Shin Ultraman

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Only three showings in the greater Philadelphia area both today and tomorrow, and all at night, a problem since I never leave home after dark. I’ll wait for either a home video release or for the film to end up on a streaming service.

[Donald]

Yep. That was a movie. It had Ultraman in it. Yep.

[Kirby101]

Just got back. Wonderful homage to the show. It went into politics like Shin Godzilla, just not as seriously.

[Angilasman]

Took the entire original series, condensed it into two hours, kept every whimsical thing from the show yet took it all extremely seriously and remembered to have fun the entire time.

Insane that this movie exists. Have to see it again to fully absorb it all.

[Donald]

Maybe I focused too much on the "Shin" prefix. Shin Godzilla was a completely different take on Godzilla that was interesting to watch even if I didn't really like their take on it.

As mentioned, Ultraman largely recapped the series but left out half the fun.

spoilers:

They got rid of the Science Patrol with their gadgets, ships, and snappy uniforms, and replaced them with bored bureaucrats. The special effects are weird combination of modern and retro 1960's effects that fell flat most of the time. The redesigns of monsters looked good but there wasn't enough of them of course. It looked like they were going to give a origin and reason for the Kaiju existing but then the just let it go with 'Mother Nature's revenge". Multiple villains didn't help the flow of the story, I would have liked it better if they just used Mefilas, who was really well acted in human form. The ending with Zoffy was just odd. It gave the humans a win after being helpless vs aliens for the whole movie, but the set up and reasoning didn't land for me.

end of spoilers

Hopefully the new Japanese Godzilla movies will get on the right track.

[Adekis]

Just saw the movie last night.
It was really fun and I definitely liked it, but it's easy to see where folks who were looking forward to something tonally more like Shin Godzilla found Shin Ultraman to be somewhat lacking. Shin Godzilla feels indebted to the original only in broader concepts, and it's really more like "A Godzilla movie made to engage with the concerns and fears of 2016," whereas Shin Ultraman is more like... "The original Ultraman show, but if it happened to be made in 2019."

But that's not to say I didn't like it. Like, to contrast, after I saw The Green Knight, my immediate impulse was to reread the end of the romance, but I did it because, weird as it might be to say about a 700 year old text... I thought the book was better, and I thought the movie totally inverted its themes. Whereas after I saw Shin Ultraman, my immediate impulse was to rewatch several episodes from the show which directly influenced the film, but I did it because I honestly kind of felt like the film was already part of the original show, in some ways.

On the other hand, I also kind of think it's easy to understate how much the film changes. Instead of a (to be honest, somewhat implausible) crack team of ace pilots and weapon experts who are also goofballs, the film's SSSP owes more to Rando Yaguchi's team of heretic academics and outsider geeks from Shin Godzilla, but with more direct, hands-on approach to directing the action, much like Yaguchi himself in Shin Godzilla's final action scene. It's a pretty striking change. Plenty of other major changes pervade this version of the "series", but in the interest of spoiler warnings, I guess I'll leave it at that.

[Angilasman]

Saw both the sub and dub and my final verdict: this movie is excellent. I love how it takes the weirdest, most whimsical bits of the original and doesn't change them at all, and it takes it all very seriously. It's also very funny, but the humor is never at the expense of undercutting the gravity, the danger of the situation. The closest it comes to that Marvel snark (for lack of a better term) is the argument at the beginning about Neronga's powers not making sense, which is something fans have always discussed but it fits well in that situation.

Missed some of the tactile pleasure of the classic practical effects, but overall I loved the aesthetic. A great argument against realism being the ultimate aim of special effects.

I didn't mind that the SSSP was a more realistic agency without the special weapons and vehicles because, ultimately, the important thing is they investigate and solve problems, with Ultraman as a team member and not all-out savior. That's the core of Ultraman and it's the core of this movie.

[AdamFTF]

I wrote my reaction to the movie here: https://tinyurl.com/sbh8zr25 It's not really a review though, because I found my emotions were a little too wrapped up in this one to do a real critical analysis.
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(Hope you don't mind a little bit of a shameless blog plug here).

[Angilasman]

For those who missed the screenings: Blu-ray and DVD release (and, presumably, digital venues as well) in June!

Loved it even more than Shin Godzilla. Great tribute to the original, but also a perfect introduction to newbies. Firmly in my top ten kaiju movies of all time!

[Angilasman]

Update in regards to this film's rather sorry home video release here in North America:

The initial US DVD and Blu-rays by Cleopatra Entertainment have been plagued with issues. The second round of replacement discs has apparently fixed the tiling video and, barring a few issues, has mostly fixed the subtitles. Unless you're ordering directly from the company who knows if you'll get a bad disc or not at this point.

Thankfully, Canadian company Raven Banner is also putting out the film on Blu-ray this December! They're advertising that their release will have proper subs, better picture quality, special features (the US release was barebones), fancy packaging, and it's a region free disc!



https://ravenbanner.store/products/s...traman-blu-ray