(originally published June 2016)
Yesterday we published our review of the 1991 cult superhero flick The Guyver to commemorate its UK blu-ray debut from Arrow Video. That film remains a nostalgic guilty-pleasure favorite of mine: a not-necessarily-good but very entertaining movie that combines excellent creature effects, terribly ill-advised comedy, and the most extremely kitschy form of '90s-ness into a package that is as fun as it is really bizarre. However, as a lifelong fan of the anime and manga series on which the film was based, I am also well aware of just what a wasted opportunity The Guyver was in some ways. Yoshiki Takaya's Bio-Booster Armour Guyver was one of the best animated and comic series to make the jump from Japan to the U.S. in the late-'80s and early-'90s. It should have easily made for an equally excellent big-screen adaptation... if the studio had let Screaming Mad George, Steve Wang, and Brian Yuzna make the darker and more faithful adaptation that they had wanted. But Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles had just been a huge hit, and the studio demanded that The Guyver be retrofitted mid-pre-production into a kid-friendly TMNT ripoff, and the tonally-messy film we know and love was the result. But not unlike its main character, the franchise somehow survived what should have been certain death, and rose from the ashes of this first not-exactly-successful adaptation to get another chance. When the first film became a surprise cult hit on cable and VHS, New Line commissioned a sequel; and this time they gave the creative reigns to the original's co-director (and fight choreographer and one of its special effects artists), Steve Wang, and this time they let him follow his and Screaming Mad George's more serious original vision. Wang used the opportunity to course-correct the previous film's mistakes, and create the really good, darker and more serious Guyver movie that should have been made in the first place. In doing so he not only managed to create that rarest thing, a sequel that is better than the original, but something even rarer: a sequel to a fairly questionable film that is genuinely pretty great.
In a
then-unprecedented move, Wang's movie was essentially a soft reboot,
much along the same lines as the Edward Norton Incredible
Hulk. The leads were recast,
events from the previous film were alluded to, but more as recaps
than integral parts to the story, and the whole thing was very much
meant to stand on its own as a superior alternative to its
predecessor. He didn't even call the film Guyver 2;
that title only appears on the American box art. Instead, everywhere
else in the world (including the actual opening credits) the film is
simply Guyver: Dark Hero. Wang's
half-sequel/half-reboot was a success: Guyver: Dark Hero
is not only a vast improvement over the original, but also one of the
coolest (and most underrated) superhero films of the 1990s.
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This
time it is David Hayter (the voice of Solid Snake, and the
screenwriter of X-Men 1
and 2 and Watchmen) who plays Sean, the college student whose body has become host
to the living suit of armor called the Guyver. With his mental state
slipping as the Guyver forces him to feed its bloodlust, Sean
searches for the armor's origins in hopes of finding a way to escape
it; a search that leads him to an archaeological dig investigating
possible alien artifacts. Of course, this also leads him back into
battle with the shapeshifting monsters of the Chronos corporation
(interestingly spelled Kronos this time around; another sign that
this is a rebooted universe). From the very first scene, in which the
Guyver brutally deals with a gang of drug smugglers, it is
immediately clear that this is a very different movie. It is dark, it
is violent (the film earns its R rating in the first five minutes),
and it is not messing around. While the first film felt
like a harder-edged knockoff of the Teenage Mutant Ninja
Turtles movie, the grim and
gritty opening sequence of Dark Hero
feels more like Darkman,
or Spawn.
It also introduces a fascinating concept: that the armor is alive,
and has a sadistic will of its own that is very much at odds with the
well-intentioned Sean. The rest of the film follows up on this change
of direction excellently, never shying away from the darker and
bloodier side of the anime, and really digging into the more
intriguing aspects of the story.
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Sean's
existential crisis of whether the armor has fundamentally changed who
he is - and if so, what it has changed him into - is the emotional
backbone of the film. It does a good job of showing how someone's
life would be totally upended if circumstances suddenly turned them
into a superhero, and even uses some pretty effective body-horror
imagery to look at how scary it would be to undergo that
transformation because of an external force with unknowable
side-effects. The whole script is far more concerned with sci-fi
concepts like this than simple action. Of course, there is still lots
of action to be found in Dark Hero
- actually, more and generally better action set-pieces than the
previous film - but the movie uses the luxury of its longer running
time (just over two hours - avoid the cut-down UK theatrical version) to develop a very strong story, and dive
deeply into the series' mythology and history. Despite being a good
half-hour longer than the typical straight-to-video film, it never
feels overlong, and certainly never padded. Instead, it has ambitions
that go beyond plenty of theatrical films in the genre, and really
does justice to the concepts and style of the long-running comic (and
the shorter but just as narratively ambitious anime) in exactly the
way the 1991 film failed to do.
