TUBI CONTINUED… ULTRAMAN (2004) ***

A pilot named Maki (Tetsuya Bessho) is on the eve of retirement so he can spend more time with his sick kid.  While out on his last mission, he flies into a ball of light and crashes.  Miraculously, he’s able to walk away from the wreckage without a single scratch.  Meanwhile, a monster called “The One” has escaped from a lab and is on a rampage.  A secret military defense team kidnaps Maki and informs him he and the creature have a psychic link and use him as bait to trap the beast.  When the two engage in battle, Maki discovers he has the ability to transform into the superhero Ultraman, but is he strong enough to defeat the constantly evolving shapeshifting monster?

Ultraman was intended as a reboot of the beloved character, but it wasn’t exactly a hit in Japan, so it’s more of a one-off remake.  (It’s conveniently set in an alternate universe to dance around the continuity.)  As someone who just watched a few of these things that were little more than regular TV episodes, it was refreshing to see something that had big budget production values.  I also liked the Top Gun/Green Lantern-inspired plot (the music even sounds like fake Harold Faltermeyer).  In fact, despite the Japanese cast and crew, it almost feels like an Americanized remake with the heavy military undertones and the superhero-style origin story. 

Like the movie itself, the new Ultraman suit is darker and edgier.  And by that, I mean, it’s dark gray, kind of clunky looking, and missing the sleek lines of the other incarnations.  (It almost looks like Robocop from the neck down.)  The CGI used to make Ultraman fly looks way better than what we’ve seen previously, so that was another plus. 

“The One” is a cool creation too.  He looks like a cross between the Fly from The Fly 2 and the Lizard from The Amazing Spider-Man.  Although we only get one monster this time around, the fact that it keeps evolving and transforming makes him unique.  He also has a neat gimmick where every time he comes in contact with another animal, he absorbs them and takes on their attributes, which is pretty sweet. 

I can see why some fans didn’t connect with this as it does take some liberties with the material.  I give the filmmakers points for trying something a little different though.  However, when it comes to the monster mashing, it’s refreshingly old school.  And by that, I mean, a lot of guys in rubber suits beating the crap out of each other.  Hey, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. 

AKA:  Ultraman:  The Next.

TUBI CONTINUED… ULTRAMAN GAIA: GAIA ONCE AGAIN (2001) **

Like Ultraman Dyna:  Return of Hanejiro, this is more of a bonus episode of the show than an actual sequel to the series.  (Both were released directly to video in Japan around the same time.)  After the events of the Ultrama Gaia show, Gamu (Takeshi Yoshioka) goes to college and tries to be a normal kid.  It’s not long before he’s called back into action when another alien monster threatens the planet.

 

As with Ultraman Cosmos 2, the threat comes from beneath the sea.  I know it’s probably a matter of preference, but it’s just not as much fun when Ultraman’s alter ego and his crew are exploring the deep blue sea.  I’d much rather see them hop in a rocket ship and go to outer space, but that’s just me.  However, the movie has more problems than just the setting.  For starters, the B plot where Gamu’s brooding rival Ultraman, Fujimiya (Hassei Takano) is visited by a ghostly little girl doesn’t add much to the proceedings.  Also, the relatively short running time of forty-six minutes feels closer to feature length, thanks to the sluggish pacing.  The CGI is pretty bad too, although I guess that’s to be expected from something that’s essentially a slightly more elaborate episode of a TV show.  Even when you take that into consideration, it still looks kinda shoddy though. 

On the plus side, when the movie relies on the old school monster mashing the Ultraman series is known for, it offers the audience a modicum of fun.  The final baddie is fairly menacing and the three-way battle where two Ultramen take on the alien invader is solid enough.  Ultimately, that’s not quite enough to make up for the numerous flaws elsewhere in the flick, but it at least ends things on a positive note.

AKA:  Ultraman Gaia:  Once Again Gaia.  AKA:  Ultraman Gaia:  Gaia Again.

TUBI CONTINUED… ULTRAMAN DYNA: RETURN OF HANEJIRO (2001) * ½

Return of Hanejiro is supposed to act as a footnote to the events of the Ultraman Dyna series.  Like Ultraman Tiga Side Story:  Revival of the Ancient Giant, it’s only about forty-five minutes long.  However, the budget is much lower than any of the Ultraman movies I’ve seen this week.  In fact, it looks cheaper than an average Ultraman episode.  While the giant monsters aren’t too shabby, the human-sized creatures look more like sports mascots.  The rest of the special effects aren’t too hot either.

