How many times is Godzilla going to be rebooted? 2014 edition

All I can say is, keep this movie in mind while you watch this pile of poo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lV1OOlGwExM

G-1 was def anti-war but… maybe with a little bit of that old rambo 2 “can we win this time?” nationalism seasoning? (I’m honestly not so sure about this myself but I _did_ get scared that the movie was gonna lean into that more at some point, at least)

I worried about that too but the line from Doc about "not going to war is something to be proud of" kind of assuaged those worries

saw a trailer for Godzilla x Kong - The New Empire, and it looks terrible artistically, I assume almost all of the effects have to be extremely unfinished. it looked like a Playstation One game on my buddy's 80 inch TV.

The plane reveal had me excited because I recognized the type. I knew that plane, I’d built a model of the German version of it.

yeah that was a mega cool moment.

also though I saw it in 4DX which meant I was like riding an amusement park ride while watching the movie which helps

On board with _Godzilla Minus One_ completely, hell of a watch. (I don’t know whether having seen _The Human Condition_ a few months back helped but it sure as hell didn’t hurt.)

Good interview, this

https://www.theverge.com/23984534/godzilla-minus-one-interview-takashi-yamazaki

"Godzilla, was it hard to film in that cold water?"

They had a giant basking lamp set up for him between takes.

I saw this last night and it's the most rewarded I've felt for watching a movie in theaters since Titanic. Yes, it was incredibly cheesy and nonsensical at times, but that didn't take away from all that was good about it. The giant lizard and the destruction that he wreaks are obviously all you need to sell a ticket here - so impressive! The human drama was appropriately intense at some times (particularly when Shikishima returns home after the war and finds Sumiko moping about the rubble) and cheesy at others, but I admit that my tears rose out of their ducts at more than one point. Other things that I was impressed with include:

The costumes were absolutely on point. Everyone looked so good in this movie.
Machine-gunning mines out at sea.
Reporters on the rooftop steadfastly reporting on the destruction.
Trio of scientists in white coats monitoring things from their little bunker on the deck of the destroyer.

I've only seen a handful of the original 1950s/60s Godzilla movies, Godzilla 1985 (when I was a kid), the Gareth Edwards one, and the first of the animated movies that came out on Netflix. Godzilla Minus One definitely whomps most of those. It's definitely inspired me to go back and check out some of the classics and the newer Japanese ones that I've missed.

if you go to archive.org and search for godzilla there are a bunch of rips there of the showa and heisei films.

HBO MAX has a bunch of Showa era but missing a ton of them. I've used that to start getting into the series.

think Ghidorah and Destroy All Monsters are two of my favs besides the original from 1954

I saw it last night too, with my 13yo son who is a massive Godzilla/Kaiju fan, and we both were knocked out.

I recently subscribed to the Criterion Channel, and there are a number on there as well.

As mentioned on another thread I'd heard some less than enthusiastic stuff from Japanese and Japan-based sources on this film and yeah, it's "anti war" in the same way the boomer Vietnam movies are anti war - WWII was terrible for what it did to the Japanese people. How did things get there, were perhaps some other peoples also negatively affected? It is a mystery. The big stirring speech about how Japan has not respected human life enough still focusing exclusively on Japanese soldiers - lol imagine if a German film did that. And of course all that stuff's valid, but it's pretty telling what goes unsaid. Nary a US soldier to be seen either, might mess with the ethno-nationalist redemption arc if it's acknowledged the country was under occupation.

That being said, obv I don't go to Godzilla for the politics, and even with those taking up a p large space in the film, the actual monster action is great. The Akira Ifukube theme will never not get me hyped. The method of dispatching big G was wonderfully silly. Minami Hamabe a much more magnetic presence than Kamiki though, could've stood to get more screentime.

One of the film's big reveals is spoiled early on if you read German. I swear they lingered on that text too!

I thought one of the themes of the film was whether you are anti-war or pro-war, we can all get together to be anti-Godzilla.

Though not unrelated, I found the hand-waving dismissal of international intervention/interference/cooperation pretty hilarious. Yes, there is a 300-foot tall radiation-breathing dinosaur laying waste to Japan, but tensions between the US and Russia are pretty high, so America's gotta stay out of this fight. You're on your own. But good luck, Japan, we're rooting for you! Let us know how it turns out.

A good time. Could've used Godzilla's heat ray to vaporize about 20 minutes.

Final Wars from 2004 absolutely ruled

well shit i just thought godzilla symbolized ptsd

Yes, Final Wars is the fucking best.

Short overview of Godzilla movies.

https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/where-begin-japan-kaiju-monster-movies

Started watching Neon Genesis Evangelion laat night after I read it

FYI, Criterion's release of all the Showa-Era films are on sale in the Apple TV store for $9.99 each.

