Favourite King Ghidorah?

[Dracosaurian]

It's MV King Ghidorah for me. I like Showa, but after some thought and re-watching the films it appeared in I've gotta give MV the edge. Certain things held Showa back for me.

Meanwhile with MV, His personality, serpentine flair and having history with Godzilla was great and I really enjoyed watching him.

[JAGzilla]

One big thing that Monsterverse Ghidorah had going for him was his melee proficiency. He was a powerful, competent tooth-and-claw brawler, and that's something no previous incarnation can really say. Showa, especially, was almost exclusively a beam-spammer, ironically even more so than Heisei.

That said, beam-spamming is what Ghidorah does, and I would have liked just a bit more of it from Monsterverse. It would've been cool if he'd had a moment where he just freaks out and torches everything in sight while wildly flailing his heads, just for tradition's sake.

[godjacob]

One big thing that Monsterverse Ghidorah had going for him was his melee proficiency. He was a powerful, competent tooth-and-claw brawler, and that's something no previous incarnation can really say. Showa, especially, was almost exclusively a beam-spammer, ironically even more so than Heisei.

That said, beam-spamming is what Ghidorah does, and I would have liked just a bit more of it from Monsterverse. It would've been cool if he'd had a moment where he just freaks out and torches everything in sight while wildly flailing his heads, just for tradition's sake.

Does the scene where he eats the generator to supercharge and blast everything around him (Godzilla's face, multiple jets the buildings etc.) not count in this regard?



Literally if you gave Ghidorah's heads dialogue here I could imagine them screaming like a mad tyrant "DIE LOWER LIFEFORMS DIE!"

[Breakdown]

It should be noted that Showa Ghidorah was absolutely capable of being a civilization destroyer, so long as that civilization didn't have access to mind control technology. Yeah, okay, that does seem to be the case for most Showa civilizations, but humanity wasn't one of them. If we hadn't lucked out and had three of the right kaiju in the right place at the right time, what could humans have done? Played whack-a-mole with nukes until one finally hit Ghidorah, assuming it would even be enough to stop him? And then we'd just have been doing his job for him.

>Allegedly destroys whole civilizations

> Gets wrecked by a caterpillar and 2 angry dinosaurs.


Either those civilizations Ghidorah destroyed were in the stone age, or they really exaggerated his capabilities.

[NSZ]

Yeah, as much as I love Showa's backstory, what's shown onscreen really doesn't support it.

[Terasawa]

>Allegedly destroys whole civilizations

> Gets wrecked by a caterpillar and 2 angry dinosaurs.


Either those civilizations Ghidorah destroyed were in the stone age, or they really exaggerated his capabilities.

Or why not assume that Ghidorah is as powerful as claimed and that the combined might of Godzilla, Rodan, and Mothra (not "a caterpillar and 2 angry dinosaurs") was enough to stop him?

Princess Salno says, "Venus was once far advanced beyond today's Earth," (Criterion subtitles), so Venus cannot have been "in the stone age."

[Voyager]

Yeah, I really hate the gross downplaying of Showa Ghidorah.

[godjacob]

>Allegedly destroys whole civilizations

> Gets wrecked by a caterpillar and 2 angry dinosaurs.


Either those civilizations Ghidorah destroyed were in the stone age, or they really exaggerated his capabilities.

Or why not assume that Ghidorah is as powerful as claimed and that the combined might of Godzilla, Rodan, and Mothra (not "a caterpillar and 2 angry dinosaurs") was enough to stop him?

Princess Salno says, "Venus was once far advanced beyond today's Earth," (Criterion subtitles), so Venus cannot have been "in the stone age."

This is hilarious considering that humans have broken alien mind control in the Showa series with Ghidorah least twice over, one of which was done using a guy's garage project.

And it is more how this planet destroying threat spends the Showa series largely under the whistle of various alien races but also being forced to flee in all but his last canon appearance where he gets ground pound to death.

Just saying the Venus backstory vs. what we actual get with Showa Ghidorah is but a touch underwhelming.

[Terasawa]

This is hilarious considering that humans have broken alien mind control in the Showa series with Ghidorah least twice over, one of which was done using a guy's garage project.

And it is more how this planet destroying threat spends the Showa series largely under the whistle of various alien races but also being forced to flee in all but his last canon appearance where he gets ground pound to death.

Just saying the Venus backstory vs. what we actual get with Showa Ghidorah is but a touch underwhelming.

