Growing up in Tokyo, Japan, Ken Sato always dreamed of playing professional baseball. But after realizing his goal and becoming a superstar athlete in Los Angeles, he’s suddenly called back home by his family to take on the mantle of Japan’s gigantic defender, Ultraman. 

Created in the 1960s by Japanese filmmaker and special effects pioneer Eiji Tsuburaya, Ultraman is well-known around the world and has been reborn across myriad series and films over the decades. The latest, Ultraman: Rising, from Emmy-winning writer-director Shannon Tindle (Lost Ollie), posits an intriguing new approach to the beloved character, finding a more personal angle on the benevolent giant. “My whole goal was taking something that I loved as a kid and asking, ‘How can I make this connect with everyone?’” says Tindle. 

In Ultraman: Rising, Sato (Christopher Sean) tries to balance his Ultraman duties — fending off the giant, rampaging beasts known as kaiju — with the pressures of playing for the biggest baseball team in Japan. When an unexpected responsibility falls into his lap, it changes his entire perspective on family. Explains Tindle: “I want [the audience] to think, This is a big tentpole popcorn movie — and it is. But what it’s really about is an estranged father and son who can’t talk with each other being united by the character that’s seen by the world as their enemy.”

In developing the film’s look, production designer Marcos Mateu-Mestre took inspiration from manga and worked alongside the animators at Industrial Light & Magic (Rango, Star Wars) to bring it all to life. “Manga can have stories that are fairly extreme in terms of dramatic action, but I was always amazed at how poetic those drawings were,” he says. “Everything has a purpose, and that’s what I love about this [film]: Nothing is random or just because it looks good or because it’s spectacular. There is a reason for it, and the visuals really emphasize the moment of the story that’s being told.”