[Fish Sandwich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

it was a bit of a bummer to see my dislike of this film categorized as "dismissive". I hope I didn't come off as not sincerely or fairly engaging with this movie? I definitely tried to approach it on its own terms, and I tried to be detailed in my criticisms. I never want anyone to think I'm being unfair to these projects, even the ones I have a hard time with.

Apparently I did get a little too fired up about this then, so let me just say that I'm sorry if my description of your criticism was genuinely dismissive, because I know you're better than that! I don't doubt for a second you were trying to give the movie the benefit of the doubt as best you could. You know, at the end of the day, it's all art, and sometimes things that click with one person just won't click with another. It's not like the way you feel about Over Quartzer is any less valid than the way I do, and I apologize if I made it sound that way.

And hey, those expanded criticisms should even help me better explain the differences that probably exist in how we're approaching what the movie is doing, so, let me say from my perspective:

I DON'T FEEL LIKE OVER QUARTZER IS REALLY *ABOUT* VIEWERS AT ALL

It's not Heisei Generations Forever, after all. I said in that old review that this movie felt like a better realized version of that movie, but that was maybe an example of me being dismissive towards a movie I didn't connect with a ton. Especially after reading what you've had to say about it, Forever was very, very deeply concerned with fans, as a theme, and what Kamen Rider means to people. It's a film where crowds of excited children and nostalgic adults literally cheer on their favorite heroes during the climax. Over Quartzer, to me, it's not doing anything remotely like that. I called it a story about Heisei Kamen Rider being confronted by its own sins, and I think that's the best way I can put it.

SOUGO and the Quartzers don't really represent particular viewer opinions to me (even though I've seen people dunk on Decade and Zi-O for very similar reasons!), so much as they simply represent fundamental bits of logic that Heisei Rider has willfully ignored. It is objectively incorrect to call Kuuga the first Kamen Rider of Japan's Heisei Era, even though it's also entirely correct to call him the first Heisei Kamen Rider. That's the significance of the motifs for the villains, and that's the sort of stuff I think the film is tackling. It never really came off to me like any of that thematic stuff was necessarily trying to correct viewer opinions, so much as it was simply exploring the depths of the franchise in ways no other Rider thing ever has.

I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHY THERE NEEDS TO BE A STRICT DISTINCTION BETWEEN METAPHOR AND NARRATIVE

This one alone probably spells out why this movie clicked with me so much, but yeah. It just seems weird to me to draw such a hard line and consider the former this separate thing that's actively distracting from the latter. To me, the metaphor IS the narrative in this film, and that's evidently something I'm completely fine with. There's still a satisfying enough story in here for me about Sougo realizing how that metaphor does nothing to change his dreams, and it doesn't bother me in the slightest that the antagonistic force he's up against is nothing besides a metaphor. I think this is definitely the part of the movie we're both the most "right" about? Unlike with some of your other criticisms, I'm pretty sure we're both seeing exactly the same thing here, it's just that how we react to it is fundamentally different. I'm pretty sure I would actively like SOUGO and his cronies less if they were more fleshed out as people.