Ultraman Movies?

[Hamster]

[Hamster]

[MouthForWar]

[planetxleader]

[kiryugoji04]

[king_ghidorah]

[Jim Ballard]

[king_ghidorah]

[Shonokin]

[ultrasanto]

[kiryugoji04]

How is The Next BORING? 0_o

And I love the design of The Next. I would hate for all Ultras to look that way but it's perfectly suited to the kind of film it is.

[ryuuseipro]

[ultrasanto]

[MouthForWar]

[king_ghidorah]

[MouthForWar]

Man, I love Otani's scores in Kaneko's films! They have a very 80s synth style to me, almost like John Carpenter or the Goblins.

As a devoted metalhead, its surprising, but I actually prefer film scores to keep that kind of thing out. I didn't like the 300 score either. But the theme for the Next isn't bad at all, its a decent track. The bulk of that score is awful though.

[king_ghidorah]

[Shonokin]

Contemporary music scores will date a movie usually in a very bad way (unless it's a musical or Saturday Night Fever, etc). I used to love Tangerine Dream but now when I see a movie with a score by them it makes me cringe, totally takes me out of the movie.

At least imho, sticking to classical scores can make a huge difference in how a movie is viewed quality-wise down the road.

[MouthForWar]

[ultrasanto]

[Hamster]

Okay, I have now seen Ultraman: The Next, Ultraman Mebius and the Ultra Brothers, and Super 8 Ultra Brothers. Here's how I rank them.

1. Ultraman: The Next -- While I Understand a lot of the criticism brought to the movie, I still think it's the best Ultraman movie that I've seen so far. Plus, I retain that this film is the best to introduce someone to the fandom if you're going to bother doing it with a movie and not the first episode of the original Ultraman (which I just used to introduce two people, and they loved it). I like the new style that they used around the story, and it took the Ultraman story from an angle that appeals to a broad scale of audience. If I was to produce an Ultraman in America, I'd use many of the story elements from this film.


2. Ultraman Mebius and the Ultra Brothers -- Shallow plot. So shallow it's almost unbearable. But, overall, it's grand fun. The bad guys are fun, the battles are awesome, and there's a lot of great homage to the original series of Ultraman, Ultraseven, Ace, and Jack (from what I can tell). There are many points where you are genuinely concerned for the heroes with the situations they keep getting into. And Yapool was a great bad guy for the film as well, his personality was fun and added to the film. If it had tried to go a little deeper with the plot, this film could've been great.


3. Super 8 Ultra Brothers -- The first half of this film is incredible. The monster battles are amazing, the setup is awesome. I love the idea of having the film take place in our universe rather than the universe of Ultraman. And this film does a great job at showing a monster attack from a human perspective (a trait that many monster films have forgotten about as of late). The sequences with older footage in them were all awesome as well. They made me want to see more Ultraseven in particular.

And Yuriko Hishimi is sooo hot, even though she's well into her 60s.

Also, to throw my two cents in about the stand-alone properties of this and UM&UB, this film stands alone perfectly well. It's okay to watch this film without having seen the previous film, but I wouldn't show it to someone that way. I'm not so worried about the flashbacks as much as I am the second half of this movie.

The second half is horrible. Firstly, there wasn't really an enemy for these characters to be fighting. Kaiju appeared for seemingly no reason other than having something to do with Mr. Purple Darth Sidious. And when it was revealed what the heck was actually happening, it was too shallow to even count. There was no explanation of WHY anything in the film was happening and the attempted explanation was a cop-out with no real information.

The ending itself is so incredibly bizarre that I can't take it seriously, and it lost its element of fun about 20 minutes before the ending even happens. This film had LOTR syndrome in that it simply wouldn't end even after the story was over. And the characters weren't deep enough for the movie to pull it off. The film was so caught up in being an homage that it forgot about being a film. I don't know what the actual last scene had to do with the rest of the plot at all, but I can only assume that it references something from one of the characters' respective tv shows? Maybe? No clue. Either way, the 57 endings of this movie ruined it for me.

[planetxleader]

Alright, I was gonna go to bed and call it a night, but now I'm so angry, that as a fan, I've gotta step up.

I bought the soundtrack to The Next after seeing the trailer, way before I finally saw the movie. Loved it, and never regretted buying it. I remember humming "Maki's Theme" in the grocery store soon after listening to it. Doesn't really strike me as "hero from the streets" music, and it is most definitely not hard rock. In fact, there is a perfect mix of orchestral, dramatic music intertwined with the guitar-laden tracks, and I, for one, love Ultraman's main theme. It's catchy and totally brings to mind the image of the hero sailing through the skies. How "Ultraman" is that? Plus, when I realized it's a rendition of the original theme, it became all the more cooler.

[planetxleader]

[Hamster]

[Reaper G]

Ultraman Mebius and Ultraman Brothers was very much like Ultraman Tiga & Ultraman Dyna -- summoning the "Light" within yourself to become Ultraman.

Similarly, The Superior 8 Ultra Brothers had the same theme as Ultraman Gaia: The Battle in Hyperspace, where Ultraman is a TV character in our world who is transported from his/their dimension.

Now, how similar is the Ultra Galaxy movie to Ultraman Tiga: The Final Odyssey?