it all is, just as the world and the conflicts are established the movie has to start wrapping itself up leading to some logic leaps that I would call contrived, but that'd be insulting the word. It didn't have a bad ending, but it could have done with more breathing room.