Toho Kingdom

Godzillian wrote:

EmperorGhidorah wrote:

Rody wrote:I'll fourth the opinion. GotU is leagues better than Destroyah.

After watching the trilogy again, this film has become my favorite of the three. G2 & G3 excel in some areas and falter in others, but GotU is a solid effort all around, making for a very balanced and highly entertaining film.

Honestly, it's kind of mind-blowing how superior this film and its sequels are to the last 4 Godzilla films of the same era, with budgets half as large.

Yeah. It's really funny how the gamera trilogy had inferior budgets yet superior effects.

It's not how much money you have, it's how you use it.

Exactly. Still a pathetic showing on toho's part.

Kaiser wrote:My gripe is not that GoTU is regarded as a better film that Destoroyah (GoTU is a better film by any criteria) but MDK bringing it into a topic where it had no place because he apparently likes bashing the Heisei series every chance he gets. So it is not his opinion that irks me, so much as how he expresses it.

Best advice I would give you Kaiser is to put him on ignore so you can't see what he says if it irks you.

Comparing the behind the scenes stuff for this and say Destroyah- I'm not surprised this looks considerably better.

For the most part the Godzilla movies used model sets in a pretty static manner.
Shoot with suit walking by a building etc. Detailed as the sets may be, they're often to small and filmed from afar. Often looking really bland.




This in particular, though a bit exaggerated with the image I'm using, highlights my gripes with the 90's Godzilla movies. They're often really stagy and uncinematic....and just make things look worse than fake- they look visually boring and dull in terms of the palette and angles shot.




I'm being really unfair here, but I think this does illustrate my opinion. It's from a ground level POV with what is likely a larger model used in the foreground with details so far as cloths/towels hanging to dry. Just in terms of how we're visually presented with a monster fight. It's just so much more interesting. Not to mention generally...colorful? Maybe it's just me but though the Ghidorah pic above isn't a truly accurate depiction of the Godzilla heisei films, I can't help but feel like they're rather too clean. Like even when filmed on a real location, things looks often washed out, like a sterile tv show look for Japan. I don't how to explain it, but with these films I almost get a certain amount of....grit in a sense. At least compared to how sterile the Godzilla ones feel. At least after RoG with some of that creeping into Biollante.

I remember I was in middle school and I was re-watching old tapes I watched as a kid. I watched Gamera vs. Zigra and went 'lame.' Next time I was at the mom and pop store I noticed a cover with a more fierce looking Gamera called 'Guardian of the Universe.' I rented it and I remember my mind getting blown by how awesome the movie was. Gamera's fire blows monsters up! The Gyaos are scary! WHOAA THAT SPINNING GAMERA SHELL IS AMAZING! What the hell why is her arm suddenly bleeding!?

Oh man what a ride that was! That was back in the day when you couldn't use the phone and the internet at the same time so I was eagerly waiting for the day this even cooler Gamera 2 was supposed to come out in the U.S. Had to wait until high school.

As far as I care the only Gamera movies that matter are Gamera vs. Barugon and the 90s movies. Okay I guess maybe the original Gamera too but damn Barugon is just this hill of awesome compared the two duller movies before and after it.

Someday I'll check out Gamera the Brave.

I really like the realism they managed to capture in this movie. Gyaos and Gamera are actually very believable as monsters, thanks to the great effects (far above Destroyah and the Mothra Trilogy's work), and the straightforward origins. Gyaos is an ancient bird, Gamera is an ancient creation. Creative, but easy to wrap your head around.

There's still a good amount of unusual stuff, such as the spiritual connection to Gamera, but it makes sense within the story that we're given. Plus, it doesn't stick out all that bad among the crazy giant monsters.

I love this film! Didn't like part 2 or 3, but I loved this one, hands down one of the BEST kaiju films ever made.
They just handled everything about this movie so well, even the dubbing is superb.
5 out of 5 stars!

Lain Of The Wired wrote:I love this film! Didn't like part 2 or 3, but I loved this one, hands down one of the BEST kaiju films ever made.
They just handled everything about this movie so well, even the dubbing is superb.
5 out of 5 stars!

Huh. I don't think I've ever seen anyone say that they don't like 2 or 3 before! One of the other, sure, but either is unique.

Generally, it seems like GotU is most people's second favorite, with the order either 3, 1, 2 or 2, 1, 3.

At this point, I think GotU and Gamera III hold pretty much equal places in my esteem, but for different reasons. GotU has the most solid storytelling of the trilogy, but III has a tone and atmosphere that really suck me in.

eabaker wrote:

Lain Of The Wired wrote:I love this film! Didn't like part 2 or 3, but I loved this one, hands down one of the BEST kaiju films ever made.
They just handled everything about this movie so well, even the dubbing is superb.
5 out of 5 stars!

