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Behind the scenes footage of kaiju movies doesn't get better than this. https://twitter.com/RoseThreat30/status/1101012571828584451
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Jun 29, 2019 21:57
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Penpal posted:uh, I'm assuming you've seen Shin Godzilla? They stop him at the end, but it's a pyrrhic victory. I don't think humanity "won" It's uncertain if the victory would last, but I wouldn't call it anywhere near pyrrhic. Japan is rebuilding, the capital wasn't nuked (although there's still the timer near zero. It's always the post-war era, after all.) and the rads are dying down faster than anyone expected. Add in the new technologies available from analyzing Godzilla, and it's all seeming like relatively minor damage considering this was potentially human extinction on the line. When one guy in a fight winds up with a broken nose, and the other guy is left eating canvas, that's still a clear win. As for the lack of movies where humanity just loses, they're pretty rare on the ground, especially when you count a monster happening to help more than harm as a human win, for pretty simple reasons. Big budget films generally want their protagonists to matter. They can screw up, sure, but if nothing they do could change the outcome, audiences tend to question why they watched it in the first place. Horror films often challenge that setup, but they also tend to pretend that things could change until the end, giving the antagonist apparent vulnerabilities and making it interact with the protagonists on a personal level. Kaiju movies, by their inherent nature, don't do that as easily.
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Aug 22, 2019 02:16
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Just to be clear, is Lupin threatening to steal Godzilla?
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Oct 20, 2019 23:44
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mandatory lesbian posted:Tbf shin Godzilla could be replaced with like, a flood or even a nebulaous budget crisis and the core drama of the movie would be unchanged. It's only a kaiju movie in the sense that a giant monster is in it Except a budget crisis would be unlikely to explode all the ranking politicians in the country in an all-encompassing plague of lasers. (Similarly, a flood would be unlikely to make the USA drop an atomic bomb on Tokyo.) Shin's plot only works because it's an unprecedented crisis that (eventually) leaves the mavericks and oddballs in charge thanks to everyone else dying. Poor handling of a standard crisis is what the film is parodying, but the exaggeration and unique impact of a giant monster is necessary for the core drama to work. As for the genre discussion, Attack on Titan is a mech anime, but the live action version is a Kaiju movie. In both, though, Titans have intentionally grotesque appearances so that even if they're intelligent, they feel inhuman, so that even the ones based on real people have enough monstrous elements you say "Oh, giant monster" rather than "Why isn't Brock Lesnar wearing pants?" As for the movie and the show, although both have titan shifters as a key plot element, they're used differently. In the anime, Titans are steadily moved towards being a military weapon. All Titans in the setting were created intentionally, and the historic atrocities are revealed as one nation using them against another, not a natural occurrence or an accident of mad science. Titan Shifters aren't monsters, really. They're flesh-mechs, working for the Not!Germans against their enemies. It's one group of humans against another, with Titans merely acting as the medium. The film, meanwhile, has Titans as an accident. Science went wrong, and the apocalypse happened. Shifters aren't part of a military with specific doctrines for their use developed over centuries, but lone figures, each one with a different plan for the future, independent of any chain of command.
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Aug 28, 2020 05:28
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Gripweed posted:I'm very far behind on Attack on Titan, but as I recall the titan's original human body is present inside the Titan body. It's in the back of the neck, that's why that area is the titan's weak spot. At one point they cut the guy out of his titan body. Whereas with Ultraman when the guy is transformed into Ultraman, the human form is in some weird dark limbo area, the physicality of which is not clear. Yep. For non-shifters, it's just a brain and spinal cord, but for shifters, we see the people inside, and they can poke themselves out, even if they're hooked up to a bunch of nerves. Season 4 is even going to have Someone remote controlling a titan from a comparatively safe location outside of the body.
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Aug 29, 2020 02:27
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Karloff posted:Gamera vs. Barugon is easily the best showa Gamera for me. It has an interesting human story, a wonderful use of colour and a sense of forward momentum that the others lack. Gamera vs. Barugon is interesting, since it feels a lot more like a Godzilla movie compared to the other Gameras. Instead of getting a kid who's got some connection to Gamera, the humans are all morally ambiguous adults engaged in their own plot when, crap, giant monsters. Likewise, Gamera's less heroic than his usual, taking a more Godzilla style role of the lesser evil. Gamera opens the film with destruction, and without a kid to play advocate, there's no clarification if the ending was a hero saving the day, or just payback. Later Gamera films would more and more lock him into a heroic role, so seeing a film in flux like this stands out. chiasaur11 fucked around with this message at 08:46 on Sep 1, 2020 |
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Sep 1, 2020 08:41
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Burkion posted:The merch gets downright horny with his design, slimming him up and making him anime as hell. Its a real weird disconnect from the tryhard loser who went all in on double chainsaw hands I will not brook any insult to the double chainsaw hands look.. Gigan was just emulating a true hero.
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Dec 3, 2020 03:04
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Burkion posted:Usually the smart guy is appreciably smarter than the big powerful guy they're fighting. On the other hand, the most popular TV show in America had a major fight scene where the little guy was much dumber than his opponent. It was very, very one sided. (In favor of the little guy.)
