Best End of Era Film

[Gojira-Fan]

The only instances of humping in the Godzilla series are the car molestation in Godzilla's Revenge, and Godzilla all over Gigan in his debut film. It's also possible there was off-screen intercourse between Emmy and Terasawa. Who knows, perhaps the Blu-Ray will feature such deleted scene...

I always thought that scene was supposed to look like the Ichiro is just jumping up and down on the car, not humping it.

At least, I don't think he was intended to hump it.

He's wearing booty shorts. His intentions should be clear.

You shouldn't apply American cultural standards to the wearing of "booty shorts" (as you call them) that was prevalent among male Japanese youth in the late 1960's.

...although what you said was still funny

[Breakdown]

Let me say that picking between GvsD and TOMG was not an easy choice, both are two of my all time favorite G flicks. In the end though, I picked GvsD.

[Voyager]

Decided to follow in Jag’s footsteps in bumping old threads. Anyway, ToMG blows the other two out of the water. It’s not even fair.

[Kaltes-Herzeleid]

Anyway, ToMG blows the other two out of the water. It’s not even fair.

This. Managed to capture that Golden Age magic one more time and Honda ended his work in the kaiju genre with a masterpiece.

[eabaker]

Decided to follow in Jag’s footsteps in bumping old threads. Anyway, ToMG blows the other two out of the water. It’s not even fair.

Yup. As much as I love the ending of GvsD, the movie as a whole is sloppy and half-baked. ToMG is richer, more sincere, better paced, and it has the finest pure city destruction sequence in the entire genre.

[Gigantis]

Also going with TOMG. It has the best characters, plot and action (well, FW may have it tied for action) above all of them.

[CrimsonBloodX]

I voted for Terror of Mechagodzilla because it's the best out of the three, in my opinion.

[Tyrant_Lizard_King]

Gotta agree with the common consensus. I mean I enjoy Final Wars for what it is but Terror is a far better movie. Destroyah is just plain boring for a majority of its runtime.

[HedorahIsBestGirl]

Happy to say my vote has just given Terror of Mechagodzilla the lead over Destoroyah.

While TOMG may not have been as grand a conclusion from a narrative standpoint, due to the looser continuity of the Showa series as opposed to the Heisei series, Godzilla's final venture into the Pacific makes for an elegiac conclusion to both the film and the series, and is a far more subtle finish than Godzilla literally disintegrating out of existence. Beyond that, TOMG represents a triumphant swan song for Ishiro Honda, ending the Golden Era of kaiju cinema with a final film from the man who oversaw the birth of the genre. While I maintain that the 70s Godzilla films are almost all underrated -- save this film's predecessor, which is grossly overrated -- it is also nice to see one more film made in the more serious style of Honda's earlier kaiju films as opposed to the more stylized and campy works of Jun Fukuda and the beautifully bizarre acid trip helmed by Yoshimitsu Banno.

By contrast, Godzilla vs. Destoroyah is a rather middling film which is elevated slightly above the mediocrity of the other 90s films only by Godzilla's effectively melancholic death scene. Even so, it suffers from one of the weakest human elements of any Godzilla film (whereas TOMG has one of the strongest) and some pretty shoddy pacing. GFW is a wild ride but I think most would agree it is the weakest of these three films and it is by no means a good conclusion to the Millennium series, which isn't even really a series to begin with.