Huh. I don't think I've ever seen anyone say that they don't like 2 or 3 before! One of the other, sure, but either is unique.

Generally, it seems like GotU is most people's second favorite, with the order either 3, 1, 2 or 2, 1, 3.

At this point, I think GotU and Gamera III hold pretty much equal places in my esteem, but for different reasons. GotU has the most solid storytelling of the trilogy, but III has a tone and atmosphere that really suck me in.

I find Gamera 3 incredibly boring in parts but the special effects are solid. Which gives me faith in the 2016 Toho film.

^ yea the third installment had me lost in thought and paying attention to the ceiling on more than one occasion (i watched it from bed on my laptop). solid effects work, but it was slow here and there. GoTU didn't have that problem for me.

three wrote:^ yea the third installment had me lost in thought and paying attention to the ceiling on more than one occasion (i watched it from bed on my laptop). solid effects work, but it was slow here and there. GoTU didn't have that problem for me.

You have a wise mind three. I put GOTU in my top 5 movies of all time.

aye; i loved that the threat was from a sort of invading group of enemies rather than one giant destroyer. the stakes are different when it is feasible that the world could be overrun.

eabaker wrote:

Lain Of The Wired wrote:I love this film! Didn't like part 2 or 3, but I loved this one, hands down one of the BEST kaiju films ever made.
They just handled everything about this movie so well, even the dubbing is superb.
5 out of 5 stars!

Huh. I don't think I've ever seen anyone say that they don't like 2 or 3 before! One of the other, sure, but either is unique.

Generally, it seems like GotU is most people's second favorite, with the order either 3, 1, 2 or 2, 1, 3.

At this point, I think GotU and Gamera III hold pretty much equal places in my esteem, but for different reasons. GotU has the most solid storytelling of the trilogy, but III has a tone and atmosphere that really suck me in.

I find part 2 just REALLY boring, also thought the CGI Gamera vs. Legion army looked SO awful.
As for part 3, it's like for the most part, I'm bored out of my mind, then the movie gets weird, and bad weird, then it just gets fucking confusing... The Gamera scenes are awesome, I love the redesign, and the scene with Iris flying through the night sky, above the clouds was great, but the rest was... nooooooo.

GoTU is my favorite Gamera film. It has an excellent story, and kaiju are well portrayed. The mystic elements and the real world elements balance eachother out, unlike G3 where mystic tends to be stronger.

It's the most exciting and well-told film of the trilogy. The only area where it suffers compared to its sequels are the FX - if they were G3 quality, it would have been a near-perfect kaiju film.

tymon wrote:It's the most exciting and well-told film of the trilogy. The only area where it suffers compared to its sequels are the FX - if they were G3 quality, it would have been a near-perfect kaiju film.

I kind of preferred GOTU's FX. Iris got a little too CGI at times for my tastes.

Kaijugriffey wrote:

tymon wrote:It's the most exciting and well-told film of the trilogy. The only area where it suffers compared to its sequels are the FX - if they were G3 quality, it would have been a near-perfect kaiju film.

I kind of preferred GOTU's FX. Iris got a little too CGI at times for my tastes.

I feel like the CGI aspect of Iris contributes to its unacanny nature, and provides a nice contrast to the more strictly pracitcal realization of Gamera. It makes Iris more thoroughly, fundamentally un-Gamera.

That's probably what I like most about G3 - it's drastically different from anything else in the franchise.

GotU, on the other hand, is a passionate love letter to classic giant monster movies, and is extremely fun for it.

Part of what I love about the trilogy as a whole is the balance of having narrative and stylistic through lines, while at the same time allowing each movie to be very much its own beast. GotU encapsulates the grandeur and joy of the classic kaiju flicks, G2 is much more in the mold of American sci-fi/monster flicks, and G3 is an apocalyptic work of horror fantasy.

It's funny. As time goes by I like G1 and G2 more and more and I like G3 less and less. Great effects, but not else in the movie does much at all for me.

Legion1979 wrote:It's funny. As time goes by I like G1 and G2 more and more and I like G3 less and less. Great effects, but not else in the movie does much at all for me.

To me, G2 and G3 are both movies where certain aspects are overpoweringly good, but intellectually I can find some faults; those faults just don't matter to me because they are dwarfed by the elements that I love.

GotU is a movie almost without flaws. If it is not my favorite of the lot (and, really, I think I just don't have a favorite), it's just because the tone and atmosphere of G3 are more precisely to my personal tastes.