Big Monster! The History of Kaiju

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, everybody, and welcome to a thrilling episode of Sneaky Geek. Today we're talking about Kaiju. We're gonna be talking about giant monsters, big monster. And we got with us Jon Hazlett. And we are gonna be talking about just the. The whole span of it all. So let's go through that theme song real quick and go. Okay, so now the theme song's all done. Let's talk about Kaiju. And with us today, we have Jon Hazlett, Jay Sarek, as he's known on the Internet, former bureaucrat of Wookiepedia. But today, we are not talking to him about Star wars. We are talking to him about his other love, Kaiju. And weirdly enough, John, I don't think you and I have ever had an extensive conversation about Kaiju. It's just sort of been that thing that I know, you know, a ton about. [00:00:55] Speaker B: I don't know that we have. I think you may be right about that. [00:00:59] Speaker A: I mean, I love. I love a Godzilla film as much as the next guy. I mean, who doesn't want to go see big monsters on screen? A big screen. Big monsters, big ass screen with a wrestling match? Like, who doesn't want that? But you happen to be so engrossed in this that the nuances of when it is just a big wrestling match versus when it is a political piece versus when it's something more, you. You have all this. This wealth of knowledge regarding that. So why don't you kind of just give us the rundown of what qualifies as a kaiju movie? Like, what is a kaiju? Let's define that. [00:01:32] Speaker C: Yeah, we'll go. Basics. [00:01:34] Speaker B: Yeah, starting basics. You've got kaiju, which is basically a japanese word for strange creature, strange beasts, something like that. You occasionally. Sometimes hear daikaiju, which is giant, strange beast. And it's a term used particularly for movies, basically, beginning with the original 1954 Godzilla movie put out by Toho studios and released in the US in a modified form in 1956 as King of the Monsters. The hallmarks of what makes a movie a kaiju film rather than just like, a giant monster film have kind of moved over time because originally it was very clear you had, you know, it was made in Japan using tsudemation techniques and extensive miniatures and other tokusatsu tricks. They're tokusatsu being basically special effects in Japan. [00:02:27] Speaker A: Got it. [00:02:28] Speaker B: But over time, it sort of created its own genre of giant monsters of extreme durability bordering on invincibility, often fighting, although that's not strictly required. So it's and then once that became a thing, then you started having american studios or other studios in the world doing the same sort of thing. So it felt similar, but wasn't actually those two things. So you wind up with, like, the British did a film called gorgo, which is very much a sort of british kaiju film, even though it wasn't made in Japan. And then later, you've got things in America like Pacific Rim, where they're actually using the word kaiju. And they're definitely giant monsters getting pummeled by giant robots. But it's made in America. And the effects are all modern. [00:03:25] Speaker A: No big suits. [00:03:27] Speaker B: Yeah, no big suits. These are all computer generated effects. [00:03:30] Speaker A: You used a term earlier. Did you say suitmation? [00:03:34] Speaker B: Yes. I'm sorry. That's so it's basically when you have a guy in a. Or a suit actor in a large suit making. Acting in front of or amongst a number of miniatures, sets and props designed to create the illusion of giant size. Got it. And so it's sort of based on, like, claymation or stop motion, those sorts of animation. It's sort of made from that same sort of. From animation we got claymation and suitmation and that sort of gotcha language use. And so those are the techniques used for the classic kaiju films of the fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties. Although the eighties was a little bit of a dry spell where you didn't see as many films. Films you did in earlier years or the. The reboots you saw in the nineties that kind of. Well, the Godzilla films rebooted in the eighties, but didn't really hit that first. That first reboot stride until the nineties. [00:04:42] Speaker A: Interesting. So so does King Kong, the original King Kong. Does that not qualify because of the suit? Or does it currently qualify even though it wouldn't have during the tokusatsu era? [00:04:55] Speaker B: King Kong is kind of an edge case. A because King Kong was such a big inspiration in the creation of Godzilla and the other early giant monster films. But particularly, it was an inspiration for Godzilla. And so it's kind of an edge case. But there you have a monster that a is not the sort of indestructible creature that we see in the later films. It gets shot down with biplanes and it gets killed. It gets killed. Very deadly. [00:05:24] Speaker A: Isn't something that happens without, you know, a nuke or some sort of oxygen. [00:05:29] Speaker B: Bomb or a severe pummeling by another giant monster enough to actually do the monster in until it gets mysteriously brought back in a later sequel for no explained reason. Right as they did as they did. [00:05:42] Speaker C: So what. What got you into the. To the Kaiju genre of movies at. [00:05:47] Speaker B: The age of three? I saw an advertisement for Godzilla on Monster island, as it was called at the time. Typically, you'll find it called Godzilla versus Gigan in the US these days. And I was hooked the moment I saw the giant monster in the commercial. And I was like, mom, we have to watch that. Right on. And as you were three. [00:06:03] Speaker A: Big monster. [00:06:05] Speaker B: Big monster. Exactly. I was not taking. I was immediately hooked as soon as I saw the advertisement and watch the movie when it came on. My recollections of it are spotty and weird, especially since I've watched the movie many times since then. But I remember, like, being super excited by seeing two big monsters swimming together through an ocean, and it's like, not even a major part of the movie, but it's like, that stuck with me. [00:06:33] Speaker A: Yeah. It's so interesting, the scenes that you latch onto when you're a little kid. [00:06:37] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. [00:06:38] Speaker A: You're like, oh, yeah, that movie with the thing and the thing. And you're like, this was not an important part of this film. Why was I so obsessed with this? [00:06:44] Speaker B: Yeah. But, yeah. So that was when I got hooked. And it's something that's never really gone away from me. I've always loved Godzilla and his fellow monsters from the Toho movies. I'm admittedly very sketchy on some of the movies put out by competing studios. I don't know my gamera that well from Toei. I don't know Ultraman that well from Tsubereya. Godzilla is my thing and has been since I was three. [00:07:14] Speaker A: Nice. So I know a fair amount of the political and, like, metaphoric side of the original Gojira from 1954, you said? [00:07:29] Speaker B: Correct. [00:07:31] Speaker A: But I'd love to hear kind of an expansion on that because some of the things that come up in a lot of those conversations are the fact that this was in american occupied Japan, yet there are no american soldiers responding to this threat. They are nowhere to be seen. The fact that it is very much an anti nuclear war film, that kind of thing. Can you talk to that a little bit about this original idea of what Gojira was before it became, you know, smackdown? [00:08:00] Speaker B: The original Godzilla was very much a metaphor for. For the immense destruction caused by atomic bombs. Of course, Japan was the only nation ever to have nuclear weapons used against them in the course of war at both Hiroshima, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But right before they made Godzilla, there was actually a third event when we did the castle Bravo test of the hydrogen bomb at Bikini Atoll, it kicked up a bunch of fallout, a lot more than we were expecting, because the blast worked in certain ways we weren't expecting. It wound up being huge, much bigger than we thought it would. And that cloud of debris floated over a japanese fishing vessel, the lucky dragon number five. And the crew, you know, was just minding their own business when, like, ash started falling on them from the sky, from somewhere. Yeah. And so they. There was this radioactive ash raining down upon their ship, and they gazed upon it in wonder at first, but they all started developing symptoms of radiation poisoning. And so the ship made it back to Japan, but multiple, everyone on board experienced symptoms, and one of them didn't make it through the year. And everyone else had things pretty bad. And I think some of them had, like, cancers later on that weren't, that were possibly explicable by other things, but also possibly related to that original exposure. None of them ultimately had a good experience then, right? [00:09:43] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:09:43] Speaker B: And I think reading about what happened that day is kind of important. Kind of gets lost in our histories. We bombed japanese citizens three different times, not just two. Just was. The third time was a, an accident, and b, a lot fewer people, but it still happened. The Americans dropped a nuclear bomb, and japanese citizens were suffering again from the results still happening. [00:10:09] Speaker A: Yeah. And that's, a. That. That can't have helped japanese american relations at that time. [00:10:16] Speaker B: No. But at the time, Japan was still in occupation, and part of the issue with that was the japanese filmmakers couldn't make any films directly addressing Hiroshimaru Nagasaki at the time. And so Godzilla was kind of a way to tell a little bit of that story without it being direct history and instead being a fantasy, a science fiction. But if you take the monster away, the scenes of destruction in the original Gojira are basically a rolling, slow moving nuclear bomb through Tokyo. [00:10:55] Speaker C: Wow. [00:10:59] Speaker B: And there's scenes of people injured and dying that are a reminder of just how bad that whole situation was. And then you have the main characters in that movie, particularly Doctor Serizawa, is in a similar position to the makers of the atomic bomb in that he has, at his fingertips, developed a power that theoretically can be used for good. But the only application he knows of right now is something destructive. And when people come to him begging for him to use this power in a destructive manner, he resists at first until finally seeing some of the images of the destruction. He realizes that there is a constructive use for this, but it cannot ever be used again. And so for those who haven't seen the film, I won't spoil it. But he finds a way to make sure that it will only be used that one time. The filmmakers wanted to show an ethical scientist with that kind of power making the choice, any choice, to prevent that kind of power being used to ruin lives. Right on. [00:12:16] Speaker A: So the original Godzilla film, very much an anti nuclear war film, very much an anti hydrogen bomb. Weapons of mass destruction. Anti weapons of mass destruction film. There's also that element of american occupation which is apparently, like you said, affecting their ability to even talk about Hiroshima and Nagasaki as an event. [00:12:40] Speaker B: Yeah, they were under wartime occupation, and for obvious reasons, we didn't want them making movies that would agitate the population against the soldiers still in the streets. So I wouldn't say we had draconian rules regarding what the movies and stories they could tell, but there were definitely some in place that were limiting what could be done primarily for the safety of our GIS still. Still on the island. It wasn't until later that we left. [00:13:17] Speaker A: That's interesting, too, because how soon after World War Two were remaking Toro, Toro, Toro, and all of these John Wayne Pearl harbor movies? [00:13:27] Speaker B: Well, Toro, Toro Tora is interesting because that one we actually did as a joint project with Japan. It was after we left, and we actually had a american director directing the scenes occurring in America and a japanese director directing the stuff going on in Japan. And they coordinated more or less effectively in telling