Something for future superhero taisen films

[CannibalS]

In this case, in-universe and real world logistics are tied together though. When Foundation X used Medals or Switches, that wasn't only a random reuse of suits, but also directly tied to their story and nature. Rather than being random resurrected villains, we got those elements tied into the whole "merchants of death" scheme. When you bring back villains set up for a single show and just throw a bunch of random past suits there too to fill on screen numbers, they just end up as... well, random past suits.

Even by their own nature, the moment you have an army of Grongi running around, you basically just have a bunch of Grongi suits completely going against their characterization in the Kuuga tv show, where such concept certainly couldn't exist. We've already seen the Heisei Riders fighting various past Heisei villains as part of larger armies outside of the context of their series, including Grongi (like Dai-Shocker's army in the original Vs Dai-Shocker, which had mostly Heisei villains outside of the commanders and Shocker grunts), and without their context and story, they're just basically random suits. Even you're ignoring them in your post.

What elevates Foundation X for this type of role is that they were written with this kind of crossover role in mind so it avoids all of those pitfalls. Besides, I don't see why you keep throwing Shocker comparisons. The only similarity between them is basically the scale and being a recurring foe, but otherwise they were hardly the same. Foundation X wasn't even a group focused on world conquest in the first place. They couldn't take a thematic role in W's or Fourze's stories, because their scale would lead to a much more negative message than what both shows were interested in telling, but I don't see how this denies that they have a better story set up for crossover stories than any of the other individual factions.

The problem is, they simply aren't interesting villains to anyone but people who care about a comic-bookish continuity (which has no business to ever be in the general vicinity of any fiction any more).
They are essentially background noise and intrinsically have no real value to the story other than a vague thing that we are supposed to care about only because of how vague they are and superficially resemble the famous Shocker twist in Stronger but without anything that actually made Shocker work. The "merchants of death" angle doesn't work, because unlike Black Ghost, they have no real weight in the narrative other than, again, being vague and Shocker-like.

They have about as much effect in the story as the empty suits does at the end of it, the only difference being they happened to appear in the popular season while using Showa-esque aesthetics. So you might as well use Smart Brain or whatever more suitable, because at least then you most of the thematic legwork cut out for you in their respective shows and still suitably serves the idea of "Big nebulous villain of Heisei".

Or better yet, just create a new villain from the ground up that is actually unique and actually serves as a counter to Heisei Riders as a whole.

One might argue there is potential for Foundation X, but at this point I have doubts they would ever be anything actually interesting. You think Riku Sanjo is gonna ever write anything more than shallow iconography? I don't think so.

 

[NeonZ]

The problem is, they simply aren't interesting villains to anyone but people who care about a comic-bookish continuity (which has no business to ever be in the general vicinity of any fiction any more).

I think Marvel's success shows that most people are in fact interested by a larger universe like that. Toei's other producers not embracing Foundation X nor replacing it with anything else to tie the series just shows that they're missing an important element there. It's one of the reasons that in the Rider fandom you often get people talking about crossovers not mattering.

They have about as much effect in the story as the empty suits does at the end of it, the only difference being they happened to appear in the popular season while using Showa-esque aesthetics. So you might as well use Smart Brain or whatever more suitable, because at least then you most of the thematic legwork cut out for you in their respective shows and still suitably serves the idea of "Big nebulous villain of Heisei".

Except thematic meaning is completely lost once you have villains out of their original context, and it'll depend entirely on the new text at that point. And, so far, we haven't seen returning villains treated with that care at all. Really, by definition, unless the villain entirely focuses on the dead or a similar concept, "bringing back" past villains from the dead just cheapens them. Smart Brain itself was left with a skeleton crew by the end of Faiz, I don't see how you could go from there to them being a real threat to multiple Riders without making it a "Smart Brain in name only".

Or better yet, just create a new villain from the ground up that is actually unique and actually serves as a counter to Heisei Riders as a whole.

