Unpopular Godzilla Opinions

[Kaltes-Herzeleid]

Honestly it's very much the same with me. For years I dismissed Showa as being the most overrated era due to it's bad rep and just generally not being engrossed with them as a kid. More or less the complete opposite for me now and many of my favorites are from the time period. And despite some of it's lesser moments, it by far remains the most impactful era of the franchise in the long run.

[Cryptid_Liker]

The common Bagan design (Type A, Type B, Movie Studio Tour, etc) is horrendous and there will never be a day where I don't prefer the decided Mothra vs Bagan design over them.

[Tyrant_Lizard_King]

I actually like some of the more elephant like designs.

[Cryptid_Liker]

I actually like some of the more elephant like designs.

Are you talking about the Spirit God Beast from Mothra vs Bagan? If so, I like it too. In fact, I think the concept art for Bagan's forms were better than what we know of the 1980 draft.

[Gigantis]

The common Bagan design (Type A, Type B, Movie Studio Tour, etc) is horrendous and there will never be a day where I don't prefer the decided Mothra vs Bagan design over them.

I think they're good, but still really uninspired. They look like a generic dragon horns slapped onto another big bulky Heisei suit that resembles Godzilla's.

[Tyrant_Lizard_King]

I grew up on 50s monster movies. Back then they had to be inventive to make up for their lack of budget. Even later films like Star Wars used inventive measures to bring the films to life. Movies get some much money thrown at them these days they'd don't have to get inventive anymore. I thinking that's why films like Shin Godzilla or even Attack the Block impresses me so much compared to say King of the Monsters. Foreign films still have relatively limited budgets that force creativity.

[gottatalktothefake]

I prefer the Serj cover of BOC's Godzilla over the original.

[Voyager]

I prefer the Serj cover of BOC's Godzilla over the original.

Ditto.

[Gonzilla]

Not trying to get into a debate about which film is better, but I'm curious about what it is that all of you think makes KOTM a "better Godzilla movie" than G14, because IMO, it's inarguably worse on the basis of its skewed nuke message.

Godzilla 2014 has IMO way too little actual Godzilla action for a Godzilla movie. To me, a good human plot in a Godzilla movie is like a good steak sauce- it's great, if it's on hand, but it can't make up for a bad cut of meat.Godzilla 2014 is a plate with a tiny medallion of meat drowning in a pool of sauce.The monster action is great, when the movie decides it wants to actually share it with you, but it's drowning in 'realistic' brown dark night cinematography and way too much focus on the humans. KOTM has more monster action, better monster action, and a human plot that is perfectly servicable- not great, but not awful, just as good as it needs to be, with characters likable enough to keep the movie from feeling like it's plodding along between monster fights.

[Cryptid_Liker]

its skewed nuke message.

KotM never had a pro-nuke message. I don't get why people think this.

[GigaBowserG]

The common Bagan design (Type A, Type B, Movie Studio Tour, etc) is horrendous and there will never be a day where I don't prefer the decided Mothra vs Bagan design over them.

If the scrapped movie were to ever receive some kind of comic or animated adaptation (official or otherwise), I really hope they use that original decided design by Yasushi Nirasawa. I love the "Type A" official design, but Nirasawa's version looks way more suited for the part.

[eabaker]

Not trying to get into a debate about which film is better, but I'm curious about what it is that all of you think makes KOTM a "better Godzilla movie" than G14, because IMO, it's inarguably worse on the basis of its skewed nuke message.

Godzilla 2014 has IMO way too little actual Godzilla action for a Godzilla movie. To me, a good human plot in a Godzilla movie is like a good steak sauce- it's great, if it's on hand, but it can't make up for a bad cut of meat.Godzilla 2014 is a plate with a tiny medallion of meat drowning in a pool of sauce.The monster action is great, when the movie decides it wants to actually share it with you, but it's drowning in 'realistic' brown dark night cinematography and way too much focus on the humans. KOTM has more monster action, better monster action, and a human plot that is perfectly servicable- not great, but not awful, just as good as it needs to be, with characters likable enough to keep the movie from feeling like it's plodding along between monster fights.

To me, the central appeal of the kaiju genre is in the relationship between the human and monster elements. But for it to be an engaging narrative, it ultimately works better if the human story is the steak and the kaiju story is the sauce.

To me, 2014 is a decent cut of steak, but not prepared as well as it could have been, but with a pretty good sauce to top it off.

KotM, on the other hand, is a pretty poor piece of meat, drowning in an excess of sauce that doesn't cover the unpleasant flavor.

[Terasawa]

its skewed nuke message.

KotM never had a pro-nuke message. I don't get why people think this.

