Kamen Rider Amazons Season 1 (2016)

 (SPOILER WARNING!!)

I have made it clear in the past that I held a distain towards "Kamen Rider Ghost", even going as far as to declare it the worst Kamen Rider season I had seen thus far. I will freely admit that my stance on it being the worst was unfair; I was still relatively new to the franchise and had yet to really get into the likes of "Agito" and "Ryuki", both of which I consider much more infuriating than "Ghost". I still don't like the series at the end of the day, but I will primarily pin it's failing's on the part of the producers playing havoc with it's progression; focusing more on promoting the toys instead of allowing Takuro Fukuda, the former head writer, to create something good that audiences can enjoy.

Why am I bring up "Ghost" for this review, you may ask?

Because Shinichiro Shirakura had the funds from both "Ghost" and "Doubutsu Sentai Zyuohger", the Sentai series of that year, cut in half; transferring the money that he had basically stolen to fund his own vanity project. That project eventually became "Kamen Rider Amazons", a quasi-reboot to "Kamen Rider Amazon" that was produced in conjunction with Amazon Prime.

Shirakura even boasted about how this show was basically his creation, claiming that Heisei Kamen Rider was not "interesting" and he hoped that "the toothless Kamen Riders can get their fangs back".

In other words, the arsehole had ignored any and all sophistication and nuance that the previous six Rider series (W/Double-Drive) has had and wanted something that was full of violence, gore, swearing and full on cannibalism. If I were to equate "Amazons" to something else more mainstream, then it's more akin to literally anything that Mark Millar has ever written; being dark, edgy and gritty, but in a way that's too stupid and pretentious to be taken seriously.

Plot:

In a world constantly clouded by an ugly green colour filter, the Nozama Pharmacy, owned by Reika Mizusawa, had accidently created a race of cannibalistic monsters called Amazons. A group of mercenaries, one of them being a tame Mole Amazon named Mamoru, are brought together to hunt the Amazons down for the sake of a paycheck. Matters are made complicated, however, when a former scientist named Jin Takayama enters the picture on his own mission to exterminate the Amazons, fighting as Amazon Alpha. And if that wasn't enough, Reika's son Haruka gets involved after learning that he is also an Amazon, becoming Amazon Omega and being put on the extermination team because of nepotism via Reika.

Pros:

Before I tear this show a new one, I can give it this; the theme song, "Armour Zone" by Taro Kobayashi, is an absolute banger. It has a good pace, and does a great job capturing the themes of the show through it's lyrics. That's honestly the most I can say about the song, as I'm not really good at analysing music.

I also really like Amazon Alphas design; it's a really good update to the original outfit while still retaining the necessary elements that make it recognisable as Amazon. And surprisingly enough, the colours don't really bother me that much. Silver, red, black and green actually made for a really good contrast.

There was also some decent foreshadowing to the ultimate endgame to this season. Essentially, Nozama Pharmacy's plan, Project: Tlaloc, is to use a gas that can kill Amazons quickly and mix it with a rainstorm to get as many of them as possible. The gas was used in an earlier episode when the extermination team get trapped in an apartment block full of Amazons, and the very first episode starts in the middle of a rainstorm, tying back to Tlaloc as the Aztec God of rain. Legitimate kudos there.

As for anything else I enjoyed... yeah, that's it.

Cons:

I don't like Omegas suit. Like Alpha, the suit still has some of the elements of the original Amazon, but it feels more like a costume than the original did. I think it's the materials that make it look like a chunk of plastic that's yearning to be a toy. On top of that, giving any suit resembling Amazon a facemask when the main motif is supposed to be a piranha fish feels kind of sacrilegious. So yeah, not a fan.

But honestly, I probably wouldn't have as much of a problem with Omegas suit, or even a majority of the suits, were it not for the stupid fucking green filter that plagues the entire show. This is something I have never understood about "dark and gritty" reboots; what is their obsession with making it as visually unappealing as possible by putting on a dingy screen filter that sucks out all the colour like a black hole? Even in scenes that take place during broad daylight on a scenic beach, it looks like a massive dark cloud is overcasting the entire area in darkness, thus casting every shot in shadows and thus making it hard to see. I hate it whenever I feel like I need to turn up the brightness on my screen just so I can see what the fuck is even happening!

