Kamen Rider Heisei Generations Forever

I was browsing through Youtube and just happened to come across the special live American premiere of Kamen Rider Generations Forever. (An official release from the American distributor.) For the unaware, Kamen Rider is one of the toukusatsu shows, a genre of Japanese children's shows showing colorful heroes in costume fighting monsters. Power Rangers uses footage from one of these series. Some may have encountered Kamen Rider footage used in Masked Rider on Fox Kids during the 90's. The is basically about a hero or heroes dressed in vaguely grasshoper-themed supersuits. This is a team-up film (and itself a sequel to a film from last year) featuring several of the characters from the Heisei era (between the 2000's and now). I found this to be so-so.

Full disclosure, I'm not really familiar with any of the characters that are the main focus of this. Still, I didn't have too much trouble following the general story, which is stand-alone. I only had to look up something once. That having been said, the story didn't completely work for me. I was rather enjoying this for the first half, but things just felt dragged out. I was surprised this was an hour and forty minutes, because this felt much longer. The main story has several interesting ideas and is ambitious but suffers from throwing way too much at you and trying too hard to be clever. This is basically a final hurrah for the Heisei era and there's a lot of fan service, which is fine, however, they throw too much into the final third and things feel padded.

It also doesn't help that the main villain doesn't have clear motivations for why he's doing what he's doing.

But, I admit that this is for the fans and not me. If you're into Kamen RIder, you'd probably get a lot more out of this. All the protagonists, both from the show and made for the film, are likable. The final fight is delightfully over-the-top.

I like all the hero outfits. They're colorful and have a unique look to them. I wasn't as big a fan of the villains. They felt both overly detailed without really having anything to say visually.

If you're not a fan of toukusatsu shows, this probably isn't your thing. However, it's an interesting curiosity if you want to give it a shot. Again, fans may find this to be an honorable homage.