Just Realized How King of the Monsters Makes No Sense

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Just Realized How King of the Monsters Makes No Sense

Post by Bigdog »

While I am editing a fan cut that combines both versions of Gojira, I have noticed many flaws with the American version.In this reversioning with Raymond Burr as Steve Martin, most of the cuts in the movie make the rest of the film have zero logic to them, namely:

-Every Ogata/Emiko scene, especially the one with the recently adopted Shinkichi. According to the King of the Monsters narrative, Serizawa doesn't care about the relationship, and the way the remaining clips of them are edited in are sloppy. For instance, when they both walk to Steve's side [if they do], Ogata comes from nowhere and disappears as suddenly. To put insult to injury, his scene is given to Raymond Burr, which makes the second thing mystifying.

-Ogata had no point in existing, as we hardly see him anywhere in the film save for at the Yamane house and towards the end when the two suitors get into a fight. A fight that occurs over nothing, making Ogata a jerk that assaulted a scientist for no reason at all. This could have been solved if most of Ogata's scenes were cut and he was rewritten as a common thug or soldier that beats up Dr. Serizawa and leaves.

-Sure 1950's Hollywood standards were different concerning infidelity and arranged marriages, but the editing of that love triangle could have been better by eliminating the detail of Dr. Serizawa's relationship entirely and establishing Dr. Serizawa as a friend of the couple. In speaking of Serizawa. Heck, even by making Ogata Dr. Serizawa's best friend and having them both want Emiko for different reasons would have been a preferable alternative to the final cut, which was not impressive.

-Serizawa's sacrifice was utterly meaningless. Since only few of the scenes were kept in concerning Serizawa, it could be assumed that either Emiko is a whore for ditching her arranged husband or that this arranged relationship was informal. Either way, since his more humanizing scenes were cut from the movie itself, Emiko doesn't seem to have any strong connection to the doctor and would have not been crying in such a way since in the American version, there is an utter lack of relationship tension building up.

-Steve Martin's last line of Serizawa being a great man does not hold up to the theatrical cut for the film. My impressions upon watching King of the Monsters is that Dr. Serizawa is a jerk that kills himself for very little reason since Burr's narration of Emiko and Serizawa's relationship only holds up in a version where the scenes with Ogata were left in. There is little reason to suspect he is a husband, let alone an emotional three-dimensional human being.

Since Dr. Yamane's argument with Ogata was cut from the final reel ,

-If Ogata never heard of the story, he would have not went to Serizawa's house.

-The mother and daughter scene left in makes little sense as their previous scene is cut. Prior to that the city is seen barren, but in the American version, it skips to them and we never see them again. They might as well been cut out if they were going to cut out all of the nuclear metaphors.

And in speaking of those metaphors, the scenes where Godzilla sets people on fire....well the people running away part should have been cut. The viewer can assume they are dead, but we see survivors. Also , in speaking of Gojira , it squarely in this sequence shows the city as barren save for the military, and the same goes for the King of the Monsters. People wouldn't be running way if they weren't left behind in the first place, making this sequence a plot hole in both versions.

Finally, the omission of Dr. Yamane's scenes with the government and or anyone else, not including the argument with Ogata, virtually makes the character meaningless to the overall plot of King of the Monsters. If I were to cut him out, it would hardly matter to the overall film as he hardly existed in it in the first place. In Gojira, his character had more of a tragic development arc which led to him killing himself in Raids Again/Gigantis the Fire Monster. I can see him crying over Dr. Serizawa just because he knew him as a child, but not anyone else in KOTM.

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Re: Just Realized How King of the Monsters Makes No Sense

Post by three »

yep the americanization of the film warped it beyond recognition but it is all i know. it helps that i noticed none of what you're bringing up since i was so little when i saw it ^_^

but yea, it makes 0 of the sense we speak of.
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Re: Just Realized How King of the Monsters Makes No Sense

Post by Bigdog »

three wrote:yep the americanization of the film warped it beyond recognition but it is all i know. it helps that i noticed none of what you're bringing up since i was so little when i saw it ^_^

but yea, it makes 0 of the sense we speak of.
I recommend to see the Japanese Gojira as it helps make the American version make sense. I didn't like this film because it looked ancient when I was younger, but I appreciate it much more if not as much as Gojira itself. I feel like somewhere, there is a lost cut to the film that has all of the development missing from King of the Monsters.

