Talkback Thread #8: Son of Godzilla (1967)

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LSD Jellyfish
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Re: Talkback Thread #8: Son of Godzilla (1967)

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Mac Daddy MM wrote: Sat Jul 23, 2022 1:59 am NECRO POSTING POWERS... ACTIVATE!

Just rewatched SoG for the first time in 2022. Every time I watch this, it grows on me more so than most films. If the suits for Godzilla and Minilla weren't this bad, I really think it'd be held to higher regards, or at least on par with the far inferior Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster. The wire work for Kamacuras, and especially Kumonga, won't get surpassed for over twenty years with Biollante. Kumo is one of my favorite Showa villain and the fact a simple giant spider had Godzilla against the ropes more so than Kong, Mothra and even Ghidorah says something. I really can't think of many battles where it actually feels like Godzilla is about to be killed. So I still say, without Minilla's interference, Kumonga would have dethroned Godzilla.
It’s always annoyed me how Kumonga got lumped in with Kamacuras as the big jobbers, when Kumonga always held its own and was a legitimately threatening monster. It’s cry, the way it moves, and the music that accompanies it makes it horrifying. I like to think that Godzilla wouldn’t die from Kumonga’s sting directly, but have been incapacitated enough so that Kumonga could take the time to enjoy and eat Godzilla alive.

I think Son of Godzilla also holds a record for most “new monsters” introduced in the franchise.

It’s always weird to me how people forget how helpful Minya was in the finale, and sort of him reduce him to how he is in subsequent films.
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Re: Talkback Thread #8: Son of Godzilla (1967)

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LSD Jellyfish wrote: Sun Jul 24, 2022 4:36 am I think Son of Godzilla also holds a record for most “new monsters” introduced in the franchise.
Interesting, I hadn't really thought of that before, but I think the answer probably depends on what qualifications you assign to "new monsters." :P KotM probably holds the record now (although I don't remember how many of the new monsters actually appear in the film), and you could argue SoG is tied with Godzilla vs King Ghidorah (the Dorats, Godzillasaurus, and MKG are all alternate forms of the two returning monsters, but where trademark is concerned they're all treated as different characters). Beyond the Godzilla films, KKE introduces three characters to the Toho canon, while Space Amoeba is the only Toho film with three entirely new monsters.
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Re: Talkback Thread #8: Son of Godzilla (1967)

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Mac Daddy MM wrote: Sat Jul 23, 2022 1:59 am The wire work for Kamacuras, and especially Kumonga, won't get surpassed for over twenty years with Biollante.
Not only stunning wireworks, but also a lot of the most impressive and ambitious composite work done in the Showa series, much of it involving those wireworks creations!
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Re: Talkback Thread #8: Son of Godzilla (1967)

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eabaker wrote: Sun Jul 24, 2022 8:02 am
Mac Daddy MM wrote: Sat Jul 23, 2022 1:59 am The wire work for Kamacuras, and especially Kumonga, won't get surpassed for over twenty years with Biollante.
Not only stunning wireworks, but also a lot of the most impressive and ambitious composite work done in the Showa series, much of it involving those wireworks creations!
Oh yeah. The miniature work was also outstanding and ranks as some of my favorite non-city scenery in the franchise's long list of sets. I also want to point out that nearly 40 years later, when Kumonga returned, he didn't look nor move nearly as good as he does in SoG.


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Re: Talkback Thread #8: Son of Godzilla (1967)

Post by Legion1979 »

To be honest, I wouldn't say Kumonga's wire effects were surpassed by Biollante. While Biollante was absolutely a wireworks nightmare in terms of how many wires were used, the monster was still a suit, and it's impressiveness had a lot to do with its design and size. The wireworks were just confined to the vines. There's nothing there that was any more impressive than what Tsuburaya's crew was able to do with King Ghidorah 25 years earlier. Hell, in his first film King Ghidorah was required to turn around completely in full view of the camera in a single shot.

Then of course, all the wire effects after Biollante during the Heisei series was pretty poor. Ghidorah, Mothra, Battra and Rodan slowly flew around the sets like Macy's balloons, and the Aggregate Destroyahs were pretty clumsy compared to Kumonga.

Honestly, the only time post-60s that the special effects crew were able to pull of something truly spectacular with wireworks was with the adult Mothra in Tokyo SOS.

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Re: Talkback Thread #8: Son of Godzilla (1967)

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LSD Jellyfish wrote: Sun Jul 24, 2022 4:36 am

It’s always annoyed me how Kumonga got lumped in with Kamacuras as the big jobbers, when Kumonga always held its own and was a legitimately threatening monster. It’s cry, the way it moves, and the music that accompanies it makes it horrifying. I like to think that Godzilla wouldn’t die from Kumonga’s sting directly, but have been incapacitated enough so that Kumonga could take the time to enjoy and eat Godzilla alive.

