[Kamen Rider Lucha]

Quote:

Originally Posted by EpsilonX

Saw the dubbed version tonight. Honestly didn't enjoy it as much as I had hoped. I'm not a fan of movies that are structured like episodes stuck together, and this was no different. I also wasn't very engaged in any of the "episode" stories beyond the first one, which wasn't helped by the non-kaiju fights all feeling a bit anti-climactic.

Hopefully I'll enjoy it more on a rewatch, when 1. my expectations are properly set and 2. it's in the original language.

I saw the Japanese subbed version, and I have to say, I felt exactly the same way. I was deeply, deeply disappointed.

The movie lacks any sense of dramatic tension. There is almost zero character development. The performances are uniformly wooden. It’s not a strong narrative, just a series of unrelated incidents strung together. Its weird attempts at humor undercut all the gravitas it was clearly trying to muster.

It fell into all of the fan service traps that Shin Godzilla deftly avoided. Like, cool, the Ultraman/Mefilas fight is shot for shot the same as the original series. But… why? What do I, an Ultraman non-fan, get from that? It was just so full of fanboy shoutouts that amount to nothing but a wink to the diehards.

It tried too hard to shoehorn in the visual aesthetic and bureaucracy-centricity of Shin Godzilla instead of lookin at Ultraman and deciding what visual and narrative approach would be best for his story.

There were some cool visuals, I’ll give it that. But ultimately, I think the lack of Anno in the director’s chair really hurt the movie. Higuchi, while a great designer and toku affects artist, just isn’t a great director. He lacks Anno’s vision and it results in a very lackluster movie.