It might not have been pro-nuke but it wasn't anti-nuke.

Anyway I think the use of a nuclear weapon, especially for what's essentially good, in any Godzilla movie is a mistake and violates the series anti-nuke ideology. Therefore, IMO, it's a skewed message.

[Spuro]

It's been over a year since release, I've had it explained to me several times, and I still don't see any difference between KotM using a nuke to revive Godzilla for the greater good, and GvKG using a nuke to revive Godzilla for the greater good. Ghidorah in both movies is the greater of two evils.

[Gigantis]

Godzilla and Gamera do not need a crossover.

[UltramanGoji]

It's been over a year since release, I've had it explained to me several times, and I still don't see any difference between KotM using a nuke to revive Godzilla for the greater good, and GvKG using a nuke to revive Godzilla for the greater good.

I don't know how others have presented it to you 'cause it's pretty cut-and-dry:

GVKG's use of nuclear energy (NOT a nuclear bomb, the submarine was nuclear powered) is a last ditch attempt to thwart the future people invasion. When Godzilla defeats King Ghidorah, he turns his attention towards Japan. The revival of Godzilla turns sour extremely quickly. The movie even heavily emphasizes that the characters' hopes that the same dinosaur from Lagos Island is in Godzilla is thwarted by dialogue from both Professor Mazaki and Godzilla's actions against Shindo. The film makes it explicitly clear that the plan to revive Godzilla using the nuclear energy from the sub is both a necessary step to stop King Ghidorah and also making a situation worse by powering up an already mutated Godzilla. The plan actively makes matters worse in the long run, resulting in a temporary victory against Godzilla who, as we see at the end, rises to attack Japan another day.

In KOTM, the nuke revival is treated with significantly less repercussions, despite it being obviously a far more direct offense (an actual nuclear warhead is used instead of a machine utilizing nuclear power). The nuking scene in KOTM is not treated as a short term necessity with long-term consequences like in GVKG, it is explicitly showcasing the use of a weapon of war as a positive thing because it revives the more heroic Godzilla in this film. As the film progresses and Godzilla defeats King Ghidorah, there is no consequences for this. Boston is destroyed but it was also evacuated before the monsters even show up. The film does not present nuking Godzilla as a necessary evil so much as just a simple necessity. It doesn't play with any of the consequential themes that GVKG does.

To summarize, GVKG is the only one of the two to really showcase and discuss the consequences of using nuclear power to revive Godzilla. KOTM actively portrays it as a good thing all the way up to the end credits sequence.

[Terasawa]

^ Pretty much, although as it turns out, in GvKG, the use of a nuke ends up being totally unnecessary since Godzilla already existed and they didn't need to mutate the dinosaur they thought they'd encounter.

[Gonzilla]

I wouldn't say depicting the nuke as a good thing is necessarily 'inconsistent,' I think here it comes down to the fact the nuke is being used differently, it's not being used to kill, it's a tool and it's being used for the greater good to do quite exactly the opposite because we happen to know the big G is nuclear powered. It's not countermanding the message of the other movies because it's not the use of a nuke for war, which is what Godzilla in other versions is about. Tools are neither good or evil, it's their use that makes them so.

[Terasawa]

A nuclear weapon is not a tool, though. It's a weapon. There should be no good uses for it.

[UltramanGoji]

I wouldn't say depicting the nuke as a good thing is necessarily 'inconsistent,' I think here it comes down to the fact the nuke is being used differently, it's not being used to kill, it's a tool and it's being used for the greater good to do quite exactly the opposite because we happen to know the big G is nuclear powered. It's not countermanding the message of the other movies because it's not the use of a nuke for war, which is what Godzilla in other versions is about. Tools are neither good or evil, it's their use that makes them so.

But the franchise has never been really anti-war as it is anti-nuclear weapons in general. The first Godzilla was not made due to radiation from a nuke being used as a weapon, it was made from H-bomb tests. It's always been the careless use of the nuclear bomb itself that was the overarching issue throughout the series, not its use in war. Even films like Godzilla vs. Megalon made minor references to the idea that nuclear testing was damaging the Earth.

This isn't really a problem exclusive to KOTM though, even G14 has its own weird revisionist nuclear moment with "Not tests, they were trying to kill it". I would argue that's honestly a far worse mentality, literally reshaping the bomb test that IRL caused a massive controversy in Japan, than what KOTM did but in G14's defense it's one hand-wavy line of dialogue compared to literally an entire plot point for KOTM.

I think the big takeaway is that American Godzilla movies are always going to be extremely wonky about their approach to nuclear weapons considering the country's history with them.