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Re: Just Realized How King of the Monsters Makes No Sense

Post by he-ba »

For the American viewer, it didn't really matter what they saw and how it compared to the Japanese version. They just went along with it. But now that you bring this up, you make perfect sense! I just hope that you fix all of these mistakes in your version!
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Re: Just Realized How King of the Monsters Makes No Sense

Post by eabaker »

While a lot of the relationship elements you discuss are less effective and involving in the KotM cut, as a result of being reduced to details mentioned in Burr's VO where previously they were developed within the narrative, that doesn't result in their not making sense, just in their being less engaging. I also think you underestimate how much is sold by the body language and facial expressions of the performers.
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Re: Just Realized How King of the Monsters Makes No Sense

Post by ILL GREEN »

There was a lot that didn't make sense but the 50's was an era of monsters and horror comics so the average audience wasn't looking for love triangles and stuff like that, they wanted the monster killing and rampaging with huge amounts of screen time and KOTM delivered.

But after watching this flick a million times, I couldn't help to notice that it was heavily edited and can sense it was cut from a superior version. I bought the movie 4 times from different publishers hoping to see an uncut version but they all were the same except for different color tones. Wasn't until Classic Media that I finally saw the original cut and that breathed in new life and a new perspective on the movie.

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Re: Just Realized How King of the Monsters Makes No Sense

Post by he-ba »

Ok now I take back what I said. I didn't want to be mean, but now that others are commenting like my thinking, I'm going to have to agree with them (not that I'm taking sides or joining the winning team or anything, just that, again, I didn't want to accuse your work)
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Maybe Minilla was some mutation inside a Kamacarus' ootheca and that's why they attacked..... Maybe Minilla ISN'T the Son of Godzilla! He's some weird Kamacari that Godzilla felt bad for!

..... Nope, the other guys would never accept that..........




I don't know even know what a he-ba is......



HAPPY BIRTHDAY BIG GUY!!!!!!!!

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Re: Just Realized How King of the Monsters Makes No Sense

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he-ba wrote:For the American viewer, it didn't really matter what they saw and how it compared to the Japanese version. They just went along with it. But now that you bring this up, you make perfect sense! I just hope that you fix all of these mistakes in your version!
I just need to get to time the subtitling of the Japanese-only parts, that and I might also have an extended version that adds the Raids Again film into it that runs 3 hours. I'm not sure if I should re add the interview scenes after the expedition on Odo Island [because it is already running at 107 minutes] because it kinda is included during the VO. Maybe I should?
eabaker wrote:While a lot of the relationship elements you discuss are less effective and involving in the KotM cut, as a result of being reduced to details mentioned in Burr's VO where previously they were developed within the narrative, that doesn't result in their not making sense, just in their being less engaging. I also think you underestimate how much is sold by the body language and facial expressions of the performers.

I guess it didn't help that when I first seen KOTM, it was after I seen Gojira. I didn't really get much of the differences because I subconsciously brought in all of the missing details from the Japanese to the American version, up until now. The body language did add up somewhat, especially when Emiko cried over the two fighting, but if a viewer were to take it from face value, its more like you're seeing your two friends fighting over it rather than a boyfriend fighting your ex fiancee who has the answer to killing Godzilla. The relationship goes well beyond the triangle, especially with Yamane versus Ogata. Since that one core scene of them bickering was cut entirely from the final cut, Yamane's role was demoted merely to a scientist-informant while Ogata is merely a character that barely exists.

Maybe I am underestimating what is told by body language, but considering that often doesn't register with me [considering my own disability] and the fact that the director cut too much of the footage {I'd rather the whole Diet sequence to be cut to make the monster more mysterious] in the final cut, I didn't register that there was a love triangle or that there was that much of a conflict like in the Japanese version. There were inklings of it that just couldn't be cut out, but that is likely one of the resting problems with the dialogue that was recorded when those scenes were included within the movie versus what story the final cut tells us the audience.

It's like in The Last Airbender. If I were not acquainted with the cartoon, much of what happens in the film only happens because the plot and Nicola Peltz's narrations dictate it to happen. Since we barely seen the Gaang actually interact with one another as friends, siblings and or warrior-crusaders, we barely could relate or care about the characters if they all got maimed or killed. Also, it did not help that I could relate and rooted for Zuko and Iroh , both the antagonists/deuteragonists of the film, over the heroes that I, the viewer, should be rooting for. Since so much was cut and warped, the movie made little sense compared to Bay films and the Showa Godzilla or anything fro that period just were gold. KOTM was Airbender-lite, whereas GINO was Airbender to Godzilla's Avatar :The Last Airbender, because while it did follow the story of Gojira well, it made the Japanese cast cardboard save for Emiko.

And for both films that heavily rely on thriller and action scenes to invigorate interest into the conflicts and not have them kind of strange to me.

