Urutora Q za mûbi: Hoshi no densetsu

I feel like I've seen most of the proper kaiju movies out there, so trying to dig deeper into the genre has me uncovering movies lately that feature some giant monsters, but aren't full-blown giant monster movies, if that makes sense. Princess from the Moon was one, and now Ultra Q: The Movie is another.

I was almost going to accept there wouldn't be much at all as far as kaiju were concerned, but then a surprisingly good scene hit right on the one-hour-mark, and I felt a bit more interested. Before then, it's not terrible, and has an interesting premise, though the presentation felt a bit off and the characters were kind of flat. Those problems make the second half much better, because that's where most of the action set pieces and special effects are contained.

There's a weirdness throughout that's kind of endearing, and the film was unique in a way that proved entertaining in bursts throughout. A little more energy or snappier writing/pacing could've made this something surprisingly great, but as it stands, I think this was decent.

On the scale of baffling in an annoying way to baffling in an awesome way, it would fall a little off from the centre, ever so slightly more toward awesome than annoying.

Legend of the Stars feels like that missing link between Heisei Godzilla and Heisei Gamera, striking an otherworldly and transcendental balance in re-imagining Ultra Q for a whole new generation and who better to helm it than the franchise's most unique voice, Akio Jissoji. Legend of the Stars could realistically be considered the 2001 of the tokusatsu genre, mainly because this movie is pretty much a metaphysical examination of existence in a similar vein to Kubrick's film, just way more dialogue-heavy. It doesn't always hold together but Jissoji's visualisation is greater than the sum of its shakey parts, his direction and camera work are constantly engaging and ever-shifting with no two shots being the same. Combining aspects of Japanese mythology and a sci-fi mystery, Legend of the Stars is very much worthy of your attention even if you haven't seen the original show, it just drags its feet towards the end as if struggling to fill time and you'll have to put up with some substandard DVD mastering if you want to see it, it's crying out for an HD release. Come on Tsuburaya! Do it!