Shin for the win: Where to go when superheroes feel stale

Like many folks, I’ve been a bit over-saturated by superhero movies the last few years. 

I’m not declaring the superhero boom “over” like a lot of pundits are, but it’s all started to feel a bit rote. The Marvel Cinematic Universe in particular has fallen into the quicksand of “what-next-itis,” where watching the movies feel like homework as bread crumb credit-scenes stack up endlessly teasing the next adventures. The movies are mostly “fine,” but I’m not getting the same epic kick I once did of watching Captain America, Iron Man and Thor share the screen for the first time or Black Panther leaping onto the screen. To be honest, it’s hard to imagine they’ll ever top the lead-up to Avengers: Endgame no matter how hard the studio execs sweat. 

But there’s far more out there than just one cinematic universe. So far, the best superhero-style times I’ve had at the movies this year have been Japanese tokusatsu films in the “Shin” heroes universe led by director Hideaki Anno. I’m very much a tourist in this world, but I like it. 

The Shin series has taken old Japanese favourites like Godzilla and Ultraman and reimagined them in bold big-budget films that combine Hollywood bombast with a distinctly tokusatsu* vision. (*Japanese “special effects” movies/TV shows) It’s included Shin Godzilla, Shin Ultraman and Shin Kamen Rider movies. 

The Shin universe – “Shin” roughly translates to “New,” “True” or “God” in the title  – is a wonderfully strange one where all the somewhat cheesy energy of ‘60s Godzilla flicks and Ultraman TV shows are done up with modern special effects and a true reverence for the material that makes it all feel epic and magical. Sure, a 40-metre tall silver humanoid hero like Ultraman is kinda silly, but his first appearance in Shin Ultraman evokes a real sense of awe. 

The Shin universe kicked off with 2016’s remarkable Shin Godzilla. From the start, it undermines your expectations, like having Godzilla first materialise as a kind of google-eyed reptilian slinky who evolves rapidly throughout the film. While at first it may seem off-putting to not get to the Big G right away, it actually makes Shin Godzilla’s dangerous kaiju all that more impressive when he takes centre stage. The movie actually won the Japanese equivalent of the Academy Award for Picture of the Year!

The Big G of Shin Godzilla is one of the venerable franchise’s finest and freakiest ‘Zillas, a truly sinister predator with no kindness in his eyes, no “helping” humanity against other monsters, and it boasts some of the most dazzling destruction sequences of the more than 30 Godzilla movies. It was a solid reminder that after more than 60 years Godzilla still has the capacity to blow us away, and Anno turned his live-action skills to two other famed Japanese franchises, with 2022’s Shin Ultraman and this year’s Shin Kamen Rider. 

I had a wide grin on my face the entire time I watched Shin Ultraman a few weeks back in the theatre. Ultraman is the Superman of tokusatsu heroes, an alien visitor fused with a human host who fights giant rubbery monsters and aliens galore. There’s been an insane amount of Ultraman series and movies over the years but, like Shin Godzilla, Shin Ultraman starts everything over from the beginning with a zippy tale of alien invasions, giant monster attacks and secret government agencies. It’s a giddy, unpredictable blast and unlike too many American superhero movies lately, you don’t feel they’re endlessly seeding the story with teases for a flurry of sequels. Instead, the Shin movies draw backwards on the franchises’ long history to create a world that feels deeply imagined yet new. 

I’ve been a Godzilla nut for years and a more casual fan of Ultraman, but when it came to watching Shin Kamen Rider, the decades of source material is something I was utterly unfamiliar with. It’s the intricate tale of insect-human hybrid “augs” battling for supremacy in a world full of zippy motorbike chases, cool helmets and bizarre villains. 

Unfortunately Kamen Rider (or Masked Rider in English) was probably the least successful of the three Shin films for me, thanks to some dodgy CGI and a sense they’re REALLY trying to jam all 50 years of fan lore into one two-hour movie. While Shin Ultraman also packs a lot of legacy story in, it feels slightly less rushed. But while it’s a bit of a chaotic jumble and overwhelming at times, there’s still more energy and originality in Shin Kamen Rider than I ever felt watching recent US hero snoozefests like The Eternals. 

The Shin movies have been full of surprises, instead of following the rather predictable path of recent superhero movies with that mandatory everybody-running-around-things-falling-from-sky-in-a-hail-of-CGI climax. They’re deeply Japanese – Shin Godzilla has a dizzily rapid-fire satirical take on Japanese bureaucracy, for instance – and don’t feel like they’re catering to a Hollywood audience. 

I grew up reading Marvel and DC Comics and so all the inside references and teases and foreshadowings make sense to me and I know my Dr. Strange from my Dr. Fate, but it also kind of means that after 30-something MCU movies, it all starts to feel like something you’ve seen before. The fun part of the Shin universe is how it’s a doorway to another pop-culture world entirely, one I freely admit to only having the barest knowledge of. 

It’s a big old multiverse out there, and I kind of love feeling like an utter newcomer to some of it.