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Apr 6, 2021 05:54
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:I like it but it definitely has a human character (the narrator) The narrator is Anguirus.
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Apr 9, 2021 23:45
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Gripweed posted:Shin Godzilla is amazing and in some ways very similar but in other ways very different. Like, there is no human relationship drama in Shin. All the humans in Shin are reacting to Godzilla as individuals within a much larger bureaucracy. Shin's a really good movie, but it's also one that I'd kinda check opinions first, like how someone feels about Apollo 13 style "A bunch of dudes in a room work out how to deal with a crisis" films. Minus One is similarly good, but it's one you can just say "You like movies? Go see it."
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Dec 4, 2023 01:26
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Hollismason posted:Still thinking about that opening of Godzilla Minus One and Everyone initially being like "Yeah you should have kamikazed yourself" then over the course of the film that changing and also tiny Godzilla Not everyone. Tachibana took Shikishima aside at the very beginning and told him "Just between you and me, I'm on your side. Your orders were bullshit. We're going to lose no matter what, and you'd be throwing your life away. We need more people like you." He didn't get pissed until the Godzilla 20mm gun incident.
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Dec 4, 2023 04:34
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Snowglobe of Doom posted:
I mean, even the MCU is suffering from that by now. It just took longer. When you have "A guy can punch hard" and "A robot suit flies as fast as a jet" as the starting point, you have plenty more room to escalate while still keeping some connection to the mundane reality for the viewer than if you start with "A millions of years old atomic dinosaur the size of a skyscraper".
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Dec 4, 2023 05:43
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Mokelumne Trekka posted:I would say, underneath the original, Shin, and Minus One, are: Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964), Godzilla vs. Biollante, and GMK. But that's a big drop from that top trio. Hard to call most of the series "good" Which is kind of why two Toho Godzilla movies in a row that are objectively good movies is considered a freak occurrence It's weird enough to kind of rewrite recommending Godzilla films. Until Shin, it was one classic (with an interesting dub) and a bunch of films ranging from "Pretty good, especially if you like this kind of thing" to "Crap, but maybe in a charming way". Then Shin came out, and it was the first Godzilla movie in ages that you could just sell as a great film, even if someone didn't have strong opinions on giant monster carnage. But even then, it's a specialized beast. Japanese political satire with a focus on procedure isn't everyone's speed. Still, it gave you a nice neat "Watch the first one and the latest one. Beyond that, it depends how much you like kaiju movies." But with Minus One being a rock solid "Just watch this, you'll like it" kind of movie, there's now three great Godzilla films, and that's just enough to complicate suggestions. Now there's enough Godzilla films to just say "Yeah, I like Godzilla films" without dealing with any of usual hurdles, and that means recommending something with those hurdles gets harder. Might not have said it well, but it does feel like a significant shift somehow.
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Dec 10, 2023 13:05
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GateOfD posted:Yea the ambiguous part of it is good. Like the post-atomic Godzilla is OP. Yeah, it's a case where the ambiguity is the point. It probably wouldn't have done any good, but him not knowing amplifies his guilt. His parents told him to survive no matter what, and he did, but he's left wondering if him living meant he was a coward who sent others to their deaths. It's part of why the ending is so satisfying. He finally shot Godzilla with the 20mm, he flew his plane as a bomb, he proved his courage to himself and everyone else beyond the shadow of doubt, but he did it without throwing his life away. Something that hasn't been talked about in relation to the theme that I've noticed, though, is some of the people at the meeting. The ones who ditched. It feels like they're relevant because the film doesn't condemn them. They have their families, they risked their lives already, they're out... and that's fair. It's heroic to put your life on the line, not cowardly to stay back to be there for the people who need you.
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Dec 12, 2023 06:10
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Count Thrashula posted:Hi thread, Godzilla '54 is one of my favorite movies, but then I watched Raids Again (ugh) and King of the Monsters '56 (ew) and lost steam. My secret shame is that I haven't seen any other 'zillas. See Minus One. It's maybe the closest to the original since the original.
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Dec 13, 2023 02:53
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Stairmaster posted:cloverfield would have been the greatest movie of all time if godzilla had shown up in the third act Part of the reason Minus One is so great is that it feels like a well written, thoughtful post-war drama about a failed kamikaze pilot rebuilding his life post-war... and then they added Godzilla.
