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El Rey X-Mas Kaiju Marathon

Mr. Adventure

Mr. Adventure

Fleet Admiral
Admiral
Hey FYI, Starting on X-Mas Eve the El Rey Network will be having a Kaiju marathon. Unfortunately, I only get the channel in SD but I think I might still record some of these I haven't seen in a while.

So here's the listing:

06:00 am Gojira
08:15 am Godzilla: King of the Monsters
10:00 am Rodan
11:45 am Ghidorrah: The Three Headed Monster
01:45 pm Godzilla Raids Again
03:30 pm Godzilla vs. Monster Zero
05:30 pm Mothra vs. Godzilla
07:30 pm Godzilla's Revenge
09:00 pm Terror of Mechagodzilla
11:00 pm Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II
01:30 am Godzilla vs. Mothra
03:30 am Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla
06:00 am Godzilla vs. Destoroyah
08:15 am Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah
10:30 am Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla (2002)
12:30 pm Godzilla Vs. Megaguirus...
02:45 pm Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack
05:00 pm Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S.
07:00 pm Godzilla: Final Wars
09:45 pm Godzilla: King of the Monsters
11:30 pm Ghidorrah: The Three Headed Monster
 
They're not showing them in order for some reason. Chronologically, it would be:

Showa era
Gojira (1954)
Godzilla Raids Again ('55)
Godzilla, King of the Monsters! (1956 English version of Gojira)
Rodan ('56)
Mothra vs. Godzilla ('64)
Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster ('64)
Godzilla vs. Monster Zero ('65, aka Invasion of Astro-Monster)
Godzilla's Revenge ('69, aka All Monsters Attack)
Terror of Mechagodzilla ('75)
Heisei Era
Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah ('91)
Godzilla vs. Mothra ('92)
Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II ('93)
Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla ('94)
Godzilla vs. Destoroyah ('95)
Millennium Era
Godzilla vs. Megaguirus (2000)
Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (2001)
Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla ('02)
Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S. ('03, direct sequel to previous)
Godzilla: Final Wars ('04)

So they're showing the third Heisei-era film after the last one, which is weird. The seven Heisei films are the single most unified continuity in the Godzilla franchise, with recurring characters (mostly the psychic Miki Saegusa, who's in all of the last six films) and an evolving narrative of the institutions that develop to respond to Godzilla. It doesn't work as well out of order. Probably best to DVR them so you can watch them the right way around. (Although you can safely skip the atrocious SpaceGodzilla, whose contribution to the continuity is easily ignored.)

And it's weird that they're putting such a gap between Against Mechagodzilla and Tokyo S.O.S. Those are the only two films in the Millennium series that are in the same continuity as each other, so they're the only ones that need to be back-to-back, and yet they aren't.

Godzilla's Revenge is an odd choice to include, unless it's purely for camp value. That's the dumbest film in the series, and the cheapest. It isn't even really a Godzilla movie; it's about a kid who daydreams about being pals with Godzilla and his "son" Minilla, with his dreams consisting largely of excerpts from earlier movies. Yep, it's a clip show. It's sort of a proto-Home Alone, with the kid taking on a group of bandits using the lessons he learned from hallucinatory kaiju. And it has a really hideous moral message that the way to deal with bullies is to become a worse bully so you can take over the head bully's gang for yourself. There are so many better films they could've shown, like the immediately preceding film Destroy All Monsters.
 
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Thanks Christopher, I will keep that in mind particularly for the later eras.

BTW, I seem to vaguely remember a scene with a "flying bicycle". Any idea what that might be from or am I just conflating something?
 
^I dunno. The only Japanese thing I can think of with a flying bicycle is Zyuranger's Bandora (aka Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers's Rita Repulsa) on her flying pennyfarthing. Although there are plenty of kaiju films with various forms of flying mecha sent against the kaiju.
 
I thought it was a Godzilla movie but maybe not. I remember it being an Asian guy and gal in contemporary clothes riding on what seemed like a pedal powered device flying around in an interior space. It seemed like it was an odd little enchanting scene that was kind of out of place with what was around it. I could see it maybe being from a Sentai or related show Ike Zeiram or something. One of those things that drives you nuts but few people can help with.
 
Mr. Adventure said:
I thought it was a Godzilla movie but maybe not. I remember it being an Asian guy and gal in contemporary clothes riding on what seemed like a pedal powered device flying around in an interior space. It seemed like it was an odd little enchanting scene that was kind of out of place with what was around it. I could see it maybe being from a Sentai or related show Ike Zeiram or something. One of those things that drives you nuts but few people can help with.
Click to expand...

