Sorry I have been gone a bit. I do not agree with the whole "if it's been in a live action movie once, being done in a live action movie again is not the same appeal as two different mediums like comic book format and live action format". I feel that seeing a character in a low (comparatively as I know not all Godzilla movies are low budget by Japanese movie standards) budget versus a huge Hollywood budget live action film is just as much of a difference as seeing the character in a comic book or animated format versus huge Hollywood budget live action film. For me, seeing say Anguirus (a kaiju who's already been in a few live action movies) in a monsterverse movie would be just as new and fresh to the character to me as say seeing the Vulture (previously seen in comics and cartoons only before) in Spider-man homecoming.eabaker wrote:Although I'm one of those who would be in favor of seeing more Toho kaiju show up (although mixed in with original creations), I have a couple of thoughts about why one might not want to.
You kind of address this, but then wave it away without really explaining your logic: The other series you talk about are being adapted across media. People were excited to see Two Face in TDK in part because the character had never before been portrayed in live action. Seeing a previous Toho kaiju return in another movie doesn't have the same appeal because those monsters have already appeared on the big screen.
And with your Hedorah example, you actually touch on exactly why I wouldn't want to see that specific character reused in a Hollywood movie; nearly everything that makes the character and his original narrative context charming would be stripped away in an attempt to make it less "cheesy and weird" (I'd have gone with a more neutral description, like "idiosyncratic") and "more serious."
On Hedorah, you and I are going to disagree on this point. I personally do not view the trippyness and psychedelic nature of his film that important to his character and charm. If I were to assign a percentage, it would be at best less than 5% important to Hedorah or the style of the film. I would have preferred Teruyoshi Nakano's vision to the film, which according to Japan's favorite Mon-star, was he wanted the film to be a darker, more straight forward allagory film about the dangers of pollution similar in tone and style to Gojira (Banno wanted it to be more kid friendly). What's important to the kaiju of Hedorah is that he is a pollution slime kaiju that represents mans hubris of the environment as Godzilla is to the Atomic bomb. These are my thoughts anyways.