this story from both sides with actors and directors from both sides. [00:13:56] Speaker C: That movie was out in 1970s, so it was a few years later, but still, like, pretty close. [00:14:00] Speaker A: That's. That's cool, though, because that's a. I never knew that. Anyway, back to giant monsters, ignoring all that. So then at some point, somebody goes, hey, you know, it'd be cool if we did with this beautiful anti WMD film, moi chandizing and franchising. And what happened? How did Gojuda suddenly become, you know, palling around with Godzooky and fighting Mothra and everything else that happened? [00:14:29] Speaker B: Well, the first sequel for Godzilla was still a pretty somber one in tone. Godzilla raids again. It was the first time he fought another monster, but it was still very much the same sort of feeling of, this is bad and people are suffering. But it was also rather hastily made and didn't wind up as good as the original. So they shelved Godzilla for a few years. Then Toho did a few other giant monster movies. They did Rodan, Mothra, Varane, the unbelievable. But eventually they're like, we need to get back to Godzilla. It's a bread and butter and about that time, an american came to them with the rights to a king Kong movie where basically King Kong would fight a Frankenstein's monster composed of various animal parts to like, cool, thanks for bringing us those rights. We're gonna yoink this Frankenstein thing. We're gonna put Godzilla in hell. [00:15:33] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:15:35] Speaker B: And so you got King Kong versus Godzilla. [00:15:38] Speaker C: Yeah. Classic. [00:15:39] Speaker B: And it is a classic, and it's a very different tone movie. The american version cuts out a lot of the Saruri man comedy elements that are present in the japanese version. It's very much a Sarah man comedy with giant monsters in it. Oh, wow. [00:15:59] Speaker A: What is this word? [00:16:02] Speaker B: I'm probably pronouncing it wrong. Sarariman. It's basically salaryman. [00:16:08] Speaker A: It's Saraman. [00:16:12] Speaker B: It's guys who are on, you know, in that sort of white collar world trying to make it in post war Japan in the summer. [00:16:22] Speaker A: So it's the office with big monsters, basically. [00:16:27] Speaker B: You've even got an incompetent boss meddling in the affairs of the guys, trying to carry out his really dumb instructions. So they got this, this actor to play him, who is basically regarded as the japanese Charlie Chaplin. [00:16:44] Speaker C: Oh, man. [00:16:47] Speaker B: Yeah. And so he's running around interfering in the attempts of our heroes to, first they send him out to catch this giant ape monster for use in marketing of his pharmaceuticals company. And then he. [00:17:10] Speaker C: That's where that trope came from. [00:17:13] Speaker B: And then he goes out there and starts meddling in their affairs. And King Kong, Michael Scott wakes up and gets loose. And then he decides that the best thing for the marketing is the fact that this monster could fight Godzilla. And wouldn't that be great for publicity? All of it's about publicity and it's production value. And so much of it could carry over to how ridiculous advertising still is 60 years later. And that was sort of a turning point for the Godzilla films and more broadly, Kaiju films, where they. The tone changed enough that they sort of had room to start playing around with, with it being more than just metaphor for the destruction of war. [00:18:05] Speaker A: Interesting. [00:18:07] Speaker B: And so after they did King Kong, they're like, well, this throwing up Godzilla against another popular monster seemed to go, well, we already used King Kong, but we've got a couple monsters that we made a few years back. Let's try Mothra. So the next one was Mothra versus Godzilla. [00:18:23] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:18:25] Speaker B: And that one was a very pointed take at, again, commercialism. Your villains are capitalists who are basically buying Mothra's egg after it washes ashore in Japan. And Mothra's got these two telepathic six inch, the twins small beauties, the twins that advocate on her behalf. And when our heroes show up around these capitalists with them, they're like, hey, can we buy them too? They're like, just like, yeah, a little casual slavery. You don't mind? Yeah, they, they really play up just how corrupting money is. And then you watch the, the villains. One of them kind of is in charge of the other and is robbing his subordinate just as much as the subordinate is robbing the people who originally found the egg. Basically, everyone involved in the commercial transactions going on are bad people getting what they deserve in the end. And also, there's giants monsters fighting. [00:19:38] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:19:39] Speaker B: But you also, you also take a visit to Mothra's home, infant island, and it's a wasteland. And again, the islanders don't want Mothra to help because of just how bad off their island is as a result of our use of nuclear weapons in bringing it back around vicinity. [00:20:05] Speaker A: Interesting. [00:20:05] Speaker B: That's cool. That that comes back after our heroes make a plea on the basis of the brotherhood of all humanity. Mothra herself is like, yeah, I'll do this. Even though it may. It may cost me, it's worth it for the benefit of the brotherhood of all humanity, basically. So Mothra rises above even the other humans she's around and winds up being the ethical core of both that movie and the one that follows Ghidra, the three headed monster, which is where we first get King Ghidra. [00:20:49] Speaker A: Can we talk about why we call Ghidra Ghidra and not Ghidorah when that happens? Yes, because I've heard it both ways. [00:20:58] Speaker B: As I understand in the dub of. Well, not, as I understand in the dub of Godzilla versus King Ghidorah. They really hit that o hard. Ghidorah. Ghidorah. Exactly. My listening to the original audio of at least how he's pronounced in the show era, the o is very, very glided. [00:21:28] Speaker A: Gira Gidra. [00:21:29] Speaker B: It's not just, it's not gone. There's definitely kind of a third syllable there in the middle. [00:21:33] Speaker A: I mean, it's a d and then a flapped r. Like, you gotta put something between it, right? Ghidorah. [00:21:40] Speaker B: But in, like, the english version of Ghidorah, it's Ghidra. G h I D R A H. They just drop it entirely. The correct answer is somewhere between the two. I sometimes slip a bit more towards the first or towards the second, depending on who I'm talking with. And, yeah, it's one of those pronunciation things that just kind of varies. [00:22:08] Speaker A: Yeah, I think twilek. [00:22:09] Speaker B: Twilek no one. [00:22:10] Speaker A: I'll say han. Han. I think Wu Tang clan. I'm not entirely sure, but I think they say key. Dr. No, I think it was run the jewels. Run the jewels mentioned King Ghidra in a song I was listening to the other day, and I was like, wait a minute, I know who King Ghidra is. And then I realized, oh, it's Ghidorah. But then, you know, obviously Ghidorah getting real bad. But I mean, the dubs, I feel like, are a whole different subject of this. But, like, that's how I was originally introduced to this was KTLA would do a marathon on, like, channel eleven when I was sitting at home. And sometimes, like, sometimes they would do all of the planet of the apes. Yeah. Sometimes they would do every godzilla movie and Sci-Fi channel. But this is before the Sci-Fi channel even existed, you know, because Sci-Fi channel was put together when we were, like, nine or ten, I think, maybe. But, like, channel 45 Sci-Fi channel. But unless, of course, you had cox cable and we're living in another city. The, the KTLA one was really funny because their commercial bumpers were all clips from the Godzilla movies spanning the entire marathon, and it was tons of them because it would be like a full day of this marathon because I was curious. [00:23:29] Speaker C: Sci-Fi channel launched September 24, 1992. [00:23:33] Speaker A: We were five. Yeah, six. [00:23:35] Speaker B: Six. [00:23:36] Speaker C: I was five. [00:23:37] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:23:37] Speaker B: But you probably didn't have it until it got to more markets. [00:23:41] Speaker C: Yeah, probably not. I'm not going that far into it, but, yeah, yeah. [00:23:45] Speaker A: Anyway, their marketing or their commercial bumpers were all clips of civilians talking. [00:23:52] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:23:52] Speaker A: And then they would just overdub them because all of the dubs were so terribly done. The localization was so horrendous that that's where that trope of, like, the bad japanese movie dub comes from. And unfortunately, it also led to, you know, this sort of weird continuing trope that was not necessarily as kind to japanese people as it should have ever been. But there was this. One of the reasons people really enjoyed watching Godzilla dubs was because the dubs were terrible. [00:24:22] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:24:23] Speaker A: And the audio that mean the sentences might have been word for word translations, it didn't matter. They never matched mouths ever. [00:24:33] Speaker C: And it was just extra hammed up. [00:24:35] Speaker A: Yeah. And then sometimes you'd get really bad voice acting where there are doing a little bit of a Charlie Chan Mickey Rooney situation where you don't, you know, you don't want that kind of thing happening. [00:24:45] Speaker B: Right. [00:24:46] Speaker A: But there's, there's, there was certainly a certain pastiche kind of kitschiness to jap like old japanese dubs of these movies. And I feel like there's probably newer dubs now or fan dubs that have done it a little bit more justice. But you have a bunch of these on VHS, don't you? [00:25:08] Speaker B: I have all of the Showa era, Heisei era, and one or two from the millennium era on VHS. [00:25:18] Speaker C: Right on. Well, that's something we can go into, is just the different eras. [00:25:24] Speaker B: Yes. So in Japan, time is traditionally measured in the reigns of the emperors. So the show emperor, emperor, Emperor Hirohito reigned from prior to World War two all the way up until 1989, 88, 89, somewhere in there. And so technically that's all showa era. But the original series of Godzilla movies went from 1954 to 1975 and then in 1984 for the 30th anniversary in order to kind of bring back some of the horror element that had kind of been lost as Godzilla became more and more sort of a kid friendly action science fiction. When Godzookee showed up, yeah, Hanna Barbera definitely threw a thing or two in there. [00:26:24] Speaker A: That was another big thing for me was the Godzooki on Cartoon network, Godzilla. Godzilla and Godzooky. Godzilla flying or Godzooky flying around or doing weird antics. But yeah, Hanna Barbera's take on Godzilla was its own thing. Extra little brand that most people, Marvel comics take on. [00:26:48] Speaker B: Godzilla was definitely its own thing. But I. Yeah, so 1984, they did this reboot to kind of bring Godzilla back to being a serious, threatening presence. And then they did a whole nother series of movies in that continuity, having ignored everything but the original Godzilla film for it. And since most of those movies happened after the death of Hirohito and the ascension of Akihito, they're called the Heisei series. Now here's where things get confusing. Akihito stayed in power after they did their next reboot. So, dang it, why aren't you changing. [00:27:40] Speaker A: Governments with changing Godzilla themes? Right. [00:27:42] Speaker C: That makes the most sense. [00:27:44] Speaker B: In 1998, America tried a Godzilla movie and it didn't go that well. And so well for me. [00:27:52] Speaker A: And then, yeah, as an adult, I still love it. [00:27:55] Speaker C: I think I saw it like three or four times in the theater. [00:27:58] Speaker B: I think it's an okay popcorn film about a giant monster in New York. It's not very good as a Godzilla movie. It's just not a Godzilla movie. [00:28:12] Speaker C: But that soundtrack was amazing. [00:28:14] Speaker B: Soundtrack was solid. They did, they did do a couple cool things in there. The roar was on point, but God, there were so many things wrong with that