"Shin Ultraman" is a fairly new Japanese movie from 2022 that is also in the Japanese language and if you pay close enough attention, then you will also come some English and Russian very briefly apparently. I am not entirely sure about the runtime here, but it is definitely somewhere between 110 and 120 minutes, so the two-hour mark is not far away in any case. This is fairly fitting because there is a 2016 film named "Shin Gojira" and that one runs for two hours indeed and you see the title is similar in terms of the first word at least and Shinji Higuchi and Hideaki Anno worked together on this film back then too and for this film from over five years ago, they were co-directing, but here Higuchi is the director and Anno is the writer and this is not a given if you take a look at the gigantic amount of films that Anno has directed throughout his career. Both of them are around the age of 60 now by the way. One is slightly under, the other slightly older, but this can of course have changed a lot already if it takes you a little longer to get here and read this review of mine. I am a bit surprised this film scored hardly any awards attention at all. I see one nomination for the visual effects, but this is apparently it and looks to me as if the movie is also released now in most countries and areas of the world, so I am not sure it will come out anywhere in the future. I saw it today as some kind of special event. Otherwise, I probably also would not have come across it. There was no really big release here in Germany I think. I doubt I would not have heard from it otherwise, so most likely the film went a lot under the radar.
With the cast, I cannot really say a lot here. Japanese movie buffs will probably recognize more than I did. Akari Hayami looks pretty stunning, but I guess they decided to hide it pretty much with her glasses and haircut to make sure that nobody is really competition here in terms of looks for Masami Nagasawa, who is also the closest this film has to a female lead. One I must mention 100% is Hidetoshi Nishijima and he is of course the lead actor from "Drive My Car", the film that won the foreign language category at the Oscars not too long ago. Very easy to identify the actor, even if I must say I did not remember the name. Maybe my loss. It was always nice though when he was on the screen, which sadly did not happen a lot of the time here. The material the actor had was a bit on the underwhelming side, even if you could surely feel his great screen presence. But this is never a film that is about the actors really anyway. It is all about the sci-fi component almost from beginning to end here. I personally preferred the beginning or the first half of the film I should say. At the very start, they rushed in some big creatures that posed a threat to Japan and they also told how they managed to eventually defeat those creatures. There is a new one coming though that creates a great deal of havoc and said creature is on its way to a facility that it may not reach under any circumstance.
Luckily, for all the human protagonists in here, an almost God-like giant that they call Ultraman shows up right on time to stop the creature and the creature is defeated and gone. I like the idea how it devoured electricity and this electricity made it visible and without the electricity you could not see it. In the second half, Ultraman is then rather up against characters that look a bit more like humans, but the truth is they are all aliens. Ultraman himself is also exposed as he was in disguise before that and seemed to be a perfectly normal human, well not too normal but he was a bit of a loner apparently. I must say the longer the film went, the more bizarre it became and I also found the story more and more difficult to understand. Had it been always like in the last 40 minutes, I would have given an even lower rating here, but luckily it was rock-solid early on. It was a very gimmicky film at times. The entire first hour almost is a huge tribute to old Japanese monster movies and pretty enjoyable as such. Made me curious to watch some of those for sure. Another thing I found fascinating here is the comedic aspect. All the comedy comes from exaggerated sci-fi moments and depictions you can say, at least if I am going by where the audience from my screening laughed the most. The only moment that was a bit of an exception maybe was when we see another extraterrestrial character shake hands with the Prime Minister of Japan. Everybody was laughing there, but everything else had all kinds of supernatural components and not necessarily as much situational comedy. The exaggeration was the key to comedic entertainment there, even if I would definitely not call this film a comedy. It will make you smile though.
Some of the laughs from my crowd were honestly as exaggerated as the film itself here and there. I found it interesting though how there is never the slightest bit of comedy at all to the dialogues here. They always mean business 100%. Interesting that a film with this approach still makes so many people laugh. The ending was in a way a feel-good ending then. The planet is saved and the title character, in his human form, is back on Earth again. Maybe not too realistic with what he went right before that, but still. I do wonder though why he cared so much about the Earth at all. I mean he is literally ready to lose everything if he can save our planet and its inhabitants, even if he is saved in the end then too. There are some really bizarre moments in here that come out of nowhere like when we see the female protagonist suddenly being really big as well. This also did not add a lot in terms of the story. Then there is this moment in which Ultraman rather early, after having defeated the dino-like creature pulls him up as if he was a feather and flies off to take him somewhere where he can never threaten mankind again. I guess gravity was not a really big thing in this movie. As for the protagonist's identity, you could kinda guess it after the second time the human character turns into Ultraman and when immediately afterwards we see him in his human form again and how he shows up there, there was clearly something going on. After the first fight, I did not see it happen. By the way, where did this dino creature then learn to dig through the ground/soil anyway?
