Audience Member
This is very good films about Ultraman Gaia only. The other two only came at the climax.
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
01/13/23
Full Review
Audience Member
It's Ultraman meets The Last Action Hero, and it works surprisingly well. The humor is well handled, and does manage to touch upon some nice sentimentality. Also, the visual effects are pretty cool, blending digital effects with its traditional approach just as well as any of Toho's last six Godzilla films. Considering the context of the story, it's actually all the better for it.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
01/21/23
Full Review
Audience Member
<b>Ultraman Tiga and Ultraman Dyna and Ultraman Gaia</b> (Kazuya Konaka, 1998)
I freely admit that back in the very early seventies, when I was knee-high to a grasshopper (okay, knee-high to a mutant ant from <em>Them!</em>) and barely out of diapers, that I was an Ultraman fiend. I couldn't get enough of the stuff. Then it disappeared from the after-school rotation sometime in, I think, 1975, and I was left with fond memories. (I vaguely recall a really bad, maybe animated?, American remake in the late seventies-early eighties with a very brief and depressing run, but IMDB is not backing me up on this.) Now, we've catapulted into the digital age. I have DVD box sets of the original first few seasons of the '66 Japanese series. Subtitled, even! I love progress. But as I dug around, I found out that while Ultraman petered out in American syndication over three decades ago, it's never stopped being wildly popular in its native Japan. So I grabbed a couple of more recent movies, as well, to see how much catching up I need to do. Answer: a whole lot.
It shouldn't surprise me in the least that the human form of Ultraman, originally played by a staid, grounded salaryman-looking guy, slowly morphed over the years into something more resembling a visual kei character. The new human form of Ultraman (Ultraman Gaia, anyway; given the movie's title here [it was also released under the name <em>Ultraman Gaia: Battle in Hyperspace</em>]), at least the new human form in 1998, is played by Takeshi Yoshioka, a friendly-seeming, attractive young chap who's made a career out of playing Ultraman Gaia (he most recently appeared in the role in 2008, as of this writing). He's brought from the parallel universe where the Ultraman stories have always taken place into our universe by Tsutomu (Gaku Hamada, recently of <em>Fish Story</em>), a pre-teen with a major Ultraman fetish. (I can relate!) One day, a strange glowing red ball falls (almost literally) into Tsutomu's hands, and before he realizes what it is, he wishes he could really meet his superhero idol. And, poof, there's Gamu, the human form of Ultraman Gaia, showing up in his fighter plane (also sleeker than the original, natch). Gamu, Tsutomu, and Tsutomu's friends must figure out why the wishing ball (as they come to call it) has suddenly come to Earth, how Gamu can get back to his own world, and how to keep the ball out of those who would use it for harm, all while avoiding the authorities, who are quite concerned about Gamu's sudden appearance in Tsutomu's life, not to mention the airspace over Tokyo.
About half the time, I had no clue at all what was going on, since I've been away from the mythology of the series for as long as I have (and even returning to it, I went right back to 1966). But once I got into the swing of things, it didn't matter a bit; it's just a barrels-of-fun action flick with cute-kid protagonists, Tokyo getting destroyed (again!), neat monsters, and just enough meta from the concept to allow it to poke fun at itself while still delivering a very good time. Not deathless cinema by any means, but if you, too, were an Ultraman freak as a kid, there's a wealth of new material out there that never got imported; this piece of it, at least, is worth hunting down. *** 1/2
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
02/11/23
Full Review
Audience Member
<b>Ultraman Tiga and Ultraman Dyna and Ultraman Gaia</b> (Kazuya Konaka, 1998)
I freely admit that back in the very early seventies, when I was knee-high to a grasshopper (okay, knee-high to a mutant ant from <em>Them!</em>) and barely out of diapers, that I was an Ultraman fiend. I couldn't get enough of the stuff. Then it disappeared from the after-school rotation sometime in, I think, 1975, and I was left with fond memories. (I vaguely recall a really bad, maybe animated?, American remake in the late seventies-early eighties with a very brief and depressing run, but IMDB is not backing me up on this.) Now, we've catapulted into the digital age. I have DVD box sets of the original first few seasons of the '66 Japanese series. Subtitled, even! I love progress. But as I dug around, I found out that while Ultraman petered out in American syndication over three decades ago, it's never stopped being wildly popular in its native Japan. So I grabbed a couple of more recent movies, as well, to see how much catching up I need to do. Answer: a whole lot.
It shouldn't surprise me in the least that the human form of Ultraman, originally played by a staid, grounded salaryman-looking guy, slowly morphed over the years into something more resembling a visual kei character. The new human form of Ultraman (Ultraman Gaia, anyway; given the movie's title here [it was also released under the name <em>Ultraman Gaia: Battle in Hyperspace</em>]), at least the new human form in 1998, is played by Takeshi Yoshioka, a friendly-seeming, attractive young chap who's made a career out of playing Ultraman Gaia (he most recently appeared in the role in 2008, as of this writing). He's brought from the parallel universe where the Ultraman stories have always taken place into our universe by Tsutomu (Gaku Hamada, recently of <em>Fish Story</em>), a pre-teen with a major Ultraman fetish. (I can relate!) One day, a strange glowing red ball falls (almost literally) into Tsutomu's hands, and before he realizes what it is, he wishes he could really meet his superhero idol. And, poof, there's Gamu, the human form of Ultraman Gaia, showing up in his fighter plane (also sleeker than the original, natch). Gamu, Tsutomu, and Tsutomu's friends must figure out why the wishing ball (as they come to call it) has suddenly come to Earth, how Gamu can get back to his own world, and how to keep the ball out of those who would use it for harm, all while avoiding the authorities, who are quite concerned about Gamu's sudden appearance in Tsutomu's life, not to mention the airspace over Tokyo.
About half the time, I had no clue at all what was going on, since I've been away from the mythology of the series for as long as I have (and even returning to it, I went right back to 1966). But once I got into the swing of things, it didn't matter a bit; it's just a barrels-of-fun action flick with cute-kid protagonists, Tokyo getting destroyed (again!), neat monsters, and just enough meta from the concept to allow it to poke fun at itself while still delivering a very good time. Not deathless cinema by any means, but if you, too, were an Ultraman freak as a kid, there's a wealth of new material out there that never got imported; this piece of it, at least, is worth hunting down. *** 1/2
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
01/26/23
Full Review
Audience Member
There can only be one. Well, maybe three Ultramen. It's a shame American Tv gave up on the live action superhero genre for kids. Ultraman rocks.!
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
02/24/23
Full Review
Audience Member
A feature film based on the fun kaiju series "Ultraman", Ultraman Gaia - The Battle in Hyperspace takes place in the "real world" where a young boy, whose also an avid Ultraman fan, comes across a mysterious red ball that grants wishes. When he and his friends wish for Ultraman man to appear in his world, it happens in the form of Gama, Ultraman's human form, whose considerably weirded out to be in this alternate universe where everyone knows his identity. When the red ball gets into the wrong hangs, villainous monsters start appearing, and the ball's powers start to grow as well. Overall, this is a decent kaiju film, but it's definitely centered around being a kid's movie first and a kaiju fan's movie second. After awhile, the kids start to become annoying and one starts to rely heavily on more kaiju action, which sorta happens. In the end, this was a mildly fun film, but the TV show was much, much better. I'd recommend this STRICTLY for small children of huge kaiju movie fans.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
01/21/23
Full Review
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