Godzilla

[Sheilawisz]

I have finally watched the new Godzilla movie yesterday after waiting a long time for it, I know that many other Mythic Scribes members have seen it already and I wanted to share my experience with everyone.

The 1998 Godzilla film left many of us Godzilla fans very disappointed, because that movie is about a monster that was very different to the original. I mean, it was a good movie and the iguana-like creature was cool, but we wanted to see the real thing...

Well, the 2014 movie has given us the true Godzilla!

The start of the movie was very intense and heartbreaking for me, but it's perfect to set the creepy atmosphere that the rest of the film provides. I was a little surprised to see the other two monsters showing up, but after all, monster fights are a classic and they did it very well in this movie...

The special effects are wonderful, it all looks so real (my father loved the film too, and my mother was a little creeped out) and the human characters are excellent.

Do you remember that the 1998 monster had the power to breathe fire, like a dragon?

Well, this new Godzilla keeps his original Atomic Breath power and it looks absolutely fantastic. It made me remember the old Godzilla game that I would play over and over again when I was a little girl, and one of the best scenes of the movie is when Godzilla destroys one of the enemy monsters with that power.

Godzilla causes quite some devastation via collateral damage, but in general he is the good monster. The design and powers of the other monsters are awesome, especially the electromagnetic pulse attacks that shot down all those fighter jets in the sea.

Please share your experience, what did you like the most about the movie?

 

[Guy]

I've been a Godzilla fan since I was about four years old. I had two Godzilla comic books before I could read. I'd look at the pictures and try to figure out the story. I thought the 1998 version was all right. It wasn't great, but it wasn't as terrible as many people said. My only criticism with this one was I thought Godzilla should have had more screen time. I was really glad they gave him his atomic breath. I was wondering, and about two minutes later he used it. And I thought the fight scenes were very well done. I loved the way he overcame the other two monsters. I don't want to give away any spoilers, so I'll just say a character left the story much sooner than I expected. I really liked their take on the origin story, too. Overall, I liked it.

 

[Penpilot]

You people are too forgiving of the 1998 movie.

But one of the things I really liked was the fact that they teased the audience with Godzilla screen time. And you really didn't get a good look until the end. Too many movies blow their wad right at the beginning. I also liked that throughout the movie we're given the ant's eye view of conflict, which for me really put me into the shoes of the people there, and it gave me the creepy feeling of if I was in the path of those monsters, there's really no where I could run. Best case is going underground, but if the city gets torn down on top, good luck getting back to the surface.

I also like the way they tweaked the mythology.

 

[kayd_mon]

I saw an old Godzilla movie or two when I was a little kid. Long enough ago that I don't remember it at all. I thougt that the movie in '98 looked dumb and never saw it. So, I went in expecting only one thing - a fun monster disaster movie. Well, I was mostly satisfied. It was about as lighthearted as a dirge, but I still enjoyed it. The 3D looked great, the battles were exciting, and the acting was solid.

 

[monyo]

Was also a Godzilla (et al.) fan when I was a kid, though likewise I can't even remember the old movies anymore. I am fairly sure the new enemy monster was somewhat Rodan inspired, though. Up until a certain point I was thinking that's basically who/what it was.

Still, I honestly couldn't get in on it. Didn't like the main character much, didn't like the big focus on the military so much. I suppose in any giant monster attack movie the military response is going to play a big part, but about halfway through I started to feel like I was watching Black Hawk Down or Zero Dark Thirty. There were really a lot of ways the story could have played out - a focus on international cooperation and politics to stop the monsters, or more of a clever science-based solution to stop them, but instead it seemed to have this weird post-9/11 American military angle.

Once I started thinking about that it also made me start seeing Godzilla as this anthropomorphized creature, and less like a prehistoric monster (I hope this isn't racially offensive, but I was laughing and thinking "big angry black guy trope" at a certain point). Even the way he fought, often grabbing things by the throat with hands, like some kind of ape, and the whole "alpha predator" angle, made it seem like it was appealing to themes I didn't really like. Didn't really ruin the movie, but I was kind of eye rolling and had mostly lost interest by the end. Still, I may check it out again when it's out of theaters to see if maybe I was just in an overly critical mood at the time. Everyone else seems to have liked it.

