Movie Review: Kamen Rider The First

Kamen Rider The First [2005]

We'll take a brief break from the longer series reviews and talk about an interesting movie released back in 2005. 

Way back in 2005, in an attempt to capitalize on nostalgia (always a good thing), Toei decided to release a gritty, more adult reboot of their very first rider, Kamen Rider #1, Hongo Takeshi. In theory, these sort of anniversary series is always neat for money-making schemes if done well. Older fans who are turned away by the more merchandise-driven newer series get a chance to see their old heroes reimagined with a bigger budget and with more adult themes. Targeting the older audience is always a good thing to do, and back in 2005, we're still in Phase-1-Heisei where the Showa Riders returning isn't quite as cheapened as it is nowadays where the Showa Riders show up in a huge crossover movie every two or three years. 

And, hey, if this 'serious, adult' reboot worked for Batman or Iron Man or whatever, wouldn't it work for Kamen Rider? Turns out... not really. Kamen Rider: The First has a pretty solid script and a pretty solid cast of characters. The cinematography is solid, and the action scenes -- particularly the motorcycle one in the middle of the episode -- are pretty spectacular to watch, bringing the series back down to basics and eschewing the huge CGI monstrosities and beam-spam attacks some of the newer series tend to rely heavily on. 

But this movie series honestly seems to confuse "aimed at an older audience" with "lots of brooding" and "lifeless". I don't expect this movie to have a gag every two minutes or anything, but the pacing of the movie is so slow and everyone just acts with so much seriousness while half of the plot involves the utterly bizarre water-crystal theme that honestly is nowhere near as romantic or dramatic as the movie thinks it is. 

Credit where credit is due, when the movie tries to be less artistic and tries to actually tell the story of Shocker, a terrorist organization that abducts people and turns them into cyborgs and brainwashes them, they do it... relatively well. The drama of Takeshi being actually brainwashed and being confused at why he's so guilty when he kills civilians is told relatively well, especially when he ends up trying (and failing) to save a reporter Katsuhiko from another one of Shocker's agent, the Spider. The reporter's girlfriend, Asuka, who is familiar with pre-brainwashing Takeshi, ends up investigating what the hell's going on and... and it's pretty dry, but at least the backbone of this story is still well-told. 

Takeshi (or "Hopper #1") is quickly labelled a traitor by Shocker, who sends out a second version of Takeshi's model, Hopper #2, Ichimonji Hayato, to hunt down the treacherous Takeshi. The plot twist, of course, is that Hayato is actually the resurrected corpse of the dead reporter, Katsuhiko, which throws in the genuinely bland and lifeless love triangle between Takeshi, Ichimonji and Asuka. Or at least that's what I think the movie is doing -- throw in Asuka being confused at the similar looking Hoppers/Kamen Riders, and it just throws in a pretty bland ball of misunderstanding.

There is also a B-plot involving two terminally ill hospital patients who end up being turned into two of the final villains for our heroes to fight, Cobra and Snake... and this B-plot is genuinely detached from everything that's going on, and neither Cobra nor Snake have enough of a personality beyond "oh, they're cute and the like each other and they have a sad backstory sort of". The two Riders end up teaming up to save Asuka from Shocker, facing off against Cobra, Snake and the main villain, Bat. We get a pretty fun fight, Shocker gets defeated, and the movie comes to a close.

I'm also not a particularly huge fan of how embarrassed they seem to be about acknowledging the fact that a man who transformed into an armoured cyborg with a belt is a ridiculous concept. Own that ridiculousness, man! This is the same sort of ridiculousness of making an adaptation of a superhero called the Green Arrow and immediately mocking the name and concept in the first episode. Instead, we get this genuinely awkward and frankly dumb shots of them ducking out of shot and then suddenly already having their bodies encased in the armour... which is a lot more ridiculous than any sort of transformation sequence, be it overblown or subdued. It's like they're honestly embarrassed of the source material, which is never a good sign when you're adapting superhero shows. 

I'm also not a big fan of turning Takeshi's armour into this weird blue shade. I get it, they want to make sure the two Kamen Riders are easy to tell apart since they fight each other a couple of times in the movie... but you'd think it's Ichimonji's suit that they would modify? Failing that, use a less bland colour than the weird grayish-blue they ended up settling with.

Part of my dislike is probably the trend of making reboots of superheroes into something drab and lifeless. Take Batman Begins or Man of Steel, for example. They are decent movies, but are so hard to sit through because they're so devoid of charisma that while the stories are undeniably great adaptations of the source material, the resulting movie is less of a great fulfilling meal and more like a good but ultimately heartless adaptation. I don't need it to be transformed into a post-Decade comedy driven show, which would be as equally bad, but this movie is just so banal and unengaging that I'm not surprised it didn't get too many people excited.

And honestly? Despite my seeming apathy, the movie's still pretty watchable. It condenses the story of the original two Kamen Riders into a relatively decent movie, but did they have to make it so lifeless? That's honestly my biggest complaint about this review. The direction this movie has most of its cast play pretty wooden and bland characters, and there's never a point in this movie where I root for the good guys because I like them, but mostly because they're not the bad guys. And yes, brainwashing is involved so some of them do have to be a bit more restrained, but I genuinely wished that Takeshi, Ichimonji and Asuka, the three main characters, are given more personality beyond "these guys are nice, root for these guys". The B-plot about Cobra and Snake are genuinely bland, though. It's ultimately a good effort, I feel, of modernizing the very first Kamen Rider origin story and concept for a more adult audience, but it definitely could've been cut short, or had more content added in to justify the running time. It's a solid movie objectively, but subjectively all I can say about this movie is "boring".