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Dec 14, 2023 06:54
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The REAL Goobusters posted:Just rewatched Godzilla 2014. I hated this movie after watching it in the theater and thought it was pretty bad thanks to its boring leads and how they killed off Bryan Cranston’s character. But looking back, I think I was just so enthralled with his character and it was right after Breaking Bad had ended so he could do no wrong in my eyes so that really annoyed me. I quite liked it after watching it in theaters, but I agreed with your initial impression on Cranston. That is, the actual lead was fine, as were the other humans, but Cranston was just killing it for his whole time on screen, so it was disappointing to have to go without for the back half of the film. I get the thematics and all, but it was still a shame. That said, my absolute favorite human moment came towards at the end, where the protagonist and Godzilla just look at each other and silently bond over having to handle everything themselves. It'd have been easy for it to flop, but the film sells it, with Godzilla treating a human as a peer in a way that enhanced both their characters. And yeah. It's a shame where things wound up, since '14 was solid and balanced the crazy monster aspects and the grounded aspects, while King of Monsters on went absolutely insane. Might be my favorite "Hero Godzilla" film, and it's in the top half of the Godzilla films I've seen. Speaking of other Godzillas, finally got around to seeing Destroy All Monsters after all these years, despite seeing Godzilla Vs Megalon on VHS before I was in kindergarten and playing the hell out of Destroy All Monsters: Melee on Gamecube. It's not very... good, is it? I don't mean in the Godzilla Minus One or original style good, either. I wasn't expecting a moving tale of guilt and redemption contemplating Japan's place in a post-war world. I mean as a gloriously stupid story of big monsters stomping on people. Because there's some good scenes of that, including the final curbstomping of Ghidorah, but it's spaced out between a bunch of nonsense with aliens that's much less fun than it sounds on paper. The protagonists scarcely have a personality trait between them, running into Godzilla on foot has no sense of danger, and the reaction to monsters destroying every world capital after decades of peace is less extreme than you get for a local sports team losing. In its day, the spectacle was probably enough to be exciting, and some of it's still there (man, there are a lot of suits in this), but time has not been kind. Not the worst or anything, but a bit disappointing.
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Dec 15, 2023 10:00
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GATOS Y VATOS posted:I hate to break it to you but most people aren't huge loving nerds like us. Godzilla is famously a thing from Japan, to the point of being in multiple Simpsons episodes. I think not knowing that they made movies there is at least mildly surprising. GateOfD posted:the actress that plays Noriko in Godzilla Minus 1 is also in Shin Kamen Rider, I think its still on amazon prime for free Not just in it. She plays the female lead, who's basically Rei Ayanami with a shotgun.
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Dec 22, 2023 06:50
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Well, the talk inspired me to finally see some Heisei Godzilla since it was up on free streaming. Decided to start with Ghidora, since it was the earliest one I could find free. And you know what? I had fun. To be clear, I'm not saying it was good (and I appreciate Shin and Minus One so much for their part in making that a necessary clarification for a modern day Godzilla movie). The characters were thin, the time travel mechanics made no sense even by action movie standards, the effects for the android were terrible, and the acting from the Americans was worse. If I was just rating it on the conventional metrics, this would probably not be a pleasant conversation. But this is, in the old sense of the word, a Godzilla sequel. It's a movie where two guys in rubber suits beat the poo poo out of each other while destroying a major metropolitan area, and in that light it's excellent. The plot goes from UFOs and talk about respecting the dinosaur to time travel and robots to a Godzillasaurus slaughtering Marines like it was an issue of the Silver Age Suicide Squad to the one everyone's been waiting for with King Ghidora and Godzilla, followed up with cyborg King Ghidora getting a rematch. It's exactly what Destroy All Monsters failed at, a fast paced dumb ride where giant monsters get in fights and the thinly sketched humans have ridiculous action to fill the time between giant monster fights. In my childhood, the Heisei era was always in a strange place. At once, it was distant and right close. I had seen old Godzilla films plenty on TV and VHS from the library, but toy store shelves and newspaper articles and comics all showed a new Godzilla series, with new releases and crazy plots and an even bigger Godzilla going through a continuing plot. A series that, for the most part, wasn't available anywhere I could get to, except as descriptions in a magazine. A series that had the allure of the green light at Daisy's dock, shining on KB Toys shelves as Mecha Godzilla roared his electronic approval. They were released on VHS eventually, of course, part of the marketing for the 90s American Godzilla (a film I saw at a drive-in, before having the better experience of seeing 2000 in a near-empty theater), but I never managed to get around to seeing them... until now. And yeah. That was a lot of dumb fun. Not sure if it's exactly what I always dreamed it would be, but it's a lot closer than I'd been afraid of.
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Dec 26, 2023 00:35
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Decided to follow up Godzilla Heisei with Gamera, just to mix things up in the thread. Like Godzilla's Heisei era, I knew it from hype more than from experience. And, unlike Heisei, it wasn't some strange abstract, but a concrete reputation. These were supposed to be three of the best kaiju movie ever. I just wish I hadn't gone in with that reputation in mind. As a kaiju film, it's not bad. The plot moves at a decent clip, the fights are fun enough, and there are some creative ideas. But the human plot is neither grounded and compelling like Minus One nor absurd bullshit like Ghidora. Worse, it's not particularly relevant to the resolution. Yes, yes, the girl and her dad believing in Gamera really hard lets him win, but that's pretty thin gruel with how vague the psychic connection is, while the rest of the human efforts don't really impact the final monster fight, despite their screentime. Instead, we get an extended plotline where the environmental minister wants to protect the Gyaos because they're an endangered species (...fine) and kill Gamera (who is even more unusual as an endangered species, and who hasn't eaten anyone). If I'd gone in expecting Showa Gamera, I think I'd have been pleasantly surprised at a more serious plot, decent fights (even if the CG didn't age well at all), and perfectly tolerable humans. But with the reputation it had, things like the clunky expository dialog, the odd plot hops, and the thin characters all hurt more than they would have otherwise. Just a reminder how much expectations can matter, I suppose. Expected Ghidora to be bad, and I had fun. Expected Gamera to be better, and I was just disappointed.