Spiders already creep people out (you should see how my sister reacts to them), so a giant one is much more terrifying. Kumonga lacks firepower but is just as deadly, cunning, and relentless. As far as giant arrachnids go, it's second only to the giant tarantula in Tarantula, which only wins because it was portrayed with a live spider.
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Re: Talkback Thread #8: Son of Godzilla (1967)

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LSD Jellyfish wrote: Sun Jul 24, 2022 4:36 am
Mac Daddy MM wrote: Sat Jul 23, 2022 1:59 am NECRO POSTING POWERS... ACTIVATE!

Just rewatched SoG for the first time in 2022. Every time I watch this, it grows on me more so than most films. If the suits for Godzilla and Minilla weren't this bad, I really think it'd be held to higher regards, or at least on par with the far inferior Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster. The wire work for Kamacuras, and especially Kumonga, won't get surpassed for over twenty years with Biollante. Kumo is one of my favorite Showa villain and the fact a simple giant spider had Godzilla against the ropes more so than Kong, Mothra and even Ghidorah says something. I really can't think of many battles where it actually feels like Godzilla is about to be killed. So I still say, without Minilla's interference, Kumonga would have dethroned Godzilla.
It’s always annoyed me how Kumonga got lumped in with Kamacuras as the big jobbers, when Kumonga always held its own and was a legitimately threatening monster. It’s cry, the way it moves, and the music that accompanies it makes it horrifying. I like to think that Godzilla wouldn’t die from Kumonga’s sting directly, but have been incapacitated enough so that Kumonga could take the time to enjoy and eat Godzilla alive.

I think Son of Godzilla also holds a record for most “new monsters” introduced in the franchise.

It’s always weird to me how people forget how helpful Minya was in the finale, and sort of him reduce him to how he is in subsequent films.


I agree. I felt like Kumonga was at least in the same tier class of Megalon, Gigan, and Titanosaurus. Even when Godzilla tried to go melee, Kumonga overpowered him (granted, you could argue the poison was still affecting Godzilla).
GVK: TNE is a modern day 70s Showa Godzilla movie. Being a massive budget modern blockbuster CGI film instead of traditional 70s tokusatsu techniques doesn't change that. Fight me.

Anguirus and Godzilla being friends in the Showa series is cannon. Deal with it.

Monsterverse is not similar to either MCU nor Bayformers just because all three are big budget CGI blockbuster franchises.

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Re: Talkback Thread #8: Son of Godzilla (1967)

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eabaker wrote: Sun Jul 24, 2022 8:02 am
Mac Daddy MM wrote: Sat Jul 23, 2022 1:59 am The wire work for Kamacuras, and especially Kumonga, won't get surpassed for over twenty years with Biollante.
Not only stunning wireworks, but also a lot of the most impressive and ambitious composite work done in the Showa series, much of it involving those wireworks creations!
Don't forget the rare use of full-scale prop appendages.
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Re: Talkback Thread #8: Son of Godzilla (1967)

Post by JAGzilla »

^ I love that scene where Kumonga reaches his leg into the cave and tries to grab our heroes. Such a cool, unconventional scene for the kaiju genre.
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Re: Talkback Thread #8: Son of Godzilla (1967)

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Kumonga and Kamacura are also interesting as a look at man and nature. Our characters are trying to control, or, at least, heavily influence natural processes. Their weather control experiment ends up creating an ecosystem where the insects rule and humans are prey. Man's science does eventually win, but not before they learn how it feels to be on the receiving end of the food chain.
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Re: Talkback Thread #8: Son of Godzilla (1967)

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edgaguirus wrote: Tue Jul 26, 2022 1:50 pm Kumonga and Kamacura are also interesting as a look at man and nature. Our characters are trying to control, or, at least, heavily influence natural processes. Their weather control experiment ends up creating an ecosystem where the insects rule and humans are prey. Man's science does eventually win, but not before they learn how it feels to be on the receiving end of the food chain.
While the semi-warning of "be careful of trying to change/alter nature" is a common trope, until this comment I never realized how probably intentionally ironic the entire film is. The point of the expirement is an attempt at climate control to be able to produce better crops and more food. A minor detail in the film is that food insecurity is becoming worse throughout the world. Now the scientists spend the majority of the film trying to avoid being eaten!

