Monster Discussion #5: Rodan (Showa)

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Monster Zero
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Re: Monster Discussion #5: Rodan (Showa)

Post by Monster Zero »

I love this version of this monster the best. It has a really good design, and is more destructive than any of the other versions of this monster.

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Re: Monster Discussion #5: Rodan (Showa)

Post by edgaguirus »

Yes. It only has to fly over an area to devastate by sonic boom. It's a great visual. Rodan flies over, and seconds later, things get destroyed.
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Re: Monster Discussion #5: Rodan (Showa)

Post by LiquidG »

Showa Rodan is without a doubt my favorite Kajiu next to big G himself. He's so badass in his original movie and I especially love him in GTTHM. His rivalry with Godzilla In that film is absolutely fantastic, their little skirmish are some of my favorite parts of the film. It tells a lot about a monster that can go toe to toe with Godzilla and shrug off his atomic breath like it was nothing, not to mention how he handled King Ghidorah was just plain boss, ramming into him and knocking his overgrown gaudy ass out of the sky was freaking awesome!!!
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Re: Monster Discussion #5: Rodan (Showa)

Post by ArchdukeCaligula »

I read on this website that Rodan could shoot a blast of wind from his mouth. I never noticed that
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Re: Monster Discussion #5: Rodan (Showa)

Post by Rody »

^ There are a couple of close-ups in the original film where you can definitely see a gust of wind coming out of his mouth. What it does is anyone's guess, though. I take it to just mean how strong even his voice is.

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Re: Monster Discussion #5: Rodan (Showa)

Post by Godzillian »

Carthormerr wrote:
NSZ wrote:Both Rodans fell into the lava stream. Unless you're Heisei Godzilla, there's no surviving.
... or Battra. In Gojira the characters assume G dies. This thought is supported by the fact that you as the viewer get to see his body disintegrate. So in Raids Again, they don't say "Godzilla resurrected". Dr Yamane says basically this is what we were afraid of, there was another G.

In Rodan one of them falls in the stream and stops moving, the other lands on top of the first one and writhes around on fire, and is even still moving when the movie ends. Now we didn't get to stay and monitor the scene afterwards, but we assume they both die. In GTTHM the prophetess doesn't say "another Rodan has surfaced" or "there was a baby". She says the "volcanic gas accumulated in the crust will resurrect Rodan". That statement seems straightforward to me.
Isn't it logically to assume she may not have meant it literally? Maybe the gas just woke this Rodan up similar to how other kaiju are awoken by atomic bombs.
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Re: Monster Discussion #5: Rodan (Showa)

Post by Gothicserpent »

I always assumed that it was just a completely different Rodan in GTTHM.
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Re: Monster Discussion #5: Rodan (Showa)

Post by Lain Of The Wired »

Godzilla14 wrote:Rodan's beak was great in Rodan(1956). But in GTTHM, at the final battle, Rodan's beak was all curved up.
well champ, believe it or not, the reason behind that was because It was an entirely different suit. ;)

And Rodan's beak looked the same all through GTTHM, it didn't just randomly change during the final battle in the film
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Re: Monster Discussion #5: Rodan (Showa)

Post by Carthormerr »

Godzillian wrote:Isn't it logically to assume she may not have meant it literally? Maybe the gas just woke this Rodan up similar to how other kaiju are awoken by atomic bombs.
Logic? Not necessarily
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Re: Monster Discussion #5: Rodan (Showa)

Post by edgaguirus »

That's the way I interpretted it.
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Re: Monster Discussion #5: Rodan (Showa)

Post by MutheSquirrel »

I'm ganna take it as one of the same Rodans as that's what's presented to me in the movie. The whole argument that it was a third egg because "this one eats fish" is kinda' weird. If it was a third egg it would still be the same kind of animal. It would still eat the same stuff... Rodan was just going through his human eating phase. As children do. The other argument that we saw them die... we've seen a LOT of these monsters die in the Showa series. Showa's continuity is more loose than the women in a Japanese adult massage parlor in that respect.