Oh, that, yes! I remember now. That's from Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II, my favorite Heisei movie. I don't think it was entirely out of place, since that film has a lot of sentimental stuff going on with the Baby Godzilla, although in a way that isn't nearly as hokey or saccharine as the other movies with equivalent characters. It's a film that has a pretty good balance of darker and lighter aspects.
 
Ah, cool! I probably haven't seen them since release so I'm looking forward in particular to catching those. I'll have to especially make sure to get G v M II.
 
Didn't know it until researching just now, but it appears I have that channel. Neat!

Sincerely,

Bill
 
I didn't realize I had this channel until the last time they did a Godzilla marathon.

That marathon was only the 50's and 60's films, but was great anyway.

Sadly, ElRey HD is only carried by a few outlets (not Dish, Direct TV or Comcrap).
 
By the way, it looks like the kaiju marathon is going to be something like four days long, but it's just going to be rerunning the same movies listed in the first post, just in different order.

Saturday 12/26 schedule:

  • 1:30 am Godzilla Raids Again
  • 3:15 am Godzilla: Final Wars
  • 6:00 am Mothra vs. Godzilla
  • 8:00 am Terror of Mechagodzilla
  • 10:00 am Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II
  • 12:30 pm Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S.
  • 2:30 pm Godzilla vs. Mothra
  • 4:30 pm Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla
  • 7:00 pm Godzilla vs. Destoroyah
  • 9:15 pm Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah
  • 11:30 pm Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla
And Sunday 12/27:

  • 1:30 am Godzilla Vs. Megaguirus
  • 3:45 am Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack
  • 6:00 am Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S.
  • 8:00 am Godzilla: Final Wars
  • 10:45 am Godzilla: King of the Monsters
  • 12:30 pm Ghidorrah: The Three Headed Monster
  • 2:30 pm Godzilla Vs. Megaguirus
  • 4:45 pm Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II
  • 7:15 pm Godzilla vs. Mothra
  • 9:15 pm Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla
  • 11:45 pm Godzilla vs. Destoroyah
 
sojourner said:
Anybody watch Godzilla VS King Ghidorah (1991) yet? They actually make a Steven Spielberg joke.
Click to expand...

In this one, they take (a) dinosaur destined to be (a) Godzilla out of 1944 and put him in the present in the Bering Sea.

Now, we know there were at least 3 different Godzilla monsters, and the one they took out of 1944 would have been the one from the first movie (?).

But if there wasn't a second one to take the place of the first when he died, how did everyone remember Godzilla.

They indicated in this movie that once they took the one out of 1944, there wasn't a Godzilla. We know the Futurians were lying about everything anyway, so do we assume there was another "first" Godzilla for everyone to remember?

Also, it took what, 2 days for displaced Godzilla to mutate?


Has anyone collected the movies on blu-ray? I've seen single movie discs and 2-movies ones. Which ones are the original Japanese releases that have been dubbed vs. the U.S. edits?
 
Ar-Pharazon said:
In this one, they take (a) dinosaur destined to be (a) Godzilla out of 1944 and put him in the present in the Bering Sea.

Now, we know there were at least 3 different Godzilla monsters, and the one they took out of 1944 would have been the one from the first movie (?).

But if there wasn't a second one to take the place of the first when he died, how did everyone remember Godzilla.
Click to expand...

Because it was a dumb movie that didn't make a damn bit of sense. (Not to mention disturbingly jingoistic, glorifying the WWII-era Japanese war machine. Not to mention not bothering to give the WWII-veteran characters any significant aging makeup to convey the passage of nearly 50 years.)


They indicated in this movie that once they took the one out of 1944, there wasn't a Godzilla. We know the Futurians were lying about everything anyway, so do we assume there was another "first" Godzilla for everyone to remember?
Click to expand...

Well, there is some basis for that as a retcon. GvKG claimed that there was only one Godzilla, that the one that had been attacking Japan since 1984 (in the Heisei continuity) was the same one that had previously attacked in 1954. But the last Heisei film, Godzilla vs. Destroyer, does confirm that the Heisei Godzilla was indeed a different Godzilla from the one destroyed in the original film. So maybe at the time of GvKG, they believed there was only one Godzilla who had survived the Oxygen Destroyer and eventually regenerated and resurfaced; but by the time of GvD four years later, they'd figured out that it was a second Godzilla. So maybe that's the explanation for why Godzilla was still remembered despite the timeline change, although that's not what the dumb movie itself suggested. That film's writers seemed to think that changing history had only caused Godzilla to disappear after the time travel, not retroactively.