movie. It was just. [00:28:29] Speaker A: There's a part of me that wants to say, that's a whole nother podcast, but there's another part of me that wants to go, okay, why? Because I love this movie so much. [00:28:38] Speaker B: Okay. The short version is, the plot is kind of dumb. Just start there. The actors were directed poorly. I'm not going to put the blame on them because I think I've seen all of them. [00:28:57] Speaker C: They're great actors, all of them. [00:29:01] Speaker B: The comic elements don't land where they're supposed to. A large number of plot elements are basically direct recycling of elements from Jurassic park. The CGI, particularly in the underwater scenes, is inferior to contemporary CGI of other things. It's not even good for its own era. [00:29:29] Speaker C: I remember that. [00:29:30] Speaker A: And I assume the Jurassic park thing is specifically related to the babies. [00:29:36] Speaker B: Yeah. There's first you have the big thing that is flipping over cars and being a danger to our heroes by being big and capable of swallowing them whole. And then you have a bunch of little, roughly human sized things running around being a threat through you, through the corridors of a building. So as far as the structure goes, it's very much Jurassic park. Similar in that respect to Jurassic park. That's, that's the express version. If we're doing another podcast, I'll have to, I'll have to rewatch it to remember all the things I don't like. Right. [00:30:12] Speaker C: I haven't seen it in years, so, like, I'm down for a rewatch anyways. [00:30:15] Speaker B: But, yeah, but yeah, it's a, it has its, its misses. We'll just say that. So after that happens, and there was pretty much universal critical disdain for what happened, both from like legitimate film critic critics and from, I mean, they literally. [00:30:35] Speaker A: Kill off Cisco and Ebert. Or Ebert. Roper. No, I think was Cisco. [00:30:39] Speaker B: And, you know, they don't kill them off. They break them up. [00:30:43] Speaker A: That's right. They break them up and they like, ruin. I don't know. Lots of bad, dumb things happen because of Siskel and Ebert in that movie. For those. [00:30:52] Speaker B: To add one more thing to problems, the guys put in xps for Siskel and Ebert specifically to make fun of critics who didn't like their movies because their movies weren't that great. [00:31:05] Speaker A: Yeah, but yeah, they put in characters who directly looked like Siskel and Ebert in order to make fun of Siskel and Ebert. [00:31:14] Speaker B: Named, they're Ebert and Gene. There was no way around thinking about who those characters. [00:31:20] Speaker A: Yeah, this was a direct attack. [00:31:21] Speaker C: Take that, man. [00:31:23] Speaker B: Yeah, those almost never go well. Don't write your critics into your fiction. Yes. You're a lot better storyteller than, than they were. [00:31:36] Speaker A: So anyway, so the rewire era or the millennium era? [00:31:41] Speaker B: Millennium era. Right. Because we're still in the Heisei era as far as the emperor goes. So the first movie that comes out is in the US was called Godzilla 2000, and it's. The movies following that one are kind of almost anthology pieces in terms of each one ignores any continuity from the others except for a set of two near the end that are once a direct sequel to the other. But they specifically ignore, like the show is the show of movies, how to pass what passed for continuity. There's definitely big gaps in logic and continuity between them, but you can at least follow a reasonable story between them. The Heisei movies worked a lot harder to maintain continuity where there's direct callbacks, thing that happened before plot elements, and only makes sense if you're at least casually aware of the previous movies in the series. They completely flipped the script on that for the millennium movies, where each one, again, except for two of them that are, one's a direct sequel to the other, they don't require having watched any of the previous Godzilla movies, and none of them make sense in that context. Got it. And so in 2004, that series comes to an end and there's a pause, basically, until 2014 when America decides to try again. And this time mostly gets it right with Gareth Edwards. 2014 Godzilla I love, oh, so good. [00:33:15] Speaker A: It got a lot of flack for taking out one of the main characters a little soon, but I feel like that's very much a, you went in with an expectation situation. [00:33:24] Speaker B: It is. [00:33:25] Speaker A: And not necessarily a fully valid criticism had they not seen the trailer. But like that moment in the trailer when they're doing the helo jump and it's that, oh, and then the lightning strikes and you see it behind silhouette. [00:33:38] Speaker B: And that scene is, that scene is just fantastic. Even in the context of the movie. It doesn't lose anything there. Right. My issues with that movie are basically, I think it could have been paced a little bit better. I think there are places that drag, and I think that Aaron Taylor Johnson, I don't know whether to blame the writer, the director, or the actor on this one, but his character did not have enough character to carry the movie after the character we, you're discussing moved out. [00:34:11] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:34:11] Speaker B: Moved on. Yeah. I feel that he was a little bit milquetoast and bland. [00:34:19] Speaker A: Yeah. And they should have leaned on Wayne a little bit more is what they should have. Wayne from letter Kinney. Yeah. Is also in that movie, but he doesn't really have a. [00:34:28] Speaker C: He's one of the. He's one of the jumpers. [00:34:30] Speaker A: Yeah. He's like one of the soldiers. Yeah. [00:34:31] Speaker B: Oh, okay. [00:34:32] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. But, yeah, we just love him. [00:34:37] Speaker B: That's fair. I think there definitely could have been. Yeah. But I don't want to detract from that movie too much. It really did a very wonderful job of capturing the apocalyptic nature of the. [00:34:53] Speaker A: Kaiju, which is what I don't really love about the first Godzilla versus Kong. In this era of american, you know, legend, legendary pictures stuff. Is it, even though there's lots of destruction, we're not seeing the suffering of the people. And it's not like I am some sadist that really wants them all hurting. But, like, if you're going to tear through Hong Kong, I should be seeing these people running, running, hurting, being, caring for each other. Show me humanity, either making okay by helping each other or hurting. And so that I can understand and feel empathy. But don't pretend that it's not affecting them. And don't pretend. Don't just like. But the big monsters are fighting in neon. I don't. I don't care. Like, I want. I mean, don't. Wrong. I want the big monsters to fight. But part of the appeal of the big monster is that it is destructive. And if it's only destructive of a bunch of metal beams. [00:35:57] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:35:58] Speaker B: There's no. [00:35:59] Speaker A: Where's. Yeah, there's not. I need. [00:36:01] Speaker B: There are no stakes. But there's a break in the suspension of disbelief because these are cities. [00:36:06] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:36:07] Speaker B: They aren't empty places filled with neon. There are people there. [00:36:10] Speaker A: Yeah. That's a really good point. Yeah. It does kind of break the. The suspension of disbelief. [00:36:14] Speaker C: Yeah. And not to get too much into it because Bryce hasn't seen it, but I think they did that really well with Godzilla minus one. [00:36:21] Speaker B: That movie is absolutely fantastic. Incredible job telling a human story about. They do an incredible story job telling a story about humans in a world being affected by a giant monster instead of telling. I mean, the giant monster is still critical and central and absolutely important to the plot, but it's a story about people. [00:36:49] Speaker C: Yeah. And the stories were amazing. [00:36:51] Speaker B: I think the american Godzilla movies have really kind of lost sight of that in a way that. That even when you look back at. At the. The showa era Godzilla movies that aren't as well received, I mean, like Godzilla versus Megalon for instance is one that's very derided. But you've still got a plot about humans preventing seatopian invaders, or not invaders, but agents from taking control of a robot that can sway the course of the battle one way or the other. And they're goofy, but they still feel like they have heart. And I feel like there's a lot of that kind of missing from. From the american Godzilla monsterverse, particularly king of the monsters. I was the character we're supposed to care for most there a. He's spouting a bunch of junk science that. I mean, junk science is kind of central to Godzilla movies, but it's. He's both unlikeable and spouting junk science. And so he's not a good character either. Either be someone I care about or be right. If you can't do either of those things, don't be my movie. [00:38:20] Speaker C: Yeah. And so I don't know if you've made it around to monarch. I think last time we talked, you were just about to get to. [00:38:29] Speaker B: It was. And then circumstances meant I didn't. [00:38:35] Speaker C: Yeah, but they. [00:38:35] Speaker B: So I'm. [00:38:36] Speaker C: They do a really good job there. Cuz that mood that show was set in between Godzilla and Godzilla, king of monsters. [00:38:44] Speaker B: Right. [00:38:45] Speaker C: And it gets more into that human aspect of like, oh, no, these big monsters are affecting humans in a negative way. Some, like one of. One of the main characters has PTSD, and so you see her dealing with that along with a bunch of other stuff, and it's. [00:39:02] Speaker A: Yeah, because she was in San Francisco. [00:39:05] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:39:06] Speaker B: And being in San Francisco in 2014 in that universe is definitely a PTSD. [00:39:11] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:39:12] Speaker B: Environment. [00:39:13] Speaker C: But the story is really good. Yeah. Bryce, you made it. [00:39:15] Speaker A: I made it about three episodes in. How much was tape? Up to four, but I was kind of in and out of the room around. [00:39:19] Speaker C: Yeah, it was late night. Yeah. [00:39:21] Speaker A: Something that I'm noticing here that you're talking about is something that I've been really appreciating about the Marvel universe as of late, and that is that once you get to a certain point in your franchise, you have a lot of room to play with the genre. And so, like, you've. Now, you know, we get Gojira, we get Gogeta rides again, rides again, raids again. Raids again. Gogeta rides again. Yeah, Gojira raids again. And then you have, you know, Mothra and these other guys, and somewhere around film six, they're like, hey, we can make a comedy. Hey, we can make this. This. So, like, WandaVision, is this, like, critique or this, like, it's a piece on both trauma and grief as well as on sitcom tropes. And Loki is this mystery show, and Falcon Winter Soldier is this other, you know, cloak and dagger kind of almost political, political intrigue, espionage kind of show. And so I noticed that with monarch, like, we were getting kind of a family drama that leads into the, you know, by the end, by the third act. The one thing that seems to be very common in american media is by the third act, they go, listen, we're still part of this franchise, so we're still gonna land back in. This is a big monster movie. But like, in film two, Skull Island, Legendary is like, yeah, we're gonna do apocalypse now with King Kong. [00:40:46] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:40:46] Speaker A: And it's so good. [00:40:49] Speaker C: So good. [00:40:49] Speaker B: Yeah, it is. In my opinion, despite being a huge Godzilla fan, it is the best monsterverse movie. [00:40:55] Speaker A: I absolutely agree. [00:40:56] Speaker C: And at the time, we didn't know they were that connected. We thought there'd be little sprinkles here and there. [00:41:01] Speaker A: Yeah. Because it was in the sixties, etc. [00:41:04] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:41:04] Speaker A: But that, that film has so much heart. And all the stuff with John C. Reilly