Ultraman the Movie(s)

[Angilasman]

History lesson!

Eiji Tsuburaya, the head of Toho's effects department, co-created Godzilla, Mothra, and the rest of those classic monsters and then established Tsuburaya Productions in the 1960s to bring the heat he was bringing to the big screen to the small screen. The sci fi/mystery show Ultra Q was a sensation, and the follow-up, Ultraman, was even bigger. A giant superhero who fights giant monsters, Ultraman became an icon, and a long-lasting franchise with dozens of shows and movies (and merchandise) running to the present day, where Tsuburaya produces a new Ultraman series for Japanese TV every year.

... but there's a parallel story, too. The story of trying to break Ultraman out internationally. While there has been some success on the overseas front in recent decades (China has been a growing market recently), the dream of a Hollywood production has been Tsuburaya's white whale since... uh, forever.

The original Ultraman was dubbed into English and had a successful run on US television in the 70s through the early '80s. Tsuburaya tried to capitalize on this initial success since the late '70s, when the success of Superman (1978) inspired them to try to get a Hollywood Ultraman movie made. PDidn't happen. What followed was two decades of the company focusing on failed projects. Most never got off the ground, and the few that did (a few VHS tapes, a 13 episode Australian series) came and went in the US leaving little impression. In the mid '90s Tsuburaya decided to shift their attention back to their bread-and-butter of Japanese TV. Ultraman Tiga came out in Japan in 1996, and since then Ultraman has been a consistent presence, in his own homeland at least!

Further complications came in the form of a Taiwanese company fraudulently claiming to have the international rights to the character. That also happened in 1996, and since then Tsuburaya was embroiled in legal battles that sucked at their time and resources, deprived them of overseas licensing revenue, and stymied any plans for international expansion until 2018, when Tsuburaya won the definitive court case asserting their ownership of Ultraman. Since then they've been busy licensing - for instance, you can buy Ultraman blu-rays and toys at your local Walmart! Certainly a far cry from my childhood of mailing off for bootleg tapes and imported toys!

But the two most ambitious projects they have in store? Ultraman is going to the movies baby!

A new, live action Japanese feature film from the creative team behind Shin Godzilla (Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi), Shin Ultraman, will come out in Japan sometime this year! It's a reboot of the original series and international releases are yet to be announced. Here's the teaser!



But that's not all! Finally, the long-promised, semi-mythical Hollywood Ultraman movie is finally coming, and it takes an unexpected form: an animated film from the creator of Kubo and the Two Strings, a coproduction between Tsuburaya, Netflix and ILM!

Baseball superstar Ken Sato returns to his home country of Japan to pick up the mantle of Earth-defending superhero Ultraman, but quickly finds more than he bargained for when he’s forced to raise the offspring of his greatest foe, a newborn Kaiju. Struggling to balance the roles of teammate and new father, Ken must confront his own ego, his estranged father, and the conniving Kaiju Defense Force to rise up and discover what it truly means to be Ultraman.

https://en.tsuburaya-prod.co.jp/news/2629

Oh, what a long, strange trip it's been.

[Vakanai]

I'm a long time Godzilla and King Kong fan, have been enjoying Gamera for well over a decade now, and am just generally a big giant monster/kaiju fan (and giant mecha fan to boot!), but I've only been able to get into the Ultraman franchise very recently thanks to the new Mill Creek blu-ray releases (haven't seen them all yet, but I have copies of all, and preordered more just last night!)(so far I've watched Ultra Q, Ultraman, Orb, Geed, a couple episodes of X, and the first disc of Ultraseven). It's definitely amazing to finally be getting this franchise over here at long last. And as a huge fan of Shin Godzilla, I'm definitely eagerly anticipating Shin Ultraman!

I'm kind of disinterested in the Netflix animated movie though - I've never watched Kubo and the Two Strings though, to be fair.

[Angilasman]

^ it wasn't my first choice either... but with the talent involved, the synopsis keying in on some key themes of the franchise, and the fact that being animated means it won't necessarily have to conform to American superhero movie formulas... I'm pretty optimistic.

[Vakanai]

^ it wasn't my first choice either... but with the talent involved, the synopsis keying in on some key themes of the franchise, and the fact that being animated means it won't necessarily have to conform to American superhero movie formulas... I'm pretty optimistic.

Well, it's not that it's not my first choice, just that there's nothing here for me to grab on to. It's not based on an existing Ultraman, and I've not seen Kubo to guess at the style or tone or quality this might be. Whereas with Shin Ultraman it's a reboot of the first series, which I've now seen, by the people who made Shin Godzilla, which I've seen, so it's easy to be hyped for it versus the animated one. But a teaser trailer can always get me hyped. I'm not against it at all, just disinterested until further news.

[Angilasman]

^ The visual seems to indicate that this'll be based on the original Ultraman - in looks, at least. Both this and Shin seem to essentially be using the original design, which is fine by me, as I think the original Ultraman is close to perfect in terms of design.

One of the great things about Ultraman is that each time you do it you rebuild it from the ground up, emphasizing certain core concepts but with new characters, different concepts, etc. Even though Shin Ultraman is based on the original and features the SSSP I don't think the characters will correspond to the original crew.

[Vakanai]

^ The visual seems to indicate that this'll be based on the original Ultraman - in looks, at least. Both this and Shin seem to essentially be using the original design, which is fine by me, as I think the original Ultraman is close to perfect in terms of design.

One of the great things about Ultraman is that each time you do it you rebuild it from the ground up, emphasizing certain core concepts but with new characters, different concepts, etc. Even though Shin Ultraman is based on the original and features the SSSP I don't think the characters will correspond to the original crew.

I meant more characters than design - there hasn't been an Ultraman design yet that I've disliked. Just that this isn't the guy from the original - but then, neither it Orb or Geed or X or Seven. So you're right that every series rebuilds from the ground up - but this means it's hard to get excited until you get a first look of any particular Ultraman concept before hand. Like I said, I'm not talking smack about this animated movie at all - odds are that it'll be good. Just that I can't get excited for it until more news or a teaser drops. It's too much of an unknown for anything other than cautious optimism.