All Things Godzilla

[bloodyarts]

I finally was able to watch Godzilla:Final Wars today. Holy shit, that was the most ridiculously awesome movie I've watched since Sharknado. It did have some pacing problems in places and a few plot holes , but the action scenes were damn fun.

Eh, to each his own.

I will forever greatly dislike this movie. Monster defeats were so anticlimactic, they lacked any weight whatsoever. Godzilla arrives, beams, moves on to the next. Even the other "hero" monsters Seesar, Rodan and Anguirus receive embarrassing beatdowns. The shiny new monster, Keizer Ghidorah looked more like a man in a suit than Gabara. His toss beams were unspectacular, to say the least.

Ebirah, defeated by super-soldiers pop guns? Hedorah, impaled? By Ebirah??? And then two-fer'd..?? A relatively flimsy electrical high tension wire tower impales Kamakuras? Yeah, please don't touch this franchise again, Mr. Kitamura.

I get it; this is Godzilla to the 10th power; a fevered fan-fiction made flesh. Every aspect of a Godzilla movie, ramped up to "Is this trip really necessary?" levels. There's clearly an audience for that sort of thing. But I feel that there's also a reason anything done to this level is ultimately unsatisfying. This is why Flash, no matter how illogical, can be hit. This is why kryptonite exists. This is why Thanos subconsciously defeats himself.

Omnipotence is boring.

Conflict, challenge, growth... without these, what's the point in doing anything? Where's the accomplishment? If Godzilla can beat all his foes in 5 seconds with barely a scratch suffered upon his person, how is this exciting? Yeah, it's cool to see him breeze through Brod-zilla, but opponents that once required an entire movie to conquer, now suffering comical defeats (even when teaming 3-on-1!!), is just downright disrespectful to the characters, the people who created them and the fans that respected the abilities of those characters.

For a 50th anniversary/remake, this was the most un-Godzilla movie I've seen since Brod-zilla '98. It's more akin to a parody. The sad thing is that before Godzilla's arrival (nearly 60min in), the movie is actually quite enjoyable. It hadn't jumped off the rails yet. The character designs for all but Godzilla and Monster X/Keizer Ghidorah were well-done. Don Frye was an awesome casting choice, and the only other character anyone gives a wit about is the mutant Xilian leader.

We really deserved better.

[bloodyarts]

Godzilla 2014's roar was a little too high pitched for my tastes; the 1954 roar remains the gold standard, and for me, it's largely because it's so deep, low, and bassy. Godzilla never sounded better (more terrifying) than he did in the original 1954 film.

Agreed!

The second film (GODZILLA RAIDS AGAIN) did something very strange: it gave Godzilla the roar of *Anguirus*, which was especially weird considering that Anguirus was his opponent in that movie.

That was only in the American version, Gigantis, The Fire Monster, no? The Japanese version has the correct roar effects. I read somewhere that the reason the American version screws Godzilla's roar is because in the movie, it is explained that Godzilla and Anguirus are from the same species, or something like that. And so, the decision was made to make them sound alike.

[bloodyarts]

In allot of Ways MechaGodzilla was better and seem to be, that is why he was such a GREAT Foe for Godzilla, he pushed Godzilla to his Hardest and came close to looking like he would win more then any other monster IMO!

For me, the foe that pushed Godzilla to his limits, and absolutely could not be defeated without outside help, was Hedorah, the Smog Monster.

Physical attacks resulted in harm for the attacker (Godzilla). Atomic bursts appeared to hurt Hedorah, but did not force him to retreat, or even move into a defensive position. On the other hand, Hedorah's very existence, much less the multitudes of weapons at his disposal, was a threat to Godzilla, and the planet at large!

I would really like to see Hedorah revisited. The treatment he received in Final Wars is unforgivably disrespectful.

[bloodyarts]

Honestly, I think when you take it for what it is as a little kid's movie Godzilla's Revenge is actually pretty good. There's some real emotional stuff to that kid's parents having to work all the time to make ends meat while the kid has to grow up by himself. The worst thing about it is that most of the monster stuff is stock footage. If not for that I'd rate it higher.

Godzilla's Revenge was apparently a nightmare to make. Special effects director Tsuburaya, the heart and soul of the series, had died. No one wanted to make movies without him, but Toho had a Godzilla-shaped hole in their schedule and basically ordered everybody to make a movie primarily using stock footage. Haruo Nakajima, the guy who played Godzilla, only did two more films after that. Director Ishiro Honda was lured back to make one more Godzilla film a few years later. The fact that the film is watchable at all is impressive.

Thanks Angilasman! That post was very informative. At first glance, the film is downright terrible. But when the actual story is taken into consideration, instead of focusing on the stock footage, the movie shapes up quite nicely. It was pretty funny how human bully Gabara looked as monster Gabara. One one hand, it's a terrible, goofy suit: bubbly skin, short brown hair (on a reptile??), and no tail;

but on the other hand, it's quite terrifying, as it is being envisioned through the eyes of a child. Hey, Gabara on the box art was much more fearsome, lol!