is great. There's good comedy moments. There's. You're, you're the biggest villain in that film is Samuel L. Jackson. [00:41:15] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. [00:41:16] Speaker A: And that, to me, that we can't let go of the war thing was also a really, really nice thing to see at a time in America where we were having a similar conversation about the Middle east. Not to get too far into the weeds there, but I feel like when the mo, my problem with Godzilla versus Kong also comes back to, you were trying to go strictly back to formula and you have to be willing to play with that formula a little bit. And you can't go so much so that you forget some of the other elements that may, that brought in that human side. And from what I understand about Godzilla minus one, which is, of course, a japanese film, and, you know, not, not part of the legendary story, but everybody who's talked about that film is you take Godzilla out of this movie and you make it any other disaster, it is still an incredible, still works. But when you have Godzilla, holy shit. [00:42:13] Speaker C: Yo. Yeah. [00:42:13] Speaker A: And like two people literally said the words, but when Godzilla is there, holy shit. [00:42:19] Speaker B: Well, I think, I think that's not fair to the value of Godzilla in that movie because I think the end of that movie doesn't work if you don't have both the people and Godzilla involved in it. [00:42:36] Speaker A: Thank you for not, for telling this. [00:42:39] Speaker B: If you throw in any under the disaster, it has to be a disaster that humans can theoretically confront in a manner that can prevent it. But also, I think there's a very important theme in the movie. Early on, the main character makes a decision that everyone else in the movie derides him for, and it weighs on him. [00:43:05] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:43:06] Speaker B: And by the end of the movie, his entire world, all the people around him are arguing for him not to make the same decision that. Arguing for him to make the same decision, even though he's thinking. [00:43:21] Speaker C: I should see what you're saying. Yep. Yep. [00:43:23] Speaker A: Interesting. Okay. [00:43:25] Speaker B: And I think there's a very important moral about the importance of human life that's told in that. And I don't think you can tell that without having a very contrived disaster if it's not Godzilla. [00:43:41] Speaker C: True. I think I see what you're saying, and I absolutely agree. [00:43:44] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:43:44] Speaker C: I think without going into spoilers. [00:43:45] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:43:46] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:43:46] Speaker A: I think this brings about a really good point. And that is that for a Godzilla movie, for a kaiju movie to work, you have to have a film that is on its own, minus the monster. Like, really good. But that it has to have. But the monster does, in fact, have to be there for it to fully come together because, like, if you could just easily take a monster out of a film, why is the monster there? Right. If you. If he's actually not necessary, then he should be removed. And with the. The disaster of, you know, of San Francisco in 2014, like, this is happening because this gigantic, like, radiation is coming through and just tearing its way through this city slowly, much in the same way that it does in the original Gojira in 1954, is that you're effectively watching this slow apocalypse just wave through this entire city and everyone's like, what can we do? We have to be able to stop this. But instead of it being in a matter of moments, it's over the course of days. So I think on some level, it makes sense. Like, if once this becomes a film where it's like it can. It's just one or just the other, it doesn't quite work as well. Like, hence taking all the people out of the, despite having, like, five different storylines going on in Godzilla versus Kong about humans. Yeah, you take those out and the movie is still a big monster fight. And, yeah, yeah, there's the little stuff with, like, Mechagodzilla at the end that, you know, based on psychic waves from a skull, which is even worse science than King of monsters has. But, like, you take the humans out of that movie and you just have monsters fighting. And that's still the most interesting part of the movie. And I don't like that part of the movie because that part of the movie neglects the humans. Whereas if you take Godzilla out of any of the really, really good Godzilla movies, 2014 Godzilla, this Godzilla versus or minus one, etcetera, you take that element out and if that, and it's, and it does not make sense. So you have to have both elements and they have to both work as their own films, but they have to at some point become interlocked. [00:46:14] Speaker B: Right? [00:46:15] Speaker A: Does that make sense? [00:46:16] Speaker B: It does. And I think I'll go back to my favorite Godzilla movie I've already mentioned. It is Ghidra, the three headed monster. And that movie is a weird, there's an entire human story about a cop and his reporter sister both going after a woman who is both a, who is a princess from a foreign country who is in a plane crash, hammed as amnesia and is now a prophetess. And they're both trying to get her. [00:46:50] Speaker A: Actually, I think I've seen this one. [00:46:52] Speaker B: I'm sure you have. They're both trying to find her at first, and when they find her, when one of them finds her, they eventually work it out and then they take her to see a doctor and the doctor isn't able to break her amnesia and that the assassins that blew up the plane originally are still following her and they're dealing with the assassins. And meanwhile, there's a whole bunch of giant monster stuff going on. And in the end, the giant monster stuff winds up being relevant to the resolution of the assassin side of the plot. And did I mention that Mothra's two fairies are also hanging out with the humans? It's a if anytime I try to explain it, it's wacky and probably anytime anyone but me watches it, it's wacky, but it's great. The human story is, could almost be pulled out and work on its own, but it ties into the monster story in a couple of points in very interesting ways. But all of the humans in it are a kick. The reporter in 1960s Japan is still a woman with incredible agency and making important decisions throughout the story that impact things. The prophetess is both a leader and directly driving events regarding the monster situation, or at least driving the human knowledge of what's going on with the monster situation. The geologist is a fun sciency character. The cop is always having little tiffs with his sister about various things you care about the humans in it, the assassins all chew the scenery in the most delightful ways. So coming back to that, I feel like the human story in the later monsterverse movies. As much as I want to care about, say, Millie, Bobby Brown's character in Godzilla versus Kong, I don't. Playing along with a conspiracy theorist who drinks, who washes himself in bleach is kind of interesting. They were kind onto something there, but I feel like they didn't really make it gel. The one thing I do kind of like about Godzilla versus Kong, but I think didn't work, and it doesn't work in exactly the ways that you're claiming it is, is that they were like, we've got a monster fight, and we have a monster that we have both that can be almost a human. Let's try and focus on him as the main character and let the humans ride around in the backseat to what's going on. And so I think they tried to be like, here's Kong right from the very beginning. We're giving him the same sort of opening that you see in Shrek. He's your main character. [00:49:36] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. He scratches his butt like that. [00:49:38] Speaker C: That was the one thing that. Because I rewatched it a couple weeks ago, and, like, I remember not loving this movie, and I. I don't remember why because I only saw it the one time in the theater, and, like, in the first couple minutes, I'm like, oh, that. Yeah, that sets it up. [00:49:51] Speaker A: Like, that's a really. Yeah, that's a good analogy. But it is very similar to the intro and Shrek. We should recut that with some all star over it. [00:50:02] Speaker B: Well, they. They do a pop song. Granted, it's seventies pop song, because they're still keeping with that whole classic rock theme for. But that also is part of the way it's similar to Shrek is that you've got this. This song that you recognize playing over the montage of his morning's events. And I'm glad they tried that. I've always kind of wondered what it would be like if you actually tried to treat a kaiju as a main human character. And it had its flaws, very big flaws. [00:50:41] Speaker C: Some things worked and a lot of things didn't. [00:50:43] Speaker B: But, you know. Yeah, I mean, I like Godzilla versus Kong, plot wise, better than I liked Godzilla, king of the monsters. I. As much as I love some of the scenery in that movie and some of the story beats, I don't think it worked as well as it should have. [00:51:07] Speaker A: Got it. And then, yeah, I think my love of Ghidra is, and especially my love of Rodin is part of why I think I gave that movie a little bit more of a pass. But Godzilla, king of the monsters, also had that stupid line where she's about to get crushed, and she's like, long live the king. I'm like, don't give her a one liner. Let her just go. Like, she's already completely unforgivable as a character. [00:51:38] Speaker B: Right? [00:51:38] Speaker A: Like, she's made so many. Like, as much as the dad was pretty unlikable, at least he played somebody who's hurting because he got utterly betrayed by this terrible other character. Don't give her some badass moment. Like, she's doing something great. This is her fault. [00:51:53] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:51:54] Speaker A: Like, she's the one who was like, yeah, Tywin Lannister. Let's be eco terrorists. [00:51:57] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. No, 100% there with you, you know? Yeah. [00:52:05] Speaker A: Did you see. [00:52:07] Speaker B: Good. [00:52:08] Speaker A: I was gonna move on to a different Godzilla. Did you see the Godzilla Netflix anime, Godzilla Planet of the Monsters and those other. They had, like, a big. [00:52:18] Speaker B: I unfortunately have not seen yet. I have seen. I have watched Godzilla. Singular point. [00:52:23] Speaker A: Okay. I have not seen that one. [00:52:27] Speaker B: I liked it. All right. It's a very, very weird series. It does some interesting things with time and artificial intelligence, as does the other one. Okay. So, yeah, it's worth watching. At some point, does some really odd things with the mythos. Like, instead of a Rodan, there's a lot of Rodan's, and they're generally pretty small. [00:52:58] Speaker A: Yeah. The other one was like, they're in space because they have to wait for Earth. They have to go find some other place to live, because Godzilla's radiation has officially become too much. [00:53:09] Speaker B: Right. [00:53:09] Speaker A: Like, a fight went just too much. A fight went too far. Too far. And now the planet is basically unlivable. And so they've been off planet, like, living on a station, hoping to find someplace to go for. I mean, it's like, a thousand years into the future or something like that. And I don't. I hope that's not a spoiler, but, like, they're in space. They can't go back because of things that happened with Godzilla. And it's very much a human story, but it's so. It's, again, so tied into a very Godzilla specific thing that it ends up being really interesting. And then eventually, like, you know, we get back to Earth, and then there's, like, another Godzilla that is, like, the grandchild of Godzilla or something like that. Some very. [00:53:52] Speaker C: I totally forgot they did those. [00:53:54] Speaker A: I watched them, I think, during the pandemic. [00:53:56] Speaker C: I remember you telling me about it. [00:53:57] Speaker A: They were really dark. Like, my God, I was not prepared for that, especially, you know, I think we have what was going on in legendary and everything. I know about, you know, big monster smackdown from marathons that I watched in the