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Dec 26, 2023 12:12
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HannibalBarca posted:The Heisei Gamera movies are kinda graded on a generous curve to some extent, but I think you could make the case that they were pretty easily the best kaiju media of the 1990s, which isn't nothing. Stuff like the Kiryu movies, Shin, and now Minus One (and even, to some extent, the 2006 one-off Gamera the Brave) have since eclipsed them in my mind, but as Mantis points out, they're one of the last hurrahs for practical kaiju FX, something that Heisei Gamera does way better than the boring, unambitious 90s Godzilla movies. I mean, I won't say it's good, but one of the last things I'd say about the 90s King Ghidora, having just watched it, is "boring and unambitious". It's constantly doing new stupid nonsense, including a brief visit to the new alternate future caused by the time travel meddling just to ensure that how time travel is handled in the film makes no sense at all. It also has plenty of practical Kaiju FX, as Godzilla continued to do through the Millenium era. Sure, there was CG mixed in, but given how much there was in Gamera, that's a bit of a glass and stones thing.
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Dec 27, 2023 10:37
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Big Mean Jerk posted:It’s such a dull glacially paced movie though That's the difference between Millennium and 2000. The dub release trims about eight minutes, punches up the sound design, and generally flows better. Makes the difference between a fun enough, middle-of-the-pack Godzilla movie and an outright slog.
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Dec 30, 2023 10:02
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Watched Godzilla's Revenge tonight. It's weird. That's about the simplest way to describe it. A kid's adventure intercut with Monster Island stock footage, coming in barely over an hour, it's not even as bad as I heard. It's just... weird. No great action, the protagonist is kind of a jerk without being compelling about it, and the plot is thin even aside from the minimal time devoted to it. It has some character growth for Manilla and Ishiro, but that's about it for the selling points. But... Well, it's interesting. A light coming of age drama where a kid gets the courage to stand up to his bullies through child endangerment and hallucinations, it moves quick enough and has some nice moments with the parents to sell their family dynamic. Both parents love Ishiro and hate how work leaves him alone, but also don't see what else they can do if they want to ensure a better future for him. I'm not saying it's an underappreciated gem. I'm not even saying it's something to seek out even if it's streaming for free, unless you're trying for a complete series run. But I expected something terrible and painful, and instead got something that went down pretty smooth. Guess it's another lesson in the importance of expectations.
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Jan 1, 2024 09:57
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Don't know if anyone else will care about this, but after some digging I managed to find a chart showing the attendance in Japan for Godzilla films up to Shin. (Well, up to early Shin. By the end, Shin had enough attendees to beat everything after Kong, reaching around 5.6 million attendees. Meanwhile, Minus One 'only' has 3 million so far.) One thing that stood out to me is how big Heisei got. I'd kind of gotten the idea in recent years that it was just moderately successful, but no. The back half of Heisei was huge, bringing Godzilla to heights it hadn't seen since Son, and unlike the original run or Millenium, it ended on a high note, with over 4 million attendees. (It also explains the shockingly high numbers for the Emmerich Godzilla. Heisei Godzilla was an institution.) Gamera wasn't listed with it, but Japanese wikipedia covered it, staring the series with 900,000 attendees, hitting 1.2 million for Legion and closing at a million. A flop by Godzilla's standards, but pretty dang good for the turtle, and highly respected by audiences and critics. (Hideaki Anno even made a feature length documentary about the production of the Gamera trilogy.) So, yeah. The 90s were a good time for Kaiju fans.