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Re: Monster Discussion #5: Rodan (Showa)

Post by MutheSquirrel »

Eh, that generally just comes across as a fan explanation to me. There sure are a lot of these unique, one-of-a-kind creatures running around. The only time I really accept that is when it's clearly presented, like the second Godzilla or Mothra's life cycle. Not that I have anything against that as an explanation of course, these things are loose enough to be interpreted however you like. It's just not the path, I, personally choose.

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Re: Monster Discussion #5: Rodan (Showa)

Post by JAGzilla »

^ Same here. I've always preferred the idea that one of the original Rodans survived the eruption, and just took a few years to recover.
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Re: Monster Discussion #5: Rodan (Showa)

Post by MutheSquirrel »

That's because only the fans care about it, really. All those monster movies were created by different groups of people and were never intended to be intertwined. When they were all added to the same franchise the Godzilla creators weren't thinking "how can we make this work so all the movies correlate.." they just didn't care, it wasn't important. People wanted monsters, give them monsters! These things are never explained simply because there is NO answer, so it's entirely up to the fans whether they see them as the same monsters, different but related monsters, or just in no way linked to any other movie. There is no right answer, just what you want to perceive it as. I tend to fall into the first group.

In the end, no matter what path you take, there are going to be continuity and plot holes everywhere because there's not really an answer to it. There was no big complex intertwining plot thread there by the creators to start with. You have to add or ignore facts within the movies themselves to make ANY theory work. Thus, at the end of the day, it's all as equally correct as it is incorrect.

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Re: Monster Discussion #5: Rodan (Showa)

Post by Godzillian »

NSZ wrote:
MutheSquirrel wrote:Eh, that generally just comes across as a fan explanation to me. There sure are a lot of these unique, one-of-a-kind creatures running around. The only time I really accept that is when it's clearly presented, like the second Godzilla or Mothra's life cycle. Not that I have anything against that as an explanation of course, these things are loose enough to be interpreted however you like. It's just not the path, I, personally choose.
It's not really fan explanation, though. Baragon and Varan in DAM, for instance, were smaller than their predacessors. The Gorosaurus presented in DAM was much larger (Toho be trollin' with their 35 meter bunk) and stronger than the one in KKE (which likely isn't even part of the continuity anway); the Manda in DAM just barely resembled the Mu guardian (who was frozen solid and was left in an area that was about to blow sky high, mind you, and, again, it likely isn't part of the coninuity either); the '55 Anguirus behaved completely different than the one that appeared later, it was certainly no friend of Godzilla's; and you can't deny that Kamacuras is not just one singular monster but rather an entire species of giant mantis. The only real oddball here is Kumonga.

Really, at the end of the day, I'm just having trouble understanding how a third Rodan is a sillier notion than one Rodan surviving the eruption while its mate oh-so-conveniently didn't. :dizzy:
I have a Godzilla movie guide book for Godzilla vs King Ghidorah and it lists a few kaiju including serval as you have mentioned as #2 such as Anguirus #2 and Gorosaurus #2 along with their first appearances simply as Anguirus and Gorosaurus. You are pretty much right on about it not being a fan explanation.
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Re: Monster Discussion #5: Rodan (Showa)

Post by MutheSquirrel »

And who do you think writes those books? You're looking at someone's opinion, really.

And don't think creators throwing out a quickie answer when cornered many years later leads to canon. Or else Han didn't shoot first.

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Re: Monster Discussion #5: Rodan (Showa)

Post by Carthormerr »

MutheSquirrel wrote:That's because only the fans care about it, really. All those monster movies were created by different groups of people and were never intended to be intertwined. When they were all added to the same franchise the Godzilla creators weren't thinking "how can we make this work so all the movies correlate.." they just didn't care, it wasn't important. People wanted monsters, give them monsters! These things are never explained simply because there is NO answer, so it's entirely up to the fans whether they see them as the same monsters, different but related monsters, or just in no way linked to any other movie. There is no right answer, just what you want to perceive it as. I tend to fall into the first group.

