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Godzilla, Kong, Gamera & Co.: The Kaiju Mega-Thread

I'm not convinced I've ever seen a good Godzilla film. Certainly not outside of a MST3K arena.

Monarch, however, was a nice surprise and I look forward to more (and more Russell family - let's have Wyatt Russell's kid play Shaw's unknown child!).

Hugo - enjoyed the fact that you really need no knowledge of modern Godzilla films to enjoy the narrative and characters (and in fact retroactively makes some of the pieces more enjoyable)
 
JD said:
Is this the first Godzilla series to have so many characters carried over from one movie to the next?
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The Heisei continuity had four recurring characters -- G-Force psychic Miki Saegusa (Megumi Odaka), government minister Takayuki Segawa (Kenji Sahara), G-Force Commander Takaki Aso (Akira Nakao), and G-Force deputy commander General Hyodo (Koichi Ueda), as well as bringing back Emiko Yamane (Momoko Kōchi) from the original film, which was counted as part of the Heisei continuity. Shelley Sweeney appeared as a minor G-Force member in two consecutive Heisei films, but it's unclear if she was meant to be the same character in both. So that's five to six returning characters, not counting kaiju.

The two Kiryu movies, Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla and Tokyo S.O.S., have seven cast members appearing in both films:
  1. Akane Yashiro (Yumiko Shaku): Pilot of Kiryu/Mechagodzilla
  2. Lt. Togashi (Ko Takasugi): Backup Kiryu/White Heron pilot
  3. Lt. Hayama (Yusuke Tomoi): Backup Kiryu/White Heron pilot
  4. Hayato Igarashi (Akira Nakao): Prime Minister of Japan
  5. Chief Hitoyanagi (Takeo Nakahara): Head of JXSDF
  6. General Dobashi (Koichi Ueda): Member of JXSDF
  7. Dr. Gorou Kanno (Naomasa Musaka): JXSDF scientist
So how many recurring characters have there been in the MonsterVerse (counting the Monarch TV series as a single production)? Let's see...
  1. Ishiro Serizawa (Ken Watanabe): Godzilla; Godzilla: King of the Monsters
  2. Vivienne Graham (Sally Hawkins): G, KOTM
  3. William Stentz (David Strathairn): G, KOTM
  4. Bill Randa (John Goodman, Anders Holm): Kong: Skull Island, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters
  5. Houston Brooks (Corey Hawkins, Joe Morton): KSI, KOTM
  6. Mark Russell (Kyle Chandler): KOTM, Godzilla vs. Kong
  7. Madison Russell (Millie Bobby Brown): KOTM, GVK
  8. Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall): GVK, Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire
  9. Jia (Kaylee Hottie): GVK, GXK
  10. Bernie Hayes (Brian Tyree Henry): GVK, GXK
So yes, technically MonsterVerse has the record for returning characters, but none of them have been in more than two different productions. Miki Saegusa, Takayuki Segawa, and Commander Aso are the only human characters to appear in more than two Godzilla-universe films, and Miki is the only one to appear in more than three, having been in six of the seven Heisei-continuity films.
 
Kai "the spy" said:
WHOOO! Oscar won!
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Knew it had been nominated, but I didn't watch the Oscars live. Learned about the win this morning through a Deviant Art upload. Then I looked for a video of the segment.

As some fans have endearingly joked, only took 70 frickin' years!

19BDcsp.jpg


Goji accepting his award.

'54 Godzilla derived from Vrahno's Blender mesh
"Statue" photogrammetry scan by Robb "RobotKid" Waters of the Aurora model kit
Art deco nightclub stage purchased from DAZ
 
Last edited:
Press room speech after the team won the award:
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I heard about that this morning on a podcast I listen to. I thought they were kidding about the heels. That's hilarious!
 
Rotten Tomatoes Trailers has a new exclusive "Legacy" trailer.
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One thing I'm getting pretty confident about with this one, is that the action scenes are going to be awesome.
 
I watched Godzilla Raids Again for the first time last night, and I thought it was OK. The stuff with Godzilla & Anguirus was pretty fun, but the human story wasn't that interesting. My biggest problem with the human story was that up until the end it didn't really tie that much into what was happening with Godzilla until the end.
I was pretty shocked how quickly they killed Angurius, I was expecting a lot more fighting between him and Godzilla.
 
Yeah, Raids Again is quite a step down from the original. As I put it on my blog:

But there’s no allegory or philosophy in this film, and the character story is rather dull. In a way, it’s interesting that the film focuses less on the battle to defeat the kaiju and more on simply getting by in a world where kaiju exist. The story is largely about the ordinary people of Osaka just trying to carry on with their lives in the face of an unavoidable threat, as people tend to do, and when it does focus on the scientists and military, their efforts in the majority of the film are more about managing Godzilla than trying to destroy him, using flares to divert him from the city lights that enrage/attract him (and it’s nice to finally get an explanation for why Godzillas smash up cities, though this explanation will not be used again as far as I know). But that idea is more interesting in concept than execution; all in all it’s kind of a dull movie. Eventually they do defeat Godzilla by burying him in an avalanche, but there’s no philosophical conundrum; it’s more just a disaster movie than the allegory the original was.
 
Interesting video essay of the politics of Japanese Godzilla movies, and the lack of politics in the American Godzilla movies:
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Kai "the spy" said:
Interesting video essay of the politics of Japanese Godzilla movies, and the lack of politics in the American Godzilla movies:
Click to expand...

Hmm, that's a really good video, aside from the "word from our sponsor" bit in the middle. It makes a good argument. I'd say the only MonsterVerse film that breaks the pattern, that does have an allegorical element to some degree, is Kong: Skull Island, which has something to say about the aftermath of war and whether you cling to the fight or let it go. But of course, that's the one film that doesn't have Godzilla in it. And it's a historical film in the Vietnam era, so it's not really a comment on current issues, I don't think.
 
I have to disagree that there's no allegory in King of the Monsters. It's not just faffing vaguely about ecoterrorism. The movie is literally about climate change and man's relationship to nature and pretty damn clearly so. That's the entire point of Vera Farmiga's character (she even says outright says something along the lines of 'Humans are the disease that is killing the planet but the Titans are the cure'), it defines everything about Ghidorah and how he's depicted and how/why he has to be defeated by the 'good' Titans, and the ending of the movie (technically the credits - which I assume is a big part of the reason so many people miss it) literally shows the Titans fixing all the damage humans have done to the planet.

Now, I won't claim it does an amazing job bringing that allegory home and it's probably true that part of the reason it doesn't is because the makers were more interested in the cool fights, but to say that it's not there at all is just as wrong as the people who think 54 is only about Hiroshima.
 
Another thing just now having popped up in my YT feed, IMAX had Godzilla Minus One director Takashi Yamazaki and Godzilla VS/X Kong director Adam Wingard for a nice little chat:
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I watched Mothra vs Godzilla on Freevee/Amazon Prime, and I liked it a lot more than Godzilla Raids Again, the human story was a lot more interesting this time, and it had lots of fun monster action.
 
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