Cegarth
This review may contain spoilers
Mild spoilers ahead:
Everything the movie did well:
-Really great practical effects, especially for its transformations.
-Pretty good acting.
-Pretty great soundtrack.
-The action scenes are really cool.
-Some cool concepts here and there.
Everything the movie did bad:
-Took the Prologue in its title too seriously and barely moved the plot forward.
-There's only 2 fights scenes so the movie isn't able to get much use of its cool effects.
-Not a single character is particularly memorable or engaging.
Reasons for the movie's strengths:
It being an adult film allowed them to realize the more monstrous concept Shotaro Ishinomori wanted to do in one of his original drafts for the first season of Kamen Rider.
Reasons for the movie's problems:
The ideas of Jo Onodera, who was part of the main writer duo, didn't mesh well with the ideas creator Shotaro Ishinomori gave in the first draft according to the cowriter Junichi Miyashita which resulted in the whole project being pretty unorganized. Some people speculate that Junichi Miyashita was brought into the project in the first place by main producer Shirakura to give more polish to writing due to their ideas not meshing well but there's no confirmation.
Also the original idea for the protagonist that Shotaro Ishinomori gave for the project was rejected by producer Shirakura (also said idea was a rejected idea for Black's protagonist), so it's possible that beside Shotaro's and Junichi's ideas were clashing, they were also clashing with Shirakura's, making the project more directionless.
The original plan was for this movie to serve as prologue to a mini-series dubbed Kamen Rider Gaia but it wasn't canceled for unspecified reasons, the only thing known is that producer Shirakura comfirmed that the reason wasn't sales as the movie sold well and that at some point the project shifted into being a crossover movie with previous riders and a new protagonist in spite of Shin originally being planned to be a stand-alone blank state, but the latter project ended up becoming Kamen Rider ZO which was a completely standalone movie. The draft of Kamen Rider Gaia ended up being reworked into a novel that had nothing to do with the film in 2004, called "Kamen Rider Eve -Masked Rider Gaia-"
Overall:
I cannot really recommend this movie, there's barely any plot in the movie and it just feels like setup, and said setup went nowhere since its sequels got canceled. None of the characters are particularly likeable which really make the movie feel like a snorefest. The biggest draw to the film are the fight scenes but they're very few and one can probably find them on the internet either way. Overall, there's really no reason to watch the movie unless you're a Kamen Rider completionist.
-Really great practical effects, especially for its transformations.
-Pretty good acting.
-Pretty great soundtrack.
-The action scenes are really cool.
-Some cool concepts here and there.
Everything the movie did bad:
-Took the Prologue in its title too seriously and barely moved the plot forward.
-There's only 2 fights scenes so the movie isn't able to get much use of its cool effects.
-Not a single character is particularly memorable or engaging.
Reasons for the movie's strengths:
It being an adult film allowed them to realize the more monstrous concept Shotaro Ishinomori wanted to do in one of his original drafts for the first season of Kamen Rider.
Reasons for the movie's problems:
The ideas of Jo Onodera, who was part of the main writer duo, didn't mesh well with the ideas creator Shotaro Ishinomori gave in the first draft according to the cowriter Junichi Miyashita which resulted in the whole project being pretty unorganized. Some people speculate that Junichi Miyashita was brought into the project in the first place by main producer Shirakura to give more polish to writing due to their ideas not meshing well but there's no confirmation.
Also the original idea for the protagonist that Shotaro Ishinomori gave for the project was rejected by producer Shirakura (also said idea was a rejected idea for Black's protagonist), so it's possible that beside Shotaro's and Junichi's ideas were clashing, they were also clashing with Shirakura's, making the project more directionless.
The original plan was for this movie to serve as prologue to a mini-series dubbed Kamen Rider Gaia but it wasn't canceled for unspecified reasons, the only thing known is that producer Shirakura comfirmed that the reason wasn't sales as the movie sold well and that at some point the project shifted into being a crossover movie with previous riders and a new protagonist in spite of Shin originally being planned to be a stand-alone blank state, but the latter project ended up becoming Kamen Rider ZO which was a completely standalone movie. The draft of Kamen Rider Gaia ended up being reworked into a novel that had nothing to do with the film in 2004, called "Kamen Rider Eve -Masked Rider Gaia-"
Overall:
I cannot really recommend this movie, there's barely any plot in the movie and it just feels like setup, and said setup went nowhere since its sequels got canceled. None of the characters are particularly likeable which really make the movie feel like a snorefest. The biggest draw to the film are the fight scenes but they're very few and one can probably find them on the internet either way. Overall, there's really no reason to watch the movie unless you're a Kamen Rider completionist.
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