So yeah, there is some good to this film and also some not so good, but all in all I would say that the film's strengths and decent moments are more frequent than the film's weaknesses, even if it is far from a perfect film. Just pointless fun I would call it for the most part. I am still not sure if the one camera shot at the female protagonist during her introduction and where the camera is pointing to exactly was intended in a slightly sleazy fashion or if it was mere coincidence there. We cannot know for sure unless we ask the director. But this was just a minor aspect anyway. I think this is it then. I give "Shin Ultraman" a thumbs-up overall and I wonder if Higuchi and Anno will release other "Shin..." films in the next few years. I would maybe watch again, even if not overly enthusiastic. This one here ends in a way where you could say that a sequel is possible, but then again Ultraman was basically up against such strong forces here that an equally big challenger, let alone a bigger one seems unlikely. So yeah go see this film, either the entire thing or just the first 45 minutes. I liked it there the most how it combined old Japanese movie monsters with the film age of superheroes (Marvel etc.). This is where "Shin Ultraman" shone the most.
With the cast, I cannot really say a lot here. Japanese movie buffs will probably recognize more than I did. Akari Hayami looks pretty stunning, but I guess they decided to hide it pretty much with her glasses and haircut to make sure that nobody is really competition here in terms of looks for Masami Nagasawa, who is also the closest this film has to a female lead. One I must mention 100% is Hidetoshi Nishijima and he is of course the lead actor from "Drive My Car", the film that won the foreign language category at the Oscars not too long ago. Very easy to identify the actor, even if I must say I did not remember the name. Maybe my loss. It was always nice though when he was on the screen, which sadly did not happen a lot of the time here. The material the actor had was a bit on the underwhelming side, even if you could surely feel his great screen presence. But this is never a film that is about the actors really anyway. It is all about the sci-fi component almost from beginning to end here. I personally preferred the beginning or the first half of the film I should say. At the very start, they rushed in some big creatures that posed a threat to Japan and they also told how they managed to eventually defeat those creatures. There is a new one coming though that creates a great deal of havoc and said creature is on its way to a facility that it may not reach under any circumstance.
Luckily, for all the human protagonists in here, an almost God-like giant that they call Ultraman shows up right on time to stop the creature and the creature is defeated and gone. I like the idea how it devoured electricity and this electricity made it visible and without the electricity you could not see it. In the second half, Ultraman is then rather up against characters that look a bit more like humans, but the truth is they are all aliens. Ultraman himself is also exposed as he was in disguise before that and seemed to be a perfectly normal human, well not too normal but he was a bit of a loner apparently. I must say the longer the film went, the more bizarre it became and I also found the story more and more difficult to understand. Had it been always like in the last 40 minutes, I would have given an even lower rating here, but luckily it was rock-solid early on. It was a very gimmicky film at times. The entire first hour almost is a huge tribute to old Japanese monster movies and pretty enjoyable as such. Made me curious to watch some of those for sure. Another thing I found fascinating here is the comedic aspect. All the comedy comes from exaggerated sci-fi moments and depictions you can say, at least if I am going by where the audience from my screening laughed the most. The only moment that was a bit of an exception maybe was when we see another extraterrestrial character shake hands with the Prime Minister of Japan. Everybody was laughing there, but everything else had all kinds of supernatural components and not necessarily as much situational comedy. The exaggeration was the key to comedic entertainment there, even if I would definitely not call this film a comedy. It will make you smile though.
Some of the laughs from my crowd were honestly as exaggerated as the film itself here and there. I found it interesting though how there is never the slightest bit of comedy at all to the dialogues here. They always mean business 100%. Interesting that a film with this approach still makes so many people laugh. The ending was in a way a feel-good ending then. The planet is saved and the title character, in his human form, is back on Earth again. Maybe not too realistic with what he went right before that, but still. I do wonder though why he cared so much about the Earth at all. I mean he is literally ready to lose everything if he can save our planet and its inhabitants, even if he is saved in the end then too. There are some really bizarre moments in here that come out of nowhere like when we see the female protagonist suddenly being really big as well. This also did not add a lot in terms of the story. Then there is this moment in which Ultraman rather early, after having defeated the dino-like creature pulls him up as if he was a feather and flies off to take him somewhere where he can never threaten mankind again. I guess gravity was not a really big thing in this movie. As for the protagonist's identity, you could kinda guess it after the second time the human character turns into Ultraman and when immediately afterwards we see him in his human form again and how he shows up there, there was clearly something going on. After the first fight, I did not see it happen. By the way, where did this dino creature then learn to dig through the ground/soil anyway?
So yeah, there is some good to this film and also some not so good, but all in all I would say that the film's strengths and decent moments are more frequent than the film's weaknesses, even if it is far from a perfect film. Just pointless fun I would call it for the most part. I am still not sure if the one camera shot at the female protagonist during her introduction and where the camera is pointing to exactly was intended in a slightly sleazy fashion or if it was mere coincidence there. We cannot know for sure unless we ask the director. But this was just a minor aspect anyway. I think this is it then. I give "Shin Ultraman" a thumbs-up overall and I wonder if Higuchi and Anno will release other "Shin..." films in the next few years. I would maybe watch again, even if not overly enthusiastic. This one here ends in a way where you could say that a sequel is possible, but then again Ultraman was basically up against such strong forces here that an equally big challenger, let alone a bigger one seems unlikely. So yeah go see this film, either the entire thing or just the first 45 minutes. I liked it there the most how it combined old Japanese movie monsters with the film age of superheroes (Marvel etc.). This is where "Shin Ultraman" shone the most.