The villainous Belial is back (this time sporting a badass crimson trench coat) and up to his old tricks again. He travels to a distant galaxy with his Darklops army in tow seeking total domination. The Ultramen can only afford to send one Guardian of Light to stop him and Ultraman Zero volunteers for the job. He arrives on a planet overrun by monsters and almost instantly runs out of energy. He then must merge with a young freedom fighter and team up with a space princess to stop Belial once and for all.
After a great prequel (Ultraman Mebius: Ghost Rebirth) and a strong follow-up (Mega Monster Battle: Ultra Galaxy: The Movie), The Revenge of Belial is a massive letdown. After having so many Ultramen battling in the previous entries, I guess they thought it would be a nice change of pace to have a more stripped-down approach. While Zero is an OK Ultraman, he just can’t quite carry a movie on his own. It doesn’t help that his kid sidekick is annoying or that the plot is so jumbled that a narrator has to occasionally step in to make sense of things.
The fact is there’s some really lame stuff in this one. Zero’s run-in with a boatload of space pirates is painfully juvenile, and the CGI backgrounds also look kind of chintzy this time around. (Like the one that occurs on the Mirror Planet.) The greenscreen backgrounds just don’t have the same weight or charm of a good old-fashioned model city, if you ask me. Zero’s new friends (who include a robot that talks like a pirate, a “Mirror Knight”, and a jet that turns into a robot a la Transformers) are kind of weak too.
Belial still remains a worthy adversary though. I liked his new look, and his fight with Zero is solid. (The part where Zero gives him a super pile driver is cool.) His kaiju form during the final battle is also quite snazzy. It’s a shame that the movie he inhabits leaves him lost in space.
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