• Produced and directed by Steve Wang
• Written by Nathan Long
• Starring
  • David Hayter
  • Kathy Christopherson
  • Christopher Michael
  • Bruno Giannotta
  • Stuart Weiss
• Executive produced by Ken Iyadomi, Hirohiko Sueyoshi, and Yutaka Wada

Although it lacks the, ahem, “star power” of the first movie (and boy, you really know your audience when you cast Mark Hamill, Michael Berryman and David Gale in the same movie), this live-action sequel may be better. Or at least more entertaining, which technically isn’t the same thing, but who cares? We’re talking about movies which proffer as their main attraction stuntmen in rubber suits beating on each other.

One of the biggest improvements is the switchout of Jack Armstrong for David Hayter as Sean Bunker, our hero. (Hayter never became much of a screen star, but he’s gone on to a successful double career as a voice performer in Metal Gear Solid videogames, and as a screenwriter who contributed to movies such as the first two X-Men movies, Scorpion King (2002), and the upcoming version of The Watchmen (2009)), Armstrong’s whiny, petulant performance was such a persistent annoyance that Hayter’s version of Sean as pensive and driven is a welcome change.

“And once I’ve finished with you punks, I’m gonna go spotlighting on Lover’s Lane!”

Since the end of the last movie, Sean, fused inextricably with the alien biomechanical Guyver unit, has been fighting crime. Not necessarily by his choice; the Guyver is a combat weapon, and it has needs. Which is why we open with a throwaway setpiece of the Guyver fighting a cadre of drug smugglers in a generic factory-slash industrial location. (Ooh, that’s a creative change for a sci-fi action movie — the fight with the catwalks and the steaming pipes comes at the beginning instead of the end!) The Guyver is not careful about leaving bad guys alive, either, which tortures Sean in his civilian guise, i.e., when the biomechanical armor peels itself back off his body and hides under his skin.

In fact, this whole nocturnal crimefighter thing has soured his life all over. Mizky (now played by Billi Lee) breaks up with him, despite having seen enough in the last movie to believe him when he says, “I don’t kill, it kills.” He’s so lost in his life that when he finally gets up in the morning, he records Inside Expose, a trash journalism TV show, as he watches it. Huh? Why would he do that? There’s never any explanation, but it sure comes in handy when the show reports on a “werewolf” attack on a hunter in Utah, near where an archaeological expedition is conducting a secretive dig. Some of the local petroglyphs are show, which match sketches Sean makes of symbols that show up in his dreams, mostly egg-shaped silhouettes with streamers.

“So finally, the origin of the ‘angel on one shoulder, devil on the other’ motif!”

Feeling driven to know about his dreams (and seeing some similarity between the “werewolf” report and the transformative powers of the Zoanoids from the Kronos Corporation he fought in the last movie), he hitchhikes to Utah, which in this case is approximated here by Angeles National Forest (a passable substitute for Southern Utah, as long as you ignore the absence of red soil). The locals won’t tell him anything about the dig, but he does meet Cori (Kathy Christopherson) at the local wee grocery store, who sees something unsettlingly familiar in his sketches. Cori’s not just a member of the expedition, she’s the co-showrunner, along with her father, Dr. Marcus Edwards (Stuart Weiss).

It’s kind of hard to ignore the fact that the dig site is in reality a public campground (if the stone-bordered gravel footpaths don’t clue you in, the ill-disguised wooden arrows pointing to various campsites and trails should do the trick). But the real action takes place below ground in a huge cave set where student archaeologists run around in shorts and tank tops because the costume designer had never experienced how cold it gets in real caves. The cave paintings match Sean’s sketches in all particulars, so he stays on as an unpaid volunteer (one who isn’t even getting class credit).

It’s either a spaceship… or a titan elbow.

Lest you think this is all getting far afield from the whole “monstrous corporation seeks ultimate bioweapon” premise of the franchise, you should know that the dig is looking for evidence of alien contact (one of the pet premises of the Edwardses), and is being underwritten by the Tempus Corporation. Hmm… Tempus… Kronos…. See a connection? Their corporate overlords are represented on site by Crane (Bruno Giannotta), a weaselly little yesman, and the head of dig security Volker (Wes Deitrick) who smiles like he’s ready to eat kittens. You’re absolutely ready for some nefarious goings-on to justify the presence of such nefarious going-onners.

The action starts again when the same hunter comes back to the area, this time with a photographer. A Zoanoid obliges with its presence, and when Sean and Cori hear the screams in the hills, Sean runs up and be-Guyvers himself to fight the monster. The fight naturally ends in a draw before any other witnesses arrive, but Sean’s willingness to run into the hills unarmed to ward off a “bear attack” arouses the suspicions of Dr. Atkins (Christopher Michael), who is not exactly as he appears.

I’ll be surprised if the upcoming remake of The Creature From the Black Lagoon does it even this well.

Things really start moving when the cave excavation reveals a leather but metallic wall, which turns out to be the hull of a buried alien spaceship. It opens to Sean’s presence, and most of the named characters blithely go exploring it, despite the lights and rumbling sounds that show it to be still functional. And it’s there that Crane gets his hands on what the Kronos Tempus Corporation wanted all along: another Guyver unit.

Now, all of the above is a necessary evil, a story ligature to hold the feature together. But let’s be honest: the point of these movies is big rubbery monsters fu-fighting each other. And in that regard, the movie delivers in spades. (By which I mean, in shovelfuls. Just to head off any complaints of racial slurs. Even though Atkins is black. But he’s nothing but human, which means he doesn’t really get in on the rubber suit action. Sorry, where was I?) The fight scenes are directly out of the best Japanese bug-monster-hero tradition (think of the Kamen Rider motion pictures), with stunt performers pulling off spins, high kicks and rolls which, even with the assistance of wire rigs, are damned impressive — not surprising, with Power Rangers producer Koichi Sakamoto as the action coordinator. If you’ve never seen any of those Japanese movies, think about it this way: imagine if the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers were actually cool.

Hey, you should at least give her a chance to change into her white one-piece bathing suit…

If I have a complaint, in fact, it’s that we keep coming back to this “plot” thing instead of focusing solely on rubber-suited martial artists whomping on each other. By about two-thirds of the way through, the story has begun to drag terribly, and it’s only the revelation of several more Zoanoids that compensates. Everyone who’s ever been on the Kronos payroll is a Zoanoid, it looks like. And in the other great improvement upon the original, the Zoanoids here aren’t forced to be jokey. There are no hiphop “street” Zoanoids, and none of them feel the need to toss off bon mots or quips during bouts. The last fifteen minutes is almost wall-to-wall Guyver vs. Zoanoid action (or, because of that second Guyver unit discovered, Guyver vs. Zoanoid Guyver action). Sure, David Hayter barely appears in favor of his rubber-suited stunt stand-in Anthony Houk, and he never really conquers those moral questions about killing and loss of control that plagued him so in the opening, but the less time we spend with brooding Sean, the more footage we get of the Guyver kicking rubbery Zoanoid heinie.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 15
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 4
• dream sequences: 2
• ominous thunderstorms: 1
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 2
  • Christopher Michael (Atkins) played “Coalition Man #1″ in the TNG episode “Legacy,” and “Helm Officer” in the DS9 episode “Rules of Engagement”
  • Brian Simpson (“Benny,” plus a couple of different Zoanoids) did stunts on a number of episodes of DS9 and Voyager