Since 1966, Ultraman has been a popular character from Japan. Over 100 television series, movies, specials, and video games have been made based on the Ultra series.
With most of the content being made in Japan, Netflix’s Ultraman: Rising is the first American reboot of the franchise where the main character, Ken Sato (Christopher Sean), is portrayed as Japanese American (born in Japan but grew up in America).
The filmmakers, director Shannon Tindle and co-director John Aoshima, went to great lengths to establish a new tale for the alien hero while honoring its Japanese origins through their story, music, and VFX animation.
Tindle and Aoshima worked on the idea of the film for over twenty years, but ultimately, they wanted the story to focus on Ken’s role as a parent rather than the origin story that has been told many times.
“So we tried a bunch of different things, but ultimately, the most important thing is that this is about Ken Sato’s story and the challenges he faces as a parent,” Tindle explains. “So I say it’s all about parents and their children.”
They did incorporate Japanese baseball into the mix, as Japan has long been obsessed with the American pastime. Aoshima’s brother was a former minor-league baseball player in Japan, giving insight into that life for the character.
“[My brother] had the Japanese American experience of playing in Japan,” Aoshima explains. “It was a great opportunity for him.”
Composer Scot Stafford wanted to pay homage to traditional Japanese instruments like the Taiko drums and add a little synth and baby metal to the music. Yet Stafford made sure it also felt American due to Ken’s upbringing.
“It is very much multicultural and very much set in Japan and very much rooted in that tradition,” says Stafford. “But it’s also very Americanized, and it’s a very modern story as well. So I wanted to just make sure that the palette was always there and that it was influenced and created by people thinking creatively, as opposed to giving me the sound that I wanted.”
VFX Supervisor Hayden Jones felt the same way when paying homage to the culture from which the story originated. As an anime fan, he drew inspiration from Akira, Your Name, and many other Japanese manga.
“[These animes] are just so influential,” Jones reveals. “I really wanted to get elements of that in there. We wanted to look at anime in general and [understand] how autonomizing could pay homage but push in its own direction to make its own style while referencing anime and manga. So there are a lot of manga references, too, and lots of it combined together into the Ultraman: Rising style.”
Check out the full conversations below:
