Just like SHTZ, Showa vs Heisei had a lot of cool parts in it (or, at least parts that would have been good if the movie had good directing, writing, and choreography), but the movie overall is just poor. The older Riders coming back was great, and they did have interesting parts in them; but it was rarely compelling. Add that to the pedestrian fight scenes, horrible voice replacements, nonsense continuity, and really slow pace; it makes me wish yet again that different people were in charge of this movie series.
I just can't see how you can compare this to SHTZ and fail to notice the immensely improved directing and fights Shibasaki had here compared to Kaneda's in the previous movies. Past heroes actually use special attacks in battles fairly often, and they're actually updated with modern effects too. Screen time is used to actually show the heroes fighting, rather than just standing around with music beats attempting to make it seem a big event while nothing happens...
The action and effects weren't just poor and lazy attempts to recreate old effects, but often new ideas that manage to complete fit in. Rider 1's transformation before the final battle represents a lot of what I enjoyed of Shibasaki's directing choices here. He wasn't just recreating old stuff. The recreation of Rider 1's transformation was in the beginning of the movie, while the one at the end, aside from the poses, was completely original - while at the same time homaging various aspects of his history, from the scars that Hongo had in the Ishinomori manga to the original suit from the tv show briefly being shown before Rider 1 powers up completely into his final design. Similar ideas can also be seen in various other elements through the movie, like Stronger's Electro Fire in his battle against Kabuto being a wave rather than just a straight line, Riderman using his Machinegun Arm for the first time or X's updated X-Kick, which seemed even better than the Megamax version to me. Even Gaim uses the closed lockseeds in new ways that were never shown on tv, but just work when you look at them on screen here.
Even if you dislike the story, I just can't see how you can put the action and direction here on the same level as the SHT movies. Now, it's true that that doesn't apply to everyone. Riders like Kuuga, Ryuki and Blade only had fairly mediocre appearances - not showing up before the final battles, and there only performing standard finishers without any new flair, but even that's a step up from the previous SHT movies where often there were characters that got to do nothing besides appearing as suits punching grunts in the background.
And of course, alongside Sakamoto, Riku Sanjo should have been in charge of any Kamen Rider crossovers; his Double-verse was at the very least promising and straightforward, but the decision to go back to the incomprehensible nonsensical Decade universe (or even worse, a weird mix of original Heisei and Decade).
There was never a "Riku Sanjo's Double-verse". The W->Fourze continuity was driven by the producer, Tsukada, which is why it continued into Fourze in the first place, in spite of Sanjo only being a secondary writer there. Fourze itself also included the Showa Riders and Heisei Riders there though, by giving them cameos in its second episode, and later the Showa Riders' appearance in Megamax. However, Tsukada left the franchise to helm a non-toku show, and it pretty much killed that for now.
And these movies have little to do with "continuing the Decade verse". In spite of Decade having a big role in the first SHT and now KRT, the world in these crossover movies has nothing to do with the AU worlds Decade visited in his own show. They even avoid mentioning alternate worlds explicitly, like how the info books for Super Hero Taisen mention that Riders and Super Sentai are from different worlds, and you can even see dimensional walls being crossed, but they never mention the different worlds explicitly on screen after Narutaki's introduction to the Go-Busters.
Is it at least on par with All Riders? 'Cause that was the good kind of bad.
At least to me, Kamen Rider Taisen is much better than All Riders vs Dai-Shocker.
Well, thinking about it, the only Rider that really got a better representation in All Riders was Black RX, since he got to use his multiple forms there and had his original actor voicing him. He still has one big scene here though, but it's a team up, not solo battle, and with a replacement voice actor.
