Did the millennium series do Godzilla justice?

[tenup]

The lack of a solo Godzilla film can also play a part in this. At best all the mellennium films were able to accomplish was spawn a series of games that were fighting based and ran stale over a short period. And now we have LP thinking that this is the standard formula for a Godzilla film. Of course the addition of extra monsters can ad an entertaining eliment but what good is that when everything else (story, charactors & execution of the monsters) fall short? Obviously Toho didnt care who they had helming the directors chair for the 2000 series. They probably messed up in trying to recycle old formulas. Again if these films were made the way they were prior to the 1998 Godzilla film :' then it could've worked.

The Heisie series is horrible imo and I couldn't watch those films today. Although there was a time that I did watch the films (out of my loyalty to Godzilla) as a kid. Talk about a mindless Godzilla that roars every 3.5 seconds and performs a beam show just felt so annoying and bland.

[RodanRedux]

Justice , yeah I think so. All of the films are entertaining to watch. GMK is very good. There were a couple mediocre entries in the series.

[Showa Gyaos]

Not really, but hey--more Godzilla!

[Arbok]

I think they did Godzilla "justice", but I felt the concept and execution was poorly planned.

If they didn't want continuity, the needed a reason for it. "Hoping that American companies will be more likely to release it in theaters if its not directly following an unreleased film" is not a good reason. GMK is a good reason, as it actually takes the character in a direction where it feels fresh yet at the same time a natural follow up to what was seen in the original.

The rest just feel like they are more or less writing the Heisei series Godzilla in a different picture with a few Showa references mixed in to tap nostalgia. Or in the case of GFW, just a whole mess of stuff thrown against a wall in hopes something will stick. The problem is that the series really doesn't have an identity, where as the Showa and Heisei do. This should have been the "What If?" of the Godzilla series with a lot of experimentation, yet only GMK and GFW took risks and produced something that felt different.

[tenup]

I also hate the fact that they never capitalized on Godzilla's interaction with human charactors. GXM was about as close as they came using this strategy. It always seems like the human charactors are casted into their own world while Godzilla is in another. Like how boring is it to always have the focussed charactors monitor the monsters attack through some facility with monitors? I never care for the humans and I really want to but they're never put in any harms way despite the threat. Even in GMK when Uri bypasses that security barricade and Godzilla charges toward her and a crowd of soilders I was thinking ? what? Did it just walk over them? did they run for cover? Its weak man.

I had nightmares where Godzilla seemed more threatening and feared it being in the wake of its destruction. This is how it should be executed.

[Ethan]

They did. It is true that it started with a mediocre film and ended with the worst film of the franchise, but that in no way negates that the 4 films in within were some the most enjoyable ones we had since the Showa series. Brought back was the point of the first film, the silly antics of the '70s, the colorful atmosphere of the Golden Era; all in a shorter period of time that both previous series. To me that's justice, especially compared to the "I don't give a damn" vibe the '90s films had.

[godzilla1996]

Compared to GINO, yes. Compared to the Showa Series, no.

[tenup]

My point in posting this thread was to give insight on what really happened since Tristars Godzilla was released. We all know that Gino didnt deliver as it should've and that Toho decided to carry on the franchise using their own resources. But this was poorly executed and Toho didnt seem to have any direction for Godzilla. With the upcoming Legendary Pictures Godzilla film brewing Im actually at ease to know that Toho would settle another deal with more suitable American movie company.

Toho ditched out everything they seemed to have with their millennium Godzilla series so Im glad that they are taking a different approach altogether. I believe the millennium series could easily be outdone by what Legendary Pictures has planned for their feature film. The whole purpose of the millennium films (from what I can tell) was to burry the harsh memory of what Tristar attempted to do to the charactor.