It doesn't help that the soundtrack, outside of the main theme, is just pretentious trash. If it's not generic action rock, there'll be a sudden burst of acapella yodelling to make the scene more serious. It fails, however, as it is constantly overused and does not fit the scene where they are used. I don't normally mind acapella music so long as it serves a purpose and helps the viewer become more engaged with a scene. But when the same acapella track is used over and over again in scenes where it isn't needed, it becomes less of an interesting means of creating a tone and more of an obnoxious gimmick that takes itself far too seriously for the audience to become invested. It's pretentious and artsy just for it's own sake.

I found it exceedingly difficult to give a single shit about any of the characters. Starting with Haruka, he should the most interesting by default as the main character; he's an Amazon injected with human DNA who is trying to discover what he is fighting for. And yet, with each episode he keeps acting like a ball in Pong; he bounces back and forth between his ideals and believes with no prompting or consistency, not helped by the fact that he can act like a blatant dumbarse at points. As an example, there is an episode where an Amazon disguised as a chef kills civilians and cooks them for other Amazons, which should allow them to hold back their savage hunger for normal humans. Haruka, for some inexplicable reason, sympathises with the cannibals and says that Amazons deserve a chance to live in peace, blatantly ignoring how the Amazons are still willingly killing people just to keep themselves fed. And when your main character is being a belligerent imbecile, you thus can't relate with them as their actions suddenly become less sensible. The most positive thing I can say about Haruka is that he can definitely yell "AMAZON" like he's turning into a savage beast.

As for the rest of the characters; Jin was a major hypocrite with how he'll kill mindless monsters like Amazons for feasting on humans, but wouldn't so much as attack a serial killer purely because they were human. Any moral high ground he may have is instantly lost, especially when he finishes the series feasting on an Amazon heart instead of a raw egg. Mamoru was annoying a lot of the time, with how he would either yell happily at the top of his voice or cry like an infant at the smallest thing. Reika was not endearing with how she basically used her son as a selling point to keep her place as director of the Nozama Pharmacy, though this proves to pointless with how it's apparently up and gone in the next season. I can summarise most of the extermination team as just... people. Unfortunately, they are not very interesting people. A couple of them die at one point, and I could barely notice any real difference. And finally, Reika's daughter Mizuki is... um... she just is. She just exists and does nothing else significant that I could name.

The action scenes, despite a clear emphasis on hand to hand martial arts combat, is shoddily directed and choreographed, with the editing and screen filter making it difficult to follow what is even happening for most of the fights. As I have brought up in other reviews, I can normally follow action scenes with fast pacing so long as it's directed well. The action in this show, however, is not directed well. In fact, I can pretty much say that for the entire series. There are a lot of bizarre camera tricks that exist for no other reason than to look artsy, and combined with the editing and colour filter makes it an ugly show to watch. I honestly have a hard time distinguishing one action scene from another because of the how much I don't like looking at this show.

Conclusion:

For the bragging that Shirakura made about giving Kamen Rider its fangs back, there is very little in terms of actually maturity. Sure, there is a violence and blood and all that shit, but in terms of sophisticated storytelling? There's zilch. Nada. Zero. Much of the cast ended up as either forgettable or unlikeable, the action is incoherent, the world-building is lacking, and the story is a mess. I can't even say it's funny in how bad it is; it's boring. And yet at the same time, it's infuriating with how THIS is the series that "Ghost" and "Zyuohger" suffered for. "Amazons" is a pretentious, ugly mess lacking in any form of creativity or entertainment. If you enjoyed it, good for you. But I doubt I would recommend it unless you were a masochist.

And yet, Season 2 is apparently worse.

Overall rating: 2/10 (It's trash).

If you enjoyed this review, please let me know in a comment. Feel free to also post your thoughts on this series in a comment if you so wish. I'd also appreciate it if you not only shared this on social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc), but if you follow me on Twitter; my handle is @MediaHood23. I post there every few days or so and I also make polls for what I should review next if I have writer's block.

But until next time; this is Callum Lewis, the Media Hood, signing off!

Changing Cobra's Rise

 (SPOILER WARNING!!)

I think it's fair to say that "The Rise Of Cobra" wasn't that great. I mean, it was fine, but it wasn't really all that it was cracked up to be. That's not to say there wasn't anything of merit; the action was fun and the actors were clearly having a blast playing the characters. The story, however, was a mess, the CG was pretty tacky, and the characters beyond the core cast of Duke, Baroness and Destro had little if any personality. Given what the initial leaked script apparently entailed, we do know that it could've been a lot worse. But it doesn't change the fact that the final product is mediocre at best.

And frankly, one of the elements that easily could've been remedied revolves around the main twist near the end concerning a character called Rexford Lewis.