The way Foundation X worked though, each time we got a different original villain tied to the organization and that villain was the story's main villain. W's tv show, the Eternal movie and Megamax all had different main villains with different goals but with ties to the Foundation. Foundation X is just a context to make their introduction simpler and tie them together.

One might argue there is potential for Foundation X, but at this point I have doubts they would ever be anything actually interesting. You think Riku Sanjo is gonna ever write anything more than shallow iconography? I don't think so.

Foundation X seemed to be tied to the producer though, not any individual writer, which is why they've seemingly disappeared now that Tsukada left the franchise, in spite of Riku Sanjo still writting for it.

 

[CannibalS]

I think Marvel's success shows that most people are in fact interested by a larger universe like that. Toei's other producers not embracing Foundation X nor replacing it with anything else to tie the series just shows that they're missing an important element there. It's one of the reasons that in the Rider fandom you often get people talking about crossovers not mattering.

The difference between the Marvel movies and Kamen Rider is that Marvel actually planned their thing out from the beginning, and the excitement didn't come from how "these are all in a continuity!" but "wow Captain America AND Iron Man sharing screentime!"
To say that Foundation X is an important element because they somehow justify crossovers completely misunderstands why people like crossovers in the first place. Also, why do we need to tie things in a diegetic continuity anyway?

Except thematic meaning is completely lost once you have villains out of their original context, and it'll depend entirely on the new text at that point. And, so far, we haven't seen returning villains treated with that care at all. Really, by definition, unless the villain entirely focuses on the dead or a similar concept, "bringing back" past villains from the dead just cheapens them. Smart Brain itself was left with a skeleton crew by the end of Faiz, I don't see how you could go from there to them being a real threat to multiple Riders without making it a "Smart Brain in name only".

Which was partially my point. Why even bring back Foundation X, when the interest level is basically the same?

The way Foundation X worked though, each time we got a different original villain tied to the organization and that villain was the story's main villain. W's tv show, the Eternal movie and Megamax all had different main villains with different goals but with ties to the Foundation. Foundation X is just a context to make their introduction simpler and tie them together.

Yeah, except the problem is, those villains were an utter bore. Utopia Dopant basically everyone agrees to be a needless addition, Eternal movie they were only as effective as Eternal was, and Megamax was based on pre-existing Rider content but was otherwise completely unmemorable.
And as I said again, Foundation X isn't needed to somehow "justify" crossovers, and neither do they have any value that is worth bringing them back for. You might as well use the Smart Brain in-name-only. Besides, its just as easy to make-up new ideas to bring Smart Brain or Grongi or whatever back as it is retroactively explaining how Foundation X was behind Wizard's rings.

 

[NeonZ]

The difference between the Marvel movies and Kamen Rider is that Marvel actually planned their thing out from the beginning, and the excitement didn't come from how "these are all in a continuity!" but "wow Captain America AND Iron Man sharing screentime!"

Every plan has to start at some point, and there's really no such thing as "planned out from the beginning" when you're dealing with large creative things. The recent leaked e-mails about Spider-Man, Antman's director leaving... there are several points that indicate that these plans are rather fluid.

Also, that just shows your (and Toei's, considering one of their comments about Avengers) misunderstanding of the Avenger's success. Obviously, no one aside from people who are already fans was cheering about them all being in a continuity, but, even to the average viewer, there's a sense that all these movies were leading into Avengers (and Avengers leading back to the individual movies and to itself), which is how Avengers managed to be much bigger than Spider-Man or X-Men, in spite of the individual heroes featured there having smaller box office before Avengers. And Avengers by itself gave boosts to all the heroes featured there in their later movies.

Toei's crossovers, for comparison, always just seem to have a "crossover" boost, like the first All Riders movie or the first All Riders x All Sentai movie. But, afterwards, they quickly fall since the gimmick isn't new anymore. They don't manage to create a loop like that due to everything, including the crossovers, being mostly standalone.

