An up and coming director,
who worked as an assistant director for many years
before helming his own films at the start of the new
century. Masaaki Tezuka graduated from the Nihon University
of Art in 1977, and quickly started a career in TV
movies. However, the director's real interest was in
the theatrical arena, which he entered in 1979 as an
assistant director on Shusei Kotani's White Love.
In 1980, Tezuka went on to assistant direct on two
more films, one was Kinji Fukasaku box office hit Virus and
the other was Kon Ichikawa's Koto: The Ancient
City. For a period of time, Tezuka worked almost
exclusively on Ichikawa's movies, including The
Burmese Harp in 1985 and Princess
from the Moon in 1987. At the end of the 1980's,
Tezuka took on an assistant director role on the critically
acclaimed Buddies (1989), which went on to
win several Japanese Academy Awards. However, the director's
true calling would be realized four years later, when
he worked on the 1993 production Godzilla
vs. Mechagodzilla 2 with Takao
Okawara. Following the end of the Heisei Godzilla
series, Tezuka aided on the last two Rebirth of Mothra
films, before his big break finally came in 2000, after
more than two decades of assistant directing. For the
second film in the Millennium series of Godzilla films,
Toho picked Tezuka to helm the project, which was titled Godzilla
vs. Megaguirus (2000). Unfortunately, the
movie was a huge disappointment at the box office,
as Toho contemplated ending the new series prematurely
following Shusuke Kaneko's
effort the following year. Undiscouraged, Tezuka signed
on for the 2001 Godzilla film as a second unit special
effects director. Unforeseen by Toho, Kaneko's Godzilla,
Mothra & King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out
Attack was a huge hit at the box office, and
breathed renewed life into the series. So Toho went
along with another production in 2002, this time turning
back to Tezuka to direct. Called Godzilla
Against Mechagodzilla, the 2002 entry marked
another hit at the box office, as Toho accepted the
director's proposal to helm a follow up, called Godzilla:
Tokyo S.O.S. (2003), which he would also write.
Sadly, the film did very poorly at the box office,
although Tezuka had already situated himself as a successful
special effects film director by that time, which landed
him the job of director on Kadokawa's big budget remake
of G.I. Samurai (1979)
called Samurai
Commando: Mission 1549 (2005). |
