Satria Dewa: Gatotkaca

When I sat down to watch the 2022 Indonesian action movie "Satria Dewa: Gatotkaca", here late in 2022, it was without ever having heard about the movie. But given my fascinatio and love of the Asian cinema, of course I needed no persuasion to sit down and give this movie a chance.

And I will say that "Satria Dewa: Gatotkaca" was actually entertaining enough, and writers Rahabi Mandra, Hanung Bramantyo and Tesadesrada Ryza did put together a good enough script and storyline here. However, I don't feel that the movie was really outstanding as per se, and there are far better Indonesian action movies out there. But it was entertaining enough, though I personally don't understand why they opted to turn the movie into a strange hybrid mix of superhero movie and "Mortal Kombat" towards the end, it was a rather strange change of direction for the overall feel of the movie.

I was, for the majority of the actors and actresses on the cast list, not familiar with the talents that starred in "Satria Dewa: Gatotkaca". In fact, the only familiar face to me here was Yayan Ruhian (playing Beceng), and he is always a nice addition to any movie.

Something that worked well in favor of director Hanung Bramantyo's movie was the action sequences and the special effects. There was quite a lot of action in the movie, and it was nicely choreographed and executed on the screen, which added a lot of enjoyment to the movie. And the special effects were quite surprisingly good for an Indonesian movie.

While "Satria Dewa: Gatotkaca" was entertaining enough, it is hardly a movie that I will ever return to watch a second time though.

My rating of "Satria Dewa: Gatotkaca" lands on a five out of ten stars.

The concept of this superhero universe is promising, combining ancient Javanese mythology into modern society. This potential concept was blown away by rushing the stories, mediocre directing, unnecessary characters, and awfully product placement.

The writers put too many things in the storyline resulting in a fast-paced and no emotional attachment story. I can't feel/empathize with the character's emotions and feelings. Sometimes relationships among characters appear out of nowhere, like the romantic feelings between the main character. This movie should focus more on how Yuda struggles to live his life while taking care of his mother and finding his true self-identity. Leave the in-universe world-building later on in other films.

As a new genre for Hanung Bramantyo as the director (and Indonesia's film industry), it is understandable that he is still not used to directing this genre. But he should be able to give a better performance than this.

The second most annoying part of this movie is two characters are really unnecessary, Quinn and Gege. They don't serve any important role, they don't contribute anything to the plot, and their dialogues are only saying something outloud and most of the time not related to the context of the scene. An important note is maybe Gege's character like that could be justified because he is a child. If these two characters were removed from the movie I'm sure nothing would be affected.

The last problem for me with this movie is how they place advertisements. The majority of the food and drink product placement is ok, not good, but in some ways is acceptable. On the other hand, the online marketplace advertisement is so weird. Why would someone create a dedicated scene with a completely unknown character who throws dirty/NSFW jokes just to advertise some online marketplace? This scene and the jokes made me cringe at best.

There is also a questionable plot hole in this movie regarding how Yuda's friends came to the final battlefield. But maybe it can be explained later.

In conclusion, this movie, Satria Dewa: Gatot Kaca needs to fix a lot of things to be able called a good/decent movie. Regardless of all the flaws in this movie I still appreciate the cast and the crews who work on this movie, they were all brave to take the challenge of creating a movie with a genre that is not popular enough in Indonesia's film industry. I also encourage anyone who reads this review to give this movie a chance and watch it in the cinema to support our local movie industry. I hope Satria Dewa Studio take lessons from their first movie, good job!

Terrible writing, mediocre acting, cringe dialogue, and too much ugly advertisements.

There is so much plot holes and unexplained things through out the film. No character development at all. I don't feel any emotional attachment to any characters. There's also two useless character that should be just thrown off.

The dialog is boring as h*ll and filled with lots of long expositions. Not follow "show don't tell" rule at all. And don't get me started on the advertisements! Ugh, I understand they need a lot of money to produce a movie, it's normal. But how they show us the advertisements is like an insult to viewers.

I'm glad Hanung Bramantyo (director and writer of this film) not directing Gundala like what it originally planned. Gundala ends up in better hands and not turning like this film.

Cringey, lame and disconnected script, very lame jokes (I couldn't believe they could make Rigen and Butet, very funny comedians, to sound lame and weird), cheap and obnoxious advertisements and product placements all over, weird lighting and angles and continuities, storyline and acting like a low budget sinetron (telenovela), out of place and unnecessary characters (Quinn is annoying as hell), over the top but weird action scenes, awkward editing, and the list goes on.

I couldn't even force myself to finish watching this movie (I'm writing this as the video is playing, over half way through the movie). Was actually looking forward to see a good movie in this topic and story, instead I ended up cursing and being confused more and more as the movie plays.

All in all, a total disappointment.

To those who give 10/10 stars, I can only assume you either work with the production team (and/or sponsors) or are very supportive of someone you know that's related to them.

The movie starts out okay, then slowly hitting rock bottom in terms of film quality. I wish the Quinn character would just fall from that bridge and plummet down to her agonizing death. No character development whatsoever. Cringe dialogue throughout the movie and for God sake, the product placement ruins the experience for me. The CG is okay, I only like the last part of the whole movie, when gatot fights beceng in their final super hero forms. That was the only redeeming quality in the whole movie. I'm surprised why hanung chose to have the product placement in his first superhero movie. It's just so unecessary and ruins the film.