Director Eddie Lebron is essentially the definition of the modern independent filmmaker. He’s a man who is a fanboy at heart who is currently devoting himself to making video game adaptations of his favorite video games that he would want to see. What began as a thirty minute fan film turned in to a ninety minute feature length film and he has devoted most of his time to garnering donations. Not for himself. Not for his merchandise, but for the film’s benefit. And as such he’s screened the film for free on the basis that he could fund his next project and inevitably be discovered. Basically he’s riding on a hope and skill, and he really should be given a fair shot at a Hollywood film.
“Megaman” is set in the year 20XX, where two brilliant scientists Dr. Wily and Dr. Light have engineered a series of revolutionary intelligent cyborgs they call Robot Masters. Dr. Light is leading the charge in promoting the latest projects he deems beneficial to mankind that will save humanity as we know it. Dr. Wily unfortunately is an envious and immensely narcissistic rival who believes they should not only promote the Robot Masters to convey to the world their superior genius, but that the Robot Masters should be use to run civilization and not benefit it. The dichotomy and boiled tension between the two inevitably leads to a confrontation where Light releases Wily of his duties due to the past mistakes with their first robot master Blues.
With the creation of pure evil, there is the creation of good as Light conceives the male cyborg Rock, an optimistic young male whose world view adds a ray of sunshine in Light and his sister Rolls life. When Wily kidnaps the Robot Masters and corrupts them transforming them in to his own army, it’s up to Rock to take on the guise of Megaman and battle his brothers. One of the highlights behind Lebron’s fan film are the performances, and beyond the utter enthusiasm displayed behind this genre offering, the collective cast provide some truly charming performances particularly with Jun Naito and Jeanie Tsie, both of whom are fantastic as Rock and Roll (Tsie is particularly adorable in her charismatic performance as the wide eyed Roll), the two robots still tasked with learning about life and mull over the concepts of life, death, and violence between each other.
This is when Tsie and Naito are able to display their keen sense of humanism as their ponderings on issues involving their war make for thought provoking fodder that they pull off well. The fine touch is Sung Mo Cho as the enigmatic Proto Man, a character whose intentions remain vague until the very end, and actor Cho gives the character a real gloss that makes him dazzling on-screen hero or not. Where director Lebron shines is in his ability to conceive an epic futuristic world around what little resources he has and he’s capable of creating some truly sweeping and exciting battle sequence out of sharp special effects, and while Megaman looks incredible the Robot Masters are about as closely tied to their counterparts as humanly possible.
Sure, “Megaman” is not a big budget summer blockbuster, but it’s teeming with ambition and respect for the source material with a director who has enough skill and craft to construct a respectable and entertaining Megaman adaptation that deserves to be watched by gamers. Much more than a fan film, “Megaman” is an ambitious and enthusiastic small budget adaptation of one of the most legendary video game icons of all time and director Eddie Lebron teamed with pure cinematic craft and a top notch cast provides fan with an entertaining science fiction film that will surely please open minded and experimental viewers. It deserves to become a cult classic as far as I’m concerned.