To say that Foundation X is an important element because they somehow justify crossovers completely misunderstands why people like crossovers in the first place. Also, why do we need to tie things in a diegetic continuity anyway?

See above. If you can create the sense that it's all part of a big series, even with different heroes, you achieve audience retention and growth. By splitting the crossovers and solo series like Toei does you create this feeling that the crossovers are meaningless unless you want the crossover gimmick itself, rather than seeing them as the real next part of the universe's and hero's stories.

Yeah, except the problem is, those villains were utterly lackluster.

That's irrelevant though. If Foundation X appeared again, we'd yet again see a new villain headlining them. You're just letting your dislike of W's final stretch completely cloud your judgment on this matter. W isn't even among my favorite Riders, but I can look past that.

Megamax was based on pre-existing Rider content but was otherwise completely unmemorable.

Megamax had the second best box office out of all Movie Wars so far and is usually seen as the best Movie Wars.

Besides, its just as easy to make-up new ideas to bring Smart Brain or Grongi or whatever back as it is retroactively explaining how Foundation X was behind Wizard's rings.

They wouldn't need to be retroactively behind them though. Of course, one could tie Wiseman's out of nowhere sci-fi research and artificial phantoms to them, but, even if you didn't do that, they still could be shown interested in rings, phantoms or lockseeds even if they weren't behind their creation, just like how they were interested and researched the medals.

And, regarding bringing back dead villains, it ties back into what I mentioned before. Just like Space Shocker or the last Dai-Shocker appearance, you'd just have a new self contained story without real ties to the other series. It really isn't a replacement for a running plotline through various things.

 

[kuroihikari]

The recent leaked e-mails about Spider-Man, Antman's director leaving... there are several points that indicate that these plans are rather fluid.

Actually, Edgar Wright left because he couldn't stick to the plan.

 

[NeonZ]

Actually, Edgar Wright left because he couldn't stick to the plan.

He couldn't "stick to the plan" because the plan changed after he was on board with the movie and working on it a for a while.

 

[kuroihikari]

Eh, I don't think the plan changed. Interviews with people who worked on Ant-Man said that his script was good, but failed to mesh with the MCU. That's means it was Edgar Wright who didn't stick to the plan.

How can everything else be out of sync except him?

And it's not like he quit early in the MCU. He quit in 2014, I think, when there have been around 8 MCU films already out on theaters.

 

[CannibalS]

Every plan has to start at some point, and there's really no such thing as "planned out from the beginning" when you're dealing with large creative things. The recent leaked e-mails about Spider-Man, Antman's director leaving... there are several points that indicate that these plans are rather fluid.

Also, that just shows your (and Toei's, considering one of their comments about Avengers) misunderstanding of the Avenger's success. Obviously, no one aside from people who are already fans was cheering about them all being in a continuity, but, even to the average viewer, there's a sense that all these movies were leading into Avengers (and Avengers leading back to the individual movies and to itself), which is how Avengers managed to be much bigger than Spider-Man or X-Men, in spite of the individual heroes featured there having smaller box office before Avengers. And Avengers by itself gave boosts to all the heroes featured there in their later movies.

Toei's crossovers, for comparison, always just seem to have a "crossover" boost, like the first All Riders movie or the first All Riders x All Sentai movie. But, afterwards, they quickly fall since the gimmick isn't new anymore. They don't manage to create a loop like that due to everything, including the crossovers, being mostly standalone.

See above. If you can create the sense that it's all part of a big series, even with different heroes, you achieve audience retention and growth. By splitting the crossovers and solo series like Toei does you create this feeling that the crossovers are meaningless unless you want the crossover gimmick itself, rather than seeing them as the real next part of the universe's and hero's stories.

They wouldn't need to be retroactively behind them though. Of course, one could tie Wiseman's out of nowhere sci-fi research and artificial phantoms to them, but, even if you didn't do that, they still could be shown interested in rings, phantoms or lockseeds even if they weren't behind their creation, just like how they were interested and researched the medals.