A random question I have is Minya's origins. This might seem like a stupid and obvious question, but I don't think it's been discussed in detail. Is the scientists expirement also what causes Minya to hatch/grow? I like to think that Minya's egg was in a preserved/hibernetic state, and the intense heat and atomic energy from the expirement awakwened and allowed for it to grow again. It might also explain why Minya is "gentler". Minya too was born out of atomic energy, but not a direct atomic test to it's skin.
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Re: Talkback Thread #8: Son of Godzilla (1967)

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In Rodan, the egg was theorized to be in a state of hibernation until bomb test caused it to hatch.
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Re: Talkback Thread #8: Son of Godzilla (1967)

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edgaguirus wrote: Wed Aug 17, 2022 1:18 pm In Rodan, the egg was theorized to be in a state of hibernation until bomb test caused it to hatch.
I'm pretty sure that's exclusive to the dub, or at least not as definitive in the Japanese cut. The Americanized version (the one with the atomic stock footage in the beginning), definitely makes this out to be the case. In the Japanese cut, global warming and the mining itself, are blamed for Rodan and the Meganulon's awakening. I think a few points in the film mention atomic testing, but Rodan makes it clear that Anthropogenic actions have caused rodan's awakening.

It's a little more unclear in SoG, if the testing caused Minilla to grow and hatch, and were the right conditions, or if it was just an inevitablity.
Spirit Ghidorah 2010 wrote: Sun Dec 03, 2023 4:54 pm Anno-san pleasures me more than Yamasaki-san.

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Re: Talkback Thread #8: Son of Godzilla (1967)

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LSD Jellyfish wrote: Wed Aug 17, 2022 3:48 pm
edgaguirus wrote: Wed Aug 17, 2022 1:18 pm In Rodan, the egg was theorized to be in a state of hibernation until bomb test caused it to hatch.
I'm pretty sure that's exclusive to the dub, or at least not as definitive in the Japanese cut. The Americanized version (the one with the atomic stock footage in the beginning), definitely makes this out to be the case. In the Japanese cut, global warming and the mining itself, are blamed for Rodan and the Meganulon's awakening. I think a few points in the film mention atomic testing, but Rodan makes it clear that Anthropogenic actions have caused rodan's awakening.

It's a little more unclear in SoG, if the testing caused Minilla to grow and hatch, and were the right conditions, or if it was just an inevitablity.
In the Japanese cut, Dr. Kashiwagi raises nuclear weapons as a possible cause of the eggs being unearthed, but he is very clear that it is pure speculation (that said, "pure speculation" inserted by an author carries greater weight in analyzing a fictional work than pure speculation in real life).
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Re: Talkback Thread #8: Son of Godzilla (1967)

Post by Terasawa »

Minya is the source of the radio interference that screws up the first test. IIRC, it's determined to be a sort of telepathic call; whatever it is, it's what brings Godzilla to the island and attracts the Gimantis to the egg.
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Re: Talkback Thread #8: Son of Godzilla (1967)

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Terasawa wrote: Wed Aug 17, 2022 4:13 pm Minya is the source of the radio interference that screws up the first test. IIRC, it's determined to be a sort of telepathic call; whatever it is, it's what brings Godzilla to the island and attracts the Gimantis to the egg.
And what messes up the plane early on (IIRC). In that case, we can presume that Minya is a more natually occuring monster and the tests weren't the catalysts towards the birth (maybe growth?).

Funny that they took a relatively minor aspect of the film (Minya's telepathy in the egg) and incporated that as a really important detail in the Heisei Entries. Minya is only shown this ability briefly in the Showa series, but Heisei's incarnation milks the telepathy angle.
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Re: Talkback Thread #8: Son of Godzilla (1967)

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Yeah, the plane also picks up the interference. (It also occurs after Minya has hatched, when he calls out to Godzilla after being ambushed by Kumonga.) I probably should have checked the film first (oh well) but Criterion translates Chotaro Togin's line at the beginning as "It's like a guidance signal, but with brain waves," so it's not necessarily telepathy. But good catch that Wataru Mimura brought that back in Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II.

While skipping through the Japanese version just now, I realized that the voice explaining the failed Sollgel Island experiment belongs to Akihiko Hirata and that we're hearing his internal monologue as he describes the storm in his log. I'm not sure why I've never noticed that any time I've watched the Japanese version. Anyway, in both English dubs, however, it's treated as voice-of-god narration, and both dubs also have their respective dubber for Tadao Takashima provide the narration. The American version's script is definitely based on the export dub's, but I think the Takashima dubber coincidence is just that (in other words, the English scripts likely didn't assign that dialogue to Takashima's character).
Last edited by Terasawa on Wed Aug 17, 2022 4:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Talkback Thread #8: Son of Godzilla (1967)

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They already had a psychic human, so a psychic monster is not a stretch.
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Re: Talkback Thread #8: Son of Godzilla (1967)

Post by The Killer Meteor »

The lead scientists are pretty unethical. They know Yoshio Tsuchiya is having a breakdown and wants to leave the island, but they lie and pretend the radio is broken!

If he'd shot them all, they'd deserve it!

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Re: Talkback Thread #8: Son of Godzilla (1967)

Post by daveblackeye15 »

No no he's just a little stressed is all he's fine.

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