I'm not even kidding.
I bring this up largely because I'm surprised I haven't heard any news about it anywhere. Nobody seems to have noticed here on the Forums and no news exists anywhere about it.
Alleged preorders for tickets will go on sale on the 14th. I can't read Japanese and Google Translate seems to be unable to translate pictures, so I can only assume that the July 29th date I saw is supposedly the release date.
Now, before I get into discussion about the film, let's make one thing clear--it IS April Fool's Day. This could very well be a prank. A sick one, at that. And the things I'm about to discuss leave me wondering how the hell this film would even exist in the first place, if it is to have a consistent story. I also want to point out that I don't think this is ":Final". Something about Godzilla's presence in the Rebuild canon just seems outlandish to me and there just isn't enough plot there to make that possible.
Anyhow, onto the project.
Bearing in mind that I can't read Japanese and rely on the translatable portions of a webpage to collect what little information I can, it seems as though the film is a "collaboration" work, obviously between Studios Khara and Toho. We remember from the Godzilla: Resurgence (no longer the film's title? Or is this even the same film?)'s trailer last year or so that it is to be a live-action film. That being said, we also saw the animated short, "Evangelion: another impact" last year as well, which leads me to believe that we could very well have a live-action Godzilla VS Evangelion movie.
But there are some problems with this little morsel of happygasm we've been given--nothing about Evangelion's plot supports Godzilla's existence in the same universe. And while I haven't seen the Toho Godzilla films, I suspect the same is true.
You would have to be able to explain that experiments were done to create Godzilla, or that Godzilla (fuck it, I'm saying Gojira) is a freak accident (something to do with the EVAs somehow that specifically gives Gojira all the powers we've come to know and love?) and that this plays into the Evangelion storyline or Gojira storyline somehow. These ideas are too far apart to be able to say that they were intended to be together. For these reasons, I don't think that Gojira VS Evangelion is the final Rebuild film, and I do also wonder if it's still Gojira: Resurgence.
Personally speaking, I'm generally not a fan of "VS" films. It feels like someone just said, "let's take these two popular characters and make them fight" and we have a hell of a lot of it here in the States already. HOWEVER, I myself am actually really hype to see this. Especially if it's in live-action.
If we choose to take this seriously, we have to also consider what Anno's doing with Rebuild. Rebuild so far has seemed to be a message to audiences, "stop materializing my work. Pay attention to the important part." And then, he comes back after 3.0 with the exact opposite of what people wanted--absolutely nothing for the longest time, even joking once that the film could be four or six years off of 3.0 and also that no work whatsoever had been done in terms of production. It's been teasers and snippets of news that turned out to not be true so far. When a "new preview" was shown, it was nothing more than a new title. So in response to the way fans of anime treat anime, Anno has responded by depriving his fans of anything whatsoever. And I think part of it has to do with making people forget about characters like Mari and Sakura, whose roles in Rebuild have been vastly eclipsed by their sex appeal. Now, I'm no feminist, but I think we all know what I'm talking about when I say this.
Now, consider this new film. Gojira, one of Japan's most iconic characters and a symbol of destruction, alluding to the nuclear bombs dropped on Japan by the United States, and Evangelion, a symbol of man's hope in a dying world, created in Japan. This collaboration would be so culturally significant that I wouldn't be surprised if, provided that it's good enough, it went down in history as one of Japan's greatest films. It would be like a movie about Neo fighting the Terminators (that one lady notwithstanding), and for it to be the most relevant thing in the world. I don't even know how to accurately compare it to anything here in the West. Batman VS Superman isn't quite it. Captain America: Civil War doesn't quite do it for me, although that's much more along these lines.
Anyways, I'm not sure what I think yet. Is this the real deal? Is this :Final? What are your thoughts on this film?
Also, quick note: I'm a Untied States Marine and got promoted to PFC today. I'm so happy.