Has anyone collected the movies on blu-ray? I've seen single movie discs and 2-movies ones. Which ones are the original Japanese releases that have been dubbed vs. the U.S. edits?
Click to expand...

I don't think that all of them are currently available in the US. There were one or two I had to find on Dailymotion or something like that, and one that I only got to see by tracking down an antiquated VHS copy from my library.
 
GvsGK is the only way to explain the '84-'89 Godzilla, it's pretty clear that the Lagos island Godzilla was the in thos movies, since the '84 movie makes it pretty clear it's a different Godzilla. The New World Godzilla 1985 though explains it differently, but it's a bad edit anyway and should be ignored.
 
By the way, I should've mentioned earlier -- the program guides on my cable system and Zap2It are confusing the 1992 Godzilla vs. Mothra (aka Godzilla and Mothra: The Battle for Earth) with the 1964 Mothra vs. Godzilla. The guides use the GvM title but give the date and description of MvG instead, even though GvM is the one that's actually being shown.

Anyway, by pure chance, twice now I've happened to watch one of my DVRed Godzilla movies from the marathon at the same time that El Rey was running the same movie again. Indeed, I ended up watching the first act or so of my DVRed Godzilla vs. Mothra almost in exact sync with what was going out live. I was tempted to watch it live instead, but decided that the recorded one would give me more control to pause or skip ads. And just now I watched Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II, and then discovered that the live broadcast of same was running about an hour behind me.

I wish I could find cast credits for the English dubs, since I'm sure I recognize some voices from anime dubs. Bridget Hoffman was definitely doing a number of voices in Godzilla vs. Mothra, and I'm pretty sure she was also dubbing the lead in G vs. Megaguirus. And I think that was Wendee Lee dubbing Azusa in Mechagodzilla II.
 
^ The fact that the 1990's movies don't look so different from the 1960's ones makes it hard to notice, until you see a car that's obviously from the 90's.

The same mistake is present in the DISH guide, but I realized it during yesterday's (or Friday's) showing.
 
Ar-Pharazon said:
^ The fact that the 1990's movies don't look so different from the 1960's ones makes it hard to notice, until you see a car that's obviously from the 90's.
Click to expand...

I think the 1960s movies and 1990s movies look very different. Not only is the quality of the effects work rather different, but the color saturation, film grain, and the like are different.

Granted, though, Godzilla and Mothra: The Battle for Earth is more or less a loose remake of both Mothra and Mothra vs. Godzilla. So maybe you could get them confused if you weren't familiar with both films.

Of course, it must be even easier to get the films mixed up in Japan, because they just reuse the same title over and over. The three films we call Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla, Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II, and Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla are all just called Gojira tai Mekagojira in Japanese. And the 1984 The Return of Godzilla is just Gojira in Japan, even though it's a sequel to the 1954 Gojira rather than a remake.
 
sojourner said:
The ship captain in Final Wars looks like the love child of Kurt Russell and Joseph Stalin.
Click to expand...

I would've gone with Dick Butkus and Robotech's Captain Gloval. And he sounds just like Scruffy from Futurama. Well, at least in the original Japanese soundtrack, where the performer (MMA fighter Don Frye) was actually speaking English throughout. I don't know whether they used Frye's real voice track in the English dub. In G vs. Mechagodzilla II, a lot of the characters in G-Force were speaking English in the original soundtrack -- notably the bearded Caucasian scientist in all his scenes, and the Japanese Mechagodzilla pilots in the cockpit scenes -- but they were still dubbed over in the English version. You can see the scenes where their lip movements match the dialogue. I'd assume this was mostly done to improve the delivery -- the bearded scientist guy gave a terrible performance, and the pilots delivered their English lines phonetically -- but some of them, like the blond female pilot, gave performances that could've worked okay, but were still dubbed anyway, presumably because it was easier than selectively dropping in their original dialogue tracks.

But really, Captain Gordon is one of the few saving graces of Final Wars. His unrelenting badassery is actually kind of fun, and Frye’s one-note, expressionless performance in the role actually works at conveying a character who’s so tough and self-possessed that nothing gets to him.
 
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