Godzilla Final Wars censored f-bombs

[Joehrex]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7g-wO5k4J4

"Godzilla: Final Wars" the most hated film that ripped off of other films is censored! The F-word is replaced with the word "Hell".

Censored lines:

Pimp: C'mon man, I already parked here for five minutes.

Cop: Five minutes, five seconds, doesn't frickin' matter 'cause I'm gonna bust you up.

Drunk Guy: Great! Go for it!

Pimp: Shut the hell up, you too drunk!

Cop: You shut the hell up!



If you can clearly read their lips and write it down what they really say, it will be great! Uncensored.

[wrongnote85]

i noticed that too. i've only seen it once at that was a couple weeks ago with my little girl. is that the only scene that way?

[Goji]

Apparently, the F-bomb's were replaced so that they film could garner a PG-13 rating.

I find it hard to believe that leaving them in would have earned the film an R-rating, but they were obviously not something that Toho wanted to take a chance on. (Seeing that they really wanted this film to get an international theatrical release).

[SuperSaiyan4Godzilla]

Apparently, the F-bomb's were replaced so that they film could garner a PG-13 rating.

I find it hard to believe that leaving them in would have earned the film an R-rating, but they were obviously not something that Toho wanted to take a chance on. (Seeing that they really wanted this film to get an international theatrical release).

PG-13 films are allowed to use the word skreeonk three times before R rating.

[Joehrex]

Is this the first time Godzilla: Final Wars had been censored? Are any other Japanese versions of Toho Kaiju films censored, edited, and American actors dubbed in Japanese?

[Goji]

PG-13 films are allowed to use the word skreeonk three times before R rating.

*Face palm* I should have known that. Thanks, Nick.

Does anybody know if it was censored at the Hollywood Premiere, or in Japanese theaters?

I wish I still had the .mpeg file of the film that I downloaded in Spring of 2005. It had Don Frye dubbed in Japanese, and I recall that scene with the pimp not being censored, but I could easily be imagining that. That was nearly 7 years ago.

[Superrex]

Is this the first time Godzilla: Final Wars had been censored? Are any other Japanese versions of Toho Kaiju films censored, edited, and American actors dubbed in Japanese?

Terror of Mechagodzilla had a shot of a woman's breast which was edited out of the U.S. release.
In the Japanese release of Invasion of Astro-Monster,Nick Adams was dubbed in Japanese. The Japanese trailer had him speaking English,though.

[Hellspawn28]

I think they would have gone a way with a PG-13 rating with two F bombs. Funny how some PG movies can say "Shit" like Warriors of Virtue (1997) for example.

[therealmccoy]

Does anybody know if it was censored at the Hollywood Premiere, or in Japanese theaters?

There has to be one somewhere. I can't imagine that they would have censored it for it's initial release. I could be wrong, but that just seems odd to me. it would be a pretty cool thing to get your hands on.

[kpa]

The cursing never made it into the film. I met Mick Preston (the Cop) and Darren Schnase (the Pimp) at the Hollywood premiere of GFW and later interviewed them. Here's what they had to say about filming their scene in Sydney...

SCHNASE: Mick and I got into makeup, and we had our scripts so we were rehearsing while we were getting our makeup done and I said, "Does this sound weird to you?" And Mick said, "Yeah, it's not real." It was really polite, like, "Don't point your gun at me. Put my car down/No, I'm going to give you a ticket." and all this sort of crap. I'm a gangster, I've got this magnum sitting on my hip, and all I'm saying is, "Don't do that, put my car down."

Noooo, that doesn't make sense. The great thing about Ryuhei was that he was so open to suggestions. When he was showing us the blocking for our scene, we said to him, "It just doesn't sound authentic...it really doesn't. It doesn't mesh at all. Mick's lived over there for like 10 years, I've spent a bit of time in America." So he asked us what we were thinking, and we said, "Maybe if you put in a 'f*ck you' or something along those lines," and he "Okay, let's try it." So we rewrote a couple lines, cut a few things out, put a word in there, cut another there, so it started sounding pretty authentic, y'know?

Then we played around with the scene a couple times and, as an actor, it felt right, it felt good. It felt like it brought tension to the scene until that little comic bit comes along.

***

Later, they traveled to Toho Studios to shoot the stunt of being blown away by Rodan...

PRESTON: When we got to Tokyo we were told our footage would have to be relooped to get rid of the swearing so that the film could get a rating that meant kids could see it. That was difficult. We'd been doing stunt work all day, some pretty physical stuff, and we'd been shooting since the morning. By this time it was about 2 a.m. We headed over to the sound studio and Ryuhei played our footage for us. He told me that he wanted me to replace all my swearing with different words. I can't remember what he asked me to say. Anyway when they played back the footage I was a little in shock seeing how much I'd sworn and how much dubbing I had to do. Dubbing can be a difficult process at the best of times but I really struggled with this.

