MaximumMadness Oh, I love you, 1990's media and entertainment! You're so silly and you don't know any better!In 1985, artist and writer Yoshiki Takaya created the popular franchise "Bio-Boosted Armor: Guyver"- which started out as an ongoing Manga comic about a teenage boy who inadvertently bonds with an alien weapon known as the "Guyver"- a bio-mechanical symbiotic suit that grants him superhuman abilities. He uses the suit to battle the "Zoanoids"- evil shape-shifting creatures who work for the nefarious Cronos Corporation, and are trying to take over the world. At its core, the story was weak but the comics and subsequent anime adaptations were decent fun. In many ways, it was almost like "Power Rangers" for adults- non-stop action, gooey creatures, alien weapons and plenty of martial-arts battles between archetypal heroes and villains... only with brutal, bloody hard-core violence and some sex appeal! It's media junk- food... but tasty media junk-food.So it makes sense that it ended up being the center of one of those early attempts at Americanizing and re-adapting a Japanese property for Western Audiences with directors "Screaming Mad George" and Steve Wang's 1991 release "The Guyver." It was a simple story that should have worked well and easily translated from one culture to another. After all... it's a classic tale of good-guy vs bad-guy. What could go wrong? ...Well, a lot as it turns out.While by no means a complete train-wreck and with a handful of engaging and effective sequences, the American film adaptation ultimately left quite a bit to be desired due to some key fundamental issues. These issues mainly pertaining to its lightning-fast pace and a mournfully inconsistent tone that never found the proper balance between adventure, drama and comedy. Viewing the film is often akin to changing channels on a television for an hour-and-a-half on a slow afternoon- you'll see quite a bit to like for brief snippets, but it doesn't really work together and it's not necessarily going to leave you feeling fulfilled when all is said and done.Jack Armstrong stars as Sean Barker, a sort-of geeky but likable enough protagonist who studies martial arts and has a thing for fellow student Mizky, played by Vivian Wu. One night, he stumbles on a mysterious alien artifact that inadvertently latches onto his body, turning him into "The Guyver"- a Bio-Boosted superhero. As it turns out, Mizky's father was actually a shape-shifting "Zoanoid" and was killed trying to smuggle the unit away from the nefarious Cronos Corporation, who sought to use it to enslave humanity. And so, Sean must try and use the Guyver armor to protect Mizky from the other monstrous "Zoanoids" who come looking for the unit and seek to eliminate all loose ends- including the two of them! They also get help from a cop whose investigating the murder of Mizky's father, and is played by Luke Skywalker himself, Mark Hamill.I believe that this particular property could work for American audiences if done properly, but I don't think that was the case here. This was one of the earliest attempts at adapting a Manga/Anime franchise for American audiences, and you get the feeling there was a lot of studio meddling and second-guessing behind-the- scenes. The violence and general "weirdness" of the original stories is largely absent, action is kept to a minimum, and there's way too much focus on broad slapstick gags and pop-cultural humor in almost every scene. It's almost as if everyone involved got cold feet and decided not to commit to faithfully adapting the story out of fear it was too "weird"... and so they compensated by trying to throw in a lot of out-of-place jokes and gags to win the audience over. That's the main problem here... the failure to commit to the material. Going into "self-parody" territory as this film does is a risky move and often doesn't pay off. Thus, the film lacks drama, excitement and intrigue for too much of the run- time.This isn't helped by ludicrously quick-paced editing that gives the film virtually no breathing room. Having seen several of the anime adaptations in my younger years, the film seems to try and cram several volumes of the original story into a single package while also doing its own things at times, and it doesn't really flow too well. You feel like you're watching a much larger story that's been edited down to only hit on key points, robbing the movie of subtlety and nuance. If the movie had an extra twenty minutes of so to play around with, it might have worked. But not as an 88-minute feature.Still, the movie isn't a complete failure. Several cast members are a lot of fun- particularly Hamill who is giving it has all, and a memorable and delightfully over-the-top turn from David Gale as the evil "Fulton Balcus"- the big-bad head of the Cronos Corporation. The practical effects used to bring the Guyver to life are awe-inspiring and still hold up well to this day... its a fantastic design and looks like it was pulled straight from the pages of the original comic. And the action is a great deal of fun, with well-choreographed fights and some fancy moves unlike anything we had quite seem at the time.As it stands... I don't hate "The Guyver." I saw it when I was getting a bit too old to like "Power Rangers" but not old enough to appreciate more adult fare, and it was a good transitional film to watch. It's a heck of a movie for a 12-year-old, and I think older children will get a kick out of it. And it does have some good aspects to it. It just doesn't take itself seriously enough and has some glaring production issues that will hinder its appeal for older audiences or fans of the existing franchise. I give it a sub-par but watchable 4 out of 10.

