[Switchblade]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Switchblade

I'm not going into this with high hopes, but I want to see it because of all the returning actors, especially X and ZX.

Me from four days ago, you are in for a real treat.

Also, don't make that stroganoff for dinner on the 13th, it'll be terrible.

So yeah, I went into this with pretty low expectations and, honestly, the first few minutes didn't really do much for me. At that point it just looked like it was going to be a Gaim-centric movie with some small cameos and a lot of retreading of the ZX special. And seeing how badly Micchy and Takatora were getting shoehorned in didn't help.

And then Decade showed up and suddenly everything turned around. I'm going to say it right now and bold it for emphasis: this is how you do an All-Rider crossover movie. It wasn't perfect - the main plot is kind of a mess, the main villain is made of questions and plot holes, and the full fighting force of both the Kyoryugers and ToQgers are blatantly tacked on for no reason beyond cross promotion. Also, tiny Narutaki; what the fuck was up with that? But I don't really care about the small weird bits or random Sentai-ness. This movie did something that should be a mandatory part of every Rider team-up movie from here on out and it did it brilliantly.

Toei is never going to get all of the former Rider actors back. Some of them are retired, some of them are busy, and some of them just plain don't want to return (and, sadly, two cannot return even if they wanted to). As awesome as it would be, we'll never get a Forever Red style All-Riders transformation. But Toei can get some of the actors back and they showed here that they really can make great use of them. Sure, Hongo, Ryou, and Haruto were pretty much just cameos, but Tsukasa, Shotaro, and especially Takumi and Keisuke got several great scenes together. Hell, I'd watch an entire feature-length version of Takumi and Keisuke working together; I loved that part of this film.

And that's what I'd like to see Rider do again: get some of the older actors - Showa or Heisei - and have them interacting, either in subplots or as part of the main story. It was so much fun to see Keisuke try to cheer up Takumi while Tsukasa tries to get Shotaro to help him fight. Even Haruto's short cameo near the end was great - honestly, I kind of liked that he only showed up after getting knocked out of his transformation - it really sold the idea that these were all the real guys and not just ghost suits.

Oh, speaking of ghosts: man, Ghost Kusaka was a dick.

But yeah, I could probably keep gushing over all of this for awhile. I freaking loved this movie. Yes, the plot had problems and that odd little fight at the end was... odd (you can definitely tell that the two endings likely split when Narutaki straight up asks the audience who will win). But the story was far more coherent than most of the earlier team-up films and I don't really care about that last fight, which was obviously just tacked on so the viewers could see one side definitively win (in a very silly way). And really, all I care about after seeing this was all the great interactions between the different Riders and I thought that was handled fantastically. I am so glad I decided to watch this.

Also, lol at cartoon Shin running alongside the bikes during the credits.