The Godzilla Thread - Plus other giant monsters, no matter how popular or obscure

[Muttnik]

Godzilla vs Destoroyah will always be my fave in the franchise. You know your shit is good when you can make your audience legit weepy over a giant rubber suit monster.

 

[Kari Kamiya]

I just learned my dad purchased this. I remember him laughing at it surfing through Amazon some weeks back, didn't think he'd actually buy it.

 

[The Nothingness]

Much like others have stated, I've got into Godzilla at young age thanks to the Showa era movies that I rented in at my local video store (it also had Rodan and Godzilla vs. Biollante) along with the Americanized versions of Godzilla and King Kong vs. Godzilla my family had in our movie collection. I also had lots of monster figurines from the Trendmasters toy line. But one that caught my eye in the Godzilla Wars series was SpaceGodzilla. While I had not yet seen the movie he was featured in, I was drawn by his look and the backstory given on the toy box. Even though the movie, Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla, may not been a good entry to celebrate the Big G's 40th anniversary (and the whole concept of SpaceGodzilla seems ridiculous), I like how he was a cunning and ruthless monster who sought out to kill Godzilla and rule the planet for himself rather than being a pawn of an alien civilization. That being said, playing as SpaceGodzilla on Godzilla: Save the Earth was a challenge since most of his attacks were telepathic based, which takes a chunk out of you energy bar and you'll need to erect crystals to recharge quickly.

 

[дядя Боря]

Gojira is fucking awesome /thread

 

[IAmNotAlpharius]

Godzilla 2019 was a damn good time with the friend.

With that being said I want to also sperg about Pacific Rim and how awesome it was and would love to see a Gipsy Danger Vs Godzilla

I would love it if that became a thing.

Wanna know the godzilla movie that popped my 7 year old cherry?

I was broken in to the franchise by what may be the ultimate paradigm of Showa era cheese

Godzilla vs Megalon

Flying Godzilla kicks, a retarded yet strangely endearing beetle monster, insane amounts of stock footage, the best godzilla villain Gigan randomly showing up and kicking ass, and of course...

Jet. Fucking. Jaguar

Also somehow the copy I owned was a subtitled VHS...which IIRC means it would have been a bootlegged/fanmade thing since UK releases were all dubbed back then, which in and of itself kicked off my slow burning affection for subs over dubs when viewing any and all foreign media

This and Godzilla v King Kong were my favorites as a kid. I thought the American ending was crap and felt that Godzilla should’ve kicked the apes ass. Otherwise it would’ve been my favorite film.


As I got older I preferred the OG Godzilla and The Return of Godzilla. Now I like him more as an antagonist than a defender of humanity.

 

[The Nothingness]

I thought the American ending was crap and felt that Godzilla should’ve kicked the apes ass.

Ackchually there is not a Japanese version of King Kong vs. Godzilla where the latter is victorious.

 

[Overcast]

Ackchually there is not a Japanese version of King Kong vs. Godzilla where the latter is victorious.

 

[StarkRavingMad]

The first Godzilla movie I remember seeing was King Kong vs. Godzilla, and I know I was probably a toddler when I first saw it. I remember being terrified of the octopus. Still watched the hell out of it, though!

I also remember loving Son of Godzilla when I was little ... And I think that's obviously because of how it appealed to kids. I vividly remember acting out some of the scenes back then, too.

When it comes to my favorite era of Godzilla films, I would undoubtedly say it's the Heisei Era. I dig it when Godzilla is a villain, and I dig it when he's a hero ... But I loved the anti-hero angle they did for this particular series. Yes, Godzilla is there to destroy ... But they give him quite an arc in these movies, to the point where you're rooting for him in many of the films for many reasons. And then by the time he dies in Godzilla vs. Destroyah, you legitimately feel sad. Also, I think that the Heisei Era gave us the BEST character design for Godzilla. When I think of Godzilla, the Heisei design is the first one I think of.

Anyway ... Here's my top 5 favorite Godzilla movies overall:

1. Gojira
2. Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah (1991)
3. Godzilla vs. The Thing (or ... Mothra vs. Godzilla)
4. Shin Godzilla
5. Godzilla vs. Biollante

 

[XYZpdq]

Shin is better with everybody's title on the screen in big letters like Eva labeling.

