Ultraman: The Next (2004)
First Lieutenant Shun'ichi Maki of the Japan Air Self-Defense Force is a prestigious F-15 Eagle jet pilot (or "driver" as he is called in the film). A lifelong fan of flying since he was a child, being a pilot is his ultimate dream. Unfortunately, his duties distance himself from his wife, Yoko, who always ends up being neglected, and his son, Tsugumu, who has a congenital blood disease and has a high risk of dying at a young age.Maki decides to quit the Air Force to devote more time to his family and to spend whatever is left for his son. He takes a part-time job as a commercial tour guide run by a kindly group of people who allow him time to work and to also take care of his family.
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Best movie of this year hands down!
Wow! Such a good movie.
Better Late Then Never
A Masterpiece!
Excellent film , was Amazon better last film Superman and Spiderman for example ...my English is basic and now writer in Spanish , Grant Film for me was great , very good actors , very good the effects , and ultraman equip very cool much modern and keep the esensy series years 70 ultraman, this ultraman better series USA , I wish continue this film about ultraman and i wish see ultraseven too ultraman , ultraseven , Goku ( dragon ball ) will be our superheroes forever .. repeat Excellent film , was Amazon better last film Superman and Spiderman for example ...my English is basic and now writer in Spanish , Grant Film for me was great , very good actors , very good the effects , and ultraman equip very cool much modern and keep the esensy series years 70 ultraman, this ultraman better series USA , I wish continue this film about ultraman and i wish see ultraseven too ultraman , ultraseven , Goku ( dragon ball ) will be our superheroes forever ..
I was very impressed by Ultraman,i was expecting it to be a cheesy piece of badly made fluff but to my surprise i found it to be quite well made and very well acted...OK maybe the sfxs weren't up to ILM or WETA standards but they tried really hard and even though it still had that typical Japanese "man in a suit" look the model work production design and visual effects did look good...In lots of films of like this the child actors normally come across as quite bad and almost unbearably cute(which i hate in a film) but these were good something not usually found in this type of Japanese film...Its sometimes very hard getting the balance right between campy fun or serious genre films,its much easier to make a successful comic/campy film than a film like Ultraman which takes itself very seriously get it wrong and the film will turn into a nightmare... something that doesn't happen in this film..overall it was a good film well made and enjoyable to watch...well worth catching on TV/DVD
The movie was great, the story was spectacular, and the characters were very likable. I love the fact that they brought an old hero back and gave him a new make-over. The music is a rock-style of the original Ultraman music. I hope that if you are a great Ultraman fan, you will get it. I could only watch it with Japanese subtitles, but I still love it. The only problem that I had, was the fact that they used a pre-existing Ultraman from the Ultraman Nexus universe. I would have preferred something more in the line of the original Ultraman. I did enjoy that they did not kill the story with to much special FX, but the battles were spectacular. This movie would make the late Tsuburaya very proud!
As I was watching the midair climax of the movie (which is a lot of fun, by the way), I couldn't help but think that the music sounded very familiar. It was starting to remind me very much of Anton Bruckner's 8th Symphony in c-minor. No sooner had I made this inner note to myself when the soundtrack actually started *quoting* the 8th, note-for-note! OK, OK, I know this has nothing to do with the movie, which is probably my favorite Ultraman so far... but I like commenting on musical trivia like this. (Another odd Bruckner quote comes in the opening credits of Victor Halperin's "Supernatural" from 1933, which uses a few bars of the Third Symphony in d-minor.)