The facial expressions ,even in KOTM were solid, but film-making highly revolves around the law of "show and do not tell". KOTM's theatrical cut ignored that and while it does not pose many issues on an initial viewing, it begins to grow obvious that if it were not for Burr's voiceover, Emiko , Ogata and Serizawa could as easily be rewritten as a gay couple [if done today], a trio of friends that grow apart, a couple of friends quarreling over how the other is abusing his trust, or even a pair of brothers that are as opposite as day and night, while Emiko is just some seductress of some sort [?]. Yamane could be cut out almost entirely without a care in the story progression, because he has zero real screen time and dialogue after the Diet demonstration. I get from that that initially, they only kept Yamane and Ogata because he had a few scenes with the main characters of the original that couldn't be cut any further, otherwise neither of them would exist. We know Emiko is sad because of the burning of Serizawa's documents, but why is she breaking down? It felt like there was an implied build up from the VO, but it didn't do enough in the manner that showing what was happening would.

Assuming I'm wrong, and the initial cut included all of the aforementioned scenes [barring all Hiroshima symbolism and attack] , then the way the cut was handled wasn't exactly tactful. To this day, I have loved all of Burr's scenes and looked at 1985 as a waste of an opportunity to do similar magic on the silver screen with other American actors because the American scenes were shot masterfully by the budget and time allowed.

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Re: Just Realized How King of the Monsters Makes No Sense

Post by Mecha-SpaceGhidorah »

Bigdog wrote:I guess it didn't help that when I first seen KOTM, it was after I seen Gojira.
This maybe part of it. I can't speak for most, but I got most all of the nuances (but by no means all) of the characters fairly easily in King of the Monsters. I saw that first when I was around 11 and didn't see Gojira until the Classic Media DVD, so that was probably when I was 18 or 19.
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Re: Just Realized How King of the Monsters Makes No Sense

Post by eabaker »

Bigdog wrote:...I didn't register that there was a love triangle...
But the VO flat-out states that there's a love triangle. It may not be established in a very artful manner, but it is explicitly established.
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Re: Just Realized How King of the Monsters Makes No Sense

Post by three »

eabaker wrote:
Bigdog wrote:...I didn't register that there was a love triangle...
But the VO flat-out states that there's a love triangle. It may not be established in a very artful manner, but it is explicitly established.

Perhaps it needs to state it so bluntly because it does a poor job of keeping up the appearance...
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Re: Just Realized How King of the Monsters Makes No Sense

Post by eabaker »

three wrote:
eabaker wrote:
Bigdog wrote:...I didn't register that there was a love triangle...
But the VO flat-out states that there's a love triangle. It may not be established in a very artful manner, but it is explicitly established.

Perhaps it needs to state it so bluntly because it does a poor job of keeping up the appearance...
Oh, I don't question that for a second. My point is simply that the information is there, and that as a purely mechanical plot point, it makes sense.
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Re: Just Realized How King of the Monsters Makes No Sense

Post by Bigdog »

eabaker wrote:
But the VO flat-out states that there's a love triangle. It may not be established in a very artful manner, but it is explicitly established.
Kind of like how Nicola Peltz-Katara states that Yue and Sokka fell in love quick, but we see nothing of why a Princess would fall for Sokka in any way or even have an indication as to how they are developing. Go to 4: 23 of this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbi7xUd5TPc

Just because the VO says there is something doesn't prove there is. Ever hear of an unreliable narrator? Since there was nothing shown, and little to of off of, its a failure of the cut itself to administer why things are happening. If I were not to have seen Gojira, KOTM makes as much sense as Airbender did.
eabaker wrote: Oh, I don't question that for a second. My point is simply that the information is there, and that as a purely mechanical plot point, it makes sense.
Not really. what information? One line over a couple that could easily be a number of things that is never shown on screen at all together is hardly info. It'd be like me telling you I am cheating with your fiancee or I said I went to a concert of your favorite band, you'd want more, but I just run away and nothing else is known or shown. The girlfriend says nothing and is quite fine , and then she breaks down out of no reason. Let's also mind the fact that she literally has zero emotional attachment to Ogata or Serizawa within the movie, so even with that line, it still makes it a flaw because Ogata has the total screen time of 3-4 minutes if not less in the American film.

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Re: Just Realized How King of the Monsters Makes No Sense

Post by eabaker »

Yes, obviously I have heard of an unreliable narrator...

However, the use of the unreliable narrator is a fairly sophisticated narrative approach, and one which is specifically signaled to the audience. In a story as simplistic as the Americanized Godzilla - King of the Monsters, the filmmakers could safely take for granted that Martin would be accepted as a reliable source.

Again, it's not good storytelling, but you insistence that it doesn't make sense is bizarre. You're having to search for reasons to doubt the movie and make things convoluted. Having seen KotM dozens of times as a child and teen prior to first obtaining a bootleg of the Japanese cut in the mid-90s, I can assure you, I was able to follow the movie and founds its contents perfectly sensible and comprehensible, and the same is true of anyone else I knew who had seen the movie.