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Jan 1, 2024 23:37
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Watched Godzilla vs. Megaguirus tonight, since I'd had better luck than I expected with Godzilla's Revenge. Sadly, lowered expectations only count for so much. Godzilla's Revenge, is, at least, distinct from other Godzilla movies. Like it or hate it (and surprisingly, I didn't hate it), you won't see its like anywhere else. Godzilla vs. Megaguirius, by contrast, is the same as other Godzilla films. Just, you know. Crap. If you've seen Godzilla, you've seen just about everything here done better. There's the protagonist driven by vengeance against Godzilla. There's the military organization right out of GI Joe, with seemingly infinite budget for ridiculous gizmos and no ability to get anything done. There's the monster that's even worse than Godzilla, so we know who to root for in the finale. There's the bickering leading into an ultra-shallow romance. All by the numbers, and all drawn out far past their carrying capacity. The closest thing to an exception is the hacking scenes, and the less said there the better. The element I noticed most, though, and perhaps it's a sign of approaching the movie in the wrong spirit, or a case of the movie not doing enough for itself to matter, is how much humanity sucks in this movie. Not in the moral sense, to be clear. That's always been variable in Godzilla, with humanity's role in relation to the monsters in constant fluctuation. I mean in terms of success. In Showa, humans killed Godzilla in the 50s, then managed a few major delays on the second Goji until he decided to bury the hatchet. By the 90s, Godzilla was contentedly living in a zoo with his kid, and humans had built a giant robot capable of defending the Earth. In the Heisei era, things were messier, but there was still Serizawa's sacrifice, and a win with the bacteria before time travelers mucked everything up, then a kill with Mechagodzilla before Rodan intervened, and finally Godzilla and humanity learned to live in mutual grudging tolerance until he died and the new Godzilla took up the role. Even in Godzilla 2000, there's still Serizawa in the backstory, and Godzilla's fight with Orga firmly establishes that the faction fighting to live with Godzilla, despite the damage he causes, is correct. After all, the aliens would have wiped out mankind without Godzilla's territorial pissiness. Here, Godzilla was never killed, and he's basically got humanity by the shorthairs. He destroys a nuclear plant, they're banned. Humanity develops a new clean energy source, he wrecks that too and everyone gives up. It's not an ongoing war. It's people getting pissy on realizing that the giant lizard runs the show. But that's not all. They also are entirely responsible for the problems in the film, which no-one confronts. Godzilla only attacks because people are developing the plasma energy in secret still, and the other monster only exists due to the dumbass black hole weapon (and an incredibly irresponsible child). Godzilla is an icon, and by now that means he's kind of the default rooting interest. We're almost expected to like the people who endorse a peaceful resolution with him, and dislike the people who want him dead, unless the film (like Shin or Minus One) puts in the legwork for the alternate route. Here, though, we're both given one of the most reasonable Godzilla around (don't build a power plant he hates in Japan, he won't bother you), and humans who just want to murder Godzilla... but we're expected to be on the human's side as they accomplish nothing. (And as the female lead is just kind of an rear end in a top hat to a bunch of kids watching a magic show for no reason.) So, yeah. Another one checked off, I suppose. And one of the worst firmly behind me.
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Jan 3, 2024 11:48
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Snowglobe of Doom posted:There was a trilogy in the 60s and it even got a TV series much later on, and it recently had a guest cameo in the 2021 Takashi Miike film The Great Yokai War: Guardians I think there was talk about him getting a 90s film instead of Gamera too. Meanwhile, I finally saw Vs. Mechagodzilla, and... it's fine. I had a good time. The humans weren't interesting, but they did fun things, the villains were ridiculous, and the monster fights were solid enough, with a ton of explosions. But it is a generic Godzilla movie. Not as endearingly bad as Versus Megalon, not as good as Shin, not even as committed to being batshit as Vs King Ghidorah. It's a film that comes on TV at midnight, and where you keep watching because it's on, something deep enough in the series that planet of the apes aliens from a black hole making a robot version of Godzilla to fight the prophesized savior of Okinawa is just another Tuesday. Godzilla is mundane at this point, hardly worthy of comment even when he develops Magneto powers. It's the kind of film that explains why Godzilla had to take such a long hiatus. Not because it's bad, but because it's so inside baseball and so similar to past works (this was, what, the fourth race of aliens trying to conquer Earth using giant monsters at this point? Heck, it wasn't even two films since we got a shot of the heroes figuring out the alien villains had set up a bomb in their cars to go off when the ignition fired just in time.) that the series needed to take a break just so people could get excited again.
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Jan 6, 2024 04:41
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Big Mean Jerk posted:I just cannot get over how they’re tripling down on the absolute dumbest aspects of GvK, an already incredibly dumb movie that really should’ve been the end of MonsterVerse Godzilla. Adam Wingard seems like a guy who just should not be doing franchise movies. It's a unique feeling with Shin and the new Monsterverse film next to each other, yeah. You get plenty of series where there's quality entries and utter dogshit, and even massive variation in tone, but this is less than a year between a film that's all but unquestioned top three material, a largely serious drama focusing on Godzilla as a metaphor for trauma without losing the impact of Godzilla as a giant atomic lizard that hates you that actually managed to make people care more about the human cast than the monster, and... well, this dogshit, to be polite. Godzilla gets a crappy new design (and Kong gets a robot hand) to sell toys, the villain is a big orangutan, there's baby kong, and nobody's even pretending that audiences will give a poo poo about the humans. It's going hard for the worst excesses of the Showa era, without the charm to carry any of it off. Also, the CG looks worse in the previews, despite costing more than ten times as much as Minus One. Which is weird.
