Godzilla & Kaiju General!

[FreakyFilmFan4ever]

Godammit, I wanna see at least one of these terrible ideas fully realized at least once.

[silvermoonlight]

Godammit, I wanna see at least one of these terrible ideas fully realized at least once.

You might get your chance since the director seems to be blaming the CGI crew for the movies problems, not himself and it looks like its still gonna come out on time....as my loyal cinema says its coming Dec 20th this year.

https://screencrush.com/tom-hooper-on-cats-backlash/

[Zeta_One]

Is the delay that surprising?
Warner Brothers know they have a financial bomb on their hands.

This. Godzilla (2014) and Kong: Skull Island were modest successes. While a good chunk of the fandom still seems to be in denial, King of the Monsters was basically a flop and there's no way Godzilla vs Kong would have ever seen the light of day had it not already been in late production. You can't spin a $385 million worldwide gross on a $185-$200 million budget into a success story. That's a sharp drop in every market except China and the studios only see 25% of that anyway. Godzilla: King of the Monsters only grossed $6 million more than Godzilla (1998).

And I would absolutely blame the quality of the movie before accusing critics and audiences of inherently rejecting the genre. Godzilla (2014), despite its plethora of issues in the writing department and how it wasted its acting talent, still had a remarkably solid first half and Gareth Edwards' spellbinding spectacle to somewhat redeem it. But Godzilla: King of the Monsters is an ugly, mess of a film with bad humor, an inexcusably sloppy treatment of nuclear energy, and the worst fights in a giant monster movie since Pacific Rim started the modern wave of giant monster movies several years ago. It was a misfire on every level.

[FreakyFilmFan4ever]

I'd like it if we got Gareth Edwards to direct another Godzilla movie. (Or direct anything for that matter.) Jordan Vogt-Roberts was also solid for Kong Skull Island.

[Chuckman]

But Godzilla: King of the Monsters is an ugly, mess of a film with bad humor, an inexcusably sloppy treatment of nuclear energy, and the worst fights in a giant monster movie since Pacific Rim started the modern wave of giant monster movies several years ago.

Did you get up to pee when Godzilla body slammed Ghidora through a building? That was tight as fuck.

[FreakyFilmFan4ever]

KOTM 2019 is most certainly the bees knees as far as the fights are concerned, which are almost wrong enough to carry the entire movie by themselves. (Godzilla Final Wars still reigns supreme in that regard as far as I'm concerned.)

Outside of that, the film is just Ghidorah: The Three-Headed Monster with updated effects (which were already top-notch for the 60's,) and absolutely none of Ishiro Honda's meditations on shifting social norms, which overall makes it the weaker of the two films for me. Even if Honda doesn't say anything about Japan's changing post-war culture, his expressions of it are always appreciated. I kinda wish a Hollywood Godzilla movie had the balls to do that with American culture. Gareth Edwards came the closest with that, though, like Honda's first Godzilla movie, Edwards clearly had something slightly more pointed to say about the times that envelop him. I don't expect GvK is gonna do any of that, though. It'll be about 2 hours of (completely awesome) monster brawling set up and execution.

I really wish that WB would stop trying to make blockbuster crowd pleasers. Their focus on more filmmaker-driven projects projects was always their strong point, separating them from the rest of the studios. They just misfired in both trying to make wide-appealing crowd pleasers and in trying to get Zack Snyder to do them successfully. It's time for them to go back to their roots. Godzilla 2014 was their strongest in their Monsterverse because of its filmmaker-focused approach. WB's test-screening approach to their blockbusters is damaging them more than helping them.

[Gendo'sPapa]

FINALLY working my way through Criterion's SHOWA ERA Boxset.
Gonna be watching two entries once a week back to back and I gotta say I'm excited.

I've seen the original I don't know how many times so revisiting that last week was just delightful.

