Kaiju Fan Confessions

[Tyrant_Lizard_King]

I think it looks far more like a hybrid of a wasp and grasshopper that has moth wings. Nothing about it remotely feels like Mothra to me. Everyone turned out about as well as they could while still retaining the core of their characters. Mothra is an enormous departure from the character. If I wasn't told ahead of time it was Mothra I would never even know.

[BlankAccount]

On the flip side, I love Mothra's new design. Most of her past incarnations look...samey. Going a radical departure was a risk but I feel it paid off.

[JAGzilla]

^Agreed. But in any case, we really should wait and see her in action before we start leaning too far in either direction. You can't always tell what a kaiju is going to be like from still promotional images. Case in point, I think G14 looks pretty terrible in posters and some other images, but in the actual movie he looks fantastic.

[Grievous]

On the flip side, I love Mothra's new design. Most of her past incarnations look...samey. Going a radical departure was a risk but I feel it paid off.

Hear Hear!

And I'm sure Mothra will still be the understanding & benevolent kaiju
she has always been. She just has a new look is all.

[Tyrant_Lizard_King]

You know I'm just not all that excited for KotM. I've been pretty ambivalent to everything I've seen so far. Maybe that's just because I haven't been impressed with the MonsterVerse output so far? Everyone in their brother are hyping it up to ridiculous levels but I'm just not feeling it. I'm gonna see it and I really do hope its good but I'm honestly getting burned out at this point. I honestly would not be disappointed if we didn't get anything else after this next trailer. They've revealed more than enough major details already and we still got such a long wait to go. I honestly don't wanna know any more.

[Grievous]

They've revealed more than enough major details already and we still got such a long wait to go. I honestly don't wanna know any more.

That's a fair call...

[KaijuCanuck]

I think about 25% of why I love Godzilla films are the JSDF sequences and shots. I think a big benefit of using miniatures is, since you’re not paying by the second for cgi or other expensive bells and whistles, you can take longer shots and also just have more objects in your shots. As a result, Godzilla films often convey a scale of battle that Hollywood honestly rarely succeeds in.

Contrast the military’s running battle with Godzilla throughout MvG, for example, which imo is the highlight of the film, with Saving Private Ryan. In the first, yeah you can tell it’s toys and a rubber suit. But nonetheless, you’ve got these incredible scenes of tanks in the foreground, background, midground, all firing their cannons, planes dropping bombs, massive explosions, Godzilla himself - often all in the same shot, or edited together to really show the full sound and scope of this battle. There’s just so much happening at once, but not in a clustered way - it’s like one of those gigantic paintings full of tiny little details where you notice new moments and things everytime you look at it.

In the second, you have a really historically accurate, harrowing infantry battle that by accounts of veterans who watched the film, truly recreated the feel and hell of Omaha Beach. BUT, that amount of effort is expensive, and as a result we only see and follow essentially one squad through a battle that, in real life, was like on an insane LOTR-level scale. I guess you could argue it was a filmmaking choice to get you to invest in the main characters, but there’s plenty of other examples in Hollywood. The set for Hacksaw Ridge in Hacksaw Ridge, for example, is intricately detailed, but is basically the size of a sound stage (which it probably is).

Both have their place, but yeah, I do appreciate the scale of the military engagements in Godzilla films, where’s there’s just rockets and muzzle flashes lighting every freaking corner of the screen at once, and in shots long enough that you can actually see them too.

[Tyrant_Lizard_King]

All I've ever wanted to see is a big military confrontation in a big budget Hollywood kaiju film and it really frustrates me that every single one so far has largely foregone such a sequence. Oddly enough Shin Godzilla is the only recent film to give me such a sequence and it was a relatively cheap Japanese product.

[MechaGoji Bro7503]

I find it annoying how there's always a dick measuring contest between new incarnations of kaiju and old ones. Why can't we appreciate all of them for what they do individually, and in the context of their story?
Like, I think both the anime Ghidorah and MV KG are pretty cool side by side, and yes they're both different aspects of the same character, but they're both King Ghidorah at the end of the day. I know all of us haven't seen those two in action, but I don't think the filmmakers associated with them set out to do anything of disservice to them.
Of course people can have opinions and people might see things others might not, I just don't think it's fair to absolutely blindly hate any kaiju incarnation, or push them aside based of appearance - be it old or new.

