Good superhero movies aren’t gone, you just need to know where to look

polygon.com:

It’s no secret that superhero movies are in a bit of a rut. Both Marvel and DC have had difficult years critically and at the box office, with market oversaturation and stinkers like Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumaniaand Shazam! Fury of the Godssouring audience excitement for massive superhero entertainment.

But two new movies, Hideaki Anno’s Shin Kamen Rider and Madonne Ashwin’s Maaveeran, exemplify the best of the genre, and you can stream both of them on Prime Video right now. They bring different versions of what makes superhero cinema appealing, and they’re two more helpful reminders that there’s a world of satisfying cinema beyond Hollywood blockbusters.

Shin Kamen Rider is the latest in Anno’s Shin Japan Heroes Universe project, the result of the Neon Genesis Evangelioncreator being handed the keys to some of Japan’s biggest science fiction franchises. His thematic series started with the masterpiece Shin Godzilla, continuing with Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time and Shin Ultraman, and now Shin Kamen Rider, an adaptation of the 1970s tokusatsu TV program that spawned a massive multimedia franchise active from the 1970s to the 1990s.

While perhaps not as searing in its societal critique as Shin Godzilla, Shin Kamen Rider is an absolute jetblast of pure glee. In the movie, an evil organization called SHOCKER is turning people into “Augs,” which are synthetic animal hybrids. Our hero (Sosuke Ikematsu) becomes the Kamen Rider after being transformed into a human-grasshopper hybrid, and he decides to take down the nefarious group, along with a former SHOCKER member.

Shin Kamen Rider encompasses exactly what can make superhero cinema so appealing to watch: a fantastical setting with dizzying visuals, great fights,