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Godzilla 2014: Rumors, Pix and filming

Greg Cox said:
But what's the point of making a monster movie if the monster only wants to eat fish?

"Omigod, it's going to destroy us . . . oh, never mind. Turns out it just wants some tuna."
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Actually I quite liked the angle of Godzilla being more or less just a (very cunning and destructive) giant mutant animal, and having the central action of the film being about figuring this out and using it to unravel the crisis.

In general I didn't mind the Emmerich film, within the parameters of relatively brainless popcorn-flickery, although I admittedly do like Cloverfield a lot better. Incidentally, according to some of the DVD commentary anyway, the premise of the Cloverfield monster was essentially supposed to be* really not too different in its own way from Godzilla '98.

At least the designers said it wasn't meant to be malevolent so much as it was a confused and frightened giant alien baby (not really that different from "it's just an animal"). Which would account for some of its behaviour, like trying to eat people and spitting them out the way it does with Hud.
 
Cloverfield, while I don't think it deserves a followup movie, could really use a book sequel. I'd read it.
 
I like the idea of a Cloverfield sequel but I'm not sure how they're going to do it. The world doesn't seem to be gagging for another found-footage film.
 
Say, you guys think Greg Cox might be dropping a "hint" about the movie? Remember, he novelized it.

Sincerely,

Bill
 
Just as well that they changed it, because an "entombed in ice" origin would be a bit too reminiscent of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, the seminal giant-monster movie that directly inspired Gojira. Not to mention that Godzilla was frozen in a glacier for the seven years between his second and third films, and that the most recent Godzilla movie before this one, Final Wars, had Godzilla entombed in the Antarctic ice for decades. So if they'd gone that route, it would've felt derivative even without any Man of Steel parallels.
 
Greg Cox said:
Tiberius said:
Given that the creature ate fish, why would it hunt humans? They even make a point to say that the only reason the babies were going after the people was because they smelled of fish.
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But what's the point of making a monster movie if the monster only wants to eat fish?

"Omigod, it's going to destroy us . . . oh, never mind. Turns out it just wants some tuna."

That's like making a James Bond movie where the villain just wants to stay home, drink wine, and pet his cat . . . . :)
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I gotta disagree. Making the monster want to eat humans is a terrible cliche. To do otherwise gives the movie a little bit of actual depth, to show that, hey, this is really just an animal, not a monster. Spielberg did it with the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. He wouldn't let anyone call them monsters.

And your James Bond villain analogy doesn't quite work. It would be more like a villain who embezzles money and blows up government installations in order to fight a corrupt government. Kinda like Dexter, in a way.
 
Greg Cox said:
Redfern said:
Say, you guys think Greg Cox might be dropping a "hint" about the movie? Remember, he novelized it.

Sincerely,

Bill
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Nah, I'm just talking about the 98 movie. I'm maintaining radio silence on the new movie.
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I hope when the movie is out and you don't need to maintain the secrecy you'll give us lots of behind the scenes info on how the story works, how you interpreted character motivations, etc! I love hearing all that stuff!
 
Tiberius said:
And your James Bond villain analogy doesn't quite work. It would be more like a villain who embezzles money and blows up government installations in order to fight a corrupt government. Kinda like Dexter, in a way.
Click to expand...

I must have missed that episode.
 
I think Godzilla is is far more imposing when he is treated as a "force of nature" that is not even really aware of our existance. It's a tired cliche, true, but as individuals, we are little more than ants, not even worthy of notice, and our "conventional" weapons, rating little more attention or effectiveness than bee stings. (So called "super weapons" might be considered the equivalent to primitive spears and clubs.) The offering of fish suggests the possibility of "appeasement", implying we have some sort of "control". But you can't placate an earthquake, a tsunami, or a nuclear firestorm. Even having the monster pursue us for food in a twisted way elevates our "status". But how demeaning must it feel to be totally ignored? One is not even considered the relative worth of a Rice Crispie! :wtf: (Okay, that was a strange analogy.)

Sincerely,

Bill
 
But most Godzilla movies features humans trying to control, redirect, contain, or fight Godzilla, only to fail in the attempt.

One of the few redeeming features of the mediocre second movie, Godzilla Raids Again, is the way it focuses on the citizens of Japan just trying to adjust to life in a reality where the risk of Godzilla attack is just part of the status quo, like the risk of an earthquake or typhoon. It's more about coping with the unavoidable than it is about defeating the monster (although they do find a way to defeat him at the end). But it fits with the experience of the Japanese people, who've always had to contend with one natural disaster after another. I used to think that Japanese movies' and cartoons' preoccupation with mass destruction was a legacy of WWII, but I now understand that it's a much older fact of life there, given the constant blows that their own environment have subjected them to. It's not by chance that Godzilla comes from the sea, or that Rodan and Mothra destroy with hurricane-force winds.

