Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Ultraman has one job: to defend the world from kaiju. Across countless manga, video games and movies, Ultraman’s core duty has been to fend off ferocious land and sea monsters — which, of course, have always been allegories for other threats facing mankind.
In “Ultraman: Rising,” our hero adopts one, which makes no sense in the greater scheme of Ultraman lore. (It would be like Batman going soft and raising a supervillain’s abandoned lovechild or Superman deciding to open a gift shop specializing in kryptonite.) But as with all metaphors, this one isn’t really about kaiju, but parent-child dynamics.
And who doesn’t love a baby kaiju? Not to rain on writer-director Shannon Tindle’s parade, but the baby kaiju thing feels like a cheat.
DreamWorks and other CG animation studios have been exploiting this tactic for years, introducing adorable infant versions of otherwise not-especially-cute characters.
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