Also over in some other onlines I've seen an interesting fellow make a lot of noise about "Cozzilla", a strange little sleazy Italian rehash of the American version of the first movie with some odd bits of extra footage mashed in from other movies and actual atomic death, also messy globs of color and maybe some Italian soundtrack synth

Luigi Cozzi's Godzilla ( Cozzilla, 1977) Geno Cuddy Restoration : Geno Cuddy : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

EDIT (5/31/2019): Added English subtitles in SRT form. An attempted restoration I undertook of Luigi Cozzi's infamous 1977 colorized reissue of Godzilla, this...

archive.org

 

[RumblyTumbly]

Much like others have stated, I've got into Godzilla at young age thanks to the Showa era movies that I rented in at my local video store (it also had Rodan) along with the Americanized versions of Godzilla and King Kong vs. Godzilla my family had in our movie collection. I also had lots of monster figurines from the Trendmasters toy line. But one that caught my eye in the Godzilla Wars series was SpaceGodzilla. While I had not yet seen the movie he was featured in, I was drawn by his look and the backstory given on the toy box. Even though the movie, Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla, may not been a good entry to celebrate the Big G's 40th anniversary (and the whole concept of SpaceGodzilla seems ridiculous), I like how he was a cunning and ruthless monster who sought out to kill Godzilla and rule the planet for himself rather than being a pawn of an alien civilization. That being said, playing as SpaceGodzilla on Godzilla: Save the Earth was a challenge since most of his attacks are telepathic based, which takes a chunk out of you energy bar and you'll need to erect crystals to recharge quickly.

Time to expose how dumb I was back then.

The Trendmasters Godzilla toylike featured several monsters from the 90s films such as Mecha Ghidorah, Battra, and of course Spacegodzilla, who was treated as the big bad of the set. A couple of these monsters were also featured in the SNES Godzilla game called Super Godzilla.

The sad truth is that the 90s films hadn’t been released stateside yet, so I didn’t know that these monsters actually came from movies! I just assumed they were invented for the games and toys. I distinctly remember the Spacegodzilla toy commercial using live action footage of Spacegodzilla and I thought “wow. They went all out for this commercial!”

So imagine my surprise when I got on the net in 96 and found out there were 5 more Godzilla movies that hadn’t been released yet. I felt like an idiot for not realizing that these new monsters actually did come from movies.

 

[The Great Chandler]

Time to expose how dumb I was back then.

The Trendmasters Godzilla toylike featured several monsters from the 90s films such as Mecha Ghidorah, Battra, and of course Spacegodzilla, who was treated as the big bad of the set. A couple of these monsters were also featured in the SNES Godzilla game called Super Godzilla.

The sad truth is that the 90s films hadn’t been released stateside yet, so I didn’t know that these monsters actually came from movies! I just assumed they were invented for the games and toys. I distinctly remember the Spacegodzilla toy commercial using live action footage of Spacegodzilla and I thought “wow. They went all out for this commercial!”

So imagine my surprise when I got on the net in 96 and found out there were 5 more Godzilla movies that hadn’t been released yet. I felt like an idiot for not realizing that these new monsters actually did come from movies.

That's like selling Avengers Endgame merchandise even though Age of Ultron just came out.

 

[The Vinyl Solution]

Saw KotM last night. I thought the monster scenes were outstandingly well done pieces of cgi. Bravo to the 3d artists who took part. However, the acting and script in this movie were so fucking bad that it almost ruined it for me and I firmly believe the film would've been 10x better with no speaking roles whatsoever. These were not bottom of the barrel actors either. These people should have known better. I can only assume they were each jockeying for screentime because literally every single human focused scene is wildly misfocused dogshit. Especially the ones revolving around that kid that got famous off that overrated netflix show, holy shit.

Can't wait for the monster only super-cut to hit YouTube in a few months.

 

[The Great Chandler]

Saw KotM last night. I thought the monster scenes were outstandingly well done pieces of cgi. Bravo to the 3d artists who took part. However, the acting and script in this movie were so fucking bad that it almost ruined it for me and I firmly believe the film would've been 10x better with no speaking roles whatsoever. These were not bottom of the barrel actors either. These people should have known better. I can only assume they were each jockeying for screentime because literally every single human focused scene is wildly misfocused dogshit. Especially the ones revolving around that kid that got famous off that overrated netflix show, holy shit.

Can't wait for the monster only super-cut to hit YouTube in a few months.

