The Guyver (1991)
AN ALIEN WAR OF GOOD vs. EVIL
I did the second try at this movie a while back, but this time it’s to the original American attempt. There’s a long history of movie adaptations just not working well - part of it is probably the constant ask that a movie (something that’s generally pretty costly) make the maximum amount of money back, which leads to a lot of “generalizing” in order to cast as wide a net as possible to capture potential movie ticket buyers. This leads to a lot of things like “dumbing down” plots or combining or changing characters, all that sort of thing. Considering you can spend about an hour searching and not find this movie streaming anymore, I think we are pretty well aware of how this one lies with the majority of folks. Get ready to blast into the past of adapting Japanese things to a non-Japanese audience, tonight we look at The Guyver.
In The Guyver, quite a bit is explained right up front. What the Guyver is, that there are aliens who made weapons that happen to be humans, and that further tweaking humans has lead to mutant monstrosities. This is all done in the most straight forward way - with a text dump. It’s boring, but it does get it out of the way and have everyone up to speed. Our female lead has her dad murdered right off the bat as he smuggles some device away from the evil corporation. Her would-be boyfriend (our hero for the movie) stumble across the device, and after getting jumped and beat up by a bunch of thugs later ends up merging with it to create the titled hero. A cop is trying to bust the corporation, but with the death of the dad and lack of the item, has nothing to go off of. Unfortunately for all of them, the bad guys want it at all costs.
The actors here do a , well, I mean I’ve seen worse. It’s not great, some of them seem a bit fresh to it, some of them are hamming it up so bad it seems like a bad cartoon, and some of them do what they can with what they got. I honestly can’t tell what of it is bad acting, and what of it is bad directing, and what parts of it are just pure dated cinema. For example, the black member of the monster crew feels terribly cliched today - with his random breaking out into so-so rap numbers in the middle of things. It’s not something that’s unheard of in movies, especially older movies, but I don’t imagine at the time it was done with any sort of malice besides “this is hip and cool and will get people in seats.” The main villain leader is incredibly rape-y feeling, which never wasn’t “aged poorly” - although it drives home the point he’s a “real evil guy” without having to do any character building at all. Our female lead feels the most like it could be “not enough acting practice but at least trying” compared to all the baddies who largely feel like “told to act like a bad cartoon” - and our main character also doesn’t feel the most experienced but at least seems to be trying. Most notable in here for most is probably Mark Hamill, whose role as the detective type is going to be underutilized when people want to see more of him than the rest of the characters, but even he isn’t free from getting a little cheesy with his performance of a classic chain-smoking detective type.
The characters do generally a bit worse than the characters. The baddies - most of them - don’t really impact the plot of the movie at all. The main female is really just a kidnapped mcguffin love interest trope for the entire movie, even if she has some agency in defense and saving in the final act. The main baddie is just evil because he’s evil, and most his lackies break-neck between stereotype baddy and Three Stooges comedic relief. This is certainly not a movie you go into for character development in the slightest. I don’t think I can even really argue that the main character goes through any real advancement either, considering it doesn’t really feel like he’s learned anything or changed by the end - the only real change is that caused by the Guyver unit, and anything done while it’s out can feel just as much like it’s the suit’s fault he can effectively Kung Fu that anywhere close to “oh look, he’s using things he learned.”
Hero shot
The real, and possibly only star is the effects work. Now, this is to totally be held separate from the fight choreography and the likes. The costume work and effects actually look really good in this thing. I mean, if you were to look at any still shots of the monsters or the Guyver suit, you would totally be convinced this movie must be awesome. The details in the hero shots, the maneuverability (at least for some of them), and even the variety of them is great. You’d almost be more interested in a making-off for all the costumes than you would be watching the movie unless you can enjoy somewhat “bad” movies. Is it enough to make up for the other parts of the movie that fall a bit short? I guess that’s largely dependent on how into costumes and monsters you are. The fight choreography really doesn’t hold up as well as the costumes do - but does work with the costumes enough that it doesn’t feel too bad. It’s mostly a lot of throwing, or pushes that cause throwing - certainly not something that feels like the action was given a lot of time to breath and develop like you’d get from a Jackie Chan movie, or something largely smeared with CG for it’s action like some of the modern super hero movies - and in all honesty it’s like a bit more limited Power Rangers in how the action plays off.
When it comes to it, I have seen so much worse than this movie, and it’s obviously not too bad if I’m coming back to it multiple times - but at the same time, there’s something to be said of guilty pleasures here. I love the costumes, I enjoy the over the top horrible acting moments, and for a dumb movie the constant turning into a cartoon with crappy jokes seems fitting. The audio works fine - heck, there’s even one point it totally rips off the Jaws theme to comedic effect, and the balance is surprisingly good considering the plot and acting doesn’t feel super great. A lot of it I could just write off as being an older movie or whatnot, but it’s also a bit unfair to say it because quite frankly it just writes everything off in a lump comment. I think, more than anything, the movie tried too hard to make everything into a somewhat family friendly movie that could draw in a much wider crowd, and the tone really got hurt for it. The other thing it did was just be another adaptation that isn’t all that great or noteworthy.
Surprise, I actually know the Guyver. I’ve sat throw two separate anime renditions of it, and know that it was a manga as well - although I never saw any of them outside of little snippets like super-Guyver versions and the likes.That said, the biggest deathblow to the adaption is really the tone in my opinion. It wasn’t all played for jokes in the source - yeah, there was some comedy in there and a lot of it was probably just a product of it’s time and cultural translations - but I don’t remember it constantly breaking down into slapstick and gags at all. The main characters were kids - which brought it’s own level of annoyance to watch - but it didn’t try to soften things up there, and the Guyver in turn felt far more intimidating and dangerous than it did here. It also ended up being incredibly violent, Cutting a lot of plot was inevitable - taking something that (even in the animated runs) was multiple parts and smooshing it into one movie is going to come with casualties and compromise - and sometimes you see things like a character or suit and you go “that looks dead on!” even if the movie as a whole misses most the marks.
You’ve been to weird places, Luke Skywalker.
This movie isn’t great. It has great costumes, but we can settle and call the rest of it mediocre at best. You’ll get more laughs than you’d expect - maybe not all of them intentional. There’s also quite a bit that probably wouldn’t be as attractive to the modern “worries about everything and everyone’s representation” audience as what flew back when. That much won’t bother everyone, and as a whole the movie won’t bother everyone as it can still entertain through various means if you aren’t thinking too hard and expecting too much. The people who will like it the most are the costume and effects folks, and oddly enough also the ones who will proabably hate it the most for it’s little source changes - the fans of the original Guyver from over seas.