Shin Ultraman (2023)

directed by Shinji Higuchi

Japan

118 minutes

5 stars out of 5

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I am going to apologize up front because I wrote this on Wednesday night, as soon as I got back from seeing this movie, and my thoughts about it were (and still are) in nothing even remotely resembling a coherent order. I usually do try to have a framework to my reviews, to make one paragraph segue into another, to relate topics to each other, etc. I can't do that right now. So I'm just going to talk about a lot of separate things that hit me in this very, very, very good movie.

There is something about the first time Ultraman ("Ripiah", here) does his now-very-famous Specium Beam pose that is sticking with me. It's showy, it's deliberate. He does it slowly like he wants everyone watching to see exactly what he's doing. He never performs the beam this way in the original series. While a concrete explanation for why he does it this way in the movie may not exist - beyond simply that the director knew the audience would eat it up - a couple of possibilities stuck in my mind. The first is what I believe to be the most likely, and it's that Ultraman is doing this for the first time. He just arrived on Earth basically seconds ago and we don't know where he's been before this, we don't know if he's been in combat at all, if he's ever used this specific attack. He could be trying out an entirely new skill. The second explanation is that he's doing it so slowly because he knows his next host is out there somewhere; he knows someone important is watching so he's demonstrating what that someone is going to eventually do alongside him. Seeing as Kaminaga's partnering with Ultraman was an accident that neither of them foresaw, I don't think this is particularly likely, but I do enjoy thinking about it. Either way, that first beam attack is an incredible moment. I love it.

This is not an especially kaiju-heavy film; mostly it focuses on alien intrusions and meddling with humankind. It stuffs two entirely separate alien invasion plans (three, if you count what Zōffy was doing) into one movie. These alien plots brought something into Shin Ultraman that I was not expecting, and that's the kind of shamelessly fun espionage-and-intrigue subplots that the original Ultra series so often had. I kept myself deliberately in the dark about as much of this movie as I possibly could, so I had no idea what to expect, but I had in mind something a little bit more serious and dark, and while this movie is serious and dark, Zarab's and Mefilas' attempts at overtaking the Earth are... they're goofy. Zarab wears a trenchcoat and a fedora, like in the original. Mefilas is so smarmy and ingratiates himself so easily with humanity's elites that it's amusing how hatable he is. These are fun, funny things. The original series was very, very fond of random spy stuff and weird INTERPOL doings, that kind of thing was always popping up, but I didn't expect to see it here. I absolutely love the mixture of humor into moments of crisis.

I just... I can't pack everything I want to say into this! This series means so much to me and I just watched a movie that honors what it means in such a deep way.

While in the '66 Ultraman we saw much more of Hayata's perspective as a human, this movie flips it the other way. Ultraman himself is a much stronger presence than his human side - in fact, his human side has essentially been killed, and while, as always, as always, he is both, human and Ultra, is is Ripiah piloting the body. Ripiah is who everyone is talking to when they talk to Kaminaga's body. Takumi Saitoh puts in such a good performance here, fleshing out this role and conveying a sense of outsiderness but also of deep care - the way he is initially cold to the people around him because he just doesn't know what being a human is, but also the way, immediately after that awkward interaction with his new coworkers, he goes to the library and reads up on human nature. He cares about us from day one. He puts in the effort to learn about us. The "buddy"s are genuine, once he learns how to use them.

I think, personally, the backbone of the Ultra series has always been persistence. This is the core of why Ultraman fights for humanity in this movie. In the end he isn't even really fighting aliens or kaiju - he dispatches all of them easily enough (when he sliced Zarab in half somebody in the back of the theater hooted). In the end he's fighting his own kind. He's fighting Zōffy. Zōffy isn't malicious towards humanity but he doesn't see the value in it like Ripiah does - but he can be made to, and this is another important point: There always has to be somebody to say wait a minute, somebody to stay their hand and stand up. The Ultra series isn't even about a fight in terms of two opponents, on even ground, who desire destruction for the same reasons. It's about the reasons why each side fights, the thought process behind it, and how that thought process might be changed, how peace might be achieved through understanding. I mean, most of the time. Sometimes peace is achieved through slicing stuff into little pieces, but you know what I mean. I also think that the fact that Zōffy was able to be swayed is a mark of how the Land of Light is a more advanced civilization than ours.

