Now, I am vaguely familiar with the Ultraman character, but I never delved into this particular subgenre of Japanese superheroes. Why? Well, mostly because I have problems taking a guy in a spandex suit with a plastic helmet serious. Thus, I never really ventured down this particular path of Japanese superheroes.

And I suppose you need to be either Japanese or fan of this overly corny superhero genre to enjoy something like the 2022 "Shin Ultraman" movie from writer Hideaki Anno and director Shinji Higuchi. Needless to say that I found "Shin Ultraman" not to be a particularly entertaining movie. And it was very difficult sitting through nearly two hours of this nonsense.

Sure, I will say that the movie had some fair enough effects, and I did enjoy the Kaiju monsters in the movie. But a humongous man in a tightly fitting spandex suit and a plastic helmet, well that is where I draw the line of entertainment.

I wasn't familiar with the cast ensemble in "Shin Ultraman", but I am sure that the actors and actresses performed well enough. I just simply didn't care enough about the storyline or characters to really get myself invested here.

Of course there is an audience out there for a movie such as "Shin Ultraman", no doubt about it. I just happened not to be part of that target audience.

My rating of "Shin Ultraman" lands on a three out of ten stars.

I was very excited for Shin Ultraman, and jumped at the chance to see it as part of a film festival. I'd given up on expecting it to get a cinema release in Australia, so this seemed like the only chance to see it on the big screen. It was at a cinema that always shows movies in their original language (even when they screen old Studio Ghibli and Miyazaki movies), so it was disappointing that they had a dubbed version. I've heard worse dubs - mostly from older movies, usually in the martial arts genres - but even if it wasn't a terrible dub, it still ruined most of the humor. You can understand certain lines and moments as comedic, but without them being in their original language, it's not genuinely funny; more just, "Oh, I assume that's funny."

Dub aside, I still think I would've been slightly disappointed with this even if I'd watched it the way it was intended. It's oddly paced, and features action that progressively gets less exciting as the film goes on. There are certain fun sequences that balance being silly and cool well, but I felt the action generally ran out of steam after about the first hour or so. And then it kept feeling like it was building to a climax, only for the scene not to be the climax, and then on and on until it eventually ended.

The character stuff is all acceptable, and having the human storyline intersect with the giant monster stuff by having a man who can transform into Ultraman is a nice way to bridge what often feels like separate parts of the same kaiju movie. It feels like Shin Godzilla in parts, when it comes to the human stuff, but never feels quite as cutting or clever as that film was, with its satirical elements and the way it unapologetically mocked bureaucracy.

For some fun action and spectacle, I think it would've been a decent watch if it had been in Japanese with subs. The dubbed version I'd give lower than a 6/10, but I won't knock the film overall for that; I'm trying to imagine how I'd feel if the version I'd watched had been the proper one. And I do ultimately think I still would've felt disappointed by the final half-hour or so of this, the pacing, and the familiarness of many of its sci-fi concepts, even if there is still a bit of fun to be had within its two-hour runtime.

1. A reimagining of Ultraman and the 37th film in the Ultraman franchise. The second live-action installment in Hideaki Anno's Shin Japan Heroes Universe. An epic tokusatsu entry with brilliant and realistic practical and visual effects combined with outstanding battle choreography. Well written dialogues with humour and political awareness regarding Japan's weak government bureaucracy and United States' over dominance in Japan's internal affairs.

2. A reimagining of Ultraman and the 37th film in the Ultraman franchise. The second live-action installment in Hideaki Anno's Shin Japan Heroes Universe. An epic tokusatsu entry with brilliant and realistic practical and visual effects combined with outstanding battle choreography. Well written dialogues with humour and political awareness regarding Japan's weak government bureaucracy and United States' over dominance in Japan's internal affairs.