Ultraman: Ascension continue the beloved Ultraman universe that began in the 1960s, with the new Netflix original breaking new ground in terms of visuals and storytelling. The film stood out as an original kaiju film that focuses more on protecting the giant creatures rather than fighting them, after new protagonist Ken Sato discovers an egg from a baby Gigantron who imprints him as his father. The film is directed by duo Shannon Tindle and John Aoshima, who previously collaborated on the 2016 release. Kubo and the Two Strings.
Ascending marks the introduction of Sato, who has recently taken up the mantle of Ultraman from his father, and must fulfill his heroic duty with the duty he has to his own family and Emi. The film received critical praise for its visual direction, much of which was led by visual effects supervisor Hayden Jones. Jones is an industry veteran in effects, having previously worked on projects such as The Mandalorian, Black Mirrorand Agent Carter.
Screen speech interviewed Hayden Jones to discuss a baby kaiju project for the Ultraman franchise, making the city of Tokyo feel like its own character, and updating a classic tokusatsu with modern visual effects.
The production babies really “earned their credit” with Ultraman: Rising
Balancing New and Old Effects and Creating a Baby Kaiju
Screen Rant: Can you talk about the challenges and rewards of creating the digital version of Tokyo as a character in Ultraman: Rising? Because that’s one of the coolest parts of it, because Tokyo feels like a character in this movie.
Hayden Jones: Yes, that’s true, and it was actually a real challenge, because we really wanted to pay homage to Tokyo and we didn’t have the opportunity. We started the show, it was during a pandemic so we couldn’t fly there. We couldn’t take photos, so a lot of research was done online. There were a lot of videos on YouTube, there was a lot of Street View navigation on Google Maps. But also, we had a cultural committee that Netflix created to have them do these training sessions where they explained to us what it was like to be Japanese, what it was like to live in Tokyo, some of the nuances, and so all of our teams really bought into that.
The modeling team was very specific. They found all the details. There are a lot of real nuances in Tokyo, so street furniture is different in different neighborhoods; the bollards in Daikanyama are different from the bollards in Nagoro, and you need to know exactly what you are doing. We were very specific about every detail, and in the end it was a real joy not to have to be encyclopedic, because the teams behind me knew literally every detail, and it’s a real joy to bring it to the screen.
Have you been to Tokyo since the film came out?
Hayden Jones: No, I’m actually going in a few weeks and it will be a real joy to visit some of the places we’ve created.
One of the most important things about being Ultraman It’s about finding balance, so how do you balance updating a classic tokusatsu and modern visual effects?
Hayden Jones: It’s a really interesting challenge and I think when you start a project like this you have to do the research. You need to know where Ultraman has been so you can take the next step into the future. Obviously, I knew about Ultraman, but I wasn’t a huge Ultraman fan, so I had to do a lot of research when I started the movie. Luckily, they gave me a stack of DVDs of all the series. I watched them all and it was great.
It started out as a really interesting experience, and then suddenly it hit me like, “Oh my God, this is huge, hugely important culturally.” Suddenly it was like I really had to understand that this is really important to a lot of people and that we have to make sure we protect it for future generations. We knew we had to take care of every detail, but it was great to be able to take the past, give it our own kind of Ultraman: Rising twist, and see how it could progress into the future. It was beautiful.
Emi is one of the cutest things I’ve ever seen on screen, and I don’t think we’ve ever seen a baby. Can you talk about the process of creating Emi?
Hayden Jones: Yes, it all starts with the character design and art. Everything we do in Ultraman: Rising always starts with a work of art, and with Emi it was beautiful. We had a beautiful surface, so we had colorful artwork that really showed off the texture and the scales and everything. But we also had all these beautiful character gestural pieces, which showed how flexible she was.
She’s like a real baby, and they’re squirmy, but the thing is, she’s 25 feet tall, so we have to make sure we balance being a baby with the scale, and that involved the babysitting team. animation. Animation supervisor Matt Vig did an excellent job of pulling together massive amounts of baby references; Never before on a show have production babies earned their credits as much as they do on Ultraman: Rising.
But we had a huge catalog of references from all the animators around the world, and it was great because we took the fun and what the animation team did was add scale. So suddenly you’re taking these really small, cute expressions and making them kaiju-sized and really, really finding the weight and scale of the character is just brilliant.
The team wanted to “push boundaries” with Ultraman: Rising
New techniques and conceptualization of ideas for sequences
Tokusatsu is so rooted in Japanese culture and I think it works perfectly in animated form. How does this open the door for other tokusatsu, such as a Kamen Rider or a Super Sentai be adapted into an animated experience for viewers?
Hayden Jones: I really hope so. I think one of the interesting things we have right now in animation is that animation seems to be one of the art forms that is still really willing to push boundaries. You see it all the time, especially with Ultraman: Rising, where stylistically I really wanted to create something quite new. We really wanted to push the boundaries of what people were willing to accept as a feature film, and I think this will open the door for a lot of different genres to really try something new, really go into new territory.
Was there a specific scene in Ultraman: Ascension Where did you try a new technique or approach for the first time?
Hayden Jones: I think one of the places where we were trying really hard to find something new was in the ocean, on the surface of the water. We started with super stylized surfaces, very simple, with very, very stylized shapes. What we learned first was that it wasn’t really connected to the size and power of the ocean, and that kind of distracted us from the size and power of Ultraman and the kaiju. So we opted for this hybrid – again, it’s balance – bringing an Ultraman theme.
We went for a hybrid approach, where we used a realistic water surface but then styled elements on top of it. So all the waves that formed had little stylized white crests that left behind almost a painterly sensation of foam, and it really looked like a kind of hand-drawn image, and it was – I mean, a lot of artists got into this and created all these elements at hand, but it really came together with the look of Ultraman: Rising. It was a beautiful thing to bring to the screen.
Ultraman: Ascension goes beyond the limits of animation. Have you started to conceptualize where you want a sequence to go and what techniques you will use for it?
Hayden Jones: I would love a sequel. I’m willing to sign up now for the sequel. I think there are things you can constantly improve and there are things that, stylistically, I think we can improve. I also think that everything we do is to serve stories to filmmakers. We want to partner with filmmakers and we want to partner with filmmakers who want to tell a really interesting story, and Shannon [Tindle] and John [Aoshima] we really told a visually interesting story and did things about it that I think we can carry forward in our next film together.
Now I want to talk about Shannon and John, since we’re talking about filmmakers. Can you talk about working with them as collaborators on this project?
Hayden Jones: Yes, it’s been one of the most collaborative and joyful experiences of my career. I’ve worked with Shannon before on Lost Ollie, which is why we ended up working together on Ultraman: Rising, and it was a wonderful experience. Both Shannon and John are actually the visual effects team, so it’s not like Netflix and ILM. It’s like we’re an Ultraman team and everyone else – there were 550 people at ILM working on Ultraman: Rising. Every one of them was on the Ultraman team, and we all felt like we were doing this together with Netflix, and that’s important to making a really beautiful movie.
More about Ultraman: Rise (2024)
With Tokyo under siege by escalating monster attacks, baseball star KEN SATO reluctantly returns home to take up the mantle of Ultraman. But the titanic superhero meets his match when he adopts a 10-foot-tall, fire-breathing baby kaiju. Sato must overcome her ego to balance work and parenthood while protecting her baby from forces bent on exploiting her for their own dark plans. In partnership with Netflix, Tsuburaya Productions and Industrial Light & Magic, ULTRAMAN: RISING is written by Shannon Tindle and Marc Haimes, directed by Shannon Tindle and co-directed by John Aoshima.
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Source: Screen Rant Plus