It makes Godzilla's roar something of a cousin to the TARDIS sound effect on Doctor Who, since the main component of that sound was created by scraping a key along the strings of a piano.
You're not helping So apparently Amazon UK carry only the original 1954 in DVD and none of the rest. Despite my VHS collection being the entire Showa and Heisei series.
Obviously this new Godzilla is an allegory for gay marriage and universal healthcare. Can't you hear his scream? He's saying, "Obaaaaaaammmmmaaaaaaa!!!!"
In ancient times, a culture's values and philosophies were often represented by its myths and legends, which often featured monsters. Many of the greatest cultural epics from around the world involve heroes fighting monsters and demons -- Beowulf, Gilgamesh, the Ramayana, you name it. Even the Bible has monsters, from Behemoth and Leviathan to the Beasts of the Book of Revelation. We create monsters out of our deep-seated fears and concerns. They're all about symbolism and meaning. Sure, a lot of monster movies are shallow exercises, but so are most cop movies or war movies or comedies or space operas. But in each genre there are some entries that have something meaningful to say. There's no genre that's intrinsically incapable of that. The 1954 Gojira is a deeply powerful allegory that raises challenging and complex questions about the ethics of weapons of mass destruction -- even though most of its sequels have been kiddie adventure flicks about weird creatures knocking down buildings. Besides, a movie doesn't have to have deep philosophical content to be entertaining. It doesn't hurt, but there's nothing wrong with just having a good time. Pacific Rim was pretty much fluff, but it was a very satisfying kaiju film. Still... what the '54 film had that most of its sequels lacked was its focus on the aftermath of disaster. It wasn't really a movie about Tokyo's buildings being knocked down, it was a movie about the human suffering and loss that resulted from that. It was an evocation of the recent memories of a nation that had seen most of its cities destroyed by Allied firebombs even before Hiroshima and Nagasaki were struck. I gather the 2014 film is attempting to capture something similar as an evocation of 9/11 and its impact on Americans. Now, we've had no shortage of recent films playing on 9/11 imagery, but the problem was that films like Man of Steel and Star Trek Into Darkness focused mostly on the visual spectacle and only lightly touched on the human cost, if at all. From the trailer and advance reports, it sounds like this movie is going to focus more on the human consequences, and that's what could potentially make something like this worthwhile.
See, this is where I get to promote my beloved The Core as a powerful evocation of fears of an environmental collapse. Hell, even The Day After Tomorrow had something to say. I'll take one of those over an equally stupid 2012 any day. Well, most days at least.
Don't forget that the same guy who directed both of those movies also directed the last American Godzilla movie.
Maybe it'll have nothing to do with atom bombs and radiation. Maybe he'll be from another dimension like a lovecraftian creature or one of those things from The Mist. Personally, i dislike earthly explanations because it's hard to buy that a creature like Godzilla could ever be created or mutated from anything that lived on this planet. That's one of the things Pacific Rim got right. But I wasn't a big fan of the expanded backstory behind those monsters either and thought the giant robot thing was too far-fetched to take seriously...but that's another matter...
Or the fact that dumping a massive amount of cement or rubble into the hole would have closed the portal off entirely and ended the whole mess without the need of Jaegers etc
Err, it was a dimensional rift in the fabric of spacetime, not just a hole in the ground. And the kaiju could effortlessly tear cities apart, and were shown to have no problem smashing through the enormous wall that was built to keep them out, so they wouldn't have had much trouble clearing some cement or rubble out of the way. Good grief, the weight and pressure of the seawater at that depth would've been tantamount to being buried under a fallen skyscraper, and the kaiju had no problem surmounting that.
The portal was maybe 50-80 feet wide, and flat. It was at the bottom of a shaft enclosed on all sides about 30 storeys deep at least. Sunlight was still illuminating the area when the Jaegers went down there and the pressure gauges on the display HUDs wasn't essentially massive. So it's not all that deep, the portal can push matter away from it only a certain distance, a maliable substance would form around it and create a "bubble" only so large, that a Kaiju would barely fit into, trapping it with no room to move or breath, or maybe fully exit the portal. Trapped, suffocated, partly vapourised, I doubt they could dig very well in those circumstances.
Look, there are a ton of holes that can be poked in Pacific Rim's physics and logic, but the same goes for any kaiju movie ever made. It's a given going in that it's physically impossible for land-dwelling creatures to grow that big under Earth gravity or be able to walk bipedally. It's a fantasy genre; it embraces the impossible and the absurd. What matters is how entertainingly it does so. And Pacific Rim was very entertaining.
Yes, it was, I'm just saying it was a little strange they never thought of "fill the hole" long before "lets build robots!"
Indeed. We just got a brief summary of the backstory; we don't know everything they might have tried. Although there is a comic book prequel that fleshes it out.
Incredible trailer. The opening jump sequence was not only amazing for the imagery, with the stark colors standing out against all the bleakness, but also for the excellent choice to use the 2001 music in the background. And then to follow that up with near complete silence. I enjoy most modern trailers full of thumping music and countless special effects money shots, but this one felt quite different, and still managed to excell. I have high hopes for Gareth Edwards' movie.