SCHNASE: It was a long day... we were there for about 15 hours on the set. And we were looking to get back to our hotel about 1:30-2 in the morning, and Ryuhei was like, "Oh before you leave we'd better go over to the sound studio. We gotta redub the whole scene." It's basically a 'PG' film, and like every second word was a swear word, was a curse.

So we're sitting there and it was torture. You just know it's not gonna mesh... all of a sudden it's "Forget you" instead of "F*ck you". You look at the mouth movements and it just doesn't work at all. I think Mick got the brunt of it; mine wasn't too bad because in a lot of my scene I've turned to look at the bum so you don't see my face. But everything Mick says is full-on in front of the camera so you can't miss a beat of it [laughs].

PRESTON: When I was in Tokyo doing looping I saw a rough cut and at that stage I was fairly pleased. There was a lot of interesting stuff happening when we were shooting. For example, at one point I was throwing pieces of donut at the pimp, putting pieces of the donut on the end of his gun, and Ryuhei even suggested I refer to him as Wesley Snipes! [laughs] It's funny because when we were shooting I remember thinking that this is something you'd find in a Tarantino movie-that bizarre, but very real type of behavior. I should have watched AZUMI before I shot FINAL WARS because that is also way out there!

Anyway, when I saw the final product I was a little disappointed that a lot of this had been cut. I sort of had a feeling that might happen because I thought it might have been too difficult to dub over all the swearing. Literally, every second word was a profanity.

SCHNASE: They cut a little bit from the loop we did in Tokyo, just because it was bad enough as it was and it just wasn't going to make any sense at all. There wasn't much cut out of the scene... for all intent and purpose most of it was there. I wasn't really disappointed; there were only 8 to 10 lines in the whole thing, anyway. I was just more surprised at how it came out with the lip-synching being way off.

It was pretty interesting to see it up on the big screen at the Chinese Theatre. Mick actually had to go to the bathroom, and he'd been gone like 20 seconds when I heard the sound of the car being jacked up. I said, "Oh, this is our scene!" So I'm sitting down there watching it and I'm thinking "Here we go, here we go!" and suddenly it's all this poor lip-synching. I thought no one in the theater would recognize me so it's alright. [laughs] Mick had been watching from the back and he was just wide-eyed. That was quite funny, it was all good. Not that there was anything we could use for our show reels, still...

[Joehrex]

Can you read their lips and tell us what they are really saying?

[Living Corpse]

Can you read their lips and tell us what they are really saying?

It's pretty clear just from reading their lips that they are saying the F-bombs and were later called in to dub over parts of their own lines to say less "offensive" words.

[Goji]

Yeah, it's blatantly obvious what they were originally saying.

Thanks for the reply, Keith. Was the interview originally on Henshin Online, or SciFi Japan?

[kpa]

You're welcome. The interview ran on Henshin.

I was a little surprised that anyone here thought GFW had been shown with the f-bombs. There is ZERO chance Toho would ever allow that to happen when so much of Godzilla's audience is kids. The actors weren't that familiar with the franchise so they tried to make the dialogue sound more real, but as soon as Toho saw the footage they demanded the lines be relooped.

[SuperSaiyan4Godzilla]

You're welcome. The interview ran on Henshin.

I was a little surprised that anyone here thought GFW had been shown with the f-bombs. There is ZERO chance Toho would ever allow that to happen when so much of Godzilla's audience is kids. The actors weren't that familiar with the franchise so they tried to make the dialogue sound more real, but as soon as Toho saw the footage they demanded the lines be relooped.

The actual dialogue sounded much more entertaining, though.

Cursed Toho!

[Joehrex]

Other than U.S. versions, how many Kaiju films in Japanese have been censored or edited?

[kpa]

Other than U.S. versions, how many Kaiju films in Japanese have been censored or edited?

I don't think either term applies to what happened with FINAL WARS. The NYC scene wasn't altered after the movie was completed... Toho changed a scene while in the middle of making the film. Reworking scenes and changing dialogue during production is pretty much how every studio film has been made over the past century. Every movie goes thru an editing process; that's just part of making a film.

[omgitsgodzilla]

^^This.

For example, studio execs demanded one of Marla's post-sex lines spoken to Tyler in Fight Club ("I wanna have your abortion") be changed, so it was changed (though the replacement line, "I haven't been skreeonk like that since grade school," was probably not what they had in mind).

Also, there's the whole redubbing of "Dallas" to "Vegas" after Kennedy's assassination in Dr. Strangelove ("A fella could have a pretty good weekend in Dallas/Vegas with this stuff").

[Joehrex]

Do you have any audio clips that contain the F-Word?

[Goji]

They literally don't exist..