In the end, no matter what path you take, there are going to be continuity and plot holes everywhere because there's not really an answer to it. There was no big complex intertwining plot thread there by the creators to start with. You have to add or ignore facts within the movies themselves to make ANY theory work. Thus, at the end of the day, it's all as equally correct as it is incorrect.
This is pretty spot on
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Re: Monster Discussion #5: Rodan (Showa)

Post by Rody »

MutheSquirrel wrote:That's because only the fans care about it, really. All those monster movies were created by different groups of people and were never intended to be intertwined.
You are probably correct about them not being intertwined; however, you are somewhat incorrect about "different groups of people". Shinichi Sekizawa was involved in writing Atragon and Varan, and Takeshi Kimura did writing for Rodan, Destroy All Monsters, and King Kong Escapes. Koji Kajita assistant directed Frankenstein vs. Baragon, Atragon, and Rodan; Ryohei Fujii did film editing for Frankenstein, Atragon, DAM, and King Kong Escapes; and of course Ishiro Honda and Tomoyuki Tanaka respectively directed and produced them all, with Tsuburaya directing the SFX.

Ultimately, I tend to lean on the side of multiple members of kaiju "species", if I choose to connect the films at all. Since I don't recall there ever being an instance where a kaiju was directly stated as having returned from the dead, but we have at least one or two instances of "another" of a kaiju appearing (e.g. Godzilla himself), there is more evidence supporting the latter than the former.

There's also the aspect that it doesn't really matter one way or the other, especially for the people in-universe. What matters for them is that they know who Rodan is, and what he is capable of - and now they have to deal with it AGAIN!

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Re: Monster Discussion #5: Rodan (Showa)

Post by MutheSquirrel »

You are probably correct about them not being intertwined; however, you are somewhat incorrect about "different groups of people". Shinichi Sekizawa was involved in writing Atragon and Varan, and Takeshi Kimura did writing for Rodan, Destroy All Monsters, and King Kong Escapes. Koji Kajita assistant directed Frankenstein vs. Baragon, Atragon, and Rodan; Ryohei Fujii did film editing for Frankenstein, Atragon, DAM, and King Kong Escapes; and of course Ishiro Honda and Tomoyuki Tanaka respectively directed and produced them all, with Tsuburaya directing the SFX.
That's still just random people crossing on random films, not a single creative group working toward a goal. Even the creator of Godzilla didn't have that much of a say where the movies were heading. Of course there are a lot of people crossing movies, but you only need to look at the cast to know that. The same actors would be used to play completely different roles within the actual canon of the series, which could actually get pretty confusing to me as a kid...

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Re: Monster Discussion #5: Rodan (Showa)

Post by Gothicserpent »

NSZ wrote:
MutheSquirrel wrote:Eh, that generally just comes across as a fan explanation to me. There sure are a lot of these unique, one-of-a-kind creatures running around. The only time I really accept that is when it's clearly presented, like the second Godzilla or Mothra's life cycle. Not that I have anything against that as an explanation of course, these things are loose enough to be interpreted however you like. It's just not the path, I, personally choose.
It's not really fan explanation, though. Baragon and Varan in DAM, for instance, were smaller than their predacessors. The Gorosaurus presented in DAM was much larger (Toho be trollin' with their 35 meter bunk) and stronger than the one in KKE (which likely isn't even part of the continuity anway); the Manda in DAM just barely resembled the Mu guardian (who was frozen solid and was left in an area that was about to blow sky high, mind you, and, again, it likely isn't part of the coninuity either); the '55 Anguirus behaved completely different than the one that appeared later, it was certainly no friend of Godzilla's; and you can't deny that Kamacuras is not just one singular monster but rather an entire species of giant mantis. The only real oddball here is Kumonga.

Really, at the end of the day, I'm just having trouble understanding how a third Rodan is a sillier notion than one Rodan surviving the eruption while its mate oh-so-conveniently didn't. :dizzy:
^ This.
"HAY ANGUIRUS"
"WHADDA WANT?"
"SUMPTIN FUNNEH GOIN ON, YOU BETTAH CHECK!"
"OKAY"
GTU wrote:There are so many concept versions of Bagan they could give him his own toyline. That's why I'm banking on a Monsterarts sub-line called SH Baganarts.

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