Tonight was Godzilla Raids Again and King Kong Vs. Godzilla. I gotta admit, Raids Again got me worried about what was to come. It just dragged for me and felt a lot longer than its 81 minute runtime. It was clearly a quickie sequel rushed into production and it felt like it. The highpoint was Takashi Shimura returning for one scene. Was almost ready to call things quits and just enjoy the nice Box Art.

Then I loved every goofy second of King Kong Vs. Godzilla! I watched the Japanese version of the film - weirdly the American version is the one in the collection but the original Japanese version is available as a Special Feature on the 8th Disc - and I was just sent by the whole thing being a satire about television and media! The switch to widescreen and colors was wonderful - the transfer has some spotty moments due to the damaged negatives I'm sure where quality for certain shots drops sharply but when the transfer is good it looks amazing, the colors and set design are the best - and I loved every goofy, cartoonish moment! That Octopus! Oh boy, that Octopus! Having the Natives just be local Japanese in dark makeup is .... awkward and unpleasant, but that's been kind've a constant through all King Kong movies. Having seen almost all Kong movies, I think this is my second favorite King Kong movie after the 1933 original. I think the Ishiro Honda Godzilla movies are going to be my favorites, which is a good thing since he did more than half of the Showa Era Entries!

Looking forward to meeting the original Mothra and Ghidorah next week.

[movieartman]

FINALLY working my way through Criterion's SHOWA ERA Boxset.
Gonna be watching two entries once a week back to back and I gotta say I'm excited.

Nice, yeah Raids Again is weak for a lot of people, It's grown on me over the years.
Vs Kong & vs The Sea Monster were the first Godzilla films I ever saw as a kid. Today I still notably like Sea Monster and consider it underrated, KKvs I am largely meh about.

Hope you enjoy Mothra vs, it's widely considered the best of the Showa era. I put it as equals with the last of the era Terror of MechaGodzilla.

What do you think of the 2005 Kong remake?

[Gendo'sPapa]

The 2005 KONG remake is very flawed - Peter Jackson is stuck in LOTR mode and trying to turn a fun simple adventure tale into an epic never really works - but the high points are great and Kong the character is the star of the film.

I think the biggest issue with the film though having revisited it a few years ago before Kong: Skull Island is how dated and effects heavy the movie is. Kong still looks great and works cause he’s a character having to give emotion but so much of the movie is people on treadmills in a studio running in place as monsters are added in post. Antiquated CG doesn’t really hold any charm for me like old practical effects do. I wish more of the movie was shot on location somewhere.

Still, I like Kong 2005. I might have been hyperbolic in saying Kong vs Godzilla was my second favorite but I just loved how goofy the movie was and the old effects hold a lot of charm for me.

[FreakyFilmFan4ever]

I know it’s not part of the Box Set, but watching the stand alone Mothra movie before Mothra vs Godzilla is a major emotional rollercoaster. Mothra neatly establishes Infant Island and the fairy priestesses before Mothra vs Godzilla turns it into a perilous battle between order and chaos. Both films are directed by Ishiro Honda, so it’s worth it for that alone.

[silvermoonlight]

The 2005 KONG remake is very flawed - Peter Jackson is stuck in LOTR mode and trying to turn a fun simple adventure tale into an epic never really works - but the high points are great and Kong the character is the star of the film.

I think the biggest issue with the film though having revisited it a few years ago before Kong: Skull Island is how dated and effects heavy the movie is. Kong still looks great and works cause he’s a character having to give emotion but so much of the movie is people on treadmills in a studio running in place as monsters are added in post. Antiquated CG doesn’t really hold any charm for me like old practical effects do. I wish more of the movie was shot on location somewhere.

Still, I like Kong 2005. I might have been hyperbolic in saying Kong vs Godzilla was my second favorite but I just loved how goofy the movie was and the old effects hold a lot of charm for me.

