Netflix’s “Ultraman: Rising” serves as a reinvention and a reintroduction of the classic monster-battling character who first debuted on Japanese television in 1966. In the years since, Ultraman has shifted and changed until he’s now the star of his very own animated feature from writer-director Shannon Tindle (coming off the Emmy-winning live-action series “Lost Ollie,” also for Netflix).
In this version, our hero, Ken Sato (Christopher Sean), is reluctantly taking over the mantle of Ultraman from his aging father (Gedde Watanabe). And he’s got an even bigger conundrum when he is forced to raise the baby of a fallen kaiju that he had been fighting. “Ultraman: Rising” has some stunning action set pieces, breathlessly animated by Industrial Light & Magic in a style that evokes the original “Ultraman” series, along with classic anime, old tokusatsu movies and beloved manga. But the true magic of the movie lies in its underlying emotion and its themes of responsibility, family and animal rights.
Those two sides of “Ultraman: Rising” — the soft and the strong — come together beautifully in a climactic sea battle between Ultraman and Dr. Onda (Keone Young), a science officer who has turned villainous after a monster attack kills his wife and child. This sequence had been a part of the script since before it was even an Ultraman movie. (Tindle’s “Made in Japan” was originally developed for Sony Pictures Animation.) “The structure didn’t change, including not just big beats but even smaller beats,” Tindle said. “There was always a big battle in the end. There was always this unity between Ken and his dad and the baby.”
One of the great moments in the final fight is the reveal that Ken’s dad, the former Ultraman, has transformed into Ultraman once again (dubbed Ultradad) and is helping his injured son form the Spacium beam, a powerful stream of energy that is one of the hallmarks of the character.
“When you’re a kid, you forget about those big things that your parents did for you, or you’re unaware of their perspective or what they had to go through to be there for you,” Tindle said. “I thought it would be nice for Ken’s dad to be there when he’s most needed.”
Tindle said that they were constantly playing with what Ultraman is and what it means to be a parent, so the dad showing up was always going to happen in this big battle. Tindle said he came up with the idea of the two characters forming the unique arm gesture that produces the beam while working through the beats of the scene: Ultraman’s arm gets sliced, Ultradad’s leg is broken. “That was one of those spontaneous things, where I had the idea in the moment,” Tindle said.
He called over his co-director John Aoshima and they made the formation in the room. “Everybody in the room was like, ‘That’s it. That’s the ending,’” Tindle said. The actual reveal that it’s both of them making the beam was an idea by Kim Lee, head of animation for Industrial Light & Magic’s since shuttered Singapore studio. Tindle gives all credit where credit is due. “It’s one of my favorite shots in the movie, and it’s because one of our animation supervisors had an idea and decided to pitch it to us,” he said.
The practicality of the battle happening at sea was something Tindle was mindful of. “I didn’t have Pixar or DreamWorks money,” he said. “We had a substantial budget, but the movie is massive.” Tindle knew he had to “write smart” and lean on his collaborators. But the final battle, one of the biggest sequences in the film, had to have a very specific location. “This was always going to be a water battle because if the battle is taking place inside of a city, you have people and buildings — so you have to destroy buildings and you have crowds,” he said. “And those two things are substantially more expensive together, especially over an extended period of time, than water. Water is expensive, but not nearly as expensive as all those things.” It ended up having another plus, since Tindle was able to pay tribute to classic water battles you see in the old Godzilla movies.
This story first appeared in the Awards Preview issue of TheWrap magazine. Read more from the Awards Preview issue here.
