Worth: $15.00
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Cast:
Masami Nagasawa, Takumi Saitoh, Nishijima Hidetoshi
Intro:
… for those keyed into its off-kilter, free-wheeling energy, it’s an embarrassment of riches.
Within cinema’s decades-long preoccupation with geek culture, our current juncture can be characterised by its increasingly self-reflexive attempts to pre-empt audience fatigue. Each new reboot and sequel is a referendum on its own existence, a commentary on the broader landscape, or a submission to the yawning abyss of the multiverse.
While Ultraman may be an unfamiliar icon to western audiences, the latest incarnation of the extra-terrestrial, kaiju-brawling behemoth in Shin Ultraman is blissfully unconcerned with questions of legacy and its own importance, providing a reasonably accessible entry point for newcomers.
The film quickly introduces audiences to the SSSP (aka the S-Class Species Suppression Protocol), a small government agency captained by Tamura Kimio (Nishijima Hidetoshi, Drive My Car) dedicated to suppressing the threat of dormant, deeply unfriendly monsters awakened by environmental destruction. The arrival of a superpowered humanoid alien (whom the team christens ‘Ultraman’) helps the SSSP turn the tide, but his presence quickly becomes the catalyst for interplanetary conflict.
It can be difficult to keep pace with the film’s dazzling synthesis of disparate genres, tones, and plotlines cribbed directly from the original 1966 series. When the existential threat posed by Ultraman’s technology sends world governments clamouring to gain the upper hand, the thinly-veiled disaster movie of its opening shifts into a political thriller. But Oppenheimer this is not; there are plenty of giddy B-movie detours to go round before the film reaches its high-stakes superhero finale, including a cheeky homage to Attack of the 50 Foot Woman.
The film’s most surprising delights come into focus when it stays down to earth, particularly when Ultraman is revealed as the alias of SSSP agent Shinji (Takumi Saitoh). Hiroko (Masami Nagasawa), the team’s latest recruit, is arguably the film’s driving character; where Shinji is deadpan and evasive, Hiroko is an irrepressible go-getter with a neurotic streak. Both lend an off-kilter chemistry to their (not strictly) professional frisson, mirroring Clark Kent and Lois Lane if both were devastatingly lacking in social finesse.
Director Shinji Higuchi and writer-producer Hideaki Anno – the long-time friends and collaborators of Neon Genesis Evangelion renown – approach this adaptation with a fanboy reverence tempered by liberal artistic license. The low-budget tokusatsu series that introduced Ultraman is updated just enough to fit a modern-day setting, while the tone, score, and chintzy optical visual effects remain faithfully intact. It’s a throwback of the highest order, revelling in old-school delights without condescending to them, but may require adjustment for those used to a sleeker, streamlined sci-fi. Ultraman and his numerous galactic nemeses wrestle with the lumbering physicality of men in oversized suits, and key moments of spectacle splinter into eye-shredding bursts of colour, channelling the retro-inspired abstractions of Ang Lee’s Hulk. It’s a thrilling reminder that digital effects harbour a limitless potential once untethered from the demands of realism.
Shin Ultraman’s biggest overhaul from the classic series is arguably its hyperdynamic camerawork (courtesy of dual cinematographers Osamu Ichikawa and Keizô Suzuki), which gleefully invigorates both set pieces and dialogue scenes alike. Goofy wide angles and unpredictable sight gags land with rapid-fire zeal, capturing the playful camp of its progenitor. It’s not unusual to be greeted with grainy iPhone footage in numerous tight shots where a cinema camera would struggle to fit.
While the Hollywood blockbuster canon continues to tunnel inwards with no end in sight, Shin Ultraman (and its siblings Shin Godzilla and Shin Kamen Rider) reinvents this familiar property by leaning into the rich expanse of worlds, ideas, and imagery gestured at – if not always reached – by quality genre pulp. However, in pushing the legacy sci-fi reboot to its limits, Shinji and Hideaki invariably expose its limitations. The film is overstuffed with competing ambitions that struggle to coalesce around a concept that was, after all, conceived of as a children’s TV show. But for those keyed into its off-kilter, free-wheeling energy, it’s an embarrassment of riches.
