Kamen Rider Fourze Movie: Everybody Its Space Time!

Finally, the great battle of the cosmos. Break through the atmosphere with the power of friendship.
Youth and space at full spark!
So I've been a Power Rangers fan all my life, but I'm fairly new to the Japanese side of things and as I discovered both the Super Sentai and Kamen Rider franchises release multiple films to support their series, more often than not although being canon they ultimately don't actually have any impact on the series but occasionally a film will introduce a new power or character which will carry over in the series. As is the case with the Fourze film, which introduces the hero who would replace him, Kamen Rider Wizard.

For those who do not know, Kamen Rider is a Toku series that started in the 70s, the general theme of the show was an insect like hero who would ride on a motorbike and destroy enemies with dramatic kicks. Kamen Rider was completely absent from the 90s, but returned with the 'Heisei Era' series of shows which are a big reason why the franchise is so big and beloved as it is now.

Kamen Rider Fourze specifically is the thirteen Heisei Era series, and the twenty second series overall which celebrated forty years of Kamen Rider and the fiftieth anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's spaceflight. And overall it is an okay series, if you're planning on starting a Kamen Rider journey you could do worse than Fourze but you could also do a lot better.

If you were more of a fan of Fourze's high school dramaside then Fourze The Movie will disappoint you, as it is almost a straight sci-fi as the Rider club go into space, the conventional way (if there is such a thing with this series) as they must befriend a sentient Orbital Space Platform with the power to wipe entire islands off the Earth in a blink of an eye. I guess you need to give the film points for trying to answer a question no one was asking, 'can man befriend machines?', let's just say it's no Blade Runner.

The Movie introduces a mixed bag of new characters. The first is Black Knight, a sort of combination between Iron-Man, a Cyberman and The Terminator and lives up completely to how badass that combination sounds. As both a huge sci-fi fan and a massive man child, the idea of an unstoppable robot sidekick just hits the right chord with me. The movie also did a great job of making him feel like an actual robot and not just a man in a suit, something that twenty seasons of Power Rangers could never achieve with their Megazords. It's just a shame he dies half way through in a way so underwhelming you'll assume he'll be coming back for a proper send off but he never does.

Sadly the other machines introduced are far less interesting. Two of those machines make up our villains, one seems to have been almost entirely built out of Fourze's Fire States so her design is completely uninteresting, that and the fact that they somehow manage to be more interesting trapped in human form than they do when they unleash their inner killer robot. The final one makes up Gen's newest friend XVII, which is basically a Megazord that can destroy the whole of Japan which although awesome is still kinda undermined by Gen's constant blubbering over it. 

The final character is Inga Brink, a clearly Black Widow inspired character, matching her in both sex appeal and badassitude. I know that women should be able to be badass without needing to be sexy, blahblah, but honestly I'm just glad to have a badass chick at all as from my experiences of Kamen Rider so far, it's primarily a huge sausagefest.

At only an hour long, with very little plot, the film really is just one long action scene, which I know won't be for everyone. Luckily every action scene is just fantastic, the whole series had wonderful action sequences as well, but with slightly more money behind it, the action sequences in the film all feel much bigger and more explosive and I don't know, much closer to the kind of action you find in comic books. Much of the action in the show is largely self contained assumedly to cut down on costs but the film really gets a chance to cut loose and it really works for great effect, you really just don't see the same kind of style in American superhero films. Perhaps best of all is that the CGI got an upgrade, it still isn't good exactly, but considering how awful the CGI is in Kamen Rider shows in general, passable CGI feels like a gigantic step forwards.

Really, if I was to have any criticisms of the action, it's that some action sequences feel more like concepts than fully fleshed aspects of the series. During one awesome moment, Meteor and Fourze find themselves in a battle with replicas of all 12 Apostles at once, awesome right? Yeah, the film thinks so as well, but because of that, that is kind of all it is, just one big pointless flashy action sequence with no actual meaning or impact onto the movie. Padding, filler, basically. They do try to balance this out by using it for a brilliant entrance to the awesome Kamen Rider Wizard but I felt this sequence just really overstayed its welcome.

What'll be good news for people who have heard of Fourze for the first time through this review and bad news for fans of the series is I actually think you could enjoy this film without seeing the series. Given what exists within the film, you can sort of roughly plot where this film fits in the shows timeline but the fact that none of the events of this film are mentioned in the show, and the length of time the events of this film seemingly take place in there just doesn't seem to be any smooth way of making this film actually fit in the shows timeline, so I think it really can be treated as its own thing. Honestly the film seems to have more connections to the Fourze and OOO crossover film, which did have a direct impact on the series but I personally haven't seen that film either and that never seemed to get in my way.

Sadly what this does mean is the great character development in the film largely goes to waste. Ryusei especially gets a lot of growth over the course of this film, growth that is key to his character that he never actually got in the series. And although not in quite a big way, Gen too got crucial development as we get to see his impact on AGHS in a way the show never depicted. Plus the film makes use of the entire Kamen Rider Club in a way the actual show never seemed able to. Honestly speaking generally, this serves as a better second half for Fourze than the actual second half of Fourze did.

So do I recommend it? You know the most frustrating thing about the  movie? It actually serves as a fantastic expansion of the series and then none of this ends up having any impact on the show at all and that is just a damn shame as it makes better use of the series than anything featured in the second half of the actual series. I'd honestly say I think people should just watch Fourze until Meteor is introduced, then just watch the movie and you'd actually probably have a better experience.

Think About It!

-Locke.

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