A trio of comic relief aliens disguised as humans come in possession of an egg.  When it hatches, an annoying alien baby comes out.  They are mistakenly blamed for an imminent alien invasion and go on the run with the yapping alien brat in tow.  Meanwhile the real perpetrator, a sexy android woman in a blonde wig and sunglasses, goads Ultraman into battle. 

The Ultraman fights are okay.  He does battle with a giant red dragon monster, and the final monster is kinda cool too.  It’s just a shame that the brawls don’t last very long.  The smaller scale fights suffer from a lot of Matrix-inspired Kung Fu, and they are all pretty lame.  I know the low budget was probably the main culprit here, but the action never quite helps the film rise above the weak kiddie crap material; it merely prevents it from circling the drain.

The other monsters suffer from being overly cutesy or just plain cheap looking.  (The alien baby looks like a bargain bin Furby.)  All the allegedly comic shenanigans with the three aliens is hella annoying too.  Every time these bozos show up, it stops the movie on a dime and seriously gets in the way of Ultraman doing his thing.  Overall, Ultraman Dyna:  Return of Hanejiro is about as bad as an episode of the fucking Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, if you can believe it. 

TUBI CONTINUED… ULTRAMAN COSMOS VS. ULTRAMAN JUSTICE: THE FINAL BATTLE (2003) *** ½

(Housekeeping Note:  I am still about two weeks behind posting reviews.  However, once I get the reviews caught up to October 1st, I will switch over to the traditional all-horror movie column, The 31 Days of Horror-Ween, which will fittingly be rebranded:  The 31 Days of Tubi-Ween this year…)

Musashi (Taiyo Sugiura) and his team are about to fly a giant ark full of monsters to another planet where they can live in harmony.  An army of giant robots doesn’t want that to happen and it’s up to Ultraman Cosmos to kick its ass.  Turns out, an Ultraman named Justice is in league with the aliens and has a score to settle with the human race. 

After the middling Ultraman Cosmos 2:  The Blue Planet, Ultraman Cosmos vs. Ultraman Justice:  The Final Battle serves as both a course correction and a thrilling trilogy capper.  Things kick off in fine fashion with a shocking death scene.  Like most comic book movies and/or Sci-Fi flicks, we know the death probably won’t be permanent, but the staging and dramatic effect is nevertheless very effective.  I’ll say this, the opening scene has more balls (not to mention drama) than the entirety of Ultraman Cosmos 2, that’s for sure.  

I also liked the scenes of Justice’s avatar, a hot goth chick that looks like she shoplifted from the Underworld and Matrix sets when security wasn’t looking.  The scenes where she alternates from being conflicted to convinced that the Earth must be destroyed really work.  Sure, not all us earthlings are would-be rapist rappers roving the streets.  Some of us are just cute kids with even cuter dogs.  I mean, come on Justice.  You’re not gonna wipe out a planet inhabited by cute kids with cute dogs, are you?

Ultraman Cosmos vs. Ultraman Justice:  The Final Battle is easily the best of the Cosmos trilogy thanks to its complex themes and slightly darker tone.  (Although there is still some juvenile humor here but thankfully not much.)  Justice’s character arc alone makes it a richer and deeper film than its predecessors and gives it more weight than you would expect from an Ultraman movie.  In many ways, this is the Wrath of Khan of the early ‘00s Ultraman films.  Praise doesn’t come much higher than that.

TUBI CONTINUED… ULTRAMAN COSMOS 2: THE BLUE PLANET (2002) **

Musashi, the little kid from Ultraman Cosmos:  The First Contact, is all grown up and has become an astronaut.  He encounters a dead planet in his travels and arrives there just in time to watch Ultraman Cosmos fight a giant monster named Scorpus.  When he returns home, Musashi decides to visit some friends on the island of Saipan where Scorpus once again appears and is fought off by a manta ray-type monster named Rayja who acts as protector of the ocean.  A mermaid babe then takes our hero into the deep to show him her hidden home world under the sea.  Predictably, Scorpus returns with its master, the evil Sandloss, in tow with the intention of decimating the Earth to ash, and the underwater kingdom right along with it.

Once again there’s some silliness here that seems a little ill-fitting. The stuff with the mermaid is lame and feels like an attempt to capture some of the female demographic.  The SRC offshoot, SEA who are an underwater division of science exploration aren’t nearly as memorable either.  Besides, let’s face it:  Being underwater isn’t nearly as cool as being in outer space.  The subplot with the mermaid’s jealous boyfriend slows things down to a crawl too.