For those who haven't seen the movie, Rex (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) was a soldier and friend of Duke who was seemingly killed in a premature missile strike called in by Duke. He survived, however, and was taken under Dr Mindbender to perfect the Nanomites, micro-scopic robots that could eat away at any material when activated. This machines were eventually taken to James McCullen and Rex, under the name of "The Doctor", went to work for him to create super-soldiers as a part of McCullen's plan of world domination. When the Joes attacked the base, however, McCullen was scarred and Rex injected him with Nanomites that gave him his signature metal face and renamed him Destro, while Rex decides to take over Destro's company, M.A.R.S (Military Armaments Research Syndicate), and rename it Cobra; taking up the mantle of Cobra Commander.

And honestly, I don't understand why he'd want to become Commander. Firstly, there was never any indication that Rex desired power over M.A.R.S . For all we knew, he just wanted revenge on Duke for seemingly leaving him to die. Otherwise, we never know that Rex wants to take command of Cobra or even desires to be higher in the chain of command.

Secondly, Rex just changing M.A.R.S in to Cobra feels a bit cheap. Yes, both organisations were always connected with each other, but that was primarily because M.A.R.S was providing funds, tech and weapons for Cobra. Destro was still the man in charge of the company while he answered only to Cobra Commander purely out of a matter of convenience. Thus, having Rex just basically rename M.A.R.S into Cobra without any seeming change lessens Cobra's overall threat and importance by the end of the film.

Thirdly, Rex becoming Cobra Commander right at the end of the film is ultimately pointless as he doesn't really do anything when he is in power. Not even two minutes after he takes over, he and Destro are immediately captured by the Joes and put in a high tech prison. Thus, any and all threat that Rex would pose as Cobra Commander is instantly undermined, especially as there is no indication that he has been setting up Cobra in secret before taking over. The closest we get are those Cobra logos on the necks of people that he had injected Nanomites into, but that isn't really enough to explain how Cobra just suddenly exists.

In short, Rex should not have been Cobra Commander. He should, instead, have been an entirely different character who acted as a double agent between M.A.R.S and an already existing Cobra, answering solely to Cobra Commander. Rexford Lewis should've actually been another member in Cobra's inner circle of command named Brian Binder; a.k.a, Dr Mindbender.

And before anyone says anything, let me get this out of the way; yes, I had said earlier that Rex had worked with Mindbender in the film to perfect the Nanomite technology, and it was also shown in the film that Mindbender had worked for Destro to create the warheads that he would launch to three different cities. So how could Rex be Mindbender if he already exists in the narrative?

Allow me to answer that by saying that this is the first change; film Mindbender will instead be another Cobra scientist named Dr Archibald "Venom" Monev.

He's a relatively minor character in the franchise, but he is best remembered as being Cobra's first head scientist in the original Marvel comics, with Mindbender succeeding Monev after the latter was killed. That'll more or less be how the relationship between Monev and Mindbender will work in this film; Brian (or Mindbender, whichever you prefer) will learn about Nanomite technology from Monev, and after Monev dies Mindbender will take the tech to McCullen to advance Cobra's scheme. Besides, Monev's entire deal is about controlling people's mind and biologically altering them; it wouldn't be out of the question that Mindbender would take inspiration from that with how he creates the Neo-Vipers and had planted mind-control devices in them and Baroness.

Which brings me to the second change; Monev was not making the Nanomites for McCullen, but instead for an as-of-yet unseen Cobra Commander, who will simply be referred to as "the Commander" as to build up Cobra's eventual reveal. This more or less helps to erase the idea of the Commander renaming M.A.R.S into Cobra, with the latter still being it's own organisation that is simply using the former to continue it's scheme from the shadows; there'll still be hints to Cobra's existence throughout the film (the Neo-Vipers, the use of Cobra's logos for certain things, major players like Destro and Zartan, etc), but they'll be the twist reveal villains that actually make sense.

Then there is change number three; Mindbender and Destro are able to escape before Duke can apprehend them. I honestly feel that having Rex and Destro caught at the end of the film kind of takes away there overall menace as the main antagonists, especially come "Retaliation" when Rex just up and leaves Destro to die in an unceremonious fashion while spending most of the film taking a backseat to Zartan imitating the President. Thus, having Mindbender and Destro escaping the Joes' clutches at the end not only allows an opportunity for them to prove themselves as cunning villains, but also finally has three of Cobra's inner circle available for the next film; with Commander leading the main forces, Destro providing the weapons and tech, and Mindbender continuing his experiments to create more effective soldiers like he does in film.