Spoilers ahead...

Spoiler: Godzilla

Yet another complaint, the excuse that Godzilla was an ancient predator who was hunting, but then why would it have natural prey that could almost kill it? Why wouldn't it stay to feast on the corpses afterwards, and instead just wandering back into the sea? If Godzilla also feeds on radiation as a secondary food source when the monsters aren't around, why wouldn't it cause the same problems the other ones did? Woudn't the "alpha predator of a primordial ecosystem" be even more aggressive and likely to do what it pleases than parasites that just feed on radiation?

I can't really say it was a bad movie, though. Just didn't appeal to me much. Wish the story had been more focused on Cranston and Watanabe's characters, who I really did like, but they were more minor supporting characters - in fact the part where Cranston died was where it started going downhill for me. The fire breath was pretty awesome, especially the way the scales glowed when it was coming.

 

[Sheilawisz]

Curious Fact: Did you know that the 1998 monster was renamed as Zilla by the Toho company, and later used in another monsters movie where it fought Godzilla?

I have never seen it, but according to the Godzilla Wiki the Sydney Opera House was destroyed when Zilla landed on top of it after getting tossed by Godzilla. They wanted to show which monster was the best, and perhaps the real intention was to please Godzilla fans that never liked Zilla.

In the 2014 movie, I guess that Godzilla wanted to hunt the other monsters not to eat them, but to prevent that they would reproduce and take over the world...

I wish that Godzilla would have had way more screen time, maybe that's my only complaint about the otherwise great movie.

 

[Penpilot]

Here's the clip of Zilla vs GODZILLA.... haha. It's from the last Toho Godzilla movie Godzilla Final Wars. In the movie Godzilla basically goes through a gauntlet comprised of a selection of the his best foes. The clip shows the world what Toho thinks of Zilla. They wrote Zilla into their continuity saying it was a case of mistaken identity. The creature that showed up in New York wasn't Godzilla, the American's just mistook him as Godzilla because they really didn't know what Godzilla looked like.

Spoiler: Godzilla and Eating

He didn't physically eat them because Godzilla doesn't eat flesh. He feeds on fury and souls. Mooohhahhahaha.

 

[Sheilawisz]

Thanks for sharing the clip of the Godzilla and Zilla fight, Penpilot.

I thought that the fight between both monsters would have been longer, and now it's very clear to me that they wanted to humiliate Zilla. It's a joke of a fight, really... I love Godzilla and it's obvious that he would win the fight because of his superior durability and atomic breath, but Zilla would give a better fight than that anyway thanks to his agility and speed.

Zilla is a good monster, the only problem with him is that he was featured in a movie called Godzilla.

I think that a better match for Zilla would be Cloverfield, because Godzilla is way too strong for either of them... now that would be an interesting monster fight to watch =)

 

[Penpilot]

Zilla is a good monster, the only problem with him is that he was featured in a movie called Godzilla.

I think you're right about this. The name Godzilla carries a lot of baggage with it which can be a tall order to move. If it'd been it's own movie, it would probably have been better received. Coincidentally, here's a little fun cracked.com is having with Godzilla and movies. 40 Great Movies Made Better by Adding Godzilla | Cracked.com

 

[Jabrosky]

Copied from my DeviantArt journal...

I have to agree with all the complaints that Godzilla didn't have enough of a presence in his own movie. For me it wasn't so much that the human characters and their drama took center stage, but that when we finally did get to see the Big G, he was obscured by smoke, rain, and darkness half the time. This was the case even in his climactic battle with the Mutos. Come to think of it, the same trend for kaiju fights to take place in darkness also appeared in Pacific Rim even if the kaiju were more luminescent. I guess dark backdrops help hide flaws in the CGI in kaiju movies.

Nonetheless I did like the portrayal of Godzilla as an inadvertent hero who fought monsters much more destructive than himself. Throughout his cinematic career, Godzilla has fluctuated between hero, villain, and wild animal just struggling to survive, so this would be a compromise between the heroic and animalistic portrayals. He's not unlike the tyrannosaurs in the Jurassic Park trilogy in this respect.