Of
course, this isn't to say that Dark Hero is
without flaws. While it is unusually well-made for a
straight-to-video film, and while it is almost of high enough
production quality that it could have just as easily been released in
theaters instead, there are aspects of the production that
occasionally show off its straight-to-video limitations. Its lower
budget is evident in aspects of its production design: the heavy use
of outdoor locations rather than constructed sets, the cinematography
which is occasionally rough around the edges, and the reuse of some
of the creature suits from the first film for (different) minor
background monsters. The acting is also uneven, with a couple wooden
performances standing out. However, the performances are probably
better than in the first film overall, aside from that movie's bigger
names like Mark Hamill and David Gale; certainly on the better end of
the '90s-low-budget spectrum. In general the film is able to make up
for its budgetary shortcomings with its ambitious ideas, and by using
its strengths very effectively.
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One of
these strengths is its very good central performance from prolific
voice actor David Hayter. In the first Guyver,
Jack Armstrong had been decent but unspectacular as Sean. Hayter is a
major step up, bringing emotional complexity, charisma, and genuine
pathos to the role. This more complex take on the character presents
Sean as someone torn between conflicting desires to be a hero and
just a normal guy, and dark impulses from the armor to be a more
ruthless antihero. Hayter plays all three sides of Sean very
effectively, and his performance would absolutely be at home in a
theatrical film. His voice work for the Metal Gear Solid
games and the 1990s animated
Spider-Man series (in
which he voiced Captain America) has made him a fan favorite in that
world, but this film makes a strong case that he should get more
chances to act in front of the camera.
The
most prominent strength of the film, as with its predecessor, is the
excellent practical effects work. While Steve Wang may have saved
some money by reusing a few monster suits, it was clearly worth it,
because it allowed him to put the budget where it really counted: in
making the new creatures (and the more otherworldly aspects of their
new environment) truly spectacular. The two main Zoanoid villains
look awesome – even better than the best creatures from the 1991
film, which were already quite impressive. Their features and
animatronic facial movements are extremely lifelike and realistic,
and their design strikes a perfect balance between sci-fi and horror
archetypes. The suits are worn by some pretty fantastic stunt people
too, and the fight scenes between these creatures and the Guyver are
more impressive and intricately choreographed than those in the
original, with some genuine Hong Kong-style martial arts action and
wire work. The film's climactic battle is particularly fantastic,
with its hybrid of great action choreography and really badass
creature design. Just as impressive as the creatures themselves are
the film's handful of sets, which likewise value quality over
quantity. While I cannot say much about what the sets actually are, I
can say that they do a wonderful job of creating on a grand scale the
organic-machinery aesthetic of the Guyver armor itself. Between these
sets and the creatures that inhabit them, you would never guess that
this film was made for only a third of the budget of the original:
under a million dollars. By knowing where to put that money to the
best use, Steve Wang created a film that, while clearly not
mega-budgeted, looks significantly more expensive than it is.
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Guyver: Dark Hero
is a perfect illustration of how imagination is so much more
important than money when it comes to making a good genre film. This
is low-budget filmmaking done right, with a great vision of what the
story should be, and the knowledge of effects and design necessary to
stretch limited funds to achieve some memorable visuals. It may be
rough around the edges in some aspects of its production quality and
acting, but it more than makes up for it with the things that it
really gets right, like its principle creature and set design, David
Hayter's strong central performance, and very good story. This is the
movie that 1991's The Guyver should
have been. If the original film was this good, or even if it had this
tone and understanding of the material, it would have been far more
successful, and probably would have spawned a franchise that went
beyond just one straight-to-video sequel. As it is, this
half-sequel/half-reboot deserves to be more widely-seen than it is,
and deserves better than to have the flaws of its predecessor held
against it. Even if you've never seen The Guyver,
this film is definitely recommended; seeing the original isn't even a
prerequisite. If you have seen the original and enjoyed it, you'll
find much more to like here, and even if you saw the 1991 film and
hated it, this far superior take on the source material may win you
over.
The
1990s were famously not a great decade for superhero movies, with
only a small handful like Batman Returns,
The Crow, Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles, and
Darkman being
particularly memorable. Even with significantly fewer resources than
any of those films, Guyver: Dark Hero is
absolutely good enough to make the short list of that decade's most
memorable entries in the genre. While it can't touch the excellence
of Batman Returns or
The Crow, I would say
it is at least as good as Darkman,
and easily better than plenty of the decade's other attempts at comic
book movies, like the big-budget mediocrity of the Joel Schumacher
Batman films
or Spawn.
Now that Arrow Video has given a blu-ray upgrade to the original The
Guyver, hopefully in the near
future they will likewise give new life to this far-superior
follow-up. Check it out – it is definitely recommended.
Score:
-
Christopher S. Jordan
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