With Tokyo under siege from rising monster attacks, baseball star Ken Sato reluctantly returns home to take on the mantle of Ultraman. But the titanic superhero meets his match when he is forced to adopt a 35-foot-tall, fire-breathing baby kaiju. Sato must rise above his ego to balance work and parenthood while protecting the baby from forces bent on exploiting her for their own dark plans
REVIEW:
There are over 44 Ultraman movies, 100 video games devoted to the character, manga after manga that are Ultra based as well as many TV shows- and I have seen none of them until Ultraman: Rising popped up on Netflix with a fairly surprisingly good Rotten Tomatoes score- and I decided to give it a try. I’m glad I did. This movie is a charmer.
I do like Kaiju, especially Godzilla. Watching them at the Drive-In is a fond bit of my childhood memories. So too watching the Mighty Morphing Power Rangers on TV. I’m a sucker for anything that combines the two, especially if it involves family drama, a hero dealing with the stresses of being a parent and saving the world from monsters.
Ken Kato (Christopher Sean) is an interesting character for an Ultraman alter ego. He’s a stellar baseball athlete whose performance is not motivated by fame or money but Daddy (Gedde Watanabe) abandonment and estrangement issues. His ego gets turned down a notch when he is forced to rear a baby kaiju killed by the Japanese agency the Kaiju Defense Forece or KDF, whose leader (Keone Young) has a secret past that involves Kaiju killing his parents. Kaiju here, are creatures who have gotten lost from home and need a loving and caring hand to point them back again. Ultraman is their semi-protector, both fighting them to prevent Japanese cultural loss, and guiding them back to prevent their own extinction at the hands of a government acting in its own short sighted and blind self-interest. Eventually legacy family will unite to fight this evil.
The family drama is the real focus here. The action is competent with battles never overly violent, except for the mother kaiju who must die (by evil hands) to setup the family and reconciliation issues to come. The final confrontation between good and evil is an unfocused affair involving a lot of off screen destruction, childish snickering between combatants and a little too much ecological preaching. Essentially Ken learns how to be a hero, superhero, good father through experiencing the joys and frustration of child rearing. And oh, by creating, a work-life balance. That’s the Ultraman legacy Rising is trying to teach.
The movie is designed to keep kids and parents interested by giving them a story with a lot of sports conflict, explosive neon bathed kaiju battles, and sweet family drama that teaches valuable lessons. The kaiju have an inoffensive Pokémon quality to them. They’re more collectible than scary-thoroughly familiar to the fan base. The animation has the usual CG gloss, the angular character design of anime but with more 3D details. There is even a nod to Spider-Man with its comic portrayal of Ultraman‘s relationship with an ungrateful public who wants him to stop the showboating and do his job with less destruction.
The Ken child is constantly put into situations the father experienced- just more uncomfortable, awkward and weirder because it’s so entirely unexpected. The kaiju baby is taller than him, shoots lasers, suffers from acid reflux, poops city blocks of doo-doo, and wanders and escapes his crib at the worst times. The height disparity between the taller baby and Ken is often used for comic gold, and to show the near impossible size of the task facing early parents. It allows the character to grow and for the frustrated Ken to seek grandfatherly advice. With experience the child sees the parent’s wisdom in all its errors and successes. Even giants eventually shrink to human size.
Ultraman: Rising gets a 3.5/5 or a B+. It’s streaming on Netflix
CREDITS:
Directed by
Written by
- Shannon Tindle
- Marc Haimes
Based on
Produced by
- Tom Knott
- Lisa M. Poole
Starring
- Christopher Sean
- Gedde Watanabe
- Tamlyn Tomita
- Keone Young
- Julia Harriman
Cinematography
John Bermudes
Edited by
Bret Marnell
Music by
Scot Stafford
Production
companies
- Netflix Animation[a]
- Tsuburaya Productions
Distributed by
Release dates
- June 12, 2024(Annecy Festival)
- June 14, 2024(Worldwide)
Running time
117 minutes[1]
Countries
- Japan
- United States
Language
English
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