Kamen Raidâ: The First

This film is wonderful. It's has quite many flaws, but it's still a great film to watch. A remake of the famous Kamen Rider from 1971, it is truly nostalgic.

But this film is kinda confusing, especially with the subplot of the young man and woman who ran away from their hospital. The subplot drags the viewers away from the main story (Takeshi Hongo get's kidnapped by the evil Shocker and turned into a grasshopper cyborg), and renders what should be an action movie into a drama.

The special effects seem rather lousy, Hongo and Ichimonji don't seem to have a true henshin. All they do is open their jacket, reveal the belt and the armor suddenly appears out of nowhere. Then they put on the helmet manually, come on, it's 2005! Shouldn't there be a cooler henshin? But anyway, the suits look baddass. In the original 1971 Ichigo and Nigo looked rather simple and round, in the 2005 movie they look much more detailed and much more complex in design, the monsters/inhumanoids also look much creepier than the original 1971 television series.

The story itself is both sad, dramatic and romantic. Overall it's a great film you should watch.

ps. I'm addicted to the film's OST Bright! Our Future

To me, Maked Rider is your average children's Japanese Power Ranger movie. Only instead of being something only a child can enjoy, it makes for a decent action flick. With a deeper (and darker) storyline, less protagonists, and without cheesy humor, aliens, crazy weapons that give the heroes an advantage, and giant robots or powerful vehicles that that the heroes could also use to lay waste to their foes.

The plot of the film jumps around quite a bit, and when it's not expanding on the main character's story you're often left bored or just dead confused at whats going on (although by the end, bits and pieces will have all come together, not that the plot twists these make are that significant to the story). Although the rising action portion of the film is a long one, and the good action scenes are short few and far between, when it gets good, it really gets good. Essentially its still acrobatic martial artists wearing costumes fighting either each other or hordes of evil minions (which are the human equivalents of grunts from Halo), the moves that the main characters can pull off are amazing. But I can't critique the film based on action so Pros Excellent Action Cool looking costumes (most of them at least) Interesting plot Cons The plot jumps around a lot The good scenes are spread out throughout the film separated by long scenes of diologue and other characters

I had heard of this film only after witnessing the true horror that is the more recent series of the Kamen Rider franchise, most infused with far too much pretty-boy angsting by actors who are so poor they couldn't convincingly appear on a soup commercial, coupled with female leads whom we're apparently supposed to consider ingratiatingly cute but who, in fact, are at least as incompetent as their male counterparts in terms of acting. While the traditional Kamen Rider series may not have been masterpieces themselves, many of them at least managed to convey the darkly fascinating world in which the Kamen Rider series is rooted, and to boot they had excellent and exciting fights. Not so in this film, which purports to be an homage to the original Kamen Rider series. In fact, that claim couldn't be farther from the truth.

As with many of the more recent Kamen Rider series, this film is one that falls flat on its face for the attempt to inject 'adult drama' into essentially a children's series. And as always, with 'adult drama', the 'drama' in question consists of rather puerile acts and activities, childish participants, and seemingly arbitrary angst that prevents more or less all of the characters involved from being anything approaching sympathetic or interesting. Any real character development is eschewed in favor of attempts at artsy shots and sequences (which the director never once manages to pull off successfully), contrived plot devices that have no basis in the original material this claims to pull from, or totally superfluous scenes that make this seem much longer than its 1.5 hour running time. And in that seemingly interminable time, not one plot point is resolved to any satisfactory conclusion. In my mind, that spells utter failure, and I find it unlikely that this little terror will be sequelized.

As with other films of this director, who seems only able to disgrace old and well-respected series with his unimaginative plodding, the focus on the human angst in favor of things actually happening brings down the film considerably. When we do get the marked relief of someone actually fighting, it's over too quickly and usually comes off as boring and too CGed-up to be anything but gaudy and confusing. Further, as usual with this director, unwelcome changes are made to the already perfectly adequate source material and then hastily discarded partially through because, quite frankly, they don't work; perhaps he saw this and decided they should be done away with, but if so he shouldn't have included them in the first place. As usual, a shoddy job.

The actors fit into the aforementioned mold of being physically attractive but not much else. Further, every time they're actually required to do anything physically demanding, it's patent that they have no idea what they're doing. They are entirely unconvincing doing anything that doesn't involve sitting around whining, which they don't even manage to do that well; the acting talent gulf in this is obvious when veteran actors, terribly underused and misused for this travesty of film, outshine the entire rest of the cast simply by appearing for a few minutes in a throwaway scene or two. Films like this shouldn't go to the trouble of getting older and respected actors involved with the franchise in question, because they're only potent reminders of superior works. If they believe that it will bring in fans of the original series, they can think again. And while I have nothing against feminine-acting men, I do wish the director had given a bit more direction to some of the main actors who were supposedly very close to some of the generic females that paraded across the screen; they seemed much more interested in each other. While that's not a bad thing in my opinion, we shouldn't then be expected to believe they have any relationship at all with these girls.

Movement and so forth also managed to be amazingly awkward, with one scene sticking out where a girl faints in a way so unlikely that it made me laugh. Certainly not the intended tone for that scene, but it unfortunately wasn't the first or only incident of people moving or acting in ways that were incongruously unlikely and implausible. How exactly can people do this? It's through bad direction, and that makes the horrid director's taint on this even more laughably obvious.

Honestly, I can only hope this talentless hack is barred from sullying the name of any other old and respected series. Kamen Rider has been slighted enough by the recent series purporting to be faithful to the original source material. They're hardly little more than asinine soap operas with some flashy costumes and the occasional fight. If you're going to claim that your film is a return to the original Kamen Riders' era and tone, at least try to capture it. If this incompetent horror had decided to do his own original Kamen Rider film, it still would've been terrible, but not quite as insulting as claiming he was trying to redo the original series. Anyone who wants a real idea of what the original Kamen Rider series were like should seek out those series and not this pathetic excuse for film-making.

When I first saw the cover of this film, I was really surprised with it since but also extremely happy since it was like a dream come true for me. Kamen Rider has been childhood hero since I was 6 and I'm still very fond of them

To get to this film, I have to stay that it was good but everything just seemed to be like going just too fast and it was more like the creators were focusing on Hongo more than Ichimoji rather than having both of the riders fight along side by side together most of the time. Apart form that, there were also a lot of parts which were not explained in the film like Kamen Rider 2's background, where did he get his bike and what was his real connection to Katsuhiko

However, these flaws did not stopped KR : THE FIRST from being a great movie. The love triangle plot between Hongo, Asuka and Ichimoji was great and I really liked the part when Kamen Rider 1 saved Asuka from the spider monster defeating him in the process. The final fight was also great and I really like the choreography crew who worked out so well in making the fights very entertaining. The ending with KR 1 carrying Asuka in his arms on the beach in the end was really romantic indeed (as well as the one when they were riding together on Hongo's bike

Overall, Kamen Rider THE FIRST is a great film and should be enjoyable for all the fans and its even better than its sequel THE NEXT. Its definitely something for the fans to enjoy

A lot of people seem to dislike this movie. I don't know why though, I really liked it. I've just recently gotten into the Kamen Rider series, but that doesn't mean I only like the new stuff. I've only see Kamen Rider Den-O and all of Kamen Rider Black (which many think is the best), and I really liked this movie. The fight scenes were great, though they could have been longer, and I loved the costume design on the Riders. The story was pretty good and the acting seemed quite good. Maybe I'm wrong though, I don't speak Japanese...

Anyways, if there is one thing I wanna say about this, it's that you should give it it a chance. Some people like it, some people don't. See for yourself!