OK, if you are like me, you watched Godzilla Sunday mornings, all the while questioning why an old, low quality, dubbed, Japanese TV show was on every week.
But once and a while an #Ultraman episode would pop up. I would think, cool, OK now they are on the right track, enough with city slaying dino-monsters placating the tender emotions of a wayward red-capped children.
No, this was a good episode because we got a guy in a silver suit. Already something a young kid can call super, and then, he would pull out a small silver rod. To a kid, a glowing silver stick, that transforms a small silver dude into a BIG silver dude who can shoot laser beams with his elbows and has a wicked cool helmet, is as cool as it gets.
So, we have an ambiguous silver guy, unbeatable, with some cool tech, but I didn’t know his back story, or his abilities or limitations. It didn’t matter, I liked that he was incomplete, he was for me, even if I couldn’t articulate it, the Ultimate Superhero Archetype. For he was there at the right time, transformed at the right time, looked and acted as an ultimate hero would.
“… I liked that he was incomplete, he was for me,
even if I couldn’t articulate it,
the Ultimate Superhero Archetype.”
So #Marvel… why would the top comic house grab a little known character from the Asian/monster genre?
In this growing market for comic book media, the large monster component covers the majority of the world unfamiliar with traditional Western comics. Ultraman is at the crossroads of these foreign markets and sensibilities, where the connective tissue between all fictional fighters and forces of nature merge.
So, part and parcel to any early childhood fandom role playing experience revolves around the mannerisms and tech extensions of the powers the characters use to fight. Ultraman had no gun, no radio, and no people or planet to speak of, just him. That purity did not go unnoticed by me. I imagined Ultraman was some universal answer to calamities in the universe. A pure silver fighter, made up of the sheer will of the cosmos, codified by the plight of a planet caught in a rampage by a radioactive spawned dino-beast.
Somehow, I assigned a …purity to Ultraman, for he was unencumbered by the mortal tellings of family, country or crime to explain his existence, he was simply is …inevitable, eternal… and just. Something a kid, optimistic and hopeful of the future, would imagine.
Superhero stories rely on the universal backstory of our own aspiration. That is to say, inside us is a knowing and a wanting. They fulfill our desire for an all-powerful force to right injustices.
“The superhero story need only identify a protagonist and set the stage for a conflict recognizable to the human condition as a need for force greater than our average self.“
So Marvel, good luck in getting the world to buy a movie ticket, you may just get there. To all the Big Space Story fans out there, try a little, simple silver Ultraman, less baggage than your fav hero, and more pure childhood imaginational goodness.
- by Garrison Portico – ConvoGeek editor
#UltramanMARVELMovie
