I remember walking out of the theater from Iron Man (2008) as a child, pushing the tips of my fingers to their extremes in order to generate that weird tingling feeling. The gesture itself looked more Emperor Palpatine than it did Tony Stark, but by some dumb childish logic, that weird finger-tingling thing made me feel like I could be a superhero. 

Walking out of The Majestic 7’s 7:00 PM premiere of Shin Ultraman, I saw an elderly Asian woman doing the Ultraman equivalent viz-a-viz his iconic cross-arm pose as she entered the parking lot, just in front of the Home Depot. The people she attended with laughed with her, but there was something wondrously committed about her pose—bent knees, unassuming, without winking, for the simple purpose of making another human smile.

And that’s also how I’d describe Shin Ultraman: it’s a movie that really adores humanity and just wants to entertain us humans.

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