Movie Review: Kamen Rider x Kamen Rider Wizard & Fourze: Movie War Ultimatum

Though this is only the fourth entry in the series so far, the Kamen Rider Movie Wars films are rather mixed. While W and Decade's Movie War 2010 was a pretty good film with some weak elements, OOO and W's Movie War Core was pretty terrible all around. On the other hand, Fourze and OOO's Movie Wars Megamax is one of, if not the, best Kamen Rider films around. Even though that's a hard thing to follow up, it'll be interesting to see how Kamen Rider Wizard and Fourze's Movie Wars Ultimatum does on the grand scale of things.

We start the film with Phantom's Medusa and Phoenix working alongside demons known as the Akumaizer 3 (characters based on an old series by Kamen Rider creator Shotaro Ishinomori) on a machine that can create an infinite supply of monsters using four gates. However their plan needs an extra element added, so one of the Azumaizers, Eel, travels five years into the future. This is where our story begins...

Fourze Portion

Club is back in session.

The Kamen Rider Fourze section of the film takes place five years after the events of the series, with the cast now having left school and taken on (rather impressive) jobs. Kengo is now a scientist working on a way to communicate with the Presenters, Yuuki is an astronaut, J.K. a journalist, Miu a model, Shun a professional American Football player, Tomoko a novelist and Ryusei an Interpol agent. Gentaro on the other hand has continued his mission to befriend everyone by becoming the latest teacher at Amanogawa High. But when a Zodiart appears and is manipulating students with their own special powers, the Kamen Rider club must reunite to face this final threat.

After an exciting opening fight sequence where we see Ryusei and Inga Blink (from the Fourze movie) take down a team of genetically-enhanced soldiers in South America, this part of the film gets off to a pretty slow start. Ignoring just how Gentaro has the qualifications to become a teacher in a mere five years after leaving High School (the same goes for the whole cast really, so it's best just to roll with it), the set-up of conflict between Gentaro and his four "Neo-human" students is lengthy enough without an added chase sequence that seems to go on forever. Once the Kamen Rider Club is rounded up and together again (including a new freshman member who doesn't do all that much until the very end), things really begin to pick up. We see a maturer Kamen Rider club kick ass together, with even Miu, Kengo and J.K. getting in on the fight action.

After an impressive middle section, it's a shame to see this third of the film fall into mediocrity once again. It's resolution concerning the Fourze Driver is touching and makes sense, but shoots itself in the foot a bit since the thing is needed once again five minutes later. The leader of the Neo-Human students, Saburo, also evolves into another classic Ishinomori hero - Inazuman. Unfortunately, his inclusion feels rather tacked on and kind of takes the spotlight away from the returning heroes.

All in all it's a semi-serviceable end to Kamen Rider Fourze, but certainly not the one the Kamen Rider Club deserved.

A fun cameo, but really necessary?

Wizard Portion

Bringing the style

Next the Kamen Rider Wizard section of the film takes us back into the present, with Haruto, Rinko, Shunpei and Koyomi arriving at the Akumaizer base to save the captured Gates. Uninterested in helping the Akumaizer trio, the Phantoms tell the group that they will need to enter the Gates' underworld in order to save them. Wizard dives in, with Rinko and Shunpei unwittingly following. Here they discover a world where the same day is repeated over and over, and the key to getting out lies with a mysterious magical girl that goes by the name of Poitrine.

Once again the film serves as a dumping ground to homage a past Ishinomori hero, only this time its Bishoujo Kamen Poitrine of the Toei Fushigi Comedy Series. While her appearance has much more plot relevance than Inazuman's inclusion, it's still difficult to care about this pretty obscure character who's suddenly been thrust into the limelight. The plot of needing Poitrine to choose to stop reliving the same day over and over is pretty unoriginal in itself, which only serves to bring the section down even more.

However Kamen Rider Wizard is a very flashy series by nature, it so certainly puts on a good show as far as the visuals go. Even a spectacularly bad CGI ostrich/chicken...thing can't detract from Wizard's flashy attacks and brilliant fight choreography. It also wins point for having Rinko be useful and actively engage monsters (since y'know, she's a cop and carries around a gun), something the series seems to avoid as much as it can.

Personally I found this section to be a little weaker than the Fourze one, but there wasn't a whole lot in it. It's low on plot but high on eye candy, so a pretty average score all-around.

Fighting evil by moonlight, winning love by daylight...?

Movie Wars Ultimatum

*Obligatory "Haha Nadeshiko is riding Accel" comment*

Finally the Movie Wars Ultimatum section of the film sees the two Riders, along with Meteor and Nadeshiko (who turned up right at the end of the Fourze section) come together in order to stop the Akumaizer and save both Poitrine and the world itself. They are joined by the previous Neo-Heisei Riders W, Accel, OOO and Birth for an all-out attack with explosive results and brand new power-ups.

While the section does indeed include a total of eight Riders, don't expect a whole lot from them. Eiji makes a brilliant cameo saving Koyomi outside of the underworld and prompting the whole thing, but the Riders that appear inside the underworld are constructs rather than the actual Riders. This isn't explicitly stated, but I assume it's the case because a) they don't transform and b) W turns into FangJoker, which would require both Shotaro and Philip to be present at the battle. This is possibly due to the production team being unable to get all the actors back for a cameo/voice clips, and while it's nice to see all these Riders together they do offer little more than glorified backup.