Your whole argument is working backwards to get to the movie, pointing out holes of which you're already conscious, not holes that feel present starting with KotM itself.
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Re: Just Realized How King of the Monsters Makes No Sense

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I completely agree with eabaker. I grew up with G:KOTM and saw it many, many times before ever seeing the Japanese GODZILLA. Even as a young child I no problem understanding who these characters were, the relationships between them, or their motivations. Much of this is fleshed in the Japanese version, but it's there in the American cut. Bigdog's explanations on how things could have been "improved" just don't work for me, and I think would greatly weaken the American version.

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Re: Just Realized How King of the Monsters Makes No Sense

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kpa wrote:I completely agree with eabaker. I grew up with G:KOTM and saw it many, many times before ever seeing the Japanese GODZILLA. Even as a young child I no problem understanding who these characters were, the relationships between them, or their motivations. Much of this is fleshed in the Japanese version, but it's there in the American cut. Bigdog's explanations on how things could have been "improved" just don't work for me, and I think would greatly weaken the American version.
I guess that has to be my issue then, as I saw Gojira before KOTM , so I easily could pick the holes of the storytelling and plot structure, largely because it felt like the movie ended far too quickly for my tastes. It's not a bad movie in any regard, even 1985 is OK. But aside from the added American element to the story, I felt that it uprooted so much of Gojira's symbolism and cut scenes of the characters that truly mattered to the overall plot, that the plot progression goes from initially happy trio of young people to a brawl over the Oxygen Destroyer. The narration certainly tries to make sense in this respect, but considering it references scenes that only existed in the early cuts and drafts of King of the Monsters, it might as well been cut out because just going off KOTM, the characters could have been best friends considering how OK and distant Yamane was about the entire ordeal. [which he isn't in Gojira]

I mean ,like you, I didn't have that many misunderstandings what was going on in the American version [as I've said, I saw this after Gojira] , but I'm also trying to see the film within the lens of film critic and someone within the industry might. I love the additions in the American version, but if the American scenes were merged with the Japanese, it would flesh out the relationships and plot and give several characters cut from the original a third dimension. I might also have different view because I never grew up with KOTM or Gojira.

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Re: Just Realized How King of the Monsters Makes No Sense

Post by Huan_of_Valinor »

Bigdog wrote:Finally, the omission of Dr. Yamane's scenes with the government and or anyone else, not including the argument with Ogata, virtually makes the character meaningless to the overall plot of King of the Monsters. If I were to cut him out, it would hardly matter to the overall film as he hardly existed in it in the first place. In Gojira, his character had more of a tragic development arc which led to him killing himself in Raids Again/Gigantis the Fire Monster. I can see him crying over Dr. Serizawa just because he knew him as a child, but not anyone else in KOTM.
I agreed with everything up till this point. now it has been a while since I've watched Raids Again/ Fire Monster, but I most certainly do not remember that happening
Gojirawars 03 wrote: The Giant Condor is a blessing upon this Earth, however. He's easily the most important and most powerful kaiju in the franchise. so powerful that Godzilla is helpless against his power, and pleads for mercy, which the gracious Condor grants him. I mean, even the editor wasn't able to show a single shot of the Condor onscreen for more than half a second, because no-one can handle that much sheer power for more than a second.

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Re: Just Realized How King of the Monsters Makes No Sense

Post by tymon »

^It was, but kids these days wouldn't know subtext if it slapped them in the face. It's pretty clear that Yamane is a suicidal member of the Anguirus Family.
JAGzilla wrote:And then there was The Giant Condor. He...seemed very dedicated to what he was doing?

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Re: Just Realized How King of the Monsters Makes No Sense

Post by Space Hunter M »

Has BigDog ever heard of the French cut? That's already a hybrid of the two versions.

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Re: Just Realized How King of the Monsters Makes No Sense

Post by Huan_of_Valinor »

Gawdziller wrote:Yamane mutated into Anguirus. I thought this was common knowledge?
tymon wrote:^It was, but kids these days wouldn't know subtext if it slapped them in the face. It's pretty clear that Yamane is a suicidal member of the Anguirus Family.
ah, but did he transform into a Gigantis monster of the Anguirus family? that is the most important part of the film imo

after all, even trains cannot survive Angilas... or Gigantis. or whatever goji is supposed to be called in that "Dub"
Gojirawars 03 wrote: The Giant Condor is a blessing upon this Earth, however. He's easily the most important and most powerful kaiju in the franchise. so powerful that Godzilla is helpless against his power, and pleads for mercy, which the gracious Condor grants him. I mean, even the editor wasn't able to show a single shot of the Condor onscreen for more than half a second, because no-one can handle that much sheer power for more than a second.

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