JDR Revival

I try to understand, but I can’t. They say it is “45 minutes of pure entertainment,” but I don’t see it. They comment that Dan Dominator is “the brilliant revolutionary director” but I don’t see that either. That’s the thing that irks me the most about JDR Revival, people’s baffling attraction to a movie that is ultimately pointless, only demonstrating a director can go through four months of intense animating for no real reason.

Yet, people will say the story isn’t important. According to them, it doesn’t need to have a point, because Revival is all about “style” and being “pure entertainment.”

A lot of people also say this about a personal, non-3DMM favorite of mine: Versus, the Ryuhei Kitamura film about an escaped prisoner who has a yakuza gang hunting him down all while he fights to stay alive in a zombie infested forest. Any review of Versus will be sure to mention the multitude of genres that are rolled into it. It’s a chambara film while at the same time it’s a yakuza gangster flick. It’s also a martial arts extravaganza complete with buckets of Tom Savini-like gore and slapstick humor not unknown to the Three Stooges.

Versus’ is mostly an introduction to the upbeat, insane film style of Kitamura that would continue on in films like Azumi, Alive and Aragami.

But Dominator Dan is no Ryuhei Kitamura.

Where as Versus is indeed a film all about style, Revival comes across as if scenes just kept getting tacked on and on. 720 scenes, rounding out to nearly 50 minutes, were required to tell a non-complex tale about three kids (Dominator Dan’s character sounds as if he were voiced by Daniel Radcliffe of the Harry Potter movies) who need to stop a stock villain. Along the way, fights with giant robots, space ships, and other evil minions are in full force. They don’t add or detract anything from the story. They’re just there to be there.

If one of the crazed fight sequences isn’t on screen, then most certainly its comedy is. There are only two genuinely funny moments (all dealing with the villain and his mustache/escape), before beyond cliché 3DMM violence antics (which involves killing every scientist throughout the course of the movie) and other such dry humor take a firm, choking hold.

By scene 541, our hero faces the villain in a dimensional vortex, filled with doors that lead to other worlds. In this case, any current or popular 3DMM film. The two wrestle past the Knights of Camelot and have a run in with Sgt. Steve before 200 scenes have passed and our hero comes out on top.

If you separated scene 1 to 540, then 541 to 720, you would swear you were watching two different movies. The nexus battle takes the whole last third of the movie to play out, making it probably the longest 3DMM battle in history, and it feels as though it could have easily been an entirely separate flick.

It might have worked out better that way since JDR Revival isn’t really about anything. Not even it’s much discussed “style” saves it since there is nothing revolutionary or unique. Though, it’s sure to hit home with people on the nostalgic level since the detailed and colorful effects have an uncanny resemblance to early fantasies of 3DMM’s past.

While I fully encourage Dominator Dan to continue his movie making efforts, I discourage putting the time into making epically aimless entries like JDR Revival. Had Revival’s animation been strung together with a decent story, maybe even a written script, I would most likely be in mass with the other Dominator Dan fans.

Until then, "style" just isn't enough.

45 out of 100