And there's something really, really interesting that this movie does that the series never explicitly comes out and does. This is, I'm guessing, only possible because it's a stand-alone movie and not a series that has to worry about how to go on after doing something that could functionally wreck the need for a continuing storyline. This is when Ultraman gives humanity the secrets behind Beta Capsule technology. The relationship between Ultras and humanity - specifically, how Ultras can protect humanity and involve themselves with us without "interfering" - is something that a lot of spinoff media (ask me about Mystery of Ultraseven and how much I hated the first issue when you have two hours to spare) fails to capture, but this movie captures it pretty much perfectly. Ultraman has always wanted humanity to grow into its own; he wants to see us learn how to fend for ourselves, but again, because of the nature of a series he was never really able to say "here is a superweapon please be careful with it". There is in fact so much crammed into this movie that I feel like it could be an entire series. Not a 51-episode thing like they used to be, but just a short miniseries that could tastefully expand upon the themes of the original without having to worry about length. Anyway, like I keep saying, I haven't digested the whole plot into my brain yet. I just know that the way Ultraman interacts with humanity as a whole here is a big part of why I was so into this film.

I actually love the way CG was used here. I of course am a dedicated suit acting fan but the design that went into each individual kaiju (again, there's not as many as you think!) drew my attention. I love the fact that Shin Gomess is made to look like Shin Godzilla as a tribute to the way the Gomess suit in the series was a reused Godzilla suit. I thought Neronga was absolutely beautiful, I loved how there were so many individual parts to him that moved and shivered when he did. Gabora was great too, and again, has facial similarities to Neronga as a tribute to them being the same suit. And my god, Zarab! You can't tell from still images, but he's hollow inside, like the rotating mask illusion! While I do love the original Zarab suit (and the overall design, apart from being hollow, is remarkably unchanged), this is something that could probably only be achieved through CGI. And I remember as soon as I saw posters and trailers for this film I thought that the design of Ultraman himself was really something else. It feels true to the original design both in terms of Tohl Narita's sketch for it and in terms of how the suit actually ended up looking. When Asami sees him for the first time she calls him beautiful and I have to say I was thinking the exact same thing too.

And oh. My. God. Zetton. I'm dedicating an entire paragraph to Shin Zetton because I thought everything about it was just incredible. The way it assembles itself outwards from a central point, the unsettling symmetry of it, how alien it looked but how you can instantly still tell it's Zetton from the antenna. The sheer, unbelievable scale of it when Ultraman flies right up to it and you can see how tiny he is in comparison. And back on Earth, those shots of it just barely visible in the sky, cruciform, hanging over the world like the ticking time bomb it was. I love everything about Shin Zetton conceptually and in terms of aesthetic.

I might come back and add more to this review plotwise once I've lived with it a little because at the moment I'm not thinking too deeply about the plot in specific (besides just "IT WAS INCREDIBLE I LOVED IT") but I want to express that this movie is FUN. I felt like I could barely take in everything at once. I would urge you all to see it on the big screen, but unfortunately it was only in theaters for two nights, so I'll urge you instead to wait until you can get a Blu-Ray or DVD and watch it on the biggest screen available to you. The battles are just incredibly good, pure sci-fi madness, everything is pitch-perfect. I have nothing whatsoever against the use of CGI for a traditionally suit-acted role because I know that care was still put into bringing this Ultraman to the screen, just like always. The fact that they brought Bin Furuya back for the mo-cap should dispel any doubts about that. But overall this was just such a pure good experience. If the rumors about a Shin Jack and Shin Seven are true, I will be in the theater for them too, should they grace our shores.