Fifty-six years ago, a gentle silver giant named Ultraman appeared on Japanese TV to fight giant monsters, win the hearts of children and become a nationwide phenomenon.
Now Ultraman is back on the big screen in a fresh take on the material from creative duo Hideaki Anno (“Evangelion”) and Shinji Higuchi (“Attack on Titan”). The two titans of otaku cinema and avowed fans of crashy, stompy Japanese classics teamed up back in 2016 to unleash “Shin Godzilla,” a revival of the Godzilla franchise (the “shin” in the title means “new,” but also “God”) to critical and box-office success. They’ve teamed up once again to revive another creation from the late special-effects legend Eiji Tsuburaya.
“Shin Ultraman” sticks close to the plot of the original 1966-67 series, in which Japan, facing attacks from giant monsters, has created a crack team called the SSSP to help deal with the threat. One SSSP member, Shinji Kaminaga (Takumi Saitoh), has a big secret: He’s the human host of Ultraman, a being from space who’s come to Earth to help defend humanity. With the press of a button (and some distinctly ’60s sound effects), Kaminaga grows into a silver giant with some ultra-cool powers, like a beam that can vaporize monsters in a flash.
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