As for Godzilla's motives for his actions, they vary from film to film. Let's see... The original said he was displaced from his normal feeding grounds and wandering in search of a new food source, so yeah, I'd say he was there to devour people. Raids Again, conversely, claimed that he attacked Tokyo because he was both drawn to and infuriated by the lights of the city (so they were able to draw him away from populated areas using flares). In many later movies, he was drawn to the other featured kaiju, seeking to battle them. Eventually he became the hero of the franchise and acted to defend his territory (i.e. Earth). In the '84 reboot, it was established that he fed on nuclear energy and was drawn to reactors; G vs. Megaguirus expanded this to include any high-energy source. I believe that in the '90s Mechagodzilla film, he was drawn by the cries of the baby Godzillasaurus. In GMK, he was a supernatural force of vengeance, possessed by the souls of the wronged dead of WWII and driven to exact retribution for the crimes of Imperial Japan. In the Millennium-era Mechagodzilla duology, he was drawn spiritually by the bones of the original Godzilla, around which Mechagodzilla had been built. But in Godzilla 2000 and Final Wars, I think, he was basically just a force of pure destruction.
 
OK, question for the Godzilla masters here. In the mid to late 80's I remember seeing ads for a Godzilla movie that had at least a couple of the Shogun Warriors in it. I never got a chance to see that movie and don't remember the title. A couple details:
Mazinger (or what looked like him) was in it from what I can recall, but the color palate of the robot was less dramatic.
Maybe I am remembering wrong and it was actually a separate movie being shown as a double feature with the Godzilla movie?
It was definitely not an anime, but a live action movie using "man in suit" effects.
Definitely not the Godzilla movie with Jet Jaguar.

My search-fu has failed me in finding this film, whatever it was.
 
Could you be thinking of this toy commercial that's linked at the bottom of the Wikipedia article? It's an ad about a couple of "Shogun Warrior" toys fighting a Godzilla toy, but it's not a movie promotion. Apparently the "Shogun Warrior" line, which was an amalgam of various separate Japanese toy lines, included Godzilla and Rodan figures as well.

I'm not aware of any movie where Godzilla fought any of the mecha used in the Shogun Warriors line. He did appear in the Zone Fighter TV series, which is officially counted as part of the Showa continuity of kaiju films from the '50s through the '70s; but those characters weren't part of that toy line. And in his own films, he's only ever fought robots such as various Mechagodzillas, Moguera, and Mecha King Ghidorah (which was actually a cyborg made from Ghidorah's corpse, so sort of a kaiju Deathlok).
 
No, I had the toys. The toys were quite a few years earlier than that. I was in grade school/middle school when I had the toys. The movie I remember was during my high school years.

I'm not sure Godzilla fought the mecha, just that they were in the movie. (or the movie they were in that was part of the double feature with Godzilla)
 
Well, see, here's the thing -- going by the list on Wikipedia, almost all of the "Shogun Warriors" toys were based on anime series from Toei or Sunrise. Onscreen, they existed only in cartoon form. The only toys on the list based on live-action mecha were "17" from Toei's TV series Daitetsujin 17 and Leopardon from Toei's Spider-Man adaptation, as well as a few vehicles from the Super Sentai franchise. All of the source shows were created between 1974 and 1977, for TV rather than movies. And not only were Godzilla's films made by a different studio, Toho, but there were no Godzilla films made between 1975 and 1984.

So there's simply no way a film like you describe could have existed. Godzilla never crossed over with any of these characters, and none of them ever appeared in a live-action movie, although a couple had animated movies.
 
Christopher said:
Well, see, here's the thing -- going by the list on Wikipedia, almost all of the "Shogun Warriors" toys were based on anime series from Toei or Sunrise. Onscreen, they existed only in cartoon form. The only toys on the list based on live-action mecha were "17" from Toei's TV series Daitetsujin 17 and Leopardon from Toei's Spider-Man adaptation, as well as a few vehicles from the Super Sentai franchise. All of the source shows were created between 1974 and 1977, for TV rather than movies. And not only were Godzilla's films made by a different studio, Toho, but there were no Godzilla films made between 1975 and 1984.

So there's simply no way a film like you describe could have existed. Godzilla never crossed over with any of these characters, and none of them ever appeared in a live-action movie, although a couple had animated movies.
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Here's the thing. I already admitted that it could have just looked like Mazinger, i.e. Not really the actual Mazinger. I also admitted that maybe it was actually a double feature that I am mis-remembering as a Godzilla movie with mecha.

So, to restate the question, does anyone recall a movie with what looked like Mazinger using live action/man in suit effects from around the mid 80's that may have had other Kaiju/Godzilla in it as well?

(Hopefully this phrasing will pass Christopher's muster and avoid him being tied up in minutia)
 
Of the giant mecha that Godzilla shared films with, the only ones that had anything near a humanoid form were Jet Jaguar, the three versions of Mechagodzilla, and MOGUERA.

I suppose Jet Jaguar looks slightly like Mazinger, what with the red markings on the upper chest. But that's the only possibility I can see within the Godzilla canon. That leaves your double-feature idea, but I'm not familiar enough with non-kaiju tokusatsu films to know of all the live-action giant-robot possibilities.
 
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