A while back, I was in the midst of a marathon of Ultraman movies. I eventually had to take a break, mostly because I didn’t want to get too much of a good thing. After seeing Godzilla Minus One, I got a hankering for more Japanese kaiju cinema, so I figured I’d try to watch the rest of the Ultraman flicks before the end of the year and the Tubi Continued… column came to an end.
In the future, the only inhabitants of Earth are a group of hot chicks known as “Team U” who ride around on low-budget Transformers scrounging the deserted cities for supplies. It turns out the evil Zetton was responsible for decimating the population and is looking to finish the job. It’s then up to Ultraman Zero and Ultraman Cosmos to resurrect the fallen Ultraman Dyna to stop Zetton and save the planet.
Some of the CGI is a little wonky, but the rubber suit monsters are charming. The early fight scenes are fun, especially the moments when Ultraman is tossing monsters around and around like an Olympic shot-put thrower. The finale is a tad disappointing though as there’s little variation on the fight scenes. (There’s three Ultramen instead of two and the villain is a humanoid instead of a giant bug.) The climax is fine, I suppose, but the film really needed something with a little more bombast to make for a thrilling conclusion.
The humor is a bit hit and miss, but I did like the scene where Zero and his human host are feuding, which causes them to not synch properly, resulting in a pint-sized Ultraman. I also dug the backstory of Zero’s host blaming Ultraman for not saving his parents, which is why he refuses to fight. Little touches like that kept the usual formula from feeling stale, although the flick never quite goes into fourth gear. All and all, Ultraman Saga is a solid, if unspectacular effort.
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