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Jan 10, 2024 12:03
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GateOfD posted:maybe one side is just overpaid given the poo poo cgi in hollywood movies that isn't Avatar It's not about the money, or even about the overwork. It's about the demands being made by the studios. Marvel movies look poo poo these days because they keep redoing scenes, forcing the CG teams to keep repeating the work on the same scenes with insanely tight deadlines. By contrast, Avatar and Minus One have directors with very clear visions and hands on experience, so the CG teams are able to just work towards specific goals. It's good for both practical benefits (less time and energy wasted on scrapped scenes) and for morale, since people know their work is going to matter instead of being tossed out at the next test screening when the execs decide people like orange better. (Also, if we're talking salary, cost of living is relevant too. A studio apartment in Tokyo with a good location can come in around 700 bucks. Not cheap, but compared to somewhere like LA, it's a bargain.) Edit: Going back on topic, man. Godzilla vs the Smog Monster is weird. I know that's common knowledge at this point, but it's got so much weird in it that it's hard to even frame it properly. There's a kid as the main character who might or might not have a psychic link to Godzilla. There's a bunch of hippies who think that it's a great idea to party where Hedorah is about to attack, and who all die when they decide fire is Hedorah's weakness (It is not, and there is no evidence it is at any point in the film) before further deciding the best way to use fire is to throw torches at Hedorah, rather than igniting the nearby incredibly flammable brush. There's a big musical sequence. There's multiple big musical sequences. The film decides to be animated for about a minute. Multiple times. The kid names Hedorah, and everyone agrees to call it that after. Godzilla is basically treated as a superhero, and they sell children's toys of King Ghidorah, the monstrous engine of terror that nearly wiped out all life on Earth before fleeing, a monster that is still at large at the time. The subtitles don't know how to use "casualties" in the context of monster attack, instead confusing it with "fatalities". Godzilla's theme is some weird-rear end guitar thing instead of the usual march. People talk about Godzilla flying like it's the weirdest part of the movie, and it doesn't even make the top five. No wonder Banno didn't get another Godzilla after this one. It's not so much that it's bad as that it's completely out of step even with the kind of nonsense that became default by late Showa. Fun fact: The actor for Hedorah in this film, Kenpachiro Satsuma (who died just last year), went on to play Godzilla throughout the 90s. Not so fun fact: On the set of this film, he was rushed to the hospital for appendicitis, still in the monster suit. He shortly after discovered that his body was immune to painkillers. chiasaur11 fucked around with this message at 11:43 on Jan 11, 2024 |
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Jan 11, 2024 06:57
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CelticPredator posted:I’m glad banno made the monsterverse I like it Without his enthusiasm it's hard to know when we'd have ever gotten more Godzilla, and the stuff that came out while he was alive was good. Definitely appreciate his efforts. Dude had weird ideas for Godzilla movies, but he really put in the effort when trying to implement them.
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Jan 11, 2024 22:14
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GateOfD posted:why is Mothra so popular, I mean I like her too, but is it the singing twins Well, Mothra's one of the older Godzilla monsters, so that's part of it. She showed up before Godzilla's first proper versus movie and got the first followup, giving her some proper credentials. She's also got a very rare role in Toho's stable as a pure babyface. Ghidorah's a heel and Godzilla makes turns by the film, but Mothra's always the good guy. You need someone to hold the line against the evil monster while Godzilla decides if he gives a poo poo, or someone who can believably fight Godzilla long enough to let the big plan come into play, Mothras are an option people will believe, while still being weak enough to give tension. Add in the fact she's got a unique design, and that some of the Mothra's are among the very few female Kaiju, and it's easy to see why people go "Oh, yeah, Mothra". (All that fails, you still have the option of giant moth gags, which aren't exactly rare when people make kaiju jokes.)
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Jan 14, 2024 07:52
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Well, watched Godzilla '85. There are just four movies where Godzilla is the only giant monster. ("Just". Like that's not a pretty decent number of films itself). The original, of course, the classic. Shin, the movie that smashed all records in Japan, bringing Godzilla back to glory in his homeland after the failure of Final Wars. Minus One, which is drawing raves across the pacific... And Godzilla 1984. Which exists. Okay, that's unfair. Godzilla 1984 was another big comeback, the start of the wildly successful Heisei era, and a reasonably successful film in its own right, even if it made less than Toho was hoping, and there's something to be said for the back to basics approach. It's just... it only has the back to basics approach, and even then they had some gaps. Where Shin and Minus One got real mileage from presenting the difficulties of fighting Godzilla with "realistic" technologies (Anno even interviewed JSDF personnel to get their takes on how they'd approach the situation with their real limitations.), 1984 has a flying laser-tank to fight Godzilla with no particular effort to justify its presence. There's just sci-fi supertech in Heisei, and we have to deal with it. Helpful for the later crazier films, but less helpful for the return to the start the film aimed to be. More importantly, though, there's another big difference between 1984 and the other three solo outings, a part of why they're the big three, while it's an also-ran, and that's the characters. Without a giant monster to fight him, Godzilla is opposed by the people of Japan, centered around our human leads. At least, that's the general gist, even in some of the monster mash pictures. The humans we care about are the ones who matter. (Even to an unreasonable degree, like Japan's defenses being coordinated by the hero kid's dad in Smog Monster because... he got attacked by Hedorah?) Here, though, our heroes are mostly just bystanders. The reporter hero, his girlfriend, and her brother might be some of the first people to realize Godzilla's back, and they might consult with the professor whose ideas lead to Godzilla's defeat, but for the most part they're just bystanders, people who happen to be in the way when Godzilla is meandering around, before running into a comic relief vagrant who has a small but pointless subplot, and then running away to assist with the backup plan after the Super X runs out of ammo. They don't feel like an opposing force to Godzilla, people forced to confront a power they cannot control in almost doomed but heroic struggle. Instead, they just... exist, while the fate of the world is determined by the politicians and soldiers who the film gives much less focus and characterization. Apparently, the film was a bit of a flop with Godzilla fans in Japan when it was released, leading to the writing contest for Biolante, which failed worse, leading to King Ghidorah and the path that Heisei took to success. But that's all trivia now, a bit of interesting memory about a less interesting film. Returns did a lot of good for Godzilla, looking back. But on its own, it's the weakest of the solo films by far (not counting Emmerich, of course), and doesn't do much that some other film didn't do better. I want to say more here than "so it goes". I want to have some grand unified vision becoming clearer and clearer as I see more of the series. But no. I'm still about where I was when I started the year. Godzilla films can be very good, very bad, and very bad in a good way, but for most of them, they're just something you kinda throw on TV and half forget. It's a strange place to be, both having my childhood love validated more thoroughly than I ever expected (both in seeing more really good Godzilla films, and in seeing Vs. King Ghidorah live up to the best childhood visions of its idiotic glory), and being reminded that there were very good reasons most Godzilla films got so little respect.