!!!!!!!!!!!

um this ruled and is a pretty great spiritual pairing w godzilla 56

no notes

a+

*godzilla minus one, I mean

a pedant writes: '54

same year as Seven Samurai, and both feature Takeshi Shimura who did 11 films that year

ugh i’m dumb

I did like what they did with the atomic breath and his physical strength in this movie.

in the Heisei era movies (that I've seen so far), he was using his atomic breath for what seemed like 90% of his attacks and his tail for the rest, but here, it being something that takes longer to recharge, but having a much more amplified, almost a-bomb type impact, was badass. used a lot more of his built-in strength, doing things like throwing actual gigantic battleships across the ocean.

also i finally watched Shin Godzilla

while very different from the modern godzilla movies it rules incredibly hard and is also, like Minus One, very spiritually connected to *54* Godzilla (i wont screw that up a second time)

maybe even more so
the fukushima parallels are so well done

when godzilla goes nuclear it is perfectly pantshittingly terrifying, as it should be

and such a great blend of fantasy & reality, excellent no notes

We are meant to understand, right, that Godzilla is just a regular local sea monster who torments some outlying islands until Bikini makes him much bigger and gives him atom breath?

Is the regeneration power a consequence of being irradiated too? I.E. are we meant to believe that if Koichi had opened fire from his plane on Odo that would have been the end of Godzilla?

I totally felt the Rambo 2 vibe here btw. I thought there was a healthy ambivalence. Sure ""not going to war is something to be proud of" but the character that's said to eventually shows up at the war and saves the day by doing so! They don't want to be in the war, but they have to be, on some level they want to have to be.

This movie reportedly about to hit $100 mil at the box office. Budget was $15 mil!

I maybe have a false memory of vague spoilers that Kid Godzilla was in this -- was it a blink-and-you-miss it kind of thing?

There's a lil Godzilla we meet first, maybe that's it? Shin Godzilla kind of had a lil Godzilla, too, iirc.

My son and I watched Shin Godzilla last week - not at all what I was expecting, but it was a real joy. I think my son scratched his head a little at this one. He must have checked how much time was left in the move four or five times. I loved it but we both prefer Godzilla Minus One.

my brother and I kept joking that the UN was going to issue sanctions against Godzilla

I'm in the Heisei era now, Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla 2.

kinda loving the more bonkers each one gets.

how in the hell can they afford to rebuild so many power plants so frequently though

This movie reportedly about to hit $100 mil at the box office. Budget was $15 mil!

The director denies this: says it was closer to ten.

have now finished the Heisei era.

Godzilla v Destoroyah rulllllllllllled.

SpaceGodzilla was a complete cipher of a monster but I actually preferred that one to Godzilla v Mechagodzilla II, which was just completely all over the place nonsense.

taking a break for a bit. I've watched about 15 of these in the last month

xpost Either way, that's astounding. I saw somewhere that labor laws in Japan are pretty loose, and non unionized crews and other people on set are seriously overworked and underpaid, but even then, it's hard to wrap your head around those numbers and what's on screen. The FX in a movie like "The Marvels" look pretty unimpressive, imo, or at least they're not notable, but even at their best they don't look significantly better than this one. I think the same article I saw that mentioned labor laws complained that the "Minus One" FX sometimes looked kind of shoddy, but I never noticed anything particularly bad. In fact, I just saw a review (in Slate, iirc) that went out of its way to complement the tactile realism of Godzilla (the creature), and when I think back to the recent Hollywood Godzillas and Kongs, they sure are hell don't look 10x better/more expensive.

I have to admit, part of the expectation of a "back-to-basics" Godzilla was hoping for a dude in a rubber suit, and being a little disappointed with how generically slick it was, though maybe with such lax labor laws the guy would probably drown a few times while filming. Was the last hurrah for that sort of thing in the 80s?

even the 90s movies largely had rubber suits, and I think several of the ones into the 21st century.

ahh this is helpful!

https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/22234-special-effects-in-godzilla-movies-history

I guess Godzilla 2000 is the first to have a fully CGI Godzilla

I'm with the quote here - I know it was CGI but it didn't look it:

But it's still necessarily CGI, which is what's great about this film's effects: Yamazaki and his team are using the latitude of computer animation to push their Godzilla to do things that no stuntman in a rubber suit could have possibly down, constrained as they all were by physics, but they also very carefully make sure that it always looks like a stuntman in a suit. As Godzilla thrashes its way through the Ginza district, in the film's big landbound setpiece (this Godzilla is primarily an aquatic animal), the flexibility and full-body vitality of its movements are like nothing else in this franchise, but it's never weightless. It's the very best kind of popcorn movie magic.

yeah they did a really good job with it. I'm usually put off by big computer monsters in blockbusters but he was dynamic and terrifying. lots of great open water scenes too which I loved.

ok I lied about the break. taking it after finally finishing Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah - Monsters All Out Attack.

think that puts me at 18....only half or so, but most of them watched in a month's time so give me credit.

My buddy wanted to see this again, so I saw it again. Held up! And while it was a smaller theatre, it was packed.

So I guess they are re-releasing this for a week in black & white for some reason. Has anyone ever preferred the B&W versions of movies, when they do this? "Fury Road," "The Mist," what else? Soderbergh made that B&W silent version of "Raiders of the Lost Ark," I guess that was a cool novelty, but mostly I prefer the original color versions of these gimmicks.

Really want to see this, so does my son, but we've had a hard time lining up a screening that works for us.

They also did a black and white version of Logan.

I massively prefer the b&w mist