nineties. Right. I'm like, okay, cool, new Godzilla. I know that, like, godzilla 2000 happened and I know that Shin Godzilla. I don't think Shin Godzilla had happened. [00:54:22] Speaker B: Yet, but I was just about to ask if you've seen that one. [00:54:26] Speaker A: I have not seen Shin Godzilla, but I know that I think the one where he kicks Zilla's ass. [00:54:32] Speaker B: Final wars. [00:54:33] Speaker A: Yeah, final wars. [00:54:34] Speaker B: I think final wars wrapped up the millennium series. [00:54:36] Speaker C: Oh, that's funny. [00:54:37] Speaker A: Yeah, but yeah. Cause Zilla shows up and he, like, immediately kills him. [00:54:42] Speaker C: Right, I did hear about that. So Zilla is the 1998 us version of Godzilla. That's that monster. [00:54:49] Speaker A: Zilla is who wraps around my cup in my cup holder that I got from taco Bell slash pizza hut slash KFC. [00:54:57] Speaker B: KFC yum brands presents. [00:55:02] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. That's another thing about that 98 movie is that there's so much product placement that's. [00:55:09] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:55:09] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yeah. And so much more and vice versa. He was in every commercial. I mean, there's the taco Bell dog trying to catch him in a box. Uh oh. [00:55:18] Speaker A: I'm gonna need a bigger box. [00:55:19] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:55:22] Speaker A: Here, zilla. Zila. Zila. Lizard, lizard, lizard. Yeah. Here, lizard, lizard, lizard. Uh oh, the taco bell chihuahua. [00:55:30] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:55:31] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh. Okay, so that's a lot of godzilla talk. You said you were not really super familiar with other kaiju, but just that you're not necessarily watching them all. But what's with the turtle that has jetpacks? [00:55:46] Speaker B: Gamera. [00:55:48] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. [00:55:48] Speaker B: Gamera was Toei studios answer to Godzilla. By the time it was made, Godzilla was already starting to move into that sort of kid friendly space. And so the camera movies tend to be a lot more kid centric than even the kiddiest Godzilla movie, at least. [00:56:12] Speaker A: Yeah, the children saved the day in the Gamera movie I watched the other day. It was on Midnight Pulp, one of the many free channels that I watch on my Samsung TV all the time. Samsung Spot sponsor our podcast, please. Midnight Pulp had it on, and I was like, oh, big monster movie. We're supposed to be recording with John. So I texted John almost immediately to be like, so I'm watching this turtle thing. And like, basically the children are the one who have the answers. It's very studio Ghibli in that regard, where it's like, you need to stop underestimating the wisdom of children. [00:56:45] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. [00:56:46] Speaker A: But all of the city is evacuating and kid, like, a group of kids basically relay races to get to Gamera so that he can help him. And then Gamera kicks its ass by like, bringing in its legs and his legs shoot out jets and it doesn't make sense. He spins around in circles in like, ways that the Ninja Turtles did in Ninja Turtles two. [00:57:08] Speaker C: Oh, so it totally works. [00:57:09] Speaker A: But they're jets fair. Imagine he pulls it all in and just spins in a circle as a shell with rockets coming out of it like. Like fire blasting on the sides. It's so weird. [00:57:22] Speaker C: Oh, man. [00:57:23] Speaker A: Anyway, so what's the deal with Gamera? What's up with that? [00:57:26] Speaker B: Well, yeah, I mean, I think you got a pretty good grasp of how those movies tended to go. What's interesting is they did a reboot in the nineties of his movies, just like they just like Godzilla did, only they wound up, like, going hard and gritty and apparently very good. [00:57:47] Speaker A: Oh, really? The gritty reboot of the nineties? [00:57:50] Speaker B: Yeah, so that's. I've been meaning to try to marathon Gamera at some point, but I'm still on my way through a rewatch of the original Godzilla movies with my girlfriend lately, so we're making our way through those. At some point I'll come back and catch up on camera and see exactly what everyone was talking about there. And then we could. [00:58:16] Speaker C: By that time, hopefully, Godzilla minus one is we can have a physical copy or a streaming copy, and then we can just do big old, big old talk on that. [00:58:24] Speaker A: Yeah, I'd love to revisit this again. [00:58:26] Speaker B: That's a movie that Bryce definitely has to watch. [00:58:29] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm so. I was so bummed that I didn't get to go see it so. In the first place. [00:58:35] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. And so doing just some little minor research, it got pulled early because Godzilla versus Kong two was coming out and they didn't want the two competing, basically, except Godzilla minus one was still making a shit ton of money. But they want to get this new one. [00:58:54] Speaker A: I wager it'll come back to theaters relatively soon, though, because. [00:58:57] Speaker C: I hope so. [00:58:57] Speaker A: We got. I mean. Cause it was an Oscar film. At the very least they might do some special showings. [00:59:02] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:59:02] Speaker A: Especially when there's not IMAX movies going on. [00:59:05] Speaker C: Yeah, throw back in. [00:59:06] Speaker B: Right. So hopefully. [00:59:09] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:59:10] Speaker B: To see that film again. [00:59:11] Speaker C: Yeah. It's supposed come out in Japan. Physical copy, I think, may 1. [00:59:16] Speaker A: Oh, wow. [00:59:16] Speaker B: Right. [00:59:17] Speaker C: So we'll see what happens, but yeah, hopefully it's sooner than later, cuz I want to get. Oh, that's. That's the movie I want to get a physical copy of because that was so good. [00:59:26] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:59:27] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:59:27] Speaker A: Is the Cloverfield monster a kaiju? [00:59:30] Speaker B: I would argue yes. I mean, it's been forever since I saw Cloverfield, so my memory of it is pretty bummy. [00:59:38] Speaker A: It's a big giant monster falls from space. [00:59:41] Speaker B: Big giant monster falls from space. The whole film is focused on action. Can't do much. So I would say probably yes on that one. But I also, in general, try not to worry too much about whether something like there's only so long you can go on wondering whether or not a hot dog's a sandwich before you get hungry and you want to just eat the hot dog. I would worry a lot less about whether a movie is a kaiju movie and a lot more about whether it's a movie you want to go see. Yeah. [01:00:16] Speaker C: Hell yeah. [01:00:17] Speaker A: Yeah. That's fair. That's fair. These are just the burning questions that I'm like, John's probably got an opinion on that and I'll just trust his. [01:00:28] Speaker B: So yeah, Cloverfield is first and foremost a cause of motion sickness. But it is also that it's probably a Kaiju movie. [01:00:38] Speaker C: Yeah, right. [01:00:40] Speaker A: You said that you mentioned a third studio in the sixties that wasn't Gamera, Tsubureya Productions. [01:00:48] Speaker B: So Eiji Tsubereya was the creator of the effects from the original Godzilla film and all of the Godzilla films up until right around his death in 69. I think. I think Godzilla returns might have been his last one that he was criticized. And he had basically for a movie or two before that had handed off most of the work to his assistant director because of his failing health and his divided attention because he'd started his own tv studio, Tsuburea Productions, and created Ultraman. [01:01:24] Speaker A: Ah. [01:01:25] Speaker B: Which is one of, I mean, Ultraman's one of the biggest franchises to come out of that era too. Just had a nice big shin Ultraman movie of its own. Oh, that's right. So, and that. It's kind of interesting how some of the interplay between Tsubereya and Toho kind of affected certain elements of the Godzilla movies and Vice and Ultraman because there are several monsters from Ultraman that are redressed suits used from Godzilla movies. [01:02:04] Speaker A: Oh, wow. [01:02:06] Speaker B: And then there are in the movie destroy all monsters. If my understanding of the story is true, one of the monsters in destroy all monsters, which is basically this huge all out thing where most of the monsters that Toho had created up until that point in franchises that up until that point hadn't even been connected to Godzilla even were all brought together in one big movie for this big shebang of monster action. And one of them is Baragon, which was the villain in Frankenstein conquers the world, or Frankenstein versus Baragon. And in one scene, he's supposed to be digging up under the ground and destroying the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. But the suit wasn't available. It's available else other points in the movie, but apparently for that shooting day, it wasn't available. And my understanding is, because it was being used in an ultraman that Subaru had gotten permission to use it for, but it was unavailable for filming that day. So they had the Gorosaurus suit instead. And Gorosaurus, which is basically a big T rex for some reason, burrowing up underground and destroying the arc of Triomphe. So, yeah, it was a weird thing where they were, in some cases, they were directly competing studios because later on, Toho went and did its own similar superhero series, zone fighter. But they were still on good terms and, like, borrowing suits and sharing time on the. Between the Toho and Tsubereya productions. [01:03:59] Speaker A: Oh, the suits wearing. Yeah. That is crazy. That's so fun. That's such a strange way to affect each other too. Like, oh, sometimes these weird things happen in the movie. And it is literally because there's only one suit and we have limited resources. And these, they can't just make another one. They can't just, you know, make that. [01:04:17] Speaker C: There's not even a backup. [01:04:18] Speaker A: Like, it's like, why Henry Cavill has weird lips in half of Justice League. [01:04:25] Speaker B: There's another monster, Varan, where the suit was, I guess, totally in terrible shape by that point. But they still had a miniature that they used for some of his scenes. And so they included it in the background in a couple places. Just so it's like, yeah, Vran's in the movie too. He's not in the movie. He's just kind of floating around in the background. He lands in that movie in one scene, and he's floating up above a mountain at the very end. That's it. [01:04:52] Speaker A: He's the watcher. He's just like, oh, no, I'm just. I'm just here on the side. [01:04:58] Speaker B: On. [01:04:58] Speaker C: Vacation from his other movies. [01:05:01] Speaker B: Yeah. So everywhere. [01:05:03] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:05:04] Speaker B: Practical considerations play a big part in some of those things. [01:05:07] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. [01:05:08] Speaker A: That's fascinating. You did mention Shin Godzilla. Did you have anything in particular you wanted to mention in Shin? Because Shin Godzilla keeps getting brought up. That's like the first pink Godzilla, isn't it? [01:05:20] Speaker B: The. [01:05:20] Speaker A: What is that? The first pink Godzilla. [01:05:22] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, there's definitely some. He's, because he gets a read purpley in ways that Godzilla wasn't as much usually before. I want to say Godzilla had Pinker radiation in some of the earlier movies, but I'm. [01:05:39] Speaker A: But his design, as far as spikes and things like that, gets a little altered too, right? [01:05:43] Speaker B: Yeah, his shoe. Shin Godzilla is a very big departure from the Godzilla movies in a lot of ways. Shin Godzilla is to the Fukushima disaster as the original Godzilla movie is to the bombings. [01:06:02] Speaker A: Interesting. [01:06:04] Speaker B: A lot of metaphor, particularly about how the japanese bureaucracy responded to emergency events that are played out in that movie. A lot of people don't like