Kamen Rider x Kamen Rider Wizard & Fourze Movie Taisen Ultimatum (2012)

Kamen Rider x Kamen Rider Wizard & Fourze Movie Taisen Ultimatum is, for a crossover, good enough. I liked the new kamen riders. For the Fourze, it was nice to see what they ended up doing and see the well familiar faces and how they coped with their new roles. It was very enjoyable actually. The story was okay, had some suspense and the performances were good as well. The costumes and special effects, not so good, however, but maybe that's the kamen rider charm. The action scenes were nice and interesting. The comedy element, unfortunately, not so much. So, six out of ten.

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Shockingly really liked this!
- Maybe partially because I watched the director's cut this time, but the writing was WAY more palatable in this than basically any of the previous Heisei 2 movies - the Fourze and Wizard parts were both coherently about the main plot, so that the 3rd part with the crossover actually made sense. The tones of the two segments didn't feel completely disparate either.
- We get to see a lot of our favorite characters again. I loved the rider interactions, adult Ryuusei is beautiful, and I actually ended up enjoying some of the movie-only female characters (Inga and Nadeshiko, primarily) a bit more than in their original movies.
- Fourze's section was adorable and wholesome (Gen as a teacher is the best), and I loved seeing Kengo again!
- The Wizard section does a wonderful job with its fight scenes, not just with nice choreography but also by letting Haruto actually do physical fight movements without the usual randomly spaced barrel piles or explosions out of nowhere. Also, Haruto's reactions were funny as usual, and I love how he interacts with Gen throughout the movie.
- I also loved Eiji's cameo, and the summons of the previous riders was charming for me since I loved those series. I am still laughing about Nadeshiko and Meteor having to hold on to Accel to fly.

That being said I did still have some criticisms:
- There is a LOT of fanservice that feels really unneeded and particularly uncomfortable in a Kamen Rider movie that is (ostensibly) aimed at kids. Incessant panty/thigh shots (including of Gen's students), Nadeshiko literally fights with her butt, Inga still has her weirdly pushed up bust, and also there is as always a really high instance of female NPCs being noticeably shiny. I really don't need to know so much about the director's preferences.
- The final fight is ridiculous, and at one point crosses the line into not making sense. I am willing to accept a certain amount of shenanigans due to the situation, but the randomly spaced stacks of barrels are back, and at one point Wizard and Fourze drive over barrels toward each other, despite previously driving alongside each other and having no reason to suddenly turn. The explosions here are SUPER overused as well - things just explode all over the ground despite there not being much reason for this, and at a few points the visual quality of the explosion footage doesn't even look that well combined with the rider footage.
- The use of random GoPro footage in this movie, particularly in the Fourze and crossover sections. I don't really understand this choice, so I can only assume that GoPros were trendy and/or becoming more accessible when this movie was made. Unfortunately, the movie cuts in and out of this footage, and this makes obvious the differences in quality and style of the two. I don't think they really had a great plan for how to use this and wish they would have stuck to normal filming techniques.

Side note: I did think it was slightly funny that, due to Haruto's very leggy fighting style, he actually ends up getting some of the weird panty-shot style camerawork usually reserved for female characters.

Overall, I think this was my favorite of the Heisei 2 movies so far. I still don't really like Sakamoto's style, particularly the weird objectifying shots and excessive battle scenes, and I'm looking forward to seeing some KR movies that don't involve him (at this point, I am of the personal opinion that he is basically the Michael Bay of Japan). Also, I believe this is the last of the films that use the 3 part system, which I am also hoping will be a positive change despite not minding it in this particular movie.

If you can stomach Sakamoto's idiosyncracies, or are willing to overlook them, this is actually a pretty fun movie aside from them.

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