Guyver 2: Dark Hero

You may have been noticing that I have been somewhat lagging in between my reviews. The reason is really because I’m getting to a point were I’ll see a newer movie on DVD or in theaters and I’ll really have nothing to say. Either because it’s just aggressively average and all I can say is that it doesn’t suck, or there just isn’t really enough to make a review out of. You have no idea how hard it is to write a review for something as intensely mediocre as “Skyline”. But the real reason that I’m having trouble is that, well, I’m really not all that interested in a lot of the new movies coming out. I’ve honestly always been way more interested in the obscure and foreign, especially lately. Yeah, go ahead and call me an elitist film snob, I really don’t care. This is my blog, I will use it how I want, and talk about what interests me. So in that vain, let’s take a brief trip to Japan.
Bio-Booster Armor Guyver originally started life in the 80’s as a manga written by Yoshiki Takaya. Its story is that of a high school student named Shō Fukamachi, who finds a weird object that attacks him and grants him a powerful armor called The Guyver. However, it is an item highly sought after by the Chronos organization who send wave after wave of shape shifting monsters called Zoanoids to retrieve it from Shō, threatening his family and friends in the process.
Guyver gained a fair amount of popularity in Japan, spawning two OVAs (the Anime equivalent of Direct-To-Video/DVD) a feature film called “Out of Control” which was totally fine as stand alone movie, despite ending on a cliff hanger. And two separate seasons of six episodes each, which have some spotty animation and a hilariously bad dub, but are still enjoyable in their own right. The most recent iteration was a 26 episode televised Anime series that ran from 2005 to 2006.
I’m not here to talk about any of those however, at least not at this time. I’m here to talk about the two live action films produced by New Line Cinema in the early 90’s. Due to the popularity over seas, the still relatively small film company picked up the American film rights and handed the keys to Special Make up Effects Artists Screaming Mad George and Steve Wang, here giving their first go at directing. For a first shot, it’s actually a pretty damn good effort, the action is well shot and the fight choreography is really good, especially for something that clearly didn’t have a glorious budget, which is also a good description for the suit and creature effects. However, from what I can infer and have read or heard over the internet, producer Brian Yuzna enforced some creative changes on the first film. Notably a marketing campaign that made it appear that Luke Skywalker him self Mark Hamill was the title character, instead of the supporting role that he actually had. Worse still, it was decided that casting Jimmie Walker as one of the main Zoanoid characters would help bring in a wider audience and an appeal for the younger crowd. Not that Walker is a bad actor, but when they make him into what I can only describe as the result of a tequila fueled one night stand between one of the Gremlins and Jarjar Binks, then add that this thing raps in the movie, whole new level of horror is created. These changes pretty much ruin an otherwise enjoyable little B-movie.
This brings us to the sequel, Guyver 2: Dark Hero. You think that with a first outing like that the sequel can’t be any good, right? I mean if the movie made enough money and Yuzna was still on it, we’d probably get a movie that was full of potential that’s drug down by attempts to pander to everyone. Well that’s the thing, Yuzna wasn’t attached to this movie, a fact that you can clearly tell was a relief to returning director Steve Wang. The film’s rating was bumped from PG-13 to a much more freeing R and the Jive-a-noid is nowhere to be seen. Is it a great movie? Not really, but for mid 90’s low budger cheese it’s actually pretty damn entertaining.
The premise this time since the origin story is out of the way is that Sean Barker, The Guyver, has found out about an archeological dig where they may have some answers for him concerning the armor. However, once he’s there he realizes that Chronos is up to it’s old tricks again and they are soon beset by the evil zoanoids.
Again, the fight choreography is very impressive, with the added ability to show the Guyver doing what it’s actually know for, killing things brutally, makes the plot more interesting. Plus, to Wang’s credit you can tell that he’s doing the absolute best with what clearly couldn’t have been that big a budget.
It’s movies like this that make me hate things like the Transformers movies. This is a low budget action movie that shows how a director actually works with his constraints and makes a movie more enjoyable through how he cuts or shoots a scene. Things like Transformers just blow their wad on bleeding edge CGI robots and shove them in your face… After, of course, they show off the jock strap clad ass of a middle aged man, dogs humping and a giant robot’s testicles. (No, I’m not ever letting that one go, now shut up!) It’s clear that Steve Wang just had much more respect for the original source material than Bay did.
I know, I’ve harped on this before, but I’m going to do it again, the robots in Transformers barely do anything in their own movie. Not only that, when they actually do something, it’s over way too quick and they may as well have not been in the movies anyway. By contrast, “Guyver 2: Dark Hero” is only about 90 minutes long, and the Guyver appears for four fight scenes in the entire run time. All four last about five to seven minutes a piece. Put simply, the title character appears, and actually does stuff, in over a third of the actual movie, and when he isn’t they are revealing aspects of his character or having the bad guys the Zoanoids doing things.
The bad news when it comes to Guyver 2, is that the acting is pretty much terrible. It’s not the worst I’ve ever seen, but it is pretty awful, notably the female lead and the main villain. However, this doesn’t take away from the film’s entertainment value. If nothing else it adds to it with some great potential for riffing.
Basically if you’re looking for something to have at a night of cheesy monster movies, “Guyver 2: Dark Hero” is more than worth your time. It has a couple hiccups here and there, but nothing to jarring. Check it out.

2.5 rubber monsters out of 5.