Shin Godzilla because a big part of it is meetings. There's a lot of government people going from meeting to meeting in the movie. [01:06:25] Speaker A: There's a lot of that in Gojira, too. [01:06:28] Speaker B: There is, there's more in Shin Godzilla. [01:06:30] Speaker A: Oh, my God. [01:06:33] Speaker B: And there's elements where they're directly playing with, like how a bureaucracy deals with the unpredictable and the, in, it's a scene where government official is declaring in a press conference that not to worry, that whatever this thing is, it can't leave the water. And then he's handed paperwork, like while on stage saying that it's left the water. It's that sort of thing where. So there's a fair amount of dark humor in it regarding the bureaucratic response to that which cannot be responded to through logical means. And at the same time, there's a very creepy Godzilla that evolves through the course of the movie and is terrifying in the implications of what it could do if allowed to run unchecked. So it's a very, it's, I don't want to call it one of my favorite movies, but I think it's one of the best Godzilla movies. Movies. Before, before I would have called it, like, probably second best, but I think Godzilla minus one is climbed up, climbed up the list. But again, it's a very interesting movie in that way. And then. Yeah. So that's when you should watch at some point. [01:07:58] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:07:58] Speaker B: If you don't mind watching characters in meetings, discussing things. [01:08:03] Speaker C: There's a big monster around still. [01:08:06] Speaker B: There is, in fact a big monster in that movie. [01:08:08] Speaker A: Oh, good. Oh, thank goodness. Yeah, I actually, because there was a lot of that in attack on Titan. There's a lot of bureaucracy, especially early on, and those sorts of meetings of like, what does this mean? And that, you know, the response and denial and that kind of thing that comes up in a lot of these tropes. Certainly is something I'm comfortable with. We'll see how my limits are tested. As far as that regard. In that regard, as far as that goes, I really only have two other questions. One of them is short and one of them is a little bit longer. Number one, anytime Mothra shows up in some of these newer films, do you hear that, Masura, in your head? Because I can't get it out. As soon as Mothra showed up in. Spoilers. Spoilers. For those of you who haven't seen recent Godzilla films, I think we're past this now. As soon you saw GXK, right? Yeah, as soon as Mothra showed up, like, I'm, like, singing that song in my head and it just, like, lives there. [01:09:14] Speaker B: So as much as I badmouth Godzilla, King of the Monsters earlier its soundtrack is absolutely incredible largely because Bear McCreary was like, listen, we can do some original themes here or I can use the original Godzilla theme and the original Mothra theme and make it work. And what he does with both of those themes is absolutely fantastic. And it's the highlight of that movie for me. [01:09:39] Speaker A: Nice. [01:09:40] Speaker B: And so I didn't even realize that. [01:09:42] Speaker A: Mothra's song really is featured in that too. Now that. [01:09:45] Speaker B: Oh, it very much is. And in the end credits, it gets its own. So funny story. I was. I don't know if it's funny, but a story. I was in theaters watching that movie with Drew. My friend Drew, who Bryce has met, but I don't know how well he remembers credits. Come on. Drew goes to the bathroom, he comes back and he watches me singing along to the Mothra song even though it's strictly an instrumental, he's like, clearly. And that version of it is just so well done that I'm getting a little teary eyed. So he comes in on me singing words to a song with no words, getting teary eyed about it and he's like, that must be a callback of some guy. [01:10:33] Speaker A: You're like, yeah, my childhood is being orchestrated beautifully right now. [01:10:36] Speaker B: So, yeah, I was disappointed that they didn't do. Do any sort of musical theme callbacks in Godzilla versus Kong or Godzilla X Kong. Both of those movies were musically uninspired, in my opinion. Whereas even the incidental music that isn't tied to the original themes in King of the monsters bear McCreary knocked it out of the park and it came out great. [01:11:09] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The level of cohesion between those movies in what thematically is going on what the tone is, is, in my opinion, where those films have not really succeeded. Like, that's the failings of those movies for me. I really like King of Monsters. I understand the issues with the bad science, and I absolutely cannot stand that they gave as much airtime to what's her name. [01:11:37] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:11:37] Speaker A: But I really. And maybe it is just because I love Rodan and Ghidorah, but, like, that. That film, for me, I was like, cool, we're going somewhere with this, even if we're kind of altering a little bit here and there, because at least the destruction of Boston is still destruction, but the kind of absence of that human element and some of the weird things going on with the. The music and some of those other themes that were happening in Godzilla versus Kong, really, for me, I'm like, what? Where? Who's running, who's driving this ship? You know? This doesn't feel like it's all under the same banner. It feels like. It feels like a straight to video sequel where none of the original crew came back, you know, and that I don't think, like, I really didn't. I feel like we were kind of promised something without necessarily be giving. Being given that initially, when Godzilla came out 2014, Godzilla and Skull island came out, it was like, okay, we know how to do this. Yeah, cool. And then King of Monsters came out, and it was like, okay, you could. You're getting a little. You're getting a little big, a little fast. You know, there's a lot. You just brought in a whole lot of Kaiju, and now they're all bowing down. And then Godzilla versus Kong starts, and they're like, cool, we're retconning that in a montage. Yeah, and Godzilla's been fighting everybody, and they're not bowing down anymore. And it's like, well, why don't we get the movie where they're not bowing down anymore? [01:13:12] Speaker C: Like, where's the King Kong movie where that happened? [01:13:15] Speaker A: You know? And so for me, that was when I started feeling like this whole franchise was just kind of. If it. When that sort of thing happens, it feels gross and like a cash grab, because it's like, hey, I noticed the heart is missing out of this, which means the art is missing out of this. And I didn't. It just came. I don't know, sometimes put that on. [01:13:37] Speaker B: A t shirt and sell it sneaky. [01:13:41] Speaker A: But for me, I feel like Godzilla 2014 and Skull island sold us on an idea, and that idea has not been followed through or has been followed through less and less. Although I felt that GXK was kind of coming back to that by narrowing the scope of the people story. But at the same time, there's a reason everyone online has been like, can we just get all of the hollow earth stuff narrated by Richard Attenborough? [01:14:07] Speaker C: Yeah. It was funny because with Godzilla versus Kong, when it came to the Hollow earth stuff, we were like, what the hell is this? [01:14:15] Speaker A: Like, I was so mad. [01:14:17] Speaker C: They hinted at it heavily in King of monsters. [01:14:20] Speaker A: Okay, I accept caves. I have a hard time accepting straight up. [01:14:26] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. [01:14:26] Speaker B: But then we went, that's. I think that's. I think one area that Kong versus Kong or, sorry, Godzilla X Kong benefits from the weirdness of the previous movies is that all of the really dumb premises have already been established in the setting, and now they can just run with them. [01:14:44] Speaker A: And. [01:14:45] Speaker B: Yeah, there's not. There's not a new dumb premise here. There's just the old dumb premises that we're working with. [01:14:50] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, no, not that. Like, oh, by the way, underneath Hollow Earth, there's another hollow earth, and it's actually dark. It's like, okay, cool. [01:15:00] Speaker C: All right, whatever. [01:15:01] Speaker A: I do like that they open the film with, like, here's the light source. Answered your question. [01:15:05] Speaker C: Yeah, that was a big. [01:15:06] Speaker A: This is where the lights coming from. Yeah. Like, here's the jewel. Sorry about that, guys. We should have shown you that last time. Yeah, yeah, GXK. Big lights. [01:15:15] Speaker B: Yeah, big lights. [01:15:16] Speaker C: Overall, we enjoyed Godzilla x Kong way more than Godzilla versus Kong. And I think. Yeah, all the goofiness were like. And just the weird plot points. Like, okay, I guess we're here now and we're just going with it. But then they did something really cool with it, so. [01:15:32] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. [01:15:34] Speaker C: Fun. [01:15:35] Speaker A: And I saw online the other day that every Godzilla movie in the legendary pictures big monsterverse has at least one shot where this is a podcast and I'm demonstrating with my hands, but where all of the monsters in the fight are running at each other from both sides of the screen. And they're like, here's the one where Godzilla and Kong are going at it. Here's the one where Godzilla and Kong are going at Mechagodzilla. Here's Ghidorah and Godzilla. And the one with this, where Godzilla is running with Kong and. And Skull, what's his name? [01:16:13] Speaker B: Scar. [01:16:14] Speaker A: King skarking is riding on the weird ice dragon. Yeah. And they're, like, running at each other before they, you know, jump off. And then. Yeah, and then Mothra shows up. Like, that movie gave me everything that I wanted king of monsters to give me that I didn't think king of monsters had quite deserved yet. Yeah. And that. It was like, hey, you know what? This plot is getting. I mean, it's moving, but, like, can we interrupt it for a second for Godzilla versus this thing, you know? Okay. Okay, we're good. Anyway, so these people, they're. And it's Kong versus this guy. Okay. Anyway, so these people, they're. They're gonna. They're. This girl is sad. And Godzilla versus this other thing. And, like, there were all. There were a lot of fights in that movie with various monsters. The big pink thing underneath the ice and the other one that's just hanging out in Italy or in Rome. Yeah. Solid. Yeah. Clearly, I liked this movie I'm getting, right. [01:17:09] Speaker C: Yeah, we definitely walked out of that movie way more hyped and excited than we thought we would be. [01:17:13] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:17:14] Speaker B: Well, you had. Having already established your thoughts on Godzilla versus Kong, and this being basically a direct sequel to that, with Godzilla and the Kong right in the title, again, you definitely went in with some lowered expectations. Most likely. [01:17:26] Speaker A: Yeah. Yes, yes. And I will say there's a lot about that movie. I was like, you know, we could not do this. Namely, no offense to that actor, but, like, I do not want to see the conspiracy theorist. [01:17:42] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. [01:17:42] Speaker A: I felt like it was a bad choice to include a conspiracy theorist as a main character who is right at a time when it's crazy because the world was doing what it was doing. [01:17:52] Speaker C: Such a great actor. [01:17:54] Speaker A: Yeah, no, he's great. [01:17:55] Speaker B: And. [01:17:55] Speaker A: And he's hilarious. His podcast stuff. Yeah, I get it. [01:17:59] Speaker C: Yeah. But, yeah, it was a weird character for the movie, and both of them. [01:18:04] Speaker A: I also wasn't super fond of. Hey, this is our new cool guy. He's like an ex lover. He's cool. I mean, he's really cool. Big monster, but he's also really cool. [01:18:15] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:18:15] Speaker A: Hey, have you seen our cool dentist? He's cool. Oh, here he comes in doing cool shit. Look at this cool guy. [01:18:21] Speaker C: And then the random synthwave soundtrack to go along with him. [01:18:24] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:18:26] Speaker