[KaijuCanuck]

Each of Godzilla's three recurring allies (Mothra, Rodan and Anguirus) have appeared in a Mechagodzilla film.

That's not a confession, I just wanted to say that somewhere...

[JAGzilla]

They've also each appeared in three or more Ghidorah films.

[KaijuCanuck]

^also true!

The criticism of ShIn Godzilla that Rando Yaguchi is not a compelling protagonist is invalid, because Rando Yaguchi is not the protagonist of ShIn Godzilla - Japan is.

*drips mic*

*crosses arms, leans against the wall with a smug, irritating, unearned smile*

I stand by it though. Shin Godzilla is about collective struggle against a prominent threat where a whole society comes together, wherein Yaguchi is only the most prominent face.* The character arc is Japan’s - it goes from a shocked, impotent country to one that is energized, confident and looking to the future. And I’ll take it a step further and say that Gojira is the same way. That is also a collective struggle throughout which a nation comes to terms with its terrible inheritance, and its place in a terrifying new world of destructive potential. Serizawa is but one face of that broader idea.


*also Rando Yaguchi is a badass bureaucrat and I wish every government was just filled with Rando Yaguchis.

[Dawsbfiremind]

*also Rando Yaguchi is a badass bureaucrat and I wish every government was just filled with Rando Yaguchis.

Yaguchi for president!

...And senate! And cabinet! And legislator! And governor!

Sorry. I'm dying at the thought of a UN meeting where everyone is Rando Yaguchi, each with a dude who just hands him a water bottle whenever he gets stressed out.

[Dr. Professor]

*also Rando Yaguchi is a badass bureaucrat and I wish every government was just filled with Rando Yaguchis.

Yaguchi for president!

...And senate! And cabinet! And legislator! And governor!

Sorry. I'm dying at the thought of a UN meeting where everyone is Rando Yaguchi, each with a dude who just hands him a water bottle whenever he gets stressed out.

That last bit genuinely made me laugh.

[goji89]

^also true!

The criticism of ShIn Godzilla that Rando Yaguchi is not a compelling protagonist is invalid, because Rando Yaguchi is not the protagonist of ShIn Godzilla - Japan is.

*drips mic*

*crosses arms, leans against the wall with a smug, irritating, unearned smile*

You smug sonavabitch...... you're so dog gone smug you didnt just drop the mic you had to go on and drip it?
Guess we should all go home......The Canadian just dripped the mic, he just Canucked us all.

[GojiDude95]

Even though I dislike the final the look they gave Shin I gotta say I loved the fanart we got before the movie came out. I especially LOVE this look and i wish it could be used sometime. Maybe as the basic design for the new series.

[Grievous]

I'd like to see a scene in a Godzilla film where a group
of people are riding horses to escape from a kaiju.

I think that would be really creative & cool to see...
mainly because its never been done before.

[Zarm]

Despite my absolute fanaticism for vs. Biollante, I actually have no idea *which* piece of music is the infamous 'Bio Wars.' (Partly because I someday dreaming of buying that volume of the Godzilla Perfect box set, and listening to the full soundtrack for the first time that way, so I don't want to look it up on youtube and hear it for the first time that way.)

[MechaGoji Bro7503]

Despite my absolute fanaticism for vs. Biollante, I actually have no idea *which* piece of music is the infamous 'Bio Wars.' (Partly because I someday dreaming of buying that volume of the Godzilla Perfect box set, and listening to the full soundtrack for the first time that way, so I don't want to look it up on youtube and hear it for the first time that way.)

If you can remember it, it's the track with the electric guitar in it.

[Zarm]

Despite my absolute fanaticism for vs. Biollante, I actually have no idea *which* piece of music is the infamous 'Bio Wars.' (Partly because I someday dreaming of buying that volume of the Godzilla Perfect box set, and listening to the full soundtrack for the first time that way, so I don't want to look it up on youtube and hear it for the first time that way.)

If you can remember it, it's the track with the electric guitar in it.

When we rewatch, I'll keep an ear out.