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Jan 21, 2024 11:06
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Dr. Jerrold Coe posted:nothing went wrong, that's why the showa gamera sequels are just people saying "remember when we launched that turtle into space" and going about their days The problem is all the children building rockets to visit Gamera on Mars, making it so that no-one else can get fuel for their cars to go to work. It's the complicated ethical issue at the heart of the Gamera films.
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Jan 23, 2024 06:04
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Mr. Funny Pants posted:Tell them awards don't matter. Godzilla's kids get excited to hear about them and that's good enough for him. Minilia still shows off his dad's MTV movie award ar Monster Island parties.
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Jan 23, 2024 19:56
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Managed to see Minus Color tonight with a bunch of people who hadn't seen it before. Nothing quite like seeing kids at their first Godzilla movie. And yeah, the neck bit is much more obvious in black and white.
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Jan 28, 2024 09:47
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Mantis42 posted:oh wow, they have white dr dolittle. that is weird Kirk Lazarus takes a lot of unexpected roles.
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Jan 28, 2024 19:55
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Well, I finally found a way to watch GMK. Just a shame it's the dub. Nothing against the dubs for Godzilla films in principle, mind. It's a cherished tradition, and some of them put in real effort, while others are exactly the level of pleasantly crappy to enhance the general atmosphere of the film. GMK's dub doesn't work for either, though. It's a serious film with a weak dub, so the emotional impact is hurt. ("What's up, you lost your parents?" is a standout bit of awkwardness.) The film itself is better, but some aspects don't work for me, like the way civilians treat kaiju attacks. At once it's casual, suggesting a Showa style setting where this kind of nonsense was commonplace, and skeptical, with plenty of people doubting Godzilla ever existed despite extensive documentation and at least one other giant monster attacking New York. There's a lot of goofy reaction shots, too, which plays oddly with the more dramatic deaths elsewhere in the film. The film similarly has an awkward dynamic with the reporter and her father, where they both get protagonist focus at various points, but the reporter gets more, while her father is the one who actually gets the victory. Not bad, but a little awkward. Overall, I agree with the consensus it's one of the better Godzilla films. The monster fights are fun (poor Baragon getting tossed is a highlight), even if Mothra and King Ghidorah have less interesting stuff to do (and more weak CG) than Baragon, the humans are well done, there's some neat ideas with the supernatural side and the legacy of guilt thing (although I felt like more could have been done with it). It's just that I also kind of feel... ah, overrated is one of the most useless phrases in these discussions, but I might as well use it when nothing else does better. It's a perfectly fine Godzilla film that gets put in fights above its weight class, that's all. Someone says it's a favorite, fine, personal taste. Someone says it's one of the better films, worth watching, sure. Not my reflex pick, but it's got enough going for it to be a solid suggestion, depending on criteria. But put it next to the original, Shin, or Minus One, it's not even close. GMK didn't feel like one of the best Godzillas ever. It felt like people wanted another top tier Godzilla, so they found the nearest pretty good one, and settled on it. Not a mark against it, so much as, I dunno. A warning to keep expectations in check more than for some of the others. Still. Good movie. Glad to have seen it.
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Jan 31, 2024 11:22
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And Astromonster down. Only Gigan left of the Showa Godzillas, (not counting the stuff for other monsters). It's interesting to see a Godzilla dub from the era with an actual Hollywood actor in a major role. It's like when you see a B actor as the only pro in a low budget film, and the guy's actually trying. Makes what you think of as the "default" suddenly impressive. Not that it's too bad a dub, either. Might be allowing for the time, might be just having my standards lowered by GMK's subpar dub, but the characters have clear personality, the emotional beats are usually the right ones for the scene, and in general, it works for the film. And the film works in turn. The human plot has enough going on to keep your attention when monsters aren't fighting on screen, there's some decent plot payoffs, and the monster fights are solid. (Which is good, because you don't get much of them.) It's what you want from a Saturday night 60s science fiction movie, although it's a little short on kaiju carnage for a monster movie. It also is interesting how much better this is than Destroy All Monsters. Sure, DAM has the bigger cast of monsters and lets them do more, but the human plot is weaker, and there's not that much more kaiju action to make up for it.