Most of the portion itself is taken up by a tanker chase with the Riders pursuing on their bikes. This does put the "Rider" back in Kamen Rider, but the sequence itself is far, far too long with several bad camera angles. Wizard and Fourze get a really great fight sequence against the Azumaizers in their Cosmic States and Flame Dragon forms, before receiving all new power ups to battle the obligatory final CGI threat. These are "Dragon Rush style" and the long-winded "Meteor Nadeshiko Fusion States"...both of which are pretty underwhelming. The former is essentially a sneak preview of the underused All Dragon Style (with slightly different colouration) and the latter is Fusion States with rockets and skis. Despite the disappointing forms the action itself is top notch, provided you don't mind Toei's rather noticeable CGI in over-abundance.

So once again it's a portion that delivers on the flash, but has very little substance behind it. What does deserve to praised however is the brilliant twist ending to Poitrine, which saves the film from a horribly cliché ending and provides the best laugh of the whole thing.

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Final Thoughts

Movie Wars Ultimatum is no Megamax by any stretch of the imagination, but thankfully it's no Core either. None of the sections really stand out, each having just as many flaws as positives, if not more. Still, it's a perfectly fun way to kill two hours if you just want to see a crossover between two particularly flashy Kamen Riders, just don't go in expecting a satisfying conclusion to Fourze or a particularly engaging plot.

Movie REVIEW: Kamen Rider x Super Sentai: Super Hero Taisen

It finally happened. After 40 years of Kamen Rider and 35 years of Super Sentai, with only a few fleeting crossovers in between, the two franchises have collided for one big movie event.  The film was released cinematically back in April, and heavily promoted between the two currently airing shows Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters and Kamen Rider Fourze. It also saw the return of the casts of both Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger and Kamen Rider Decade, two series which shared very similar motifs.

The film sees Captain Marvelous/Gokai Red taking control of the DaiZangyack fleet, a crew made up of previous villains in the Super Sentai franchise. In order to seek out the ultimate treasure, Gokai Red has proclaimed war on the Kamen Riders and vowed to eliminate them all. On the other side, Tsukasa Kadoya/Kamen Rider Decade has once again taken his place at the head of DaiShocker, and in turn plans to destroy all of the Super Sentai. As the legendary seven Riders, the Gorangers and many more fall at the hands of both Gokai Red and Decade, the two's former friends wonder what has happened to the heroes they once knew and why the Super Sentai and Kamen Riders have suddenly turned on each other.

Marvelous is back as the leader of the Zangyack...

Of course, in true crossover style the hostilities don't last very long and the climax of the film sees an army of Super Sentai and Kamen Riders take on the enemies of their previous franchises in an all-out costume clad battle.

As is Tsukasa with DaiShocker, looking even sillier than ever.

So with all the hype surrounding Super Hero Taisen, the question that has been on the tongues of many for a good while is whether the film is any good? And at last the answer can safely be said that "no, it really isn't." The opening scene sees Gokai Red single-handedly take out the seven legendary riders (that's Riders 1, 2, V3, Riderman, X, Amazon and Stronger) in under two minutes, which already gives you an idea of how unbalanced some of these battles are. What follows is Gokai Red struggling against Fourze, and then Decade struggling against the Go-Busters. While the Gokaigers (well, Marvelous, Joe and Don anyway) and Decade (along with Kaito and Hina from OOO who decided to tag along) are at the forefront of the film, it often doesn't really know what it should be advertising itself as. Sometimes its a Gokaiger/Decade movie, others it feels like a Fourze/Go-Busters movie, and then an extremely pointless scene involving the Den Liner is thrown in just to remind you that Kamen Rider Den-O is still around.

The source of most of this film's angst

Next comes just how out of character some of the cast are in comparison to their depictions in their respective series, and that's ignoring Gokai Red's sudden turn to evil (Decade has done it before, so that's a little more bearable). The worst offender is Joe Gibken/Gokai Blue, who's gone from being the mostly calm/collected pirate he was into an emotional mess who would have been useless had Don or Hina not be around. The comes Diend's sudden turn to villainy at the very end of the film, which would be fine had he done it for his usual reasons of "treasure" and not "Decade pretended not to be friends with me so I'm going to throw a hissy fit".

Oh, and we still have no idea who or what the hell Narutaki is.

So many colours!

But getting past the obvious plot holes and the fact that a large portion of the film is flat out boring, the are some pretty good moments. The battles between Gokai Red and Kamen Rider Decade have some nice choreography, and are well thought out too (Space Ace vs. Blade Battle Japan vs. Hibiki changes). Then later on, the all rider/all sentai battles have some great moments, with characters like Kamen Rider Black and Shadow Moon receiving little character moments in the dialogue and riders and sentai teaming up corresponding to their respective years. The Gokaigers finally use the long teased OOO keys...and then use them to fire a Gokai Galleon buster. On the humour side of things, we have Yoko calling the Shocker grunts dated and Tsukasa calling the Goseigers boring.

TAJADOR CHARGE!!

The big CGI centrepiece of the film sees Go-BusterOh face off against the DaiShocker/Zangyack alliance's "Big Machine" (a combination of the Gigant Horse and the Crisis Fortress), with Fourze piloting in the place of Yellow Buster and using the Super Drill and Rocket switches. It works well as a flashy action sequence, and breathes life into the usually lacklustre Go-BusterOh.

Go-BusterOh: Now with added rocket drills

What you'll get out of Super Hero Taisen is honestly going to depend on what you go into watching it looking for. If you're expecting a coherent plot, people to actually stay in character and a reasonable premise and resolution, you're going to be sorely disappointed. If however you go in looking forward to a bit of fun, great fight sequences, cameos, hilarious Tsukasa hair/make-up and the chance to finally see your favourites from both franchises on screen together then the film might not feel like a complete waste of 90 minutes.

Admittedly it isn't the worst crossover film we could have got, but its far from the best either.