As much as I like Peters Kong the biggest issue for me was the portrayal of the natives, to me its huge stumbling block and the biggest mistake Peter made as it hypes back to the people of colour are savages and animals portrayal in really racist old-time literature and even watching it in the cinema it felt so dated and wrong even back in 2005. Like I got that he was shooting the 1933 scene for scene but that whole scene needed changing period and hurts the film on rewatch.

This was a mistake I was really glad Kong skull island fixed big time regarding the natives and I think it was always a great way to modernise it and bring it into the present by having it during the Vietnam war and it is a cautionary tale of why getting fixated on war and winning can end up kill everyone involved. I also like the upcoming possible tie in that skull Island is about to become monster Island hence why Godzilla and Kong are gonna be fighting since Kong views it as his island and Godzilla and his monsters will be deemed as trespassers.

[FreakyFilmFan4ever]

One of the aspects of Peter’s Kong that shows that he’s stuck in Epic Mode is spending an hour on the boat developing about 8 characters that go nowhere once they get on the island. Like, they all get some deep backstories or intense scenes, and they all either die on the island or do nothing after returning to NYC.

[movieartman]

Hey Gendo's Papa how is the dive into the Showa films going? Bet it's coming in handy with the virus lock down.

[Gendo'sPapa]

Had I known it was going to get so bad that I was going to be locked at home for weeks on end I would have saved the Boxset but I foolishly finished it about a month ago!

I loved it! Some of the films meld together now but all in all I enjoyed almost every one of them - i wasn't a fan of All Monsters Attack! which was somehow the longest movie I've ever seen even though it runs only 70 minutes and Godzilla Vs. Megalon never grabbed me either despite Jet Jaguar being an interesting idea - and may revisit a few during this lockdown if I need a pick me up. I preferred the Ishiro Honda entries - All Monsters Attack! aside - over the Jun Fukuda films but overall I had a great time!

I'd love to work through the Heisei and Millennium era films but when I looked online without having to buy physical discs I could only find them dubbed and that I just can't do. I know I wouldn't be able to fully appreciate the films if I had to listen to them in a dubbed language. I would prefer not to resort to piracy cause I don't do that anymore SO if anyone knows of a paid streaming service or even a place to rent them online in the original language I'd be very appreciative.

On the bright side, the boxset of Hideaki Anno's Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water has been sitting on my shelf untouched for months and last night I started it for the first time since I don't know when.

[FreakyFilmFan4ever]

All Monsters Attack! is a very rough film to watch, and I don't blame anyone for disliking it. I remember hating it, even when watching it as a young child. But the more I learned about that film, the more I appreciated it. It's not that I think the movie is good now (I still think it's pretty bad,) but I can enjoy certain aspects of that film.

For one, that movie was made for a children's film festival in Japan that featured all sorts of monster movies. The fact that the studio even let Ishiro Honda shoot new footage for that movie (even some new special effect footage) is kind of impressive for what it is. Also, movies like All Monsters Attack, which were seen as mostly disposable as they were being made for a small film festival and nothing else, rarely get to see international distribution. So the fact that we actually got to see this movie internationally released with professional dub work is kind of a unique rarity in and of itself. (Could you imagine if this film had been lost, like these types of films normally are, and rumors of a lost Godzilla film plagued the fandom for decades? Only for it to be found decades later and we discovered that it was All Monsters Attack!? That would have been so painfully anti-climactic.)

Child actor Tomonori Yazaki does a great job as Ichiro Mitsuki. He doesn't come off as a "producer's kid" or anything like that. His character feels natural and believable, and it feels as though Tomonori Yazaki took his craft as an actor very seriously for the role.