C: Which I love that stuff. [01:18:27] Speaker B: Well, that's. I think that was, like, the hollow earth gets that very vangelisy old synths soundtrack that goes with it every time we're there. And that's sort of a neat little bit of musical consistency that I've kind of enjoyed and is, like, the outlier to me saying that the music's kind of uninspired in guzzler versus Kong in this. [01:18:46] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:18:46] Speaker C: I think it was just so jarring and out of nowhere, you're like, oh, okay, cool. [01:18:50] Speaker B: Yeah, whatever. Yeah. I think you're absolutely right that it doesn't fit as well with the other things, which makes it stand out which movie musics typically shouldn't. But it at least makes the hollow Earth parts memorable, because you've got, oh, someone brought the ghost of Vangelis to possess the composer long enough to. To do these scenes. I was just musing on going back to Godzilla, king of the monsters, and how much things kind of shifted there. Tonally, Gareth Edwards was originally supposed to direct that movie, and I would love to visit the universe where he actually did. [01:19:32] Speaker A: Right. [01:19:33] Speaker B: Even if it means, you know, that universe didn't get a rogue one. Oh, that's unfortunate. They get a Godzilla versus Kong. I mean, they get a Godzilla, king of the monsters. With the sensibilities of 2014 Godzilla. [01:19:49] Speaker A: Yeah. We can bring Ghidorah back and give Gareth Edwards another shot. That's amazing. [01:19:54] Speaker B: Yeah, that's. I would have. But also, I want to see that non existent movie so badly. [01:20:00] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:20:00] Speaker C: Apparently his new movie is really good. Okay. Yeah. His new movie is called the creator. I mean, I've heard nothing but really good things about it. [01:20:07] Speaker A: Nice. Well, maybe he'll get another Godzilla opportunity. The problem is, is Godzilla's gotten a little too silly. Yeah. For him to, like, come in there. If he's gonna come in there, it's got to be because the studio has said, all right, we're gonna move back towards what Godzilla was. And, like, I've made that. That comparison before where I've said, look, I get that the original Godzilla was serious. And then we went into the, like, jumping around rubber suits, Godzilla jumping in the air and pumping his fist, you know, showa era Godzilla. I get that we eventually got to silliness, but I felt like they were just following that same path. And I'm like, there's a reason those films aren't on the same playing field as the original Gojira. So can we just. Can we just go back and keep. We can keep this storyline going, but can we please just be a little more serious? Yeah. [01:20:55] Speaker C: Right. [01:20:55] Speaker A: Because I really like that. And to its credit, Rio and Rome in that film suffer. And the people in Rio and Rome, I mean, they don't show the poor guy working at his desk who gets. Whose entire top of a building gets chucked. [01:21:11] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. [01:21:13] Speaker A: Like, that guy's just, like, in the glass going, ah, all the way across. You know, they don't show that, but that might have been really horrifying to watch. [01:21:22] Speaker C: Right. [01:21:22] Speaker A: But at the same time, maybe that would ground these movies a little bit, maybe. I don't know. There's only so much. I mean, I don't want to see again. I'm not a sadist here, but I. It's. There's a suspension of disbelief. I need to see the people get. I need to see. I need to see that. This is. Yeah, get out of the way. Knock it out of the way. Help each other. Um, but, boy, got GXK was really about destroying landmarks. [01:21:48] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [01:21:49] Speaker A: Like, there's a lot of wonders of the world that are no longer there in the Godzilla universe. [01:21:54] Speaker B: That's something I'm not a huge fan of. I love seeing the fights in modern cities where modern infrastructure goes down. But leave the pyramids alone, man. [01:22:06] Speaker A: And how comes the. How come the giant Jesus gets to stay up? What's that about? Why didn't we throw giant Jesus at him? [01:22:12] Speaker B: Cowards. [01:22:13] Speaker A: I think just throw giant Jesus scar king. [01:22:17] Speaker B: Yeah, that's okay. The Coliseum works great as a cat bed, so I love the Colosseum cat bed. [01:22:22] Speaker A: That's such a stupid thing. But I really do enjoy it. [01:22:24] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:22:25] Speaker A: Yeah. Oh, my God. [01:22:27] Speaker B: That's what happens when you nuke Godzilla's original home. He's got to sleep somewhere. [01:22:30] Speaker C: That's true. [01:22:31] Speaker A: You did this. This is on you. The one thing that I do wish that these movies did is that I. They were clearly going down a path. This is that same thing with that cohesion problem. They were going down a path. That twins were going to play some sort of role with the Mothra story. There were twins, and we focused on these twins a fair amount. [01:22:56] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:22:56] Speaker A: Going into that movie. [01:22:58] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:22:58] Speaker A: And I know the twin twins and Miss, like, missing limbs and replacement limbs and that kind of thing are a very. There's a lot of weird kind of cultural mythos in Japan about those ideas, but I don't know that it felt like made that decision to not go that route because they weren't sure how american audiences would have been able to. [01:23:25] Speaker B: My understanding, and it's a bit limited because I didn't do a whole lot of looking into Godzilla X Kong before the movie came out, and I haven't read a whole lot of stuff afterwards, my understanding is they weren't 100% sure they were actually going to get Mothra for this movie, and they actually planned out and designed a whole other new kaiju that they could use in her place to be sort of the herald that brings Gudzil and Kong together and joins in and helps the story play out. Yeah. So, thankfully, we got Mothra, who really is I think the character that can actually do that role appropriately in the movie because wise Godzilla gonna listen to some random new kaiju coming out of the Hollow Earth. [01:24:16] Speaker A: Yeah. He needs to be like, oh, sorry. Hey, what's up, honey? I'm in a thing. [01:24:21] Speaker B: So my understanding is the reason that there wasn't a whole lot of, like, we didn't get Mothra hatching and going through larval stage, cocooning, becoming Mothra or anything like that. We just got Mothra kind out of the blue was because they kind of had to leave it generic enough to use another monster if they couldn't get Mothra and still have it fit if they did get Mothra, it kind of. [01:24:45] Speaker C: Worked with the whole mysticism of the whole thing. [01:24:47] Speaker A: So for me, when they showed the other, the leader of the tribe that lives in hollow earth and she's obscured, my very first thought was, oh, my God, homegirl has a twin. This could go there. And then they showed that it's an adult. And I was like, oh, but I separated at birth. Like, hollow earth versus Skull island thing would have been so cool. Yeah. Okay, well, I guess we're not getting Mothra. No big deal. And then, as Tate pointed out, a larval mothra of some sort was in another movie and teased, there's a. [01:25:24] Speaker B: At the end of Godzilla, king of the monsters, there's a new Mothra egg in the newspaper clippings. [01:25:31] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:25:32] Speaker B: In the end credits montage. [01:25:34] Speaker A: Yeah. So Mothra versus mega Mothra. [01:25:40] Speaker B: My hope. I had that same thought where we had the hidden leader. [01:25:45] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:25:45] Speaker B: Thinking it could be her. Then I was hoping that they at least kind of pay some kind of homage as she's going up the stairs to awaken her. I was hoping at the top there would be some, like, reflective surface. And so when she's doing the ritual, she'd be reflected and there'd be two of her doing it. It wouldn't have been quite the thing, but it would have been, like, at least a cool callback that wouldn't have disrupted the plot or made us have to explain anything. Yeah, but we got what we got, and I don't think it's the worst thing that. [01:26:15] Speaker A: All right, legendary pictures. We know you listen to this podcast. Hire John. He's your new consultant. That way he can, you know, watch tales of the Empire trailers instead of driving around doing work things, because he has to work for you now to fix your movies. Waiting for that phone. Hit us up on threads. We're right there. I think this kind of breaks down Kaiju. Well, enough, I think. We've certainly talked a whole bunch about all this other Godzilla stuff, too. [01:26:41] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:26:42] Speaker A: Is there anything else that needs to be mentioned? [01:26:43] Speaker C: I don't think so. I think we'll definitely do a follow up of this once we've all caught up on. On the various things. Like, I definitely want to watch the animated movies that came out of Netflix. [01:26:52] Speaker A: Yeah, I need to watch the singular point. And then, plus, we still need to talk about the Hanna Barbera Godzilla versus the WB kids. Wbzilla. Godzilla. [01:27:02] Speaker C: Oh, right, right. Yeah. [01:27:05] Speaker A: I mean, we could do an entire episode on just animated Godzilla at this point. That's, you know, how important is Godzooky? [01:27:13] Speaker B: The answer is no. [01:27:16] Speaker C: That's just. The answer is he's like, not that. It's not very important. [01:27:20] Speaker A: No, no, I watched that. I mean, I was so entrenched in the Hanna Barbera cartoons as a kid. Birdman, Johnny Quest, all those space goes. [01:27:33] Speaker B: For whatever reason, the Godzilla Anna bear bear cartoon never crossed my radar until adulthood. [01:27:40] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:27:40] Speaker B: So I never got to enjoy it as a kid. And watching it now, it's just. [01:27:43] Speaker C: Yeah, I don't remember watching it. [01:27:45] Speaker B: Painful. [01:27:46] Speaker A: Really? I haven't seen it since I was a kid. Like, I just remember the Ann Godzook. But when you said Hanna Barbera, I was like, that is. Who made that? That's weird. And as soon as you said that, I suddenly had this flash of all the characters from the show, and I'm like, oh, my God, that's absolutely a Hanna Barbera. Hanna Barbera cartoon. [01:28:05] Speaker B: So, yeah, it's, uh, it's not terrible, but it's definitely Ana Barbera, and it's definitely a little harder to watch than other things. Whereas I think, weirdly enough, the 1998 cartoon. The cartoon based on the 1998 Godzilla movie. [01:28:23] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:28:23] Speaker B: Is surprisingly good. [01:28:26] Speaker A: Good, I'm pretty sure is the same one that did go, the new Ghostbusters and the men in black cartoons. At least that animation style is very similar to those. And it was extreme ghostbusters. Extreme Ghostbusters, I think, is what it was. Yeah. And that whole era of kids, wb, like, that's what led us to, like, Batman beyond and some of those really good gritty cartoons that said, hey, you know how we, like, suddenly got dark in the early nineties with Batman, the animated series? We're going darker. [01:28:56] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:28:57] Speaker A: And I remember. I remember loving all that stuff, even though it was like, kind of the animation. The animation's fine, but the character design and the art style is a little weird and kind of jarring, but. But it works. For Godzilla because of the way Zilla was designed. So. So anyway, everybody, your homework is to go watch Shin Godzilla, Godzilla minus one. And the Hanna Barbera Godzilla. Top tier. Top tier. Ooh. And then three watches of the Matthew Broderick to, you know, cleanse your palate before you go in and watch GXK. [01:29:40] Speaker B: Is that a palate cleanser? [01:29:44] Speaker A: Look, it's not that bad. Hank Azari is there. Like, how bad could it possibly be? [01:29:51] Speaker B: Might be time to rewatch that