Foreverisacastironmess123 Review of The Guyver

The Guyver (1991)

Thought it was great when I was a kid but it's pretty much a big 'ol corny pile of crap now! Fun, but not enough to make it a good movie..

[6/10 · 12 March 2017]

Yep that is correct, I did love this flick when I was about eight or so, my favourite Zoanoid was the bad stereotype jive-talking one with the big lips and the bling, I thought he and his...rap was the absolute coolest ever!! Well time doth make fools of us all and some movies you just plain outgrow. I still love many pictures that I did when I was little, but this to me does not hold up at all. I'd love to enjoy it for what it is, but the thing is, what it is happens to completely suck! Who'd think a movie with nothing but an alien cyborg fighting monsters could be so boring? I mean it is a little fun and entertaining but only in stops and starts, I mostly find it to be a tedious watch. From the beginning there's a noticeable lack of momentum to it. And the tone is completely wrong, rather than being all sleek and dark and cool, it's all a bit go-go Guyver rangers! It feels like a kid-friendly movie but like it's seriously forcing itself to be that way? when the visual style and atmosphere of everything is clearly crying out for something decidedly more gritty and harder-edged and dark, with some well placed swears and maybe even a little light nudity, and it was begging for copious amounts of blood guts and severed limbs to be flying in all directions as a result of the Guyver's deadly arm blades and firepower. It would have been improved so much if they'd only done away with the painful attempts at slapstick, and also if they'd bothered to invest in some decent fight choreography, because most of the time the Guyver just picks enemies up and throws them around. And get used to those f***ing scene-to-scene transmissions! The way the film slices itself in half and blares out that annoying noise is so jarring and stupid. The cartoony comic book-esc elements and the tone are what really murders this film for me. The good guys don't exactly leap out and grab you, Vivian Wu as an actress was really terrible! And Jack Armstrong was fine enough but he was dull and didn't make the character of the Guyver compelling at all.. It does have some positive aspects, like what's definitely the best thing about the movie whether you love it or hate it are the practical creature suits and makeup effects. The Zoanoid suits look great, they all blink and have expressions and have a great scaly skin texture, and the Guyver suit is an excellently presented piece of work that's quite striking. A brilliant job was done of recreating the look of it from the manga, it's near-perfect, right down to the steam vents. It's also pretty spectacular and icky when Mark Hammel painful transforms into a giant cricket, and dies! I'm also still quite fond of the last battle where the Cronos president changes into a humongous demonic lizard beast that stomps after the Guyver in a sequence that I find oddly similar to when Howard the Duck takes on the Dark Overlord! The Zoalord is similar in design to another creature that Screaming Mad George designed for the Full Moon movie Arena. And that leads me to David Gale, who I thought was terrific as the tyrannical leader of the monster organisation bent on world domination, his was the only character that wasn't dull, dim-witted or ultra-thin. The movie didn't deserve him, he steals and just really livens up every scene that he's in. What a brilliant character actor, he could play a crazy villain like no one else I've ever seen, so sad that he passed away too soon.. I love when Jeffrey Combs pops up as Dr. East, an underling professor to the man who's head he once chopped off years earlier as Dr. West in the gory classic Re-Animator. Oh well in closing I don't think that this is something you can watch and then immediately love the thought of watching again any time soon, because to me its bad points far outweigh its good ones. Horribly mishandled, it's truly a bad adaptation of an awesome franchise and character.