Kamen Raidâ: The First

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.

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!

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

First of all, the negative review(s) you might read here definitely do not reflect the opinion of all die-hard fans of the classic Kamen Rider series. You can see that their review 'usefulness rating' are very low anyway, meaning most people don't agree with their baseless reasons for bashing something new.

I watched the original Kamen Rider series as a kid back in the 70s, and it was really good entertainment for the time. Rewatching these classics about 30 yrs later, I feel the nostalgia, but understandably not too impressed with the old fashion FX and fight choreography. So, pulling this franchise into the 21st century is a very good idea to me. I just couldn't get into the other "Rider" series because the story isn't about Hongo. And the Riders only look derivative of the original and therefore not as good.

It really brought back fond memories when the classic title theme was played at the beginning of The First. I totally love the introduction of Kamen Rider 1. Since the character is introduced during the night, the light-up eyes effect was an excellent idea! The use of CG effects in the movie was well...very effective. Some good examples include: when Kamen Rider 1 jumped off the building landing on the ground with all the broken window glass around him. Also when Kamen Rider 1 and 2 are fighting each other, the concrete busting punches and kicks are really powerful looking. These are not just eye candy FX but used very effectively to show the invincibility of these super-human characters.

As for the villains, the intricate wire-work was very well done. I especially liked the battle with 'The Spider' where high-flying moves are done in conjunction with speeding motorcycles and among trees. The original series (if watched today) lacked some of these FX scenes to thoroughly convince me that Kamen Riders have any real special powers. Well, other than the big kick that ends the show every time. But for a youngster in the 70s, that was enough to keep me role-playing "Kamen Rider" endlessly with my friends during recess. One other cool idea in this new franchise: we can see that the "grasshopper" heads of the Riders after transforming is really just a helmet. They can take it off to reveal their real human faces. This allows the actors a much greater range of emotions while they are Riders. It also confirms for me that the Rider transformation is just changing into the suit, not changing into another being like Ultraman. For Kamen Rider, I rather like the idea that they are still human inside.

Overall if you were a fan of the original, I think The First is a must see, but still good entertainment if you just happen to like superheroes and anime. I hope that I'm not offending any fans of the other 'Rider' series when I say that they're just not the same as Kamen Rider. But "The First" successfully captures that magic from the past, and relaunch it with modern film production values. 9/10