I thought the Serizawa and Chen characters stood out the best. Part of the problem is how there are too many characters (to be fair, older films had this too). Another one from what I heard is were they cut off some monster scenes for the sake of appeasing a test audience. Hopefully we could see some uncut monster scenes in a Blue-Ray at some point.

 

[StarkRavingMad]

Since we can talk about other Kaiju monsters in this thread ... I'm going to talk about Gamera.

I'm just here to showcase my appreciation for the Heisei Gamera Trilogy ... Because they are some of my all-time favorite Kaiju movies. Loved the western-esque and BLEAK ending of the trilogy as well. Let's just say that the darker take on Gamera is my favorite take.

The same director of this trilogy also went on to make Godzilla, Mothra, and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack ... Which is also one of the best Godzilla movies, IMO.

Annnnd speaking of GMK, here is the most adorable thing you'll ever see. The suit actress for Baragon roared while filming in the suit:

 

[Scarlett Johansson]

Dare I ask how Ken Watanabe is in the film? He's very underrated. He deserves more.

Also I kept thinking Gillian Anderson was in this film but nvm its Vera Famiga

 

[The Nothingness]

Dare I ask how Ken Watanabe is in the film? He's very underrated. He deserves more.

His character stood out a lot more than in the 2014 movie. Plus he is involved in one of the big emotional scenes.

 

[The Great Chandler]

Speaking of the Serizawa character, I think it's worth pointing the sacrifices both the '54 Serizawa and the KOTM Serizawa made.
'54 Serizawa:
- Meant to kill Godzilla
- Destroyed all his research and his own knowledge
- The result is more tragic since another Godzilla pops up anyways
KOTM Serizawa:
- Meant to save Godzilla
- Gave his notes and knowledge of Godzilla to his colleages.
- The result ensures humanity's and Earth's survival

Don't get me started on the anime's Haruo sacrifice. That nigga died a virgin lol!

 

[Kari Kamiya]

Don't get me started on the anime's Haruo sacrifice. That nigga died a virgin lol!

I thought he got one of the twins pregnant before offing himself for some stupid reason?

The Netflix Godzilla films led up to disappointment. If it hadn't been for the fact Gen Urobuchi wrote the screenplay, more people would be tearing that trilogy a new one like it deserves.

 

[StarkRavingMad]

I still haven't seen the anime trilogy. Lots of Godzilla fans I know tell me it's not really worth my time ... Maybe one of these days I'll check it out, but my expectations are pretty much rock bottom.

I went to see King of the Monsters again last night, by the way. When it came to theaters almost two weeks ago, my husband was away for the weekend, so I saw it with friends. He wanted to finally check it out, so we decided to go last night.

My husband has only seen one Toho Godzilla movie, the 1998 cinematic abortion (I personally haven't seen that movie in its entirety, btw), the 2014 Godzilla, and Kong: Skull Island, so his reaction to the movie was someone who has little knowledge of Godzilla and his lore. He said he enjoyed the movie and that the critics were WAY too harsh on it ... But he did profess that the human characters could have been done better. He said he got a little impatient while watching the family plotline unfold, and that he wished that the movie had prioritized Serizawa and the group of scientists instead because he enjoyed those people much more. He said that the family wasn't terrible, but that the plotline dragged a little bit and he just wanted to see more awesome monster fights and more interaction with the scientists.

Now that I'm thinking about it, if the family plotline had been omitted from the movie to the point where there was no "twist," and that Charles Dance's character had just been the main villain, then a lot of time spent on the humans would have been trimmed down a lot and I don't think the movie would have missed much. Don't get me wrong, I didn't mind the family (and I thought they were INFINITELY more interesting than Aaron Taylor Johnson's character from the 2014 movie), but I wouldn't have minded spending more time with the scientists at all, either. So I can totally see where my husband's criticism is coming from. Methinks I need to get him to watch Shin Godzilla, because ALL of the human interaction in that movie is basically what he was asking for in this movie.

But anyway, he enjoyed the movie, he said his favorite monster was Rodan, and his favorite sequence of the film was basically Rodan fucking everyone's shit up.

 

[Recoil]

I remember reading somewhere that "Gojira" was the name of an executive at Toei who was not to be fucked with, the monster was named accordingly.
I get a kick out of the old flicks because those huge model cities tickle my autism. Such detail, such care went into them.