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The metaphor is intact in 2014 (or at least interestingly rewritten) because the monsters come from a time when the Earth was much more radioactive than it is now, and they're drawn by the radiation coming from our use of nuclear power. It's still our misuse of nature causing catastrophe.
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Apr 14, 2016 14:34
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Detective Dog Dick posted:The aliens who turn into Ape-Men when you kill them in Mechagodzilla were badass. That's such a wonderfully freaky moment when the first one is revealed. G vs MG may be the best installment of the 70s, as artistic as Hedorah is.
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Apr 14, 2016 15:47
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The Godzilla design here, along with the scarring, looks a bit like some of the maquettes and publicity mock-ups from the original, which showed Godzilla with a proportionally larger head than on the suit. (I assume the suit design was altered for weight/balance reasons since they had a hell of a time making the costume at all mobile.)
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Apr 17, 2016 18:47
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He excretes chlorine gas or something similarly lethal. For such a surreal film they actually explain the science (such as it is) pretty clearly.
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Apr 22, 2016 04:05
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Like BvS, King Kong and Godzilla are manipulated into fighting by, I dunno, the Xians or Kilaaks or the Aliens from the Third Planet of the Black Hole, then they unite at the end to face off against Gigan with the assistance of Mothra, and we see news footage of Rodan and Varan and Baragon in brief scenes setting up Destroy All Monsters.
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Apr 29, 2016 20:06
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Yaws posted:I dunno what it is about Godzilla movies but I've loved all of them. Even the lovely ones. Godzillas Revenge with that annoying latchkey kid? Totally watchable. Yeah, Godzilla vs. Megalon barely resembles a movie at times- it's more like a really cheap sentai episode with a cast of like 5 people (and no women!) - but it has a certain fascination in that regard. The one kaiju movie I really loathe is Rebirth of Mothra II.
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Apr 30, 2016 19:41
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The first and third are okay, the second is hideous. There's this weird orange and green color scheme (though the Toho Kingdom review says it's partly a problem with the BR transfer, I don't recall it looking any better on video), most of the running time is given over to really cheap and uninteresting Indiana Jones stuff, there's an orange fluffy furby thing whose urine has magic healing powers, it's very unpleasant.
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May 1, 2016 03:01
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The Gamera movies are better than the Heisei Godzillas, but there are some very good films in that series too and the average quality is pretty solid. Godzilla and Mothra is the weakest (others say Space Godzilla but that has a certain look and atmosphere that I like) but even that's pretty good. One advantage the Gamera trilogy had- apart from Kaneko just having a great visual sense in general- was that the monsters were all about half as large as the ones in the Heisei Godzilla series (a 50m scale vs 100m.) This meant the miniature buildings and such could be larger and more detailed, and it made it easier to have scenes where the humans interact with them. Kaneko is fond of ground-level views of the monster stuff, which also is a big part of what makes GMK effective.
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May 8, 2016 18:32
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My Drafthouse showed it back in 2013. I think it was a film print with the International dub.
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Jul 20, 2016 17:30
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Kulkasha posted:Just watched Mothra vs Godzilla for the first time. Godzilla got clowned up and down. Sad! Pretty much the first 2/3rds of the movie is Godzilla ignoring everything the military throws at him, and he even kills the adult Mothra, so it's pretty well-balanced IMO.
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Jul 22, 2016 08:04
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I'm sure I've said this before in this thread but the run of Toho's 60s monster films is up there with the Hammer gothic horrors or WB postwar film noir as one of those great fertile creative periods where a lot of really talented people used a proven commercial formula to do cool things. Too often serious scholarship of Japanese or World cinema skims over it with a mention of Gojira, at most, but the movies are just so wonderfully weird and colorful and creative. These were talented folks seeing what they could pull off.
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Jul 31, 2016 02:23
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E: posted multiple times
Maxwell Lord fucked around with this message at 02:29 on Jul 31, 2016 |
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Jul 31, 2016 02:24
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E: connection issues caused multiple posting
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Jul 31, 2016 02:27
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It's deliberately a little freaky in the way Japanese horror can be. Some of the shots in the trailer put me in mind of Attack on Titan.
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Aug 3, 2016 22:05
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That's a very cool and scary thing right there. This is kinda looking like the film Godzilla 2014 seemed it would be from the teasers, just a modern take on "Godzilla loving kills everyone." I like that it was a swerve then, but a straight take on the 1954 concept is also good.
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Aug 11, 2016 04:09
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This looks like it might be a wee bit horrifying for a little kid, but I dunno.
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Sep 3, 2016 04:10
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I think Son and vs Mechagodzilla are the only two that haven't been reissued, and most of those Sony releases ended up as Kraken titles so there's a chance.
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Sep 15, 2016 18:54
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The remasters for the original Star Trek were not bad but they went overboard in replacing every single optical shot. Actually now that I think of it Blade Runner: the Final Cut looks good, they messed with the matte lines but that was enough.
