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

[Overcast]

After seeing KotM recently, I've been on a bit of a Godzilla binge. Watching a bunch of different films online in my spare time. And I noticed there doesn't seem to be a dedicated thread on here.

From 1954 to now, this giant allegory for nuclear destruction and mass murder has become a household name and source of joy for children and adults alike. They even made a show where chibi-fied versions of Godzilla and friends teach kids math and spelling. Which seems kinda messed up, but I won't question it.

So what are your favorite Godzilla films? Least favorite? Games? Also feel free to either reminisce about childhood memories involving Godzilla or rant about your grievances with certain movies or the franchise as a whole.

I practically worshiped Godzilla as a little kid and had lots of VHS's of the various movies he's been in. I recall also having toys of Godzilla himself, King Ghidorah, and Gigan. It feels nice revisiting a staple of my childhood.

The movies I remembered most include Vs. King Ghidora (Hesei Era), Vs. Megalon, vs. King Kong, and vs. Mechagodzilla 2. And I recently re watched some of them and watched ones I've never seen before. Including the original 1954 movie (absolute classic and probably one of my new favorite films) some films from the Showa era, and most of the Hesei films leading up to vs. Destroyah. (Probably my new favorite Godzilla film in general next to the original)

I also remember playing a crap ton of Destroy All Monsters Melee on the Gamecube with friends and recently tried out its sequel Save the Earth.

Feel free to talk about other giant monster (or Kaiju if you prefer) related films as well.

 

[NOT Sword Fighter Super]

I actually liked the 1997 American abomination Godzilla. Effects were good, and the destruction was cool.
Also, the soundtrack was amazing.
I know the rest of the movie sucked "that's a lot of fish", but I still enjoyed it.

 

[Megaroad]

The 90's Gamera trilogy is peak gaint monster movies for me. The effects in the third movie are spectacular that Toho never matches.

 

[NIGGO KILLA]

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

 

[Mangy Mutt]

Mothra is bae.

 

[Forever Train Engineer]

I still need to see Godzilla 2019. Godzilla Destroy All Monsters Melee, and Unleashed are in my opinion, two of the best Godzilla games so far, and both deserving of a remaster in my opinion.

Shout-out to my g's Anguirus, Mechagodzilla, King Ceasar, and King Ghidorah. Godzilla Vs. Destoroyah is the best movie in the series in my opinion.

 

[Notgoodwithusernames]

My in tro diction to the franchise was actually Godzilla Unleashed

 

[Vampirella]

I'm still missing a few Godzilla movies in my collection, but it's almost complete. The DVD I have of the original Godzilla comes with a copy of the Japanese release. There a lot of lines that directly talk about the bombs, and one woman telling her kids how they're going to join their father soon. The American release is pretty grim but the Japanese cut is much worse.

 

[Overcast]

I'm still missing a few Godzilla movies in my collection, but it's almost complete. The DVD I have of the original Godzilla comes with a copy of the Japanese release. There a lot of lines that directly talk about the bombs, and one woman telling her kids how they're going to join their father soon. The American release is pretty grim but the Japanese cut is much worse.

It must have been such an impactful movie considering the time it came out.

 

[Judge Holden]

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

 

[Muttnik]

Jet Jaguar died for our sins.

 

[Vampirella]

It must have been such an impactful movie considering the time it came out.

My father saw the original Godzilla when if first came to the states. That was one of the things that he would always talk about, "It came out so close after we dropped the bomb. That takes some guts"

The first Godzilla movie I saw was Destroy All Monsters when I was home sick and my dad came over to watch me. He turned on the tv and it just happened to be on. It blew my 7 year old mind, giant monsters fighting!! Holy FUCK!! He loved Godzilla, it was one of his favorite franchises.

When he was in the hospital I sent him a copy of the Godzilla DVD I got, and he finally got to see the Japanese release. He called me right after he was done watching it lat at night and we talked about it for hours.

 

[ProfDongs]

The Criterion version of Godzilla 54 comes with a really neat short feature on the Lucky Dragon incident that worked as inspiration for the film, was really cool to see what the ideas were based off more than just being told its a symbol for the A-bomb. All of the parts with Dr Serizawa always stand out to me when I watch it, his character was really well done. I really like that the series doesn't limit itself to one canon except with 54 as the base in most cases. Return(84), Godzilla 2000, and GxMG all did this with varying degrees of significance to the first movie. In the 84 canon because of the Oxygen Destroyer you get Destoroyah, and GxMG Mechagodzilla is built off of the skeleton of the original Godzilla.
I imagine being a Suit Actor for these movies was probably the most enjoyable job, although I could see the SFX guys having a lot of fun as well with all the explosions and miniatures they got to destroy with them.
Its hard to nail down a favorite because a lot of the movies are great for different reasons but the Original, Shin, and Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla are probably my top 3.

 

[Kari Kamiya]

My favorite Godzilla film is Godzilla and Mothra: The Battle for Earth, probably because of Battra. Next to Biollante, Battra's my favorite one-off monster in the series, I'm legit sad we never saw him outside of the film because I thought it was cool to give Mothra a foil/rival/counterpart, and it was sweet of her to help Battra despite the fact he was a jackass. Him being somewhat in Save the Earth is something I guess, and he's a PS2 exclusive player for Unleashed, but he's otherwise just a fond memory.

