Satria Dewa: Gatotkaca

Plenty of sci-fi/fantasy flicks revolve around finding THE ONE of some prophecy who will save the world from ...whatever. Usually it's an average young guy (occasionally a kid or young woman) who seems an unlikely, underqualified wearer of that lofty mantel. Keanu Reeves in the Matrix was probably the most famous. Yuda, the hero of this iteration of the concept, can only claim to be the most... recent.

The movie runs too long for what it delivers. It takes almost half of its two hours just to get the kid started. Then another half hour of figuring out who's who on both sides of this eternal conflict. Waaaay too much exposition for the amount of action they manage to stage; overcrowded with past and present characters involved in this existential struggle. And when the big CGI-laden fights finally begin, they're mostly in dim lighting with misty overlays, and cut so jerkily that it's hard to appreciate whatever physical skills the players may be deploying.

All of this for the first installment of an intended series. No spoiler in saying the good guys win this battle, but it's not the end of the war. The Yuda character might play well in a tighter package, but the the producers have to clean house on writing, directing and editing to make the sequel(s) worth following.

The movie starts out okay, then slowly hitting rock bottom in terms of film quality. I wish the Quinn character would just fall from that bridge and plummet down to her agonizing death. No character development whatsoever. Cringe dialogue throughout the movie and for God sake, the product placement ruins the experience for me. The CG is okay, I only like the last part of the whole movie, when gatot fights beceng in their final super hero forms. That was the only redeeming quality in the whole movie. I'm surprised why hanung chose to have the product placement in his first superhero movie. It's just so unecessary and ruins the film.

Watching the action scene makes me headache theres too much cut to cut clip, i cant focus and its hard to figure out what are they doing.

I know, that particular way of editing is to help the action scene to cover bad movement etc but in my opinion they were doing it too much.

I dont know who's responsible for this, but for a superhero movie i think the action part is one of the biggest factor people would watch.

And i think they could've done much better for the choreography, i thought this character would have a superstrength kinda like power, that the fight will full with breaking walls and stuff intead of just ordinary martial art fighting, i think the choregrapher should've work more on the imagination of the power of the superhero, and not just a choreofighting.

Gatotkaca is the First Instalment of Satria Dewa Universe, This Movie a Lot Many Problem.

Story or Script is Really Bad, Directing is Fine, Acting is Cheesy and Cringe (This Acting Looks Like Soap Opera or FTV), Cinematography is Fine, Editing Camera is Really Bad and Broken, CGI is Failed, Production Design is Good, Gatotkaca Costume Design is Okay (Kinda Captain Marvel Little Rip-off), Sound and Music is Really Bad, And The Most Annoying in Movie is A Lot Many Commercial or Ads.

Overall, A Disappointing Indonesia Superhero Movie, I Giving Score is 6/10, The Next Satria Dewa Movie Arjuna is Gonna Be Better Than Gatotkaca.

The concept of this superhero universe is promising, combining ancient Javanese mythology into modern society. This potential concept was blown away by rushing the stories, mediocre directing, unnecessary characters, and awfully product placement.

The writers put too many things in the storyline resulting in a fast-paced and no emotional attachment story. I can't feel/empathize with the character's emotions and feelings. Sometimes relationships among characters appear out of nowhere, like the romantic feelings between the main character. This movie should focus more on how Yuda struggles to live his life while taking care of his mother and finding his true self-identity. Leave the in-universe world-building later on in other films.

As a new genre for Hanung Bramantyo as the director (and Indonesia's film industry), it is understandable that he is still not used to directing this genre. But he should be able to give a better performance than this.

The second most annoying part of this movie is two characters are really unnecessary, Quinn and Gege. They don't serve any important role, they don't contribute anything to the plot, and their dialogues are only saying something outloud and most of the time not related to the context of the scene. An important note is maybe Gege's character like that could be justified because he is a child. If these two characters were removed from the movie I'm sure nothing would be affected.

The last problem for me with this movie is how they place advertisements. The majority of the food and drink product placement is ok, not good, but in some ways is acceptable. On the other hand, the online marketplace advertisement is so weird. Why would someone create a dedicated scene with a completely unknown character who throws dirty/NSFW jokes just to advertise some online marketplace? This scene and the jokes made me cringe at best.

There is also a questionable plot hole in this movie regarding how Yuda's friends came to the final battlefield. But maybe it can be explained later.

In conclusion, this movie, Satria Dewa: Gatot Kaca needs to fix a lot of things to be able called a good/decent movie. Regardless of all the flaws in this movie I still appreciate the cast and the crews who work on this movie, they were all brave to take the challenge of creating a movie with a genre that is not popular enough in Indonesia's film industry. I also encourage anyone who reads this review to give this movie a chance and watch it in the cinema to support our local movie industry. I hope Satria Dewa Studio take lessons from their first movie, good job!