It's not a fault of the 1964 film that later films undermined Ghidorah's threat. At least in that film alone, there's nothing that refutes Salno's claims about Ghidorah. Breakdown didn't try to use events from later films, they used only what happens and what is said in GTTHM. I have no problem acknowledging that Ghidorah appears underwhelming in his subsequent Showa appearances, but you really can't use his 1964 debut to discount his backstory as Breakdown and NSZ did. That film doesn't overstate his menace, it's just the later films that seemingly contradict what's established.

These things didn't really happen, we're talking about very imperfect works of fiction. There are no definite rules here on how to handle the contradictions from film to film.

And FWIW, Tetsuo's invention doesn't break the Xilien mind control. They use his device to interfere with the Xilien computers that they're totally reliant on. The mind control is broken by the A-Cycle device which interrupts the magnetic waves controlling the monsters. They are not the same thing.

[godjacob]

This is hilarious considering that humans have broken alien mind control in the Showa series with Ghidorah least twice over, one of which was done using a guy's garage project.

And it is more how this planet destroying threat spends the Showa series largely under the whistle of various alien races but also being forced to flee in all but his last canon appearance where he gets ground pound to death.

Just saying the Venus backstory vs. what we actual get with Showa Ghidorah is but a touch underwhelming.

It's not a fault of the 1964 film that later films undermined Ghidorah's threat. At least in that film alone, there's nothing that refutes Salno's claims about Ghidorah. Breakdown didn't try to use events from later films, they used only what happens and what is said in GTTHM. I have no problem acknowledging that Ghidorah appears underwhelming in his subsequent Showa appearances, but you really can't use his 1964 debut to discount his backstory as Breakdown and NSZ did. That film doesn't overstate his menace, it's just the later films that seemingly contradict what's established.

These things didn't really happen, we're talking about very imperfect works of fiction. There are no definite rules here on how to handle the contradictions from film to film.

And FWIW, Tetsuo's invention doesn't break the Xilien mind control. They use his device to interfere with the Xilien computers that they're totally reliant on. The mind control is broken by the A-Cycle device which interrupts the magnetic waves controlling the monsters. They are not the same thing.

Nothing is a strong word, while I agree the original film is Showa Ghidorah's peak and the one time he came off as the planet invading menace he is generally supposed to be I wouldn't say the first film confirms his planet busting threat entirely. When Ghidorah actually does arrive on Earth, we see his style of destroying civilizations is...to slowly advance and break buildings one at a time with either his Gravity Bolts (Which on occasion even miss stationary targets due to their chaotic swings of the head) and yeah. If you put even say Anguirus on Venus you could paint him as a planet destroyer without Kaiju resistance if that is how he goes about it. Still I have no issues with GTTHM portrayal and if subsequent films kept up that characterization he'd be a definitive front runner by most accounts. But they don't do that.

And I don't think you can just gloss over how well sad the rest of his run in the Showa films is when talking his character.

My point was more if Tetsuo's personal invention can become a critical competent for combating an invasion destroying the "super advanced" technology of the ones who tamed Ghidorah so casually it doesn't speak so highly about them and even less on those they subjugate.

[JAGzilla]

I'll just jump in and point out that 'advanced' in no way means unstoppable, as our own history shows again and again. Take, for example, the last year, which we've spent getting our asses kicked by a microscopic virus that's totally within our means to contain.

[Terasawa]

Nothing is a strong word, while I agree the original film is Showa Ghidorah's peak and the one time he came off as the planet invading menace he is generally supposed to be I wouldn't say the first film confirms his planet busting threat entirely. When Ghidorah actually does arrive on Earth, we see his style of destroying civilizations is...to slowly advance and break buildings one at a time with either his Gravity Bolts (Which on occasion even miss stationary targets due to their chaotic swings of the head) and yeah. If you put even say Anguirus on Venus you could paint him as a planet destroyer without Kaiju resistance if that is how he goes about it. Still I have no issues with GTTHM portrayal and if subsequent films kept up that characterization he'd be a definitive front runner by most accounts. But they don't do that.

And I don't think you can just gloss over how well sad the rest of his run in the Showa films is when talking his character.

My point was more if Tetsuo's personal invention can become a critical competent for combating an invasion destroying the "super advanced" technology of the ones who tamed Ghidorah so casually it doesn't speak so highly about them and even less on those they subjugate.

I didn't gloss over the later films nor did I say anyone should.

I'm not interested in further debating this, especially if we're gonna take turns nitpicking each other's posts as we have, because I've really no more to say about it. I was just trying to offer what I think was the screenwriter's idea, that 1) Ghidorah did in fact destroy Venus (no one has shown yet how GTTHM invalidates this), and 2) being beaten by Godzilla, Rodan, and Mothra means those three are stronger together, not that Ghidorah is weak. Those were essentially the two ideas Breakdown put forth, hence my initial response.