You know, I didn't think anyone could really bugger up a big budget Godzilla film and yet they managed it before. And then there's Aliens vs Predator. Seriously, how could that go wrong? It's amazing how bad movies can get.
It's directed by Koichi Sakamoto, who was the action director on the brilliant Drive with Mark Dacascos, and has directed loads of Power Rangers and Kamen Rider episodes and it's a very similar vibe to those shows because of the rubber-suited heroes.
The basic plot is Ultraman and his comrades from M-78 (including a new Ultraman, Zero) join forces with other allies to fight a massive army of giant monsters led by the evil Ultraman Belial.
Belial is a great baddie who kicks pretty much every Ultra hero's ass and it takes a new Ultraman and a half-human with monster-controlling powers to attempt to take him down. He looks like a cross between Ultraman and Venom/Carnage:
It's a great place for newcomers to the Ultra series as it explains the background of the heroes, but also has pretty much all of them from over the decades making an appearance for the long-term fans.
I really enjoyed it as it rattled along at a fair old pace, was pretty cheesy instead of taking itself serious like a lot of the latter po-faced Godzilla films and had plenty of action. The finale was great!
The only downsides to it were that Ultraman Leo never popped his nunchuks and that the whole film was made using greenscreen. It's all very convincing and the CGI is very good, but part of the charm of giant rubber monster movies is to see the bad guys stomping all over Tokyo and other cities represented in model form.
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