Kaiju Fan Confessions

For discussions covering more than one Toho film or show that span across more than one “era.”
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Chrispy_G
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Re: Kaiju Fan Confessions

Post by Chrispy_G »

CrimsonBloodX wrote: Thu May 06, 2021 3:45 pm
Gigantis wrote: Tue May 04, 2021 8:50 am Honestly Sony's proposed title for GMK (Godzilla Must Be Killed!) is so.. hilariously awesome i kinda wish they made the English dub.
Wow, I did not know that Sony was going to do that lol
Wow...that's interesting even if the tone of that title doesn't really fit the film. I always assumed the simplest solution would have been to just call it "Godzilla: All Out Attack" in the same way they went with just "Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S"

I also feel like I've waited my whole life to get the following titles:
Godzilla Returns - YES we have "The Return of Godzilla" but honestly that is just a wordy version of a better title
Godzilla Reborn
Godzilla Rises
Godzilla: Evolution

Yes...they are all generic....but honestly when compared to something excessive like "Godzilla, Mothra, and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack"...they do the job.

I also think the final 3 titles would have all been great alternate options for "Shin Godzilla"...I get that they initially picked "Godzilla: Resurgence" and then decided to change it after Independence Day: Resurgence came out....but dang, I would have loved if they just went with SOME proper English Title for the film.

I think something like "Shin Godzilla" creates a barrier. In conversation, search engine algorithms, keyword searches etc....I feel like "Shin Godzilla" specifically hinders how effectively word of mouth about the existence and awareness of that movie absolutely threw a wrench into some of its potential to make an impact here in the USA.

I mean...couldyou imagine if the OFFICIAL English title for one of the 70s films was literally "Godzilla Tai Megalon"....how much more obscure that film would be in the public consciousness?

If there is a word in your title that makes an average joe go "wait, what's it called?" or "What does that mean?" when they hear it....it isn't a great title.

Like damn....the hardcore fans don't mind any of this stuff, but the common American audiences need common American titles with some level of 'generic' to them!
Last edited by Chrispy_G on Fri May 14, 2021 2:14 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Kaiju Fan Confessions

Post by Tyrant_Lizard_King »

While SP has some nifty action sequences it is fairly dialogue heavy and there's a tendency to fall into technical jargon often. Still every episode ends with a great hook to keep you interested, the characters are all fairly distinct, and there's a nice sense of mystery and escalation. I could see how the scientific talk can turn people off. Even someone like myself who enjoys the hell out of it has a lot of stuff kind go over my head. Still I would recommend you watch it dubbed as there's a lot of information thrown at you and its kinda hard keeping up with the subtitles. Having never watched a Netflix dub I can't comment of the quality of the casting sadly. Do they always use the same crew?
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Re: Kaiju Fan Confessions

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Chrispy_G wrote: Fri May 14, 2021 2:12 am Godzilla Returns - YES we have "The Return of Godzilla" but honestly that is just a wordy version of a better title
Unless you're just taking some hard-line "passive voice is always bad" stance, I don't see how Godzilla Returns is the stronger of those two options. The Return of Godzilla has a better rhythm, and feels ominous/portentous, where Godzilla Returns feels more... heroic, maybe?
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Re: Kaiju Fan Confessions

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eabaker wrote: Fri May 14, 2021 6:44 am
Chrispy_G wrote: Fri May 14, 2021 2:12 am Godzilla Returns - YES we have "The Return of Godzilla" but honestly that is just a wordy version of a better title
Unless you're just taking some hard-line "passive voice is always bad" stance, I don't see how Godzilla Returns is the stronger of those two options. The Return of Godzilla has a better rhythm, and feels ominous/portentous, where Godzilla Returns feels more... heroic, maybe?
Yeah, I’d have to agree with this. Godzilla Returns makes me think of Batman Returns, or Superman Returns.
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Re: Kaiju Fan Confessions

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I would hate to see any of those titles become a reality, they're the sort of thing you attach to the most generic schlock. All you're missing is Godzilla Resurrection.

If somebody gets filtered by Shin Godzilla's title alone then they probably wouldn't like the actual movie anyway.
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Re: Kaiju Fan Confessions

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And I don't think any of those titles have the pulpy charm or, well, the Japanese-ness of Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack.
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Re: Kaiju Fan Confessions

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I don't think there's much truth to the "Godzilla Must Be Killed" story.

Edit: And I'd ask Michael Schlesinger (producer/director of Sony's G2K and writer of the aborted "Godzilla Reborn" script) himself, since he's about the only approachable person I know who could possibly confirm or deny that with any real authority, but the only way I know of contacting him is through a message board account he hasn't used in over two years. SOL, as they say.
Last edited by Terasawa on Fri May 14, 2021 11:07 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Kaiju Fan Confessions

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Terasawa wrote: Fri May 14, 2021 10:58 am I don't think there's much truth to the "Godzilla Must Be Killed" story.
Though, honestly, I don't think that title is entirely unsuitable for the movie, or at least its second half.
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Re: Kaiju Fan Confessions

Post by Terasawa »

eabaker wrote: Fri May 14, 2021 11:00 am
Terasawa wrote: Fri May 14, 2021 10:58 am I don't think there's much truth to the "Godzilla Must Be Killed" story.
Though, honestly, I don't think that title is entirely unsuitable for the movie, or at least its second half.
I also think if the Japanese title was meant to evoke the 1960s Toho monster movies, then it's fitting to have an American title that would likewise evoke American (or British, in this case) monster movies of the same period.
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Re: Kaiju Fan Confