Ultraman: emerging directors want to bring the iconic Japanese character to a wider audience

Ahead of the new film‘s debut, the pair – whose previous credits include work on Kubo and the Two Strings – spoke exclusively to RadioTimes.com about making a film that would work for both longtime fans of the franchise and for those having their first exposure. to the character.

“I mean, we’re talking about a character with a multi-generational legacy,” Aoshima explained. “And we’re big fans too. But we also knew it would take a long time to establish this world, to the point where it could serve all fans.

“But that wasn’t the point of this film: the point was to tell the beautiful story that Shannon had written and to support it and to… well, basically, we wanted people to come in not knowing anything about it. Ultraman, just like we discovered Ultraman when we were kids.”

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Tindle added: “Yeah, when you’re a kid, you don’t start at episode 1. You just turn it on and it can be episode 8, episode 10, episode 12 – I didn’t no origin story for that.” but that doesn’t matter, because I’m captivated by the imagery and getting to know the character.

“So we also wanted to echo that experience – that joy before we became so obsessed with [it]. Rule making in fandom is so toxic, and it gets even more so as the years go by. “It has to be like, oh, this is not my Star Wars, this is not my Ultraman, etc.” And the thing is, you can tell all kinds of stories in these worlds.

“Now, we’ve paid homage to a lot of that. We have a science team in our movie, but we turned them around and made them the bad guys. They didn’t start out that way. There’s a story there. And we work in the background and with Tsuburaya on that stuff and they’ve been really great to collaborate with us. But it really was… if it supports the story that we’re telling,. it can stay. If it distracts people, it’s out.

Interestingly, the new film didn’t start life as an Ultraman project. Tindle began writing it as a separate storyline simply inspired by the superhero, because he thought he was unlikely to obtain the rights to place his film in such a long-running franchise, which began in 1966 and encompasses television shows. , films, books and a host of other media.

“I was like, ‘I can’t have Ultraman,'” he explained. “And I didn’t even know at the time that I had this idea, the legal issues surrounding it and why… there’s this dead period where there weren’t really any shows and there was had a huge lawsuit and they only withdrew from the lawsuit when I was leaving Sony with what was called Made in Japan at the time.

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He added: “I was inspired by Ultraman. And just as I was leaving it, they got out of a legal problem and they were like, ‘We’re going full throttle, we want Ultraman is a global figure now.’ ” because Takayuki Tsukagoshi, who is the chairman and CEO, believed so could be.

“And he had worked at Disney before, so he knew branding and knew how to get the message across. But what was also very important in all of our conversations was that I didn’t want it to be an advertisement to sell toys, I wanted to tell a good story and I had a story that they responded to and we were allowed to do it.

Ultraman: Rising is streaming on Netflix starting Friday, June 14 – sign up from £4.99 per month. Netflix is ​​also available on Sky Glass And Blank media stream.

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