This is what will lead to change number four; I have written an exchange between Mindbender, Destro and Cobra Commander that will take place at the same time as Rex and Destro are on the sub. At this point, McCullen has been injected with the Nanomites that save his life, but instead of Rex putting on the helmet to become Cobra Commander, Mindbender is preparing to communicate with the Commander via a hardlight hologram. This will more or less how the exchange would go;

D: I've finally taken my place in the long line of McCullens.

M: James McCullen is no more. Now, you are Destro.

D: What have you done to me?!

M: What I have done, Destro, is save your life. Without me, he would not have any use of you. You'll thank me, later.

D: Don't call me that, you lunatic! What is going on?! Why have you made me like this?! And "He"?! Who's "He"?! What the devil are you talking about?!

M: I believe it would be best if I let him explain.

A hologram appears, revealing Cobra Commander. For the sake of saving a lengthy description of his appearance, I'll just give him his appearance from "Retaliation".

It's a good modern update to the design while still having the essential elements to make him recognisable as Cobra Commander, with the only real change I'd make to it being that he would be blue instead of black. And lord knows it's a lot better than this:

Say what you will about the film, but this was a stupid design no matter who the person wearing it was supposed to be.

Also, for this scene, imagine that Cobra Commander is voiced by Charlie Adler. But back to the exchange:

CC: I see you've finally made your move, Doctor Mindbender.

M: All according to your vision, sir.

CC: Good. Bring him to me. Major Bludd will have you both outfitted for the rest of "Operation: Zeus".

D: What is going on here?! Who are you, and what have you done to me?!

CC: All of your questions will be answered in time, Destro. But to give you the simple version; you and your company now answer to me.

D: My name is not Destro! I am James McCullen, and I answer to--

Cobra Commander uses the control device to stop Destro in his tracks.

CC: Don't you dare question my commands, you impudent fool!

Destro eventually relents and Cobra Commander stops torturing him.

CC: The two of us have much to discuss regarding the chain of authority, Destro. For I... am your Commander. And you belong to Cobra, now.

M: This will be quite the experiment, Commander.

CC: Indeed, Doctor. Indeed.

With that, Mindbender and Destro escape and the rest of the film plays out as normal; Duke and Ripcord join G.I Joe, Baroness is imprisoned to have the Nanomites taken out of her head, and Zartan is now posing as the President of the United States as part of Cobra's plan to, you guessed it, take over the world.

And thus, there we have it; simply changing Rexford Lewis into Dr Mindbender not only gets rid of that stupid ending where Rex takes over for no adequately justified reason, but we also have an ending that can actually lead into a sequel more naturally instead of bookending things without proper resolution.

Also, before people ask about Brian Binder being related to Ana Lewis (Baroness); they still are, but they won't be brother and sister. Brian can just be a distant cousin who ended up having a good relationship with Ana before the events of the film turned him into Mindbender.

Honestly, I feel like that was the intention that the film was initially going for; having Rex become Mindbender and answering to Cobra Commander as a double agent. But instead, we get this half-assed ending where he suddenly becomes the Commander, almost like an early idea was left in one of the films rewrites and revisions but no-one bothered to check if it made sense. When you get down to it, Rex certainly has more in common with Mindbender than he does with the Commander. The pair of them are mad scientists who spend much of their time creating new weapons for a terrorist faction while never actively partaking in the main battle.

Even the design between pre-Commander Rex and classic Mindbender are pretty similar if you put them side-by-side.

I can't be the only one who sees it, right?

If they had gone this route with Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character instead of what we eventually got, I feel like "Rise of Cobra" could've been a stronger film as a whole. Not a great film by any means, but one that still ultimately understands G.I Joe and how Cobra works as a terrorist organisation. And all it would've took was changing Rexford Lewis into Brian Binder, thus erasing the "dead brother" sub-plot from the film and erasing the unintentional subtext that Cobra Commander is literally doing all of this purely out of spite to someone who thought he died.

But that's just my two cents.

If you guys enjoyed this rewrite, please let me know with a comment. Feel free to even comment your own thoughts regarding the movie and how YOU would've improved it if you so desired. I'd also appreciate not only sharing this on social media (Twitter, Facebook, etc), but also if you follow me on Twitter; my handle is @MediaHood23. I post there semi-regularly (basically every couple of days) and I am recently delving into the rabbit hole of Kamen Rider Amazons, so feel free to join me on my descent into madness.

But until next time; this is Callum Lewis, the Media Hood, signing off!