To sum it all up, I dont understand why Toho rushed into it and ended up making a broken series of Godzilla films that were all detatched from everything else. GMK alone would be the only exceptional Godzilla film to deminish any harm that was done by Tristars Godzilla, so in that case they really didnt need to go any further afterward. As great of a film as GMK was to me I feel bad that the film has to be tangled amongst this mess of a series even if it was a standalone from the others. GMK belongs in a category of its own just as Tristars version.

As loyal of a Godzilla fan that I am, I really dont want to go through another Showa or Millennium style faze of Godzilla movies. Godzilla desperately needs structure and a proper presentation of films that will get recognition and end all the confusion of alternate incarnations and subpar storylines that aren't relivant.

[Legion1979]

To sum it all up, I dont understand why Toho rushed into it and ended up making a broken series of Godzilla films that were all detatched from everything else.

$$$$$$$$$$

[Sam]

Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla ... The production values were the most consistent.

Got to admit, I haven't watched it for a few years now, but I remember not liking the stiff Godzilla suit, the at-times cartoony CGI, and the average miniature-work.

Final Wars may not represent the serious, gritty Emozilla everyone on this board seems to want, but the film incorporates so much Toho mythology and so perfectly encapsulates 70's Toho that no one can argue the film doesn't represent what Godzilla became near the end of his first series.

Is that a good thing? The 70s Godzilla movies, in spite of how entertaining you and I may find the likes of Terror of Mechagodzilla, were bad movies, shown by the poor box office figures. Maybe that's why GFW did so disappointingly at the box office.

GMK is where I start to have problems. It meant well, the bulk of its characters are straight out of Mothra vs. Godzilla and Godzilla vs. Gigan, and although I despise the suits the production values were quite high. The biggest problem is that this film tried to force a new message on the Godzilla character that, while on paper might work, fails in execution. This is a botched effort at best, thanks mostly to Toho rushing the project.

I don't understand this. Which characters are similar to those in the movies you mentioned?

I don't know which message you're talking about with regards to GMK. So far as I'm aware, the movie is Kaneko arguing against those in Japan who appear to have forgotten Japan's past and are pushing for a change in the constitution and rearmament. So far as I understand it, Japan has had a similar problem to Germany is the respect that it's decided that the best way to approach it's involvement in World War II is by not discussing it, going as far as to skip past it in history textbooks.

If you're discussing how that's made relevent to Godzilla, i.e., having him spurred on the souls of the Pacific War's dead, it's been covered elsewhere that this new "message" being "forced" on Godzilla is not, in fact, a new message. The idea that Godzilla was motivated in the original movie to attack Japan by the spirits of Japan's war dead is a relatively old and well known one. They probably could and should have made it work better, and as you said that's probably to do with the famously tight Toho production schedule, but to said it "fails" is unfair. It certainly succeeds in explaining why Godzilla is attacking a country that has no history of making or using nuclear weapons with such vemon.

Not to say your opinion is wrong (because it's all subjective), but GMK tends to be appreciated as the best of the Millennium Series, was the best attended at the box office, and I believe is the Millennium movie most often booked by theatres in the US. I had a break from Godzilla for a few years, by no means intentionally, but it was a break nonetheless. I've started watching some again, and find GMK is probably second only to the original movie is terms of quality. It's one of the few Godzilla movies that are genuinely quality movies (i.e., would appeal to those unfamiliar with the genre).

And then you have Megaguirus, which is a Heisei film. A really bad one at that and second only to Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla '93.

Sorry - this is probably my bad - but does that mean you don't like Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II? If that's the case, I don't understand why you've rated it lower than the likes of Godzilla vs. Spacegodzilla and Godzilla (1984).

[DaikaijuSokogeki!]

Technically, no. Like what's been previously said, this series of films hardly brought anything new to the table aside from GMK and GFW. The other four stuck to the basic formula as hard as they could. While the series did remind the public of the true Godzilla and helped redeem the franchise after the '98 disaster (somewhat), as a whole it failed to repeat the massive success of the Heisei films or the critical acclaim of the Showa films. The Millennium series is just....there.