 | MOVIE DETAILS • Name: Shin Ultraman • Year: 2022 • Country: Japan • Director: Shinji Higuchi • Main cast: Takumi Saitô, Masami Nagasawa, Hidetoshi Nishijima, Daiki Arioka, Akari Hayami • Runtime: 118 minutes • Production company: Tsuburaya Productions, Toho Company, Khara Corporation, Toho Pictures, Cine Bazar • TRAILER
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It doesn’t matter if Hollywood tries to steal the gigantic monsters attacking our planet theme, Japan will always be the home of the Kaiju. Godzilla and all the monsters of the series, and the superhero Ultraman, who came from outer space to fight them for us, have their home in the country of the Rising Sun. Because, as one of the characters says in Shin Ultraman (2022), for some reason “Kaiju only appear in Japan”.
Shin Ultraman (2022) is, overall, an entertaining movie, a love letter to all those monster movies and TV series that came out in Japan in the 1950s and 1960s. And the director Shinji Higuchi makes clear once again that he knows what he is talking about. He’s been probably drinking from that source since he was a little boy and now, as an accomplished filmmaker, his stagging and action sequences are the most loyal to the originals and, at the same time, updated to the current times; as he already proved with Shin Godzilla (2016), which he co-directed.
The first hour of Shin Ultraman (2022) is a delicious display of cinema. Those crazy camera frames, the adrenalinic editing, the action sequences mixing digital effects with the classic optic tricks, and the practical dudes in gigantic monster suits, kept me with my eyes glued to the screen. Despite the number of action sequences and fights, the storyline is intense and there is a lot of information said by the characters, so one can’t afford to lose attention to what is going on. Sadly, as it happens often in these sorts of movies, the filmmakers try to take the plot to a next level and make it a little bit more elaborated and, if you allow me, adding a deep message. Yet, the fun rarely stops and the fights don’t cease until the end of the film.
Because not everything is fun and popcorn here. Shin Ultraman (2022) gets political with a clear environmental message and a feeling of repudiation towards the politicians that only look for their own interests. A message of unity in the terms of only all of us together can defeat the enemy, either if it’s an extraterrestrial superbeing or the problems that we humans are causing to our own planet, is displayed as the story gets evolving. But no sermons are said, the fun adventurous tone of the movie remains.
While I was watching Shin Ultraman (2022) I was thinking that in this Kaiju universe, the worst job must be being a topographer. So many mountains are destroyed, cities and landscapes are being ravished, so maps gotta be changing all the time!! We sometimes hear or wonder about the collateral damages in these kinds of catastrophes and big monster movies but have you thought of the poor people who gotta redo all the maps?
If Hideaki Anno, who here serves as the screenwriter of the movie but has also been behind Shin Godzilla (2016) and the recent Shin Kamen Rider (2023), and Shinji Higuchi keep on delivering new adaptations for classic Japanese monsters and stories I think we can state that we are in good hands. Let’s forget the evil moneymaking machinery of Hollywood dishonoring those creatures and let the true children of the Kaiju do the job. Especially if the result is a spectacle like Shin Ultraman (2022), simple, at moments childish, but loyal to the originals.
RATE: 6/10
IMDB URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt10737918