breakdownthatfilm-blogspot-com When it comes to cartoon movie adaptations, it has yet to be seen where one comes out playing well. Speed Racer (2008) is a perfect example of this. Live-action tends to suck the life out of cartoons. So after watching the Japanese cartoon of The Guyver, I wasn't quite sure how this movie adaptation would play out. But surprisingly, to me, I was somewhat entertained by the creature effects and actors that appeared in the film. However, this still does not make it a great movie.The film starts off with a scrolling of lines that explain that there is a group of people who can transform into creatures called Zoanoids. The Zoalord, the strongest Zoanoid who looks to control the world, leads these Zoanoids. But the only way he can do this is by obtaining the "guyver", a bio-armor that should make him invincible. That is, if not for an unwilling individual who runs into the bio-armor first, giving him power beyond his original abilities.The unwilling individual is named Sean Barker played by the forgotten actor, Jack Armstrong. Armstrong gives a convincing performance as his character, even if the majority of his lines are "Are you OK? or Let her go!". Baker also has a girlfriend, Mizky Segawa (Vivian Wu), who gets caught by the Zoalord and is the damsel in distress. However, her character does show some courage, a trait that does not come up often, usually most damsels scream constantly. Tagging along with them is CIA agent, Max Reed, played by the famous Mark Hamill. Hamill gives Reed some good lines, this made me chuckle here and there.Even more surprising is to find four other iconic actors in this film as well. Michael Berryman from Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes (1977) has a significant role as the Zoalord's henchman. Even more intriguing is that Jeffrey Combs and David Gale from Re-Animator (1985) both have roles in here too. Gale plays the Zoalord himself and Combs plays a lab rat named Dr. East. Jeez, how funny is that. Herbert WEST from Re- Animator (1985) is now Dr. EAST in The Guyver (1991), and, now Combs is working for Gale instead of fighting him, like in Re-Animator (1985). Also Willard E. Pugh, Mayor Kuzak from RoboCop 2 (1990), plays one of Reed's coworkers. Which also coincidental because when the "guyver" armor is first activated by Baker, someone says, "Alright you RoboCop thing!". Hahaha wow. Too many coincidences.Now for the bad things. First, I enjoy martial arts fight sequences but for a lot of the time, I felt like they dragged on forever. This is mostly because the fight scenes contained the same techniques. Also, I understand that it is 1991 but it seemed like many of the creature costumes ran from either clunky to unrealistically goofy. One monster had googly eyes. Really? How does that look terrifying? I'd laugh. Actually, a lot of the costumes looked like they were ideas to be used for the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers (1993) TV show. But I do give credit to Linda L. Meltzer, head of costume design for making the "guyver" armor looking so awesome. The special effects with the bio- armor were cool but it also made me wonder why the same couldn't be done for when the villains transformed.Also, for the first half of the film, the transitioning between scenes was very obnoxious. But credit should be given to screenwriter Jon Purdy for at least making the story more creative. The story isn't the usual cliché hero movie. There are parts of the film where it'll have the audience guessing and I'll admit there were segments where I thought certain things wouldn't happen but they did. It keeps you on your toes so that's good. The musical score by Matthew Morse wasn't impressive though. I had a slight resemblance to the anime shows but it wasn't very prevalent in the film. Also the ending seemed quick which made me feel like it was done last minute just as a throw in. This movie had a lot of ups and downs but I support it because it did almost go somewhere.For the most part, the actors and the "guyver" armor itself is the thing to see in this film. The action is good for a while but gets tiresome overtime as well as the creature costumes.

gavin6942 A race of aliens are trying to run the earth with an evil corporation. They have a reptile-like appearance, which I suppose pleases David Icke. Their next goal is to attain the guyver, a special device that turns the user into a living suit of armor. Unfortunately for them, a young martial arts student finds it first.This film should have been awesome. The cast was amazing (more on this later) and the general idea was decent. Sure, it reeks of "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers" and "Voltron" in some ways, but it's based on a Japanese comic, so you'll have that. Let's go over the negatives before I try to say something nice.The fight scenes dragged on way too long. The Guyver has the power to use knives and cut his opponents to shreds, but he rarely does it and waits until the end of the fight to do so. So, we're left with a long fight scene followed by another long fight scene... less entertaining than the one from "They Live" and cheesier because they keep fighting the same guys and it's just rubber suit hitting rubber suit.The acting was awful. It was cheeseball. Most noticeably from Mark Hamill, who plays a CIA agent. I didn't understand why a CIA agent was investigated domestic murder (isn't that what the FBI is for?), but even more confusing was Hamill's over-the-top approach and bad mustache. I really hope this was intention on the part of the creators, because Hamill can do so much better than this (see "Star Wars" and "Silver Bullet"). Even if intentional, it was still bad.The scene cuts were annoying, with these diagonal slashes indicating a new scene. They were not necessary, done too often, and just made the film seem even more of a cartoon. Maybe the audience was supposed to be kids, who might like that. I don't know. I just thought it was excessive.And yes, there were too many costumes. I don't know how to get around that since the film was about aliens. But the costumes were just so cheesy. Maybe it was better than some costumes. Actually, I know it is. But I can't watch all these rubber suits bounce around. I need some sort of human presence.Now, I will say the cast was amazing, even if put in a really bad film. Horror fans will recognize a great many of these names: Michael Berryman ("The Hills Have Eyes"), Mark Hamill ("Silver Bullet"), David Gale ("Re-Animator"), Linnea Quigley ("Return of the Living Dead"), and Jeffrey Combs ("Re-Animator"). The film was even produced by Brian Yuzna, making this something of a "re-Animator" reunion. And the horror in-jokes were nice (casting Quigley as a scream queen, and Combs as "Doctor East").If the fight scenes had been cut shorter, this would have been a smoother and more enjoyable film. As it is now, it's pretty bland and boring. Put it on for the kids, as I think they'll get a lot more out of it. Then some day they'll go back and watch it again, only to be traumatized that they used to like such rubbish. But looking back on what I used to like, I don't know how I tolerated such poor animation as a child.

ccthemovieman-1 The "bad news" outweighs the "good news" for this movie.BAD - The dialog in here is very stupid; the acting is poor (Jack Armstrong, Vivian Wu?); there is too much violence and simply a general Class B-type production feeling about this whole film, making it dumb overall. GOOD - It was very light on the profanity and sometimes had some pretty good special-effects with the humans turning into monsters.STRANGE - Added to the cast is television star Jimmie Walker, who played a goofy "Kid Dyn-O-Mite" character on TV, and Mark Hamill, from the hugely-successful Star Wars movie series. Wow, times must have gotten tough for those two actors to be in this movie!OVERALL - After watching this for an hour, it was hard to get interested enough to finish the film.