And, finally, I always felt like one of the main trademarks of Ishiro Honda as director was his commentary, reflection, or even his meditation on post-war Japan within his Godzilla films. In King Kong vs Godzilla Honda criticizes hyper-capitalism as performed by sensationalist TV broadcast studios, in both of his Mothra movies (Mothra and Mothra vs Godzilla) Honda criticizes late-capitalism and features a giant moth coming in to literally destroy the economic infrastructure built on mans' greed, and in his first two Ghidorah movies (Ghidorah the Three-Headed Monster and Invasion of Astro-Monster) he explores two different kinds of adult sibling relationships where one or both of the parents have died for some reason in the past. (The deaths could have been for any reason, but I feel as though a lot of children of WWII can relate to these stories when these films came out in their adulthood.) All Monsters Attack! certainly has Ishiro Honda's deepest dive into yet another critique in Japan's late-capitalist tendencies, which came at a point where Japan was in its worst economic recessions in decades. Both of Ichiro's parents have to work jobs so they can afford to live in (what seems to be) the shitty part of town, and Ichiro's latchkey kid lifestyle caused by the poor economic conditions is in part of what leads to him getting kidnapped by two burglars to begin with. So Ishiro Honda's most scathing commentary on Japan's performance of capitalism seems to be hidden away in some disposable film for a children's films festival, and I find that wild to a certain degree. In fact, I feel like All Monsters Attack! seems closer to an Ishiro Honda Godzilla movie that Destroy All Monsters. As endlessly satisfying as it is to see Godzilla and his monster buddies finally kill King Ghidorah, the film itself doesn't have any of Ishiro Honda's trademark focus on Japanese lifestyle. Destroy All Monsters feels more like a Jun Fukuda Godzilla movie that it does an Ishiro Honda movie, and I'm beginning to think that Toho simply hired Ishiro Honda to recapture the marketing surrounding the admittedly better Godzilla films Honda directed in the 50's and 60's.

Despite all that, All Monsters Attack! still sucks as a movie. The fact that it got international distribution isn't as interesting without that context of it being a disposable children's film festival entry, the movie is made up of a bunch of the least impressive special effects reused from many of Jun Fukuda's Godzilla films, and that Godzilla suit in the clips from Son of Godzilla looks weird and out of place compared to the rest of the Godzilla suits featured in the movie. (And, let's be real, a kid dreaming about Godzilla is the least compelling plot element in any Godzilla film ever made.) It's still not a fun movie to watch, but, looking back at it, I'm glad I watched it and I appreciate the thought and effort that was put into the movie. (Some efforts that were mysteriously lacking in Honda's Destroy All Monsters.)

PS - Watching the animated Godzilla movies on Netflix is part of what made me appreciate these aspects of All Monsters Attack!. Those animated movies are so bad that literally anything else looks better by comparison. Also, if you can find it, the English dub of All Monsters Attack! (called Godzilla's Revenge, I think) is much better simply for not having the annoying song at the beginning of the film, though you do lose part of Tomonori Yazaki's performance in the process.

[Thuktun Flishithy]

As much as I like Peters Kong the biggest issue for me was the portrayal of the natives, to me its huge stumbling block and the biggest mistake Peter made as it hypes back to the people of colour are savages and animals portrayal in really racist old-time literature and even watching it in the cinema it felt so dated and wrong even back in 2005. Like I got that he was shooting the 1933 scene for scene but that whole scene needed changing period and hurts the film on rewatch.

Holy fuck yes, I'm glad other people share my opinion about Jackson's depiction of the Skull Islanders. FFS, he somehow managed to make it even worse than the original 1933 movie- at least in that one they're shown with a degree of sympathy when Kong razes their village, whereas in the 2005 movie they're depicted as inhuman brutes, more like Jackson's depiction of Orcs than any real culture. The bit where they focus on the kid grinning like a sociopath while Ann's being offered to Kong comes to mind. Hell, I could've sworn some supplementary materials claimed that the people living on the island had become a separate species from humanity, which only makes it even worse.

[BlueBasilisk]

If anyone's interested in checking out Ultraman, Moviespree (from official western distributor Mill Creek) is having a sale for Ultraman Day: https://www.moviespree.com/ultraman You can get each complete series (sans movies) for $7.10 USD!

I'd highly recommend the original Ultraman and Ultraseven, especially if you're interested in seeing some of Anno's influences.

[Mr. Tines]

Warhammer etc tangent split to here -- thread/20193/Chaos-Death-Spiky-Bits-WH-DnD/

[FreakyFilmFan4ever]

So, who else was able to snag Arrow Video's Gamera Complete Box Set during that brief moment of time when it was in print? I was watching through the audio commentaries, and was surprised at how many people who worked on 90's Gamera specifically also worked with Hideaki Anno in various projects. I already knew about Shinji Higuchi's God-tier special effects direction in the trilogy, and recognized Ayako Fujitani from the Ritual Day film she would later on create with Hideaki Anno. But I didn't know about key-animator Mahiro Maeda's work designing the monsters for the first film in the trilogy. (I actually got to see him at an anime con back in 2015, and he signed a few Evangelion things for me. )

Also, the remasters of these movies look amazing. Apparently the 90's trilogy was pulled from a 4K digital restoration. And Higuchi's work on the Gamera movies was the inspirational innovation that the Godzilla movies from the 90's so desperately needed. You can really tell that they're pulling shot choices from Ishiro Honda films, and taking the next logical step in cinematically presenting these monsters in a more contemporary film. I've seen Gamera 3: Revenge of Iris before these restorations, and it's so good that I'm constantly wondering if it really is the best kanji film ever made.

I think there's a standard edition of the Blu-ray release coming out shortly. (I had to order the Limited Edition one from the UK because apparently all of the American Limited Edition copies were sold out weeks before the official release.) Arrow says that the disc content won't change, but that'll be a little awkward if they keep Matt Frank saying in an audio commentary that his comics are included in the box set if the standard edition doesn't keep the print material.

[movieartman]

Jesus fuck tits, I'm watching through the third and (thankfully) final Godzilla anime film, and I've never felt so much hatred and confusion over a movie in my life. My hatred for this thing is stronger than anything I've felt over this franchise before. Like, I haven't felt this way since DC's The Killing Joke animated movie.

SPOILER: Show

This is probably gonna be a long, rambling rant. If you're down to witness some well-deserved venting, buckle up.

Okay, so you remember those twin girls who were clearly supposed to be the Mothra Fairy Twins, but human-sized? Like, that wasn't an homage to the Twins or anything like that. They weren't cleverly winking at lore. They were actually the Mothra Fairy Twins. And they do summon Mothra....'s silhouette in a hallucinatory dream sequence of the main character. So the movie goes as far out of its way as possible to prove that these are in fact the Fairy Twins without ever actually using Mothra in a battle. Like, it's the most useless use of a monster in a movie that's about giant monsters I've ever seen. I can't think of anything else to relate it to, honestly. This has to be one of the biggest wastes of space in a movie ever.

Which makes the filmmakers' decision for Haruo to have sex with one of the twins all the more mind-boggling. And just to make it even more infuriating and gross, Haruo doesn't even figure out which of the twins he's with until she's naked in front of him. Like, the movie goes WAY out of its way to prove that these are, in fact, undeniably, the Fairy Twins from the Mothra lore, despite Mothra not being important to anything with this movie whatsoever, has its main character fuck one of the twins, all while explicitly stating that Haruo really couldn't be bothered to care which one it was, and the movie doesn't even seem to notice that it did that, or that it makes the main character out to look like a little bit of an asshole. This is Bruce Wayne fucking Commissioner Gordon's daughter levels of infuriating. This is as bad as the time Batman boned Batgirl. This is DC's animated The Killing Joke movie for the Godzilla franchise.

And, fuck me right in the asshole, that whole scene where Haruo fucks a human-sized Fairy Twin is there just for padding out the goddamn story to fill out a whole wretched 90 minutes of what someone Toho thought would quietly pass for "entertainment" so the movie could at least be considered feature length. But I'm not sure this movie's other tactics of padding out the run time are any more favorable. I shit none of you when I say that Ghidorah's coming to Earth is just three small black holes opening up in the clouds as a head from each of them take an excruciating 5 minutes of screen time to reach Godzilla, all while the scientist guy is stuck in a loop of "How could this be? How is this possible?" until the filmmakers decided it was time for the next 10-minute-long beat of the film. And what was that 10-minute-long beat you ask? Ghidorah biting down on Godzilla once and sssssssssssssssssssssslllllllllllllllllllllllllllooooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwlllllllllllllllllllllyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy dddddddddddddrrrrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnniiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnggggggggg aaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyy GGGGGGGGGGGGooooooooooodddddddddddzzzzzzzzzzziiiiiiiiilllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa'sssssssssssssssssssssss eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeennnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnneeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggggggggggyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy. What the fucking shit is this fucking shit? I thought there was going to be an actual goddamn monster fight in this fuckass whole-ass asshole of a film about two monster goddamn fighting. The "fight" ends when Haruo is finally able to disrupt the prayers of the alien people to Ghidorah, therefore making hIm vulnerable to Godzilla. (Oh yeah, Ghidorah's a god in this movie, apparently.) After a solid 15 minutes of a hallucinatory scene showing prayers being blocked and counter-prayers being prayed, and that afore-mentioned Mothra silhouette fly-by, Godzilla ends Ghidorah in 5 seconds.

After all that, the humans begin to co-exist with the Fairy Twins' native people, and the movie shows us children appearing, as though it's a montage, and these kids were born during this co-existance and are up to be, like, 5 years old. So we're meant as the audience to ascertain that about 5 years has passed since Godzilla defeated Ghidorah. And that's when the scientist guy shows Haruo that he's finally repaired a flying mechanical suit from the first time they fought Godzilla, and Haruo suddenly remembers "Oh yeah, that's right. I hate Godzilla." Haruo grabs his dead girlfriend who's been dead for the past 5 years but hasn't decomposed yet because it was merging with nano machines that killed her (I guess that's how that works), tells his 5-year rebound Fairy Twin fuck buddy (who's now understandably very emotionally attached to Haruo) that deciding to lose is what makes us human before leaving her to climb into the mech suit's cockpit and FLIES THE GODDAMN MECHA SUIT RIGHT INTO GODZILLA WITH HIS 5-YEAR DEAD GIRLFRIEND ON HIS LAP.

Godzilla ends Haruo in 5 seconds.

Roll credits

Wait for End Credits Scene.

The End Credits Scene is just a bunch of other children at a religious ceremony in the Mothra Cave where they pray to have good dreams and not be bit by bugs and shit, all while a now elderly Fairy Twin fuck buddy watches on and smiles.

I.

Hate.

This.

Movie.

The movie has no redeeming aspects to it, nothing that makes this shit show worth while, and just simply doesn't seem to care about anything it's talking about or showing us. And, in doing so, it seems to piss all over everything that made these kinds of movie worth watching in the first place.

-10/10, I want my time back. Fuck this movie!

Potential reparations for your suffering is coming my friend




https://i.imgur.com/0xiBuVh.jpg
Godzilla - Singular Point to be released on Netflix.

The series comes from quite the experienced creative team. Atsushi Takahashi (Doraemon: Great Adventure in the Antarctic Kachi Kochi) will direct the series, which will feature an original storyline and cast unrelated to any of the previously mentioned Godzilla anime films. Takahashi will be working with acclaimed studios bones (My Hero Academia) and Orange (Beastars) on the project, which will combine both CG and hand-drawn animation for its aesthetics. Plus, Studio Ghibli veteran animator Eiji Yamamori, who’s worked on classics like Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away, will design the Kaiju, the monsters in the series, and that is quite exciting.

https://collider.com/godzilla-anime-ser ... lar-point/

On the other hand maybe the universe requires more pain as Godzilla vs Kong has been delayed until March 4, 2022.