The monster battles are where it’s at though.  Scorpus is a pretty decent monster.  He looks like a cross between Gamera and an oversized bedbug and shoots red flames.  The scenes of his worldwide destruction are well done, and it’s a shame that so much of the film is a slog because whenever he and his minions are tearing up the town, The Blue Planet rocks.  The moderately stylish finale when Sandloss blots out the sun and battles two Ultramen in darkness is solid, but it’s not quite enough to put this one in the win column.  The Rayja creatures are decidedly less cool and look especially goofy when they start talking.  Although the scenes of kaiju kicking butt fit the bill, whenever the action switches underwater, the movie sinks like a stone.

AKA:  Ultraman Cosmos:  The Blue Planet.

TUBI CONTINUED… ULTRAMAN COSMOS: THE FIRST CONTACT (2001) ***

A young astrology nut named Musashi (Konosuke Tokai) desperately wants to meet his hero Ultraman.  Luckily for him, he gets his chance when Ultraman crashes to Earth after fighting a metal lobster monster in space. The Scientific Research Circle hears about his encounter and takes the kid on as an honorary member.  Eventually, Ultraman must stop another alien from trying to take over Earth.  

The CGI during the monster fights is a bit chintzy.  However, some of the goofy touches are surprisingly endearing.  Musashi’s robot sidekick had the potential to be annoying, but he winds up being rather cute and innocuous, all things considered.  I also liked that the SRC spaceships came equipped with humorously oversized boxing gloves so they could safely do battle with rampaging kaiju.  

The best thing I can say for Ultraman Cosmos:  The First Contact is that it handles the scenes with the kid characters much better than Ultraman Tiga, Ultraman Dyna, and Ultraman Gaia:  Battle in Hyperspace did.  I especially loved the scene where Ultraman repays Musashi for nursing him back to health by scooping him up in his arms and flying him over the city.  That’s the good stuff right there. 

I also enjoyed the rivalry between the SRC, who want to capture and study the monsters, and the military outfit SHARKS, who naturally just want to destroy them.  It helped give the human drama a bit of a different dimension than your typical Japanese monster movie.  The SRC’s efforts also makes you think of the monsters with a hint of compassion. 

That’s not to say there isn’t some dumb stuff here.  The scene where the citizens of Earth band together to stop the monster by… uh… singing it a lullaby is particularly cringe-inducing.  And at ninety minutes, it’s by far the longest Ultraman flick I’ve watched so far this week.  (It’s over twice as long as Ultraman Tiga Side Story:  Revival of the Ancient Giant.)  Because of that, it’s not nearly as fast-paced as some of the best Ultraman movies.  However, when it manages to find the right balance between giant rubber monsters and genuine heart, it works. 

TUBI CONTINUED… ULTRAMAN TIGA SIDE STORY: REVIVAL OF THE ANCIENT GIANT (2001) ***

Ultraman Tiga Side Story:  Revival of the Ancient Giant is a direct-to-video spin-off of the Ultraman Tiga series.  At forty-four minutes, it’s a lot shorter than some of the other Ultraman movies I’ve watched this week (and those were short to begin with).  If you’re like me and you’re trying to watch 365 movies on Tubi in 365 days, you take the shorties when you can get them.

In the future (2038), Tsubasa Madoka (Shogo Yamaguchi), a member of the Super GUTS team (and the son of Ultraman Tiga) gets sucked into a wormhole along with a dinosaur and winds up 5000 years in the past.  The monster threatens a village of peaceful mountainfolk, and the bad guy wants to use it to vanquish “The Warrior of Light” that the people worship once and for all.  It’s then up to Ultraman Tiga to save the day.

Revival of the Ancient Giant is a “Side Story”, and as a self-contained spin-off it’s a lot of fun.  I guess they thought whisking the son of Ultraman 5000 years into the past wouldn’t screw up the continuity too bad.  Even if you just somehow stumbled upon this without much knowledge of Ultraman in general, you’d probably dig it.

The effects are kind of inconsistent.  Some of the monsters and costumes are very good, while others look like an episode of The Land of the Lost.  That’s part of the charm though.  There was also a really weird effect where the bad guy is standing in front of the monster, and it just looks like he’s standing in front of a big screen TV that’s playing scenes from the movie behind him.  And you know what?  It’s just odd and goofy enough to work. 

The villain himself is really cool too.  He looks like a cross between Darth Vader and the Joker, if such a thing is imaginable.  I mean, if you’re going to steal, steal from two of the best, right?

I’m not saying all of it works.  The stuff with the prehistoric GUTS team flying around on wooden airplanes is cheesy, and the fights where they shoot Street Fighter 2-inspired orbs of light at their enemies isn’t nearly as fun as the giant monster battles.  However, those are relatively minor quibbles all in all.  The final fight kicks ass too, so that’s all you can ask for from something like this.

AKA:  Ultraman Tiga Gaiden:  Revival of the Ancient Giant.  AKA:  Ultraman Tiga:  The Outside Story.