And, regarding bringing back dead villains, it ties back into what I mentioned before. Just like Space Shocker or the last Dai-Shocker appearance, you'd just have a new self contained story without real ties to the other series. It really isn't a replacement for a running plotline through various things.

The problem with that is completely misunderstanding how Kamen Rider works in the first place (even Showa Riders, the often toted example of "Rider Continuity", in reality pays very little attention to the aspect of canon), and greatly mistakes that "being part of a series" has to mean creating a diegetic continuity more obsessed with the background data than it does anything else. The problem with Rider crossovers isn't that they lack some unifying continuity, but just an overall lack of passion in general. The banality and transparent "gimmick" is the problem, and wouldn't be fixed by retconning Foundation X into everything to then only serve as the same thing as Shocker does in these movies except without any of the iconography to grab on to.
Neo-Heisei fans like Foundation X, but this is where I have to point out that for the average viewer, they most likely don't really know or care about Foundation X unless given a better reason than "they funded the bad guy of a show from 2 years ago!".

Sure, as stock-villains you need for Riders to punch, I suppose you could do worse than Foundation X, but let's not kid ourselves if we really think that and a diegetic continuity is what is gonna fix Kamen Rider crossovers, or that they are a good enough for the title of "Heisei-Shocker" just because they happened to be in Megamax.

 

[NeonZ]

Eh, I don't think the plan changed. Interviews with people who worked on Ant-Man said that his script was good, but failed to mesh with the MCU. That's means it was Edgar Wright who didn't stick to the plan.

Keep in mind that Edward had been working on the movie since 2006. The only reason there even was an Ant-man movie at that point before some bigger names (and one not even starring Pym) was due to his interest in the project.

Later in the week Wright told MTV News that there was no timetable for the film "Because that character isn't one of their biggest properties, it's not like a tentpole deadline ... It's more like me and [Marvel Studios president] Kevin Feige saying, 'Let's make a really good script.' We've always agreed on that — 'Let's make a good script that works, that's all about a great genre film, and that isn't necessarily relying on anything else'".[32] At the 2010 San Diego Comic-Con International, Wright said that Ant-Man would not fit in the chronology of The Avengers as "it didn’t work with the kind of the angle that we were going to do with the origin that I’d written".[33]

In May 2013, Feige indicated that the screenplay needed to be modified in order to fit into the universe because the project had been in development before the first Iron Man film.

It's clear that the "plan" changed to incorporate Ant-Man into the MCU and he couldn't work around that.

The problem with that is completely misunderstanding how Kamen Rider works in the first place (even Showa Riders, the often toted example of "Rider Continuity", in reality pays very little attention to the aspect of canon), and greatly mistakes that "being part of a series" has to mean creating a diegetic continuity more obsessed with the background data than it does anything else.

It's not background minutia, it's a matter of giving a sense of identity and continuity. To give a reason for fans of one series to stick with the show even after the end of that series. If we speak about Showa series in general, yes, it's true that not all of them really carried that, even some with returning supporting cast, but, at least up to Stronger, there's a pretty strong sense of identity (well, aside from Amazon, where they don't even mention previous Riders specifically, just that there had been previous Riders). Even X that had a seemingly completely unrelated premiere, soon had Destron name dropped and flashbacks to the previous Riders before we actually got a couple of them returning on screen.

Whether there are plotholes or the background minutia matches up perfectly is irrelevant. Even Marvel doesn't bother with
minutia like excuses for the absences of heroes from each other's solo adventures.

Rider crossovers isn't that they lack some unifying continuity, but just an overall lack of passion in general. The banality and transparent "gimmick" is the problem, and wouldn't be fixed by retconning Foundation X into everything to then only serve as the same thing as Shocker does in these movies except without any of the iconography to grab on to.