movie, Bryce. [01:29:54] Speaker C: But also. [01:29:55] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm down for a rewatch. I've watched that movie so many times. Like, it's such a guilty pleasure for me. [01:30:00] Speaker C: Yeah, I'm surprised. [01:30:01] Speaker B: Fine. [01:30:04] Speaker C: I slowed down, but I still have all my physical media, so I'm surprised I haven't bought that. [01:30:08] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. I'm sure that. I'm sure it's like a buck at book off. [01:30:12] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. [01:30:13] Speaker A: So what's your all time favorite? You said that Shin Godzilla was your first. [01:30:17] Speaker B: My all time. Well. [01:30:19] Speaker A: Oh, sorry. You said it was the best. Second best. What's your all time favorite? [01:30:22] Speaker B: My all time favorite? Ghidra, the three headed monster. [01:30:25] Speaker A: Okay. [01:30:26] Speaker B: No matter how far down on the scale it may be in terms of quality, it's not that far, but it's definitely not like as far as quality. Best as separate from favorite original Godzilla. Still, I think, takes the cake very close as Godzilla minus one. [01:30:46] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. [01:30:47] Speaker B: Shin Godzilla probably comes after that. And then it gets a little murkier. Probably the 1984 return of Godzilla because it does some interesting things about the Japan being stuck between two superpowers in the cold war that I think it does very interesting storytelling things with and then some others. But as far as favorites go, Gija, the three headed monster, it's got the right balance of. It's got enough monsters to keep things interesting. It's not just two. It's got Godzilla, Rodan, Mothra and the introduction of King Ghidra. It's got Mothra's priestesses played by the original actresses, singers, because the Shobijin roles were made basically for the Peanuts, a singing duo of twins who were big in Japan. Even had some crossover appeal. They were on the Ed Sullivan show over here. [01:31:46] Speaker A: Idols in Japan, making it to Ed Sullivan. That's pretty cool. [01:31:50] Speaker B: Yeah. And they were still doing it at the time. So they're there in it. As I already mentioned, the human story is fun and engaging and has interesting characters in it. There are some really nice effect sequences with. When Ghidra first emerges, there's a very intricate animated form as the fireball that emerges from the meteorite he comes in takes form into King Ghidra. And it's just. It doesn't tend to show up on a lot of best of Godzilla list. That's a mistake. It doesn't belong at the top of those lists, but it's good. Should be on a list. [01:32:32] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah, right on. [01:32:34] Speaker A: Brian, do you have a favorite Godzilla movie minus one? That's fair. [01:32:39] Speaker C: Yeah. And then. Yeah. So growing up, I just watched them. [01:32:44] Speaker B: What? [01:32:45] Speaker C: I kind of watched whatever was on WB or Sci-Fi or whatever was on. [01:32:50] Speaker A: And it versus gargantua. [01:32:52] Speaker C: Yeah. First kind of watching them at my grandma's house. It was just kind of like we flipping channels and there's a big old monster, like, okay, I'll watch this. And then even when I was living up in Washington, was at a friend's house at a, like, sleepover, and his brother was just watching it. And then we just sat down and watched. I think it was. I remember the first one being on. And then that point, we were just kind of, like, running around. And every time we came in and we saw monsters on the tv, which kind of, like, sat and, like, stared, and then it, like, would go to commercial board meetings. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So watched a whole bunch of random clips of a whole bunch of them. But I think we actually did sit down and watch the first Godzilla one, which was weird because we were ten, so it was. We must have been enthralled for ten year olds to sit there for the whole thing. And. Yeah. [01:33:38] Speaker B: And if you were. Sticks out, if you saw it when you were ten, you were probably seeing what was released in America's King of the monsters. [01:33:45] Speaker C: Okay. [01:33:45] Speaker B: Which tends to get a bad rap over here, I think. It's actually not that bad, but it definitely pulls back some of the more terrifying elements of the original Godzilla. So if you haven't seen the original subbed, it's worth seeing, but it's also worth seeing the dub to see how America took that movie and inserted an american character into it. That is still, given that it was 1954, relatively respectful. Okay. But it's. Yeah, it's still an insert of an american into the movie to make a main character appear where there wasn't one before. From. From over here. [01:34:30] Speaker A: Strange. [01:34:31] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah, check that out. Bryce, what about you? [01:34:36] Speaker A: You know, um, I kind of am in the same boat as you are. Although I watched a lot more of those marathons. Like, I remember, you know, Godzilla versus Gargantua and Godzilla. Godzilla versus Mothra. And I'm pretty sure. I watched King Ghidra as well, and. [01:34:50] Speaker B: I'm pretty sure war of the gargantuas. [01:34:53] Speaker A: Or war of the gargantuas. Is that what it was? Maybe there's no godzilla in that at all. [01:34:57] Speaker B: Yeah, they're the. The only one with gargantuan. The title doesn't have Godzilla in it, but it tended to get shown in the same marathons. [01:35:03] Speaker A: You know what? It probably was war of the. Because there's, like, two of them. Right. And they're just, like, weird sort of monkey things. [01:35:09] Speaker B: Yes. [01:35:09] Speaker A: Like King Kong adjacent. Yeah. But for me, having seen all of these things, I have a very soft spot in my heart for Mothra. And I think it's because that's the one I remember the most. Having not watched any of these start to finish in a long time, I feel a little bit unqualified to declare, like, a favorite. Yeah. But I have a very. As far. If we're gonna. If I could at least say my favorite kaiju in the Godzilla monsterverse, I think it is Mothra. I have, like, I like the little twins. I like the little song. And I like the, like, weird mythos about how, like, Mothra will save us because she will make sure that Godzilla saves us. [01:35:57] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:35:57] Speaker A: And that element of it, I think, is really, really cool. If I had to, like, pick which of the godzillas that I actually remember that I feel, like, really made Godzilla, like, made me go, yeah, this is what I came here for. It's probably gonna be one of those three anime movies from Netflix, which were Godzilla, the planet eater was the movie, and there's definitely the fight on. That is just so good. So I'll name that one because I can at least tell you what happened in that film. Whereas I only have these little snippets that bring me sweet nostalgia and that little, like, oh, my gosh. That same thing we talked about earlier, that Mosura, that whole element of Godzilla and Mothra. Godzilla versus Mothra, whatever you want to call. Call it, like, I have distinct memories of sitting watching that on a maybe 17 inch TRC or CRT model in my bedroom playing with legos, what have you. And it was just. Yeah, it was good times. It's just. It's. It was like. And it was one of those. It's one of the few memories of my childhood where there's not chaos happening all around me. Cause I have five brothers and sisters, and where it was, like, me in my room, everyone else was doing something else, and I was just like, yeah, I'm here. For this, like, this is great. Barrett came in occasionally, but he would just sit down and watch quietly with me. Like, I don't know, there was some. There's something very peaceful about the Mothra movie for me. And it's got a sweet spot in my heart. Has nothing to do with the quality or connection to the actual film or plot. It just is connected to a very nice memory for me. So when Mothra shows up and current Godzilla films, I'm just like, hey, my boy, like you. So you sat next to me in Godzilla versus or Godzilla GXK. I was like, you know, give him the chair. But, yeah, so I'll go with. I'll go with Godzilla, the planet eater, because Ghidra is super dope. But know that Mothra is deep down. [01:38:17] Speaker B: The 1961 Mothra film is. [01:38:19] Speaker A: It is the one I have a shirt for too. So next hit back next time, and I'll have watched a couple these and I'll be like, okay, this is my guy, right? [01:38:29] Speaker B: All right, if you like. If you like Mothra being heroic, definitely see Mothra versus Godzilla and Ghidra, the three headed monster. [01:38:35] Speaker A: Maybe Ghidra, the three headed monster is, like, partially what I'm remembering. Yeah. Which means that I might be on the same. [01:38:43] Speaker B: It's part of it. It's a. It's a plot point that Mothra is the one that shows up, takes Rodan and Ghidra, who are in the middle of a fight with each other, sits him down, shuts him up and says, hey, there's a worst threat. We gotta get together and fight this thing. And then Rodan and Godzilla are both being jerks. So Mothra just wanders off and tries to take on Ghidra all by herself. She's a fucking badass. Part of my language. [01:39:12] Speaker A: Yeah. I hate to say this, but pretty high on my list is actually Godzilla 1998. I freaking love that movie. So, yeah, you know, but, like, there's. So I had so much, like. I mean, they were just throwing every bit of merchandising they could at that. They were like. Like this movie. [01:39:34] Speaker C: Definitely the target audience. [01:39:36] Speaker A: We were the target audience. [01:39:37] Speaker B: Size matters. [01:39:39] Speaker A: Yeah, size matters. [01:39:41] Speaker B: Take that. [01:39:41] Speaker A: You on the nineties? Oh, my gosh. I mean, yes. That's when I became a true Pepsi, Stan. Well, John, thanks so much for explaining Kaiju to us. And, you know, talking about turtles with jetpacks and giant robots that are kind of power Ranger adjacent. [01:40:05] Speaker B: Yeah, thanks for having me. I enjoy talking about such things. [01:40:09] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:40:10] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:40:10] Speaker C: We'll definitely do a follow up. [01:40:11] Speaker A: We should do a follow up. Yes. Especially after I. After Godzilla minus one. [01:40:15] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. [01:40:16] Speaker A: Becomes available to me in any capacity. [01:40:17] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [01:40:20] Speaker A: All right. Well, with that, everybody who's listening at home, this has been an episode of Sneaky Geek. A thrilling one, one might even say. I was thrilled. I hope you were thrilled. They were thrills. Anyway, you can find us on our socials at Sneakygeek podcast. You can find us on our other socials at Sneakygeek podcast. You can find us in the other place that used to be pretty social heavy at Sneakygeekpod, but don't expect us to post there at all. But we definitely are active on threads, and threads is currently an X Men 97 hub of sorrow and sadness, and we're all supporting each other over there. And you can come join our community where we're talking about this. And of course, you can find. Find our discord by just typing in Sneakygeek. Our logo is right there. And make sure you give us a follow on whatever, whatever podcast, app, network, etcetera. You are listening on whether it's I heart radio, audible, Amazon, Apple, Spotify, yada, yada, yada, yada. And Brian, you're at brom 1137. [01:41:28] Speaker C: Yeah, I guess. [01:41:29] Speaker A: And I'm ricerankins. And John, you're a s a R E k. Sarek, depending, you know. Sarek, sarek, Vulcan, Vulcan, Spock, Spock. They're all pronounced weird, right? It's fine. No big deal. Yeah. Anyway, without further ado, we're gonna get the heck off of here, and it's dinner time. We're gonna eat dinner and do our taxes. Thanks for listening, guys. See you soon. Sneakygeek is hosted by Bryce Rankins and Brian Romero. This episode was edited by Bryce Rankins. Our logo and website were designed by Ally Nimmons. Our theme song was written and produced by Skylar Johnson. Copyright 2024 Sneakygeek Media. All rights for sure.