Fifty-six years ago, a gentle silver giant named Ultraman appeared on Japanese TV to fight giant monsters, win the hearts of children and become a nationwide phenomenon.
Now Ultraman is back on the big screen in a fresh take on the material from creative duo Hideaki Anno (¡°Evangelion¡±) and Shinji Higuchi (¡°Attack on Titan¡±). The two titans of otaku cinema and avowed fans of crashy, stompy Japanese classics teamed up back in 2016 to unleash ¡°Shin Godzilla,¡± a revival of the Godzilla franchise (the ¡°shin¡± in the title means ¡°new,¡± but also ¡°God¡±) to critical and box-office success. They¡¯ve teamed up once again to revive another creation from the late special-effects legend Eiji Tsuburaya.
¡°Shin Ultraman¡± sticks close to the plot of the original 1966-67 series, in which Japan, facing attacks from giant monsters, has created a crack team called the SSSP to help deal with the threat. One SSSP member, Shinji Kaminaga (Takumi Saitoh), has a big secret: He¡¯s the human host of Ultraman, a being from space who¡¯s come to Earth to help defend humanity. With the press of a button (and some distinctly ¡¯60s sound effects), Kaminaga grows into a silver giant with some ultra-cool powers, like a beam that can vaporize monsters in a flash.
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