The Movie War has Evolved!
The OOO portion of the film functions as a direct sequel for the series, more focused on answering or simply progressing from the ending, rather than anything else. Brotou has returned to the police, Kougami is still obsessed with desire and birthdays and Eiji has been on a quest to bring Ankh back. So sadly, for this portion at least, this doesn't have quite the same mass appeal as the Fourze movie I reviewed last time. Although Fourze's film did some good things with the characters, it basically played out like a what if scenario since there was really nowhere for it to fit in the series and it was never acknowledged in the series either which made it a perfect jump in platform. And although the OOO portion is action heavy and plot light enough to leap in, it doesn't really bother to set up many answers to 'why should I care' as it assumes you've got an established emotional investment in these characters already by watching the series (which you really should do).
The action sequences in this portion are energetic but in many senses kinda underwhelming. There was always something that felt restrained about the action in Kamen Rider OOO, it was flashy and well made but even when Eiji lost control somehow it all still felt so small but I guess any fight is gonna feel small when watching it alongside Fourze who regularly takes his enemies up to space. I mean don't get me wrong, the action is still fun and obviously bigger thanks to the movie budget but I don't think Kamen Rider OOO is really the place to go for truly spectacular action.Truly the weakest aspect of this portion were the New Riders and I honestly think the lack of an interesting villain to focus your hits at was a big reason why the action so regularly fell flat in this section. Initially it was a single Rider, badass and awesome, but as it turned out it was just a wimp, possessed by Medals. The wimp gets his own powers eventually and the Badass Rider gets to do his own thing but the wimps powers suck and the badass dies pretty soon after he becomes self sufficient. Yeah the pacing of this film is a major issue...
The Fourze portion takes place in a very early point in the shows lifespan, it fits into the timeline roughly about a third of the way through the show with Meteor getting an awesome cameo right at the very end of the film. What this does mean in terms of a positive is that once again Fourze is pretty accessible to a mass audience but that said the first third or so of Fourze is the one part of the series I implore you to check out because it's really, really good. Another reason it's great for a mass audience is the Fourze portion feels considerably more like filler dealing with teenage romance, in your usual Fourze quirky way for sure, but it is basically just about Gen on a date so there are no real spoilers or the like for the show itself, hell the events that happen here aren't referenced until the 41st episode of the show and even then the reference is so subtle you'll barely notice there was one. Really the biggest fault of this portion is just how awful it makes Gen look as a protagonist, I promise you he is so much better than this in the series, even when his character becomes a lot flatter in the second half he is better than this. You thought Twilight was a shallow, strangely disturbing and poorly realised story of romance? Well wait until you get a load of this shite, where Gen teaches children everywhere that you can fall madly in love with a girl, even if she barely says a word and merely echoes them like a parrot in a school uniform. I know he is a teenager, so hormones or whatever, but way to paint your hero as looking incredibly shallow. It's even worse because as it turns out, the appearance he has based his love on isn't even hers, as it isn't a her, it's an it, a pile of space goo. Then, as if to add insult to injury, his friends who initially accuse him of basically being a shallow moron suddenly get on his side and risk their lives for his 'love', I know they are all teenagers but they were never this immature or downright retarded in the series as they were in this movie. This was awful.
Plus the amount all of this contradicts for the second half of the season really shows how poorly thought out Fourze was. Given what Gen has gone through here, which is allegedly canon, you would have thought it would have come up in a pretty big way considering the revelation for what Kengo really was but...nope. And learning the identity of Virgo and his true motivations in the second half as well, what the fuck was his reasoning behind his actions in this film? It really doesn't make sense. Fuck this shit.Really the only real positive I have to say about this is Goo's ability to turn into a female Fourze was a lot of fun, and the undeniable quirky hilarity of Fourze made the action sequences a lot more fun than in the OOO portion, they were much bigger and much more spectacular as well. Luckily this portion had something enjoyable...
This all then leads to Kamen Rider W, Kamen Rider Os and Kamen Rider Fourze teaming together with the Legendary Seven Riders to battle with Foundation X and destroy the big bad...so the film can finally end, thank God. Sadly this was the aspect with the worst new Rider, who knew combining Fourze and Os powers would result in something both so uninteresting but most importantly ugly? The dude looked like a dildo with bits of tablecloth hanging off him. Luckily, even with an ugly ass design, the action in this section is stunning. Super TaToBa's power really was realised well and made for an epic confrontation, that could allow you to look past just how shit the final villains appearance was.
Honestly all the action was fantastic, I may not be particularly knowledgeable in Showa Kamen Rider or be a massive fun of W either but it's undeniably awesome, even without an emotional investment, to see so many crazy powers happening on screen at once and so many iconic characters getting the chance to interact and play off of one another. It's just a shame that the final battle was so CGI heavy and with such cheap CGI at that.Technically the film is five portions, not three, but in its race to make an epilogue for OOO, to turn Fourze into Twilight and to have a big bad at the end, these two other portions are glorified cameos, as we have Kamen Rider W and their universe acting as a framing device to hold the whole thing together and we have the Seven Legendary Riders who are only there to celebrate it being forty years of Kamen Rider.
So do I recommend it? If you couldn't tell by that, the biggest problem with Movie War Mega Max is the pacing absolutely sucks. Really only OOO's portion 'deserves' to be here as it functions as an epilogue to its own series, basically everything else in the film is filler and cameos and quite often the cameos and filler are the same thing and due to the film racing around to stuff itself as much as physically possible anything good about OOOs section is lost and that is a real shame. I guess if you're a fan of Showa Riders or W you might get some kicks from this film but I can't see it really doing much for fans of OOOs and I can see it downright insulting fans of Fourze.
Think About It!
-Locke
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