[Pharozonk]

I finally got around to watching Godzilla vs SpaceGodzilla. I think SpaceGodzilla might be my favorite antagonist for a Godzilla movie, challenged only by King Ghidorah. However, the human story was pretty dull and nonsensical at times. It does make we wonder though: Are there any Godzilla movies besides the original where the human story is actually as interesting as the monsters fighting?

[Buried Alien]

I finally got around to watching Godzilla vs SpaceGodzilla. I think SpaceGodzilla might be my favorite antagonist for a Godzilla movie, challenged only by King Ghidorah. However, the human story was pretty dull and nonsensical at times. It does make we wonder though: Are there any Godzilla movies besides the original where the human story is actually as interesting as the monsters fighting?

I thought the subplot with the King Seesar statue in the original MECHAGODZILLA movie (1974) was pretty intriguing.

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

[Pharozonk]

I thought the subplot with the King Seesar statue in the original MECHAGODZILLA movie (1974) was pretty intriguing.

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

I'll have to check that one out then once I finish up the Heisei era movies.

[Angilasman]

We'll have to wait 'till 2018 for Legendary Pictures' Godzilla sequel, but Godzilla will be returning to screens a bit earlier in a new, Toho-produced film from Japan!

http://kotaku.com/japan-is-finally-m...vie-1668043870

[CJStriker]

We'll have to wait 'till 2018 for Legendary Pictures' Godzilla sequel, but Godzilla will be returning to screens a bit earlier in a new, Toho-produced film from Japan!

http://kotaku.com/japan-is-finally-m...vie-1668043870

That some Exciting new to hear, good to see Toho is getting back into the Godzilla Business!

Greatly looking forward to this, while I like the American 2014 movie, Japan and Toho do stories that made Godzilla the character he is today.

I agree ... I actually found that it was more about the human characters. Godzilla was lost in everything else ...

Indeed, but what I found most funny is when you go back to original Godzilla movies back in the day, they also seem to focus Allot on the Human characters more times then I remembered. So it seems, either by choice or by accident, Godzilla 2014 followed the same style they did.

While indeed I like more Godzilla on the screen, each moment we got of him was a Great and even had more then 1 moment in my Theater where the audience clapped and cheered out-loud! Never had that happen before in a Long-Time!

[evangelionofasgard]

In regards to the new Japanese film
Please be serious and realistic
please be serious and realistic
please be 1984/biollante level serious and realistic
I like final wars a good deal but I have had my camp quota met for a good long time if not forever.

[Kensei]

I heard a piece about the new Toho film on the national news on the radio tonight and it said it hasn't been announced yet whether Godzilla will be CGI or a traditional man in a suit. Does anyone think it's possible to do a man in a suit that actually looks realistic? Now that the 2014 film delivered such an amazing look using modern special effects but preserving the traditional upright stance that diehard fans enjoy, I guess a suit that actually manages to be awesome would be the final hurdle to overcome.

[BeastieRunner]

Godzilla raids AGAIN!

Thread necromancy ...

Here's the new teaser logo/banner for the new Japanese film in 2016!

godzilla2016teaser.jpg

[Hilden B. Lade]

[Goggindowner]

I heard a piece about the new Toho film on the national news on the radio tonight and it said it hasn't been announced yet whether Godzilla will be CGI or a traditional man in a suit. Does anyone think it's possible to do a man in a suit that actually looks realistic? Now that the 2014 film delivered such an amazing look using modern special effects but preserving the traditional upright stance that diehard fans enjoy, I guess a suit that actually manages to be awesome would be the final hurdle to overcome.

I've got some doubts that a rubber suit can look as good as the CG version in the 2014 film. But even so, has anyone ever really expected a Godzilla film to look as good as that one did? The man in the suit still works just fine. I've always loved the series for its campy-ness as much as anything else.

[Angilasman]

I'm very interested in how Toho is going to make their film. Toho wants to make a Godzilla that stands next to what Hollywood's done. Godzilla 2000 was a response to America's Godzilla (1998), and because the former was such an embarrassment all Toho had to do was make a more traditional Godzilla film and declare victory. That isn't the case with Godzilla (2014), a film with a Godzilla that was accepted by fans and in Japan made the same kind of money as when he was in his last height of popularity in the early '90s. Toho is competing with a success, not a failure.

The reason why Hollywood movies have such great CGI is because Hollywood movies can make so much money in America (a huge country - lots of potential ticket dollars there) and are popular worldwide, so much so that nowadays they make even more money overseas. Since there is the potential for making so much money back there's a willingness to spend $200 million on the countless hours of work to make all that great looking CGI. It's not the technology itself that's expensive, it's paying all the people who're sitting down and doing the work. Most Hollywood blockbusters feature several different effects companies all working at the same time on a film to get the job done.

Japan is a much, much smaller country, and it's films aren't popular worldwide in the same way. It's practically impossible for it to make the same kid of money as a Hollywood blockbuster and because of that it's unlikely for them to ever spend the same amount of money on paying an army of people to whip-up all that high-quality CGI footage.

I'm very interested in how Toho will do this. Will they combine traditional effects and computer animation (like in the Attack on Titan movie)? Will they get foreign effects houses on board? Will they give an especially long production time so that a smaller group can have the luxury of time to make so many effects sequences look good?