May as well start with the worst one first. The first Movie I watched was 'The Guyver' or 'Mutronics' as it was called in the UK.
I am a fan of Tokusatsu (japanese live-action / tv dramas usually featuring super heroes) which include shows like Kamen Rider, or Super Sentai (the originator of the Power Rangers franchise). While watching one of these I remembered something similar I had seen when I was younger. Eventually I found a copy at a friend's house and watched it. That was 'The Guyver'.
The Guyver is based off the manga series 'Guyver the Bioboosted armour', created by Yoshiki Takaya. Though it was America that tried to make a live action adaption. For the most part... they failed, and sadly it wouldn't be the last time.
The reason I decided to blog about this was because of the good, or at least decent effects that were in there. The monster costumes are pretty good. Well most of them. The faces had plenty of detail to the point where they could be compared to more famous aliens of Predator. Sorry to say, I was unable to find out what materials were used to make this or how they were made. Sadly some of them did look completely rediculous, in particular a big lipped lizard monster. For now I want to talk about the Guyver costume. This thing looks GLORIOUS.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELsDc8sAskQ
It does what it is meant to do, make the Guyver look completly alien. Its body is designed to look organic yet at the same time have a slightly mechanical look to it as well, to the point where it looks more like an exoskeleton than it does armour. They added lights to eyes and core (the piece on the forehead) to add to its intimidation. Finally, the face has two tubes around the mouth where smoke pumps out, this gives it the effect of exhaling, or that its about to move.
The effects as I mentioned were decent. Keeping in mind that this movie was made in 1991. In the link above is the first transformation in the movie. I think theres some stop motion in there, like when the Armour comes out of the unit in the form of dark tentacles, grabbing the hero's face and covering his body. Theres also the armour plating which later on in the movie extend from the back of the neck, to do this several people controlled them and held them using wires making it look like they were hanging in mid air. Theres also the pulsing and opening of the main char's neck. This was some low level special effect, most likely some animatronics. Theres a little stop motion work where a character is turned into a horrible beast. The whole transformation is stop motion from beginning to end. Finally there's the final boss of the movie. His monster form is a giant puppet controlled by wires by the puppet wranglers.
The music FAILED. It didn't really convey the mood of the scene most of the time sounding just plain awful. It was something akin to B-movies. The few songs that were in it were obscure early nineties songs that don't really work in the super hero genre. Then there was the scene transition. Every single time the movie changed scene there was a sudden loud burst of sound and a lighning bolt on screen. What I think they were trying to do was recreate the Transformers transition but just screwed it up. Frankly it was completely unnecessary.
In Tokusatsu the music they play conveys the mood very well. When someone was dying they would play a slowed down acoustic version of one of the main theme songs to great effect, or when they were fighting they would play something exciting and fast paced. Guyver doesn't do that at all.
Finally the acting, or lack there of. The only really good character was Mark Hamil's character. Granted out of the cast he was the only veteran actor. The rest of the cast were awful. The main character in particular was too freaking cheesy, which doesn't work in a story about a Dark Hero like Guyver. In short they didn't enhance the movie at all and a few of them just came off as mind-numbingly bad. To the point where they could give Jar Jar Binks a run for his ill gotten money.
Thus concludes my analysis of' 'The Guyver' sorry if its a bit long. Oh and guess what...THERE'S A SEQUEL!
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