LamangoKaijura wrote: ↑Fri Apr 23, 2021 5:24 pm
Well, I've kept my mouth shut for YEARS and avoided this topic. Let me tell you what I've learned about this film, it's director, and the process.
First, I learned the director apparently hated or disliked, or hasn't even seen ANY Godzilla film prior to Godzilla vs MechaGodzilla 1974.
Second, I learned that he wasn't even a fan of Godzilla.
Third, he literally had a table of bandai figures and went 'yeah this one looks good, put him in the movie', not even giving the monsters abilities and concepts a chance to show, aka, Hedorah being nerfed so much he became a low ranking Ultraman Taro villain.
Fourth, I had to deal with people fan wanking this skreeonking movie since 2004. Holy. poop. There used to be a person here named GXG who'd come up with every way possible to make GFW Godzilla out as this skreeonking god.
Fifth, the director just wanted to make a Matrix/Star Wars/X-men movie. And the way the movie was written and shot, Godzilla was a last minute detail he was skreeonking forced to add.
Sixth, the movie was SO skreeonking panned by the Japanese audience, Godzilla was FORCED to retire. "OH BUT TOHO WANTED TO STOP MAKING FILMS IN 2005!' Yeah, and it was 2004. Godzilla took a skreeonking bullet and died on his anniversary, and had to wait until 2014 to come back in full swing. It took 10 years for them to realize what to do with Godzilla after GFW skreeonked him over so hard that the Japanese fans were SICK of him.
1/2. Doesn't really matter. Plenty of decent directors haven't seen or read much of their source material. In fact, Christopher Nolan and Bryan Singer [ I heavily dislike the man, but I really liked the first two X-Men films and what he did with their emotional weight.] both weren't really fans of their respective franchises and their outings were for the most part, decent films or at least decent for their time. Especially when only one other studio handled it well until 2007. The key is simply making a decent film. Sometimes, emotional distance from a project is a great thing for a franchise than having a fan in there who can't objectively know what to cut or keep. That's where one gets a Superman Returns.
3. If he made the film to your liking, you'd instead say that as a massive positive. As if he was finding his "inner child" again.
4. The movie isn't that bad or good. If someone likes it, oh well. Live and let live. I like it and found it a pretty fun flick that came cat just the right time in my life. At least it never had the pretensions of trying to make it look like the story was going to be deeper, and instead, it's merely a pretentious dressing on a pig. That's basically GMK, 1984 and Shin Godzilla to a way lesser extent. It was a fun movie that dared to be as stylistically different as vs Hedorah. For a series that needed something safer for its fiftieth anniversary for the audience and for the box office, an experimental take on Godzilla wasn't exactly wise. Not really Ryuhei Kitamura's fault, since even you admit that he wanted to do a far different movie unrelated to Godzilla.
5. Plenty of other studios have done for this. The reason why many franchise reboots have been off the wall or completely terrible is from this very reason. Hollywood studios want reboots or "connected universes" and won't approve of original films. Can't blame directors for wanting to get their vision and ideas out when oftentimes, they can be [ and usually are] pretty low on the totem pole. It's simply TOHO being like a typical movie studio. If even Shusuke Kaneko couldn't get full creative control over his film after his immense success rebooting Gamera into a respectable trilogy, Ryuhei Kitamura didn't have a chance. He simply just made the best out of his situation. Or in other words, made lemonade from the studio's lemons.
6. Blame TOHO. If they simply allowed him to do his action movie and hired a director that would've brought a more traditional Godzilla film honoring its fiftieth anniversary, there wouldn't have been that problem at all.
- They denied a decent Godzilla pitch because Tomoyuki Tanaka was racist against foreigners, instead producing schlock after schlock until Destoroyah.
- Turned an interesting original Godzilla pitch from an American into a box office bomb that stripped all reference of Godzilla out of it.
- TOHO allowed Roland Emmerich free reign to make Godzilla as wimpy and cowardly as possible, and didn't put their foot down when Sony balked at a "high budget" movie that ended up being better than the similarly budgeted 1998 film [disregarding the massive marketing campaign]. Only when it flopped were they so brave enough to declare it was bad.
- TOHO interfered with Shusuke Kaneko's vision for his Godzilla movie while approving Megaguirus, resulting in a much weaker film strung around monsters that clearly made no sense in their roles.
- TOHO denied a Quentin Tarantino Godzilla film when he was in his immensely successful prime, probably because he was foreign. It seemed as different and wild as Ryuhei Kitamura's Final Wars, but unlike Kitamura, his name on the project and cast would've brought financial success internationally versus domestically. It would've revived the franchise sooner than a decade.
There's probably many other instances I don't know, but these stuck out like a sore thumb to me. The studio's not perfect by a long shot. Given how they've approved KOTM 2019 and GvK's plots, I can't say they've necessarily are or ever were for creative integrity or even financial success. They only pretend to care to sucker their longtime fans in. Ryuhei Kitamura was simply a fall guy for incompetent studio management. Nothing more. While it was his fault for the final product, I can't particularly blame somebody who had his creative vision compromised having a chip or two on his shoulder. So knowing he likely did what he did because of studio politics makes me more sympathetic to him than not.