[Fish Sandwich]

My workaround for the formatting right now is to just paste the text in again using the edit button right after I make a post, which for some reason seems to make things fine? Hopefully this inexplicably works for you too, Die!

But yeah, on a much happier note: one of the best Rider movies ever! I'm going to beat you to the punch with recycling old content here, because this happens to be something I already wrote up my opinions on:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

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.