I'm not talking about just slapping Foundation X in Shocker's role though. If Foundation X took over Shocker's role in the spring movies and everything else stayed the same, that'd be utterly pointless.

Neo-Heisei fans like Foundation X, but this is where I have to point out that for the average viewer, they most likely don't really know or care about Foundation X unless given a better reason than "they funded the bad guy of a show from 2 years ago!".

It's not a matter of liking Foundation X, I don't think anyone would watch a movie 'for' Foundation X. Foundation X is highlighted in these arguments because they were used as world building tool in an attempt to give a sense of identity to the world. They're a tool that could make ties between series and movies feel relevant. That's what makes them standout, not this supposed "Shocker iconography" that you think they're ripping off. Of course, it was all limited to the work of one producer and now it has been dropped for more than two years.

They could still possibly return as standalone movie villains at some point, like how we randomly got Badan in Rider Taisen. They could even, in that movie, claim to be involved with other Rider villains in the last few years. Still, it'd be mostly pointless. The attempt to use them as a tool for world building clearly isn't there anymore. If we're just talking about a standalone movie villain, then, yes, I agree with you that there's no reason to go with them specifically, but that's not what I was talking about and that was never their appeal.

 

[CannibalS]

It's not background minutia, it's a matter of giving a sense of identity and continuity. To give a reason for fans of one series to stick with the show even after the end of that series.

That sounds terribly condescending to fans of Kamen Rider, if you mean to imply that the only reason people would stick with it is a continuity.

If we speak about Showa series in general, yes, it's true that not all of them really carried that, even some with returning supporting cast, but, at least up to Stronger, there's a pretty strong sense of identity (well, aside from Amazon, where they don't even mention previous Riders specifically, just that there had been previous Riders). Even X that had a seemingly completely unrelated premiere, soon had Destron name dropped and flashbacks to the previous Riders before we actually got a couple of them returning on screen.

I don't think you quite understand the fact that no, it wasn't the continuity that actually forms the significance or, heaven help me, "identity".
It was the simple matter of fact that Kamen Rider V3, the hero of the previous show, appeared and meets Kamen Rider X, not the handwaving associated with it.

I'm not talking about just slapping Foundation X in Shocker's role though. If Foundation X took over Shocker's role in the spring movies and everything else stayed the same, that'd be utterly pointless.

But this is exactly what bringing back Foundation X means. The only difference is that it puts everything in a sludgy canon logbook.

It's not a matter of liking Foundation X, I don't think anyone would watch a movie 'for' Foundation X.

No, the arguement of re-using Foundation X is completely based on whether or not one likes Foundation X. Otherwise, this debate won't exist in the first place.

Foundation X is highlighted in these arguments because they were used as world building tool in an attempt to give a sense of identity to the world. They're a tool that could make ties between series and movies feel relevant. That's what makes them standout, not this supposed "Shocker iconography" that you think they're ripping off. Of course, it was all limited to the work of one producer and now it has been dropped for more than two years.

They could still possibly return as standalone movie villains at some point, like how we randomly got Badan in Rider Taisen. They could even, in that movie, claim to be involved with other Rider villains in the last few years. Still, it'd be mostly pointless. The attempt to use them as a tool for world building clearly isn't there anymore. If we're just talking about a standalone movie villain, then, yes, I agree with you that there's no reason to go with them specifically, but that's not what I was talking about and that was never their appeal.

Here is the crutch of my problem with that thinking:

"World-building" in Heisei Rider is utterly and completely pointless, and ultimately does not change anything for the better (in fact, probably worse in many cases).
The show is not improved by thinking by an added weight of extra mental gymnastic over how to fit a villain's plot into a rigid and quite draconian master narrative, if that is what you are suggesting by "world-building". Especially over something that has nothing interesting to offer beyond nicking the end of Stronger. These shows are simply not made to have the Star Wars T-canon G-Canon thing in mind, and its all the better for it.