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Feb 2, 2024 22:24
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Maxwell Lord posted:Some of the dubs done by the likes of AIP were pretty strong, the actors try to sound like the types their characters are and they’d even sometimes get Asian American actors. Yeah, there's definitely a gulf between the films that give a poo poo and the films that don't. Speaking of not giving a poo poo, finished Gigan. It's disappointing, which is the last thing I expected. I knew going in it wasn't top tier, with a lot of reused footage, but I thought in the first scenes that the human plot could be a fun ride with strongly defined characters, some good gags, and a good flow to balance the monster fights. But it fell apart pretty steadily as it went, moving away from the parts that worked to just wind up as a kind of nothing, with no real conclusion beyond defeating the aliens (unlike Astro-Monster, which resolved the romances by tragically killing off the rebelling alien and letting the dweeb inventor score a win to prove himself to his future brother-in-law). The characters basically stop mattering once Godzilla shows beyond assisting with the dumb tower, but Godzilla figured everything else out on his own long before the humans. One thing that stood out, in a weird way, (beyond how bad and blatant some of the day-for-night stock footage was. I mean, reusing the neck bite from Destroy All Monsters? Really?) was how much better Gigan and Megalon work as a dynamic than Gigan and Ghidorah. Gigan's constantly laughing at his foes, taunting them, trying to fistbump his partner, but Ghidorah is much less chummy in his assholishness. It just feels like he's leaving Gigan hanging, only showing up out of obligation. Meanwhile Megalon has a full on Beavis and Butthead thing going on with Gigan, where Megalon's stupidity bounces well off Gigan just being a petty rear end in a top hat. So, yeah. Seen the whole of Showa now. Planning to finish Millenium and Heisei before the year's out, as well as the rest of the Gamera films, but this feels like a good start. (Might even watch the anime movies if I feel particularly self-loathing.) (Edit: On an unrelated note, I found a smallish Japanese poll on favorite non-Godzilla kaiju from a few years back. Interesting to see Anguirus so high. Guess claims that he was only a fan favorite stateside were as full of crap as a lot of other common fandom beliefs.) chiasaur11 fucked around with this message at 09:08 on Feb 3, 2024 |
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Feb 3, 2024 08:58
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Arc Hammer posted:https://twitter.com/KaijuNewsOutlet/status/1758620400294977719?t=gNS4dggK36bLeFyy8qfP4g&s=19 I'd be interested if it is. Saw the original Godzilla in a library where they'd set up a projector and a small screen, complete with a little talk about the historical context (either before or after, it's been a few years). Wouldn't mind seeing it again with a larger crowd. Also, that VFX doc is really neat. Lower budgets tend to make for more interesting behind the scenes.
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Feb 17, 2024 00:34
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| # ¿ May 12, 2024 13:19 |
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PriorMarcus posted:I don't think any of the previous movies did as well as Legendary wanted? Godzilla and Skull Island did pretty well. Sure, maybe they'd have liked more for Godzilla, but they had no idea going in what the benchmarks were since it'd been over a decade since a Godzilla film got a wide release in the US, and it made a very healthy profit. Skull Island made less domestic and cost more, but the increase in the global take and the better legs suggest it wasn't a big disappointment either. (A bit of a disappointment, maybe, given that it made less than Jackson's Kong domestic and adjusted for inflation, but not much of one.) It was King of the Monsters where the bottom fell out. Domestic nearly sliced in half, international down 50, and worse legs than Kong. (Better than '14, but that one had Cranston's character dying as a handicap.) If GVK had bombed, that'd be ballgame. As is, well, there's a lot of factors going forward, especially with Minus One's shocking success, so it's hard to know what's next... but yeah, if this one loses money right after everyone praised Minus One to the heavens, it's going to, at minimum, lead to a lot of talks around the table. Speaking of flops, I finally saw Vs. Biolante. Man, that movie has a weird opening. It's just a bunch of characters you don't know killing each other, then you get a brief into to scientist and his daughter trying to make the desert blossom, and then the daughter dies, and then there's a five year timeskip and psychics are a thing now. It's a mess, just like large portions of the soundtrack. Then there's the oddly extensive English dialogue, which is worse than in King Ghidorah a couple years later. There, it was badly acted, but it was badly acted by native speakers. Here, you usually don't even get that. You also have monster fight pacing that doesn't seem to recognize the "Versus!" in the title, with a pathetic brawl midway into the film before going back to Godzilla Vs. The Army's Latest Boring Superweapon for the bulk of the runtime before bringing back Biolante's (really cool) second design for a final slugfest. Then, after that ends on an emotional note, we get a few minutes of nonsense to finish off the weird spy plot and kill off the mad scientist. It's not terrible (although the use of the music often is), but it's a versus film with dull fights, there's a love story as pointless as the later Marx Brothers films to take the lead spot from the potentially interesting scientist, and the film doesn't have the verve and energy to make its dumb bits fun. Might try giving it a second chance some other time, but for now, I mostly agree with the Japanese public of the 80s. It's not worth the hassle of tracking down.
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Feb 22, 2024 12:17
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