It's so weird, I remember we owned the VHS tapes ever since I was a kid, especially the Heisei Godzilla films, but apparently the Heisei films didn't come out until the tail-end of the '90s or at least weren't widely available to the public, you had to rent them from video stores. I dunno, my memory's muddled with that, I just remember watching them a lot as a kid.

I just now realized that seeing the 1998 Godzilla in theaters is one of my earliest theater memories lol (X-Files: Fight for the Future came out like a month later, I thought that was my earliest theater memory), which is kinda funny because then two years later, Godzilla 2000 came out to theaters and that was much more enjoyable. I wonder if I only really liked the '98 Godzilla as a kid because I loved Jurassic Park and it's rather reminiscent of Jurassic Park.

My baby brother's a huuuuuuge Godzilla fan, I think he's the only reason we got the DVDs outside of Dad liking Godzilla too, but we also got a lot of old monster flicks and we also got the Gamera collection. We realized too late it doesn't have any of the dubs on it (honestly sad about it, we had the Gamera vs. Guiron VHS tape but I don't know what happened to it), but he seemed to have not minded besides not being a reader. He also got the figurines, which are really cool figurines, although Biollante's is hella expensive and it's like bruh so he doesn't have that one. The Destroyah figure's a favorite of mine, it's just so badass. I might pull them all out to take a picture of them as well as a few of the Ultraman figurines. Little bro just really likes the tokusatsu films lol, he used to watch them like every day but it seems he's regulated himself into watching one every Saturday morning now. He had just watched War of the Gargantuas this past weekend (the one doubled with Rodan on the DVD).

 

[CheezzyMach]

Unlike pretty much everyone I like the American Godzilla film and wish poor Zilla got more respect.

The animated series fixed a lot of problems Zilla had and made him more like Godzilla.

 

[RumblyTumbly]

As a young kid, I got into monster movies of all kinds, but Godzilla stood out among the rest. I loved the sheer bad assery and aggression of the character and I was blown away by how many of these movies there were. By the time I got into it, there were already 17 films, and that was amazing to me. Godzilla was like the James Bond of Monsters!

But unlike Bond, finding all of these movies was difficult. Scouring TV guides and the video stores in hopes of finding one of those rare ones I had never seen before was a regular ritual for kid me. There was this fun treasure hunt aspect that made every new discovery a delight. I distinctly remember staying up till 3:30AM one night just so I could finally see "Frankenstein Conquers the World", a movie that features the monster Baragon, who up to that point, I had only seen in a cameo role in Destroy All Monsters, alongside Godzilla and the other heavy hitters in the Toho monster menagerie. Speaking of Destroy All Monsters, that was kind of the Holy Grail of Godzilla films for a while and I couldn't find it anywhere until it finally appeared on the Sci Fi channel during one of there Godzilla movie marathons, and it was like Christmas had come early for me.

And keep in mind, this all happened before the internet and I found out that there were Japanese versions of these films, and that there was a string of films in the 1990s that hadn't been released yet (my first bit of net rage spergery was the day I found out the five films from 1991-1995 existed).

Another aspect that made me love these films was the special effects aspect, which is ironically part of why these films are derided in the states. The problem with modern blockbusters today is that EVERYTHING is CGI. There are degrees of quality, but not much variety in technique. Everything just kind of looks the same or is made the same. Back in the good old days, you'd get man in suit, model city movies like Godzilla, and then you'd get the movies with creatures that are stop motion models like the Harryhausen classics, and then you'd have movies like Jaws that shoot around the creatures. I liked having that variety and different approaches to things.

It is absolutely amazing that Godzilla has the legacy that he has had. 65 years, and multiple film series, including animated films, and even three American produced films. It is pretty amazing. But hey, its Godzilla. What's not to love?

 

[Judge Holden]

Unlike pretty much everyone I like the American Godzilla film and wish poor Zilla got more respect.

The animated series fixed a lot of problems Zilla had and made him more like Godzilla.

Mandatory Godzilla Final Wars clip

Speakin of this movie...eh I liked it fine but for some reason the human subplot was even more annoying to me than usual so I have refrained from rewatching it for a while. Maybe I should give it a retry and see if I have warmed up to it since 2005

 

[Kari Kamiya]

Unlike pretty much everyone I like the American Godzilla film and wish poor Zilla got more respect.

The animated series fixed a lot of problems Zilla had and made him more like Godzilla.

Agreed. It's actually pretty impressive that from a mediocre at best movie that we ended up getting a pretty cool animated series out of it by the same people behind the Men in Black animated series.

They couldn't showcase the monster designs much in the movie, but it's really a pretty interesting design. I know Final Wars basically laughed in the face of Zilla, but I still think it was nice of Toho to at least accept that it's a kaiju, even if they didn't care much for it in terms of the real Godzilla.

 

[Notgoodwithusernames]

Mandatory Godzilla Final Wars clip

Speakin of this movie...eh I liked it fine but for some reason the human subplot was even more annoying to me than usual so I have refrained from rewatching it for a while. Maybe I should give it a retry and see if I have warmed up to it since 2005

Final Wars is an absolute mess of a movie but the fun kind of mess

 

[RumblyTumbly]

Final Wars is an absolute mess of a movie but the fun kind of mess

Final Wars is the closest that Godzilla has ever gotten to pure sensory overload. It just has SO MUCH STUFF in it.

But I'll never accuse it of being a lazy film, that's for sure. It is so crazy and off the wall that it is weirdly fascinating and fun to watch.