Satria Dewa: Gatotkaca

Plenty of sci-fi/fantasy flicks revolve around finding THE ONE of some prophecy who will save the world from ...whatever. Usually it's an average young guy (occasionally a kid or young woman) who seems an unlikely, underqualified wearer of that lofty mantel. Keanu Reeves in the Matrix was probably the most famous. Yuda, the hero of this iteration of the concept, can only claim to be the most... recent.

The movie runs too long for what it delivers. It takes almost half of its two hours just to get the kid started. Then another half hour of figuring out who's who on both sides of this eternal conflict. Waaaay too much exposition for the amount of action they manage to stage; overcrowded with past and present characters involved in this existential struggle. And when the big CGI-laden fights finally begin, they're mostly in dim lighting with misty overlays, and cut so jerkily that it's hard to appreciate whatever physical skills the players may be deploying.

All of this for the first installment of an intended series. No spoiler in saying the good guys win this battle, but it's not the end of the war. The Yuda character might play well in a tighter package, but the the producers have to clean house on writing, directing and editing to make the sequel(s) worth following.

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.

Watching the action scene makes me headache theres too much cut to cut clip, i cant focus and its hard to figure out what are they doing.

I know, that particular way of editing is to help the action scene to cover bad movement etc but in my opinion they were doing it too much.

I dont know who's responsible for this, but for a superhero movie i think the action part is one of the biggest factor people would watch.

And i think they could've done much better for the choreography, i thought this character would have a superstrength kinda like power, that the fight will full with breaking walls and stuff intead of just ordinary martial art fighting, i think the choregrapher should've work more on the imagination of the power of the superhero, and not just a choreofighting.

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.

Might be a good start for a studio name satria dewa, but please fix this movie, i dont have a problem with the visual effect, the problem is with the music and the story, the story was uninteresting and the music was so dramatic. When will indonesian superhero movie will be good? What im saying this movie isn't bad or good, its like low average.