Heisei more dated than Showa?

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KaijuCanuck
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Re: Heisei more dated than Showa?

Post by KaijuCanuck »

Mr_Goji_and_Watch wrote: The worst thing about the Heisei films is their flat lighting and their aspect ration retroactively looks "made for TV."
Yeah I think this explains it all for me. The Heisei series definitely had more sophisticated effects, sets and costumes - but the cinematography was terrible, and that really hinders the potential of the overall look. The Showa series looks much more cinematic in comparison.

But whatever, I love 'em both. :D
Last edited by KaijuCanuck on Thu Feb 01, 2018 6:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Heisei more dated than Showa?

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Mr_Goji_and_Watch wrote:Yeah. Doesn't help that the Heisei Gamera films looked far better and were made with half the budget, whereas the Showa Godzilla films were head and shoulders above their Japanese competitors. It's worth mentioning that both Tsuburaya and Kawakita didn't strive for pure realism though. The worst thing about the Heisei films is their flat lighting and their aspect ration retroactively looks "made for TV."
This. The first several Showa films and Vs Hedorah have some beautiful cinematography and overall I think the effects still hold up. They're not photo-realistic, though they're certainly well-crafted and well shot. Very cinematic. Minus his fondness for questionable puppetry and the misfire that is King Kong vs Godzilla, what else compares to Tsuburaya's special effects output in the late 1950s and early 1960s? Also the composition for the human scenes in Ishiro Honda's films is usually pretty impressive too and don't get enough credit. Excluding Return of Godzilla and Godzilla vs Biollante, the Heisei features look like television productions and Shinji Higuchi completely blowing them out of the water with far less money is embarrassing. I also don't care for how most of them were shot or understand the praise for the effects in Godzilla vs Destoroyah.

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Re: Heisei more dated than Showa?

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kamilleblu wrote:Shinji Higuchi completely blowing them out of the water with far less money is embarrassing.
To be fair, while Higuchi had less money, he and his team had more time.
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Re: Heisei more dated than Showa?

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eabaker wrote:
kamilleblu wrote:Shinji Higuchi completely blowing them out of the water with far less money is embarrassing.
To be fair, while Higuchi had less money, he and his team had more time.
Did Return of Godzilla and Godzilla vs Biollante have an unusually longer production than the rest of the Heisei films?

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Re: Heisei more dated than Showa?

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kamilleblu wrote:
eabaker wrote:
kamilleblu wrote:Shinji Higuchi completely blowing them out of the water with far less money is embarrassing.
To be fair, while Higuchi had less money, he and his team had more time.
Did Return of Godzilla and Godzilla vs Biollante have an unusually longer production than the rest of the Heisei films?
Vs. Biollante certainly had several years more development time, at least. While I can't speak to the production schedule of those two, neither of them were yet under the one-year turnaround edict, so I would assume that they did have more time.
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Re: Heisei more dated than Showa?

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kamilleblu wrote: Did Return of Godzilla and Godzilla vs Biollante have an unusually longer production than the rest of the Heisei films?
Biollante had an even shorter production schedule than the other Heisei films, according to this interview with Ed Godziszewski.
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Re: Heisei more dated than Showa?

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I'd say so. Most of them are just not very well made films, especially when you compare them to other kaiju of films of the time (the Gamera Trilogy).
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Re: Heisei more dated than Showa?

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Terasawa wrote:Biollante had an even shorter production schedule than the other Heisei films, according to this interview with Ed Godziszewski.
A lot of interesting information packed in there. Finally got a reason for its lackluster financial performance. As a last minute affair it didn't have any publicity or merchandise to accompany its release. That would definitely explain things. And Vs Biollante was made in under half the time of the other Heisei films? What happened to the special effects afterwards? Time or money obviously wasn't the issue.

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Re: Heisei more dated than Showa?

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Wasn't it a different effects director?
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Re: Heisei more dated than Showa?

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Zarm wrote:Wasn't it a different effects director?
Nope. Koichi Kawakita was in charge of special effects from Godzilla vs Biollante - Godzilla vs Destoroyah. He's also responsible for the Rebirth of Mothra Trilogy, Gunhed, and Yamato Takeru.

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Re: Heisei more dated than Showa?

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Huh. Clearly, I have to get ahold of one of those behind-the-scenes books, as my knowledge is lacking. :)
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Re: Heisei more dated than Showa?