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Sep 18, 2016 02:52
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It's a good disc. The first three Heisei films in particular all take their time getting started. Godzilla appears about 35 minutes into 1984, there's a similar delay in Biollante despite the opening recap, and in King Ghidorah he's visible in the opening title shot, then doesn't show up for over an hour (not counting the Godzillasaur.)
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Sep 24, 2016 02:52
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Bimmi posted:I had a lot of issues with Edwardszilla, but I couldn't help but wonder if the people bitching about Godzilla hardly being in it have ever actually SEEN one of these movies. To be sure, in King Ghidorah, once Godzilla does finally show up it's pretty much a relentless Godzilla rampage with the human stuff getting less prominent, but yeah.
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Sep 24, 2016 21:27
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Much like Cloverfield, Edwards' Godzilla is about the people running around in the footsteps of the gods. It's a little more optimistic, though, in that the people aren't as powerless to stop the destruction around them.
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Sep 25, 2016 05:02
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Have some Godzilla bloopers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3oKqbQg33A -Showa https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxPXUq9wr1E -Heisei
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Sep 25, 2016 19:53
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One issue with the 1994 Godzilla script is that it does keep him on a leash for a while. Godzilla (who in this film is a product of genetic engineering to protect Earth from monsters like the Gryphon) heads towards San Francisco, but is subdued by being sprayed with "amniotic fluid" from his birthing chamber, and collapses on the bridge. He's moved to a testing facility where he spends much of the time asleep, until finally the Gryphon goes on a rampage and Godzilla awakens to battle him. There's no sense of him being any kind of threat, even as much as in the 2014 film (where there's a little irony in the "Savior of the City" title he's given at the end.) And of course the nuclear angle is completely gone. Still, not a bad script.
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Oct 6, 2016 18:18
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So Shin Godzilla is really good. Godzilla is presented as some kind of horrifically super-evolved organism that can handle whatever you throw at it. It lurches onto shore in this strange, almost comical form that again put me in mind of what I see in Japanese horror and manga and so on- big bulging eyes and an awkward shape and the horror is how incongruous it is. It never quite looks "right". And though the satire in the beginning implies that the Japanese don't act quickly enough because of red tape and so on, when they- and the US- respond with missiles and bombs, it makes things even worse, because Godzilla responds by incinerating earth and sky with radioactive fire. A lot of it is specifically political in regards to Japan and its relations with other nations and how it's still under the shadow of the war- they even say "the postwar era lasts forever." Though the film is in some ways a radical revision of the traditional Godzilla-versus-mankind story, it doesn't cut ties with the past entirely- there's ingenious use of some old music cues and near the end you feel like it's a reconstruction of those tropes in a modern environment. (Granted I have no idea if they'll try for a direct sequel. Seems it would be tricky.) The effects are generally quite good. Like I wasn't sure what specific techniques were being used for Godzilla in a given scene, and the blending of it with live action backgrounds works way better here than it ever did in the 2000 series. Like, there were definitely chuckles because for a US crowd the bug eyes and such look funny, but it's effective. Last night I was thinking it's remarkable just how experimental Godzilla as a franchise has gotten. Final Wars was its own weird experiment in bringing in tropes from sentai and shonen anime and so on (I still honestly have yet to pin down just how I feel about it. Need to watch it again.) 2014 was "humans walking in the footsteps of giants". We've got this, and apparently there will be an animated film (?) and Legendary has more in the can. These are fascinating times.
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Oct 12, 2016 04:13
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Most Godzilla movies are mostly footage of other things happening.
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Oct 12, 2016 04:36
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It's even more noticeable with Americans in Toho's movies because, well, there aren't that many American expats seeking acting jobs in the Japanese film industry, so sometimes these'll just be people otherwise related to the studio- friends of the production staff and the like.
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Oct 15, 2016 00:50
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The thing about Godzilla 2014 is, I suppose the human characters are kind of flat, but even though Godzilla has very little screen time, the entire movie is essentially about him. The characters don't have time to be developed or get "interesting", every scene is about how they're reacting to monsters being unleashed on the Earth, and what the gently caress do you do in that situation, can you even do anything, etc.
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Oct 16, 2016 19:42
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:It's right-wing for sure. Fascist is another story. Even then I'm not sure since the first military attack on Godzilla is what prompts him to unleash the atomic fire.
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Oct 17, 2016 03:03
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david_a posted:I think I've only seen two of those and I don't remember that. The deal with Shin Godzilla is he's an organism that instantly adapts to face danger, so, danger from above? Back lasers. It's actually kind of a neat take on the premise. Radiation promotes mutation, so Godzilla is a creature that continues mutating to survive in its environment. I'm interested in seeing what Toho does next. This made a poo poo ton of money so there obviously will be a sequel but will they try to make a direct one or will it be like the Millennium series? Will Godzilla's design become more traditional to facilitate monster fights, or will they find a new way to stage them, etc.
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Oct 18, 2016 19:34
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Glad this is going down well in America. Given that Godzilla 1985 kinda flopped here and Godzilla 2000 barely made acquisition costs, that may make this the first successful US release of a Toho kaiju film since the Seventies.
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Oct 19, 2016 03:11
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Best use of Zilla is in the Godzilla: Rulers of Earth comic from IDW. It's a Destroy All Monsters style plot, Godzilla and Zilla fight at one point- Godzilla wins but it's an actual fight and kinda fun, and later Zilla gets to be one of the good guys.
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Oct 20, 2016 01:18
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Godzilla's Revenge is an interesting movie. It was made for the first Champion Festival, which was a series of films for kids with (I believe) a lower price of admission, and I think they even showed some Ultraman episodes (which was a big deal in the first few years because while Ultraman was a popular show not many households had color TVs.) This was to offset already dwindling attendance for Japanese movies. So it was a deliberate choice to make it less of a proper monster movie and more a child's fantasy. Tsubaraya was dying so the SFX department was a little rudderless (he's in the credits out of respect and because of all the recycled footage), but the main story is a bit of a commentary on the increasing issue of latchkey children in Japan, which was down to economic pressures making for more households where both parents worked. The real worst one is vs. Megalon, which was originally going to just star Jet Jaguar (who was the winning entry in a Toho create-a-monster contest for kids), so it's mostly a henshin story with Godzilla showing up. And of course by this point the budget had gotten threadbare and so you have one good "destruction" sequence, lots of recycled footage, a human story with like five characters, and a big drawn out fight scene on an empty field which still manages to recycle stuff from the last movie.
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Oct 20, 2016 17:04
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Godzilla 98 has Jean Reno and a cool monster design. Also I like the score and the photography quite a bit (for all Emmerich's faults he tends to get good visuals.) It's a film that desperately needs more editing but it has a place in my heart.
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Oct 20, 2016 19:33
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Yeah, Toho were not great at film preservation. Even the Criterions of Godzilla and Seven Samurai are a little lacking compared to some other films of the same vintage. The Japanese cut of King Kong vs Godzilla would be good to have, but I think that's the last big "unseen in the US!" Godzilla thing out there. Though it would also be nice if someone cleared up the rights to Godzilla 1985- it's strictly worse than the Japanese cut but worth having for historical value (and they do give Raymond Burr a nice final monologue.)
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Oct 23, 2016 03:54
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King Kong 76 is a weird movie that feels like it should work more than it does. It's nicely shot with a touch of seventies naturalism which is cool for a fantastic premise (kinda like Superman), the music is great, the cast is superb, but there's just no payoff. A few nice ideas ( I like the way Kong's unveiling/escape is presented, fictional park and all) but it never has any visceral punch. I LOVE the Jackson version though. I feel like all the added time and such gave Jackson room to tweak the themes of the story- Ann is special not because she's a blonde (i.e. White) but because she introduces Kong to things like laughter and beauty and gentleness. Making Denham an Orson Welles type raises questions about the spectacle machine and the real cost of creating, and whether it's worth it- there's arguably as much self examination of the author here as in Death Proof. Plus you know it's Jackson thinking "I have one shot at paying tribute to the movie that I love and I'm going to go all out." Spider pits, dinosaurs everywhere, it's definitely self indulgent but that gets a bad rap these days.
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Nov 19, 2016 01:32
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The funny part about Lange's performance is that she did it too well, and directors and casting people assumed that she really was a ditzy shallow model/starlet, and she was badly typecast. She had to pay out of pocket to film an audition for The Postman Always Rings Twice, and she got the part and an Oscar nod and people took her seriously at last.
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Nov 19, 2016 05:20
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Roadie posted:Wait, why have the "prove monsters are real" thing in the trailer then? After Godzilla and the MUTOs stomping around, skepticism seems like it would be hard to come by. Is Kong going to be a prequel? It's set in the Seventies IIRC.
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Nov 19, 2016 05:30
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Yeah the film's nicely nuanced in its handling of the political stuff. They make fun of government bureaucracy but the monster is defeated through collective action and not some bold individual heroics. They show how Japan is under the yoke of international obligations but also show them leveraging those same connections- they don't just defy the US, they get France on their side by promising them research, then buy just enough time to implement their plan. It could still all fall apart at the end, if that tail ever twitches. They're in a delicate state.
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Dec 11, 2016 22:01
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Actually they should have called it Godzilla Raids Again, since it will be followed by King Kong vs. Godzilla.
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Dec 15, 2016 00:21
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VolticSurge posted:And,in the grand Godzilla tradition,will be Godawful as gently caress. Name one good Godzilla dub. That's the thing-one doesn't exist. The 60s AIP dubs are generally okay. The voices and accents are broad but superior to the outright poor acting and mixing of the international dubs. The main reason live action dubbing sucks for us Americans is, we're not used to it. In places like Italy and Germany all the big Hollywood movies are dubbed.
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Dec 24, 2016 23:50
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