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Terasawa wrote:
kamilleblu wrote: Did Return of Godzilla and Godzilla vs Biollante have an unusually longer production than the rest of the Heisei films?
Biollante had an even shorter production schedule than the other Heisei films, according to this interview with Ed Godziszewski.
But it also has on the whole less elaborate effects sequences than later Heisei films; Kawakita and team were able to focus on the details more.
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Re: Heisei more dated than Showa?

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kamilleblu wrote: Nope. Koichi Kawakita was in charge of special effects from Godzilla vs Biollante - Godzilla vs Destoroyah. He's also responsible for the Rebirth of Mothra Trilogy, Gunhed, and Yamato Takeru.
Kawakita retired after ROM2, Kenji Suzuki handled the special effects in ROM3.
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Re: Heisei more dated than Showa?

Post by kamilleblu »

Terasawa wrote:Kawakita retired after ROM2, Kenji Suzuki handled the special effects in ROM3.
My bad. Mr. Suzuki indeed took the reigns for Rebirth of Mothra 3.
eabaker wrote:But it also has on the whole less elaborate effects sequences than later Heisei films; Kawakita and team were able to focus on the details more.
Really? Godzilla vs King Ghidorah and Godzilla vs Mothra had more complicated effects sequences?
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Re: Heisei more dated than Showa?

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kamilleblu wrote:
Terasawa wrote:Kawakita retired after ROM2, Kenji Suzuki handled the special effects in ROM3.
My bad. Mr. Suzuki indeed took the reigns for Rebirth of Mothra 3.
eabaker wrote:But it also has on the whole less elaborate effects sequences than later Heisei films; Kawakita and team were able to focus on the details more.
Really? Godzilla vs King Ghidorah and Godzilla vs Mothra had more complicated effects sequences?
Well to start off with, Godzilla vs. Biollante only had one city set built for it while the others had at least 3 per movie. It's much cheaper to film in pools and mountain landscape sets than miniature city sets. Also, filming more optical animation sequences (i.e. kawakita's beam wars scenes) is more elaborate.
Also, as was pointed out by LSD jellyfish, there is more interaction of miniature buildings in the Heisei movies.
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Re: Heisei more dated than Showa?

Post by Tyrant_Lizard_King »

The fact that the underwhelming performance of Biollante was a huge blow to Kawakita didn't help matters at all. He supposedly fell into a drinking habit and it had a big effect on his work.
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Re: Heisei more dated than Showa?

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Tyrant_Lizard_King wrote:The fact that the underwhelming performance of Biollante was a huge blow to Kawakita didn't help matters at all. He supposedly fell into a drinking habit and it had a big effect on his work.
Doubly sad in hindsight since GvsB is easily the best of the Heisei era (Toho)
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Re: Heisei more dated than Showa?

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kamilleblu wrote:
Terasawa wrote:Kawakita retired after ROM2, Kenji Suzuki handled the special effects in ROM3.
My bad. Mr. Suzuki indeed took the reigns for Rebirth of Mothra 3.
eabaker wrote:But it also has on the whole less elaborate effects sequences than later Heisei films; Kawakita and team were able to focus on the details more.
Really? Godzilla vs King Ghidorah and Godzilla vs Mothra had more complicated effects sequences?
While we mostly look at Biollante and Gunhead as Kawakita's best work, the later films had some very ambitious effects sequences. Consider, for instance, stuff like the Shinjuku set in GvKG which was ENORMOUS and super-detailed, the Mt. Fuji eruption sequence in GvM, the whole battle with Space Godzilla in Fukuoka or the space battle in GvSG, and stuff like the Army battle with the small Destroyahs and the Meltdown in GvD. A lot of very elaborate effects sequences, the issue's that this ambitious and elaborate stuff just isn't executed as well.

The '90s films had big budgets for Godzilla films, but relatively tiny budgets compared to Hollywood and a lot of what Kawakita tried to accomplish really needed Hollywood budgets.

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Re: Heisei more dated than Showa?

Post by LegendZilla »

The last thing we need is yet another thread dedicated to bitching over the faults of the Heisei films.

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Re: Heisei more dated than Showa?

Post by GodzillavsJason »

LegendZilla wrote:The last thing we need is yet another thread dedicated to bitching over the faults of the Heisei films.
I don't really see anything wrong with this thread as it's just mainly a topic for people to debate whether or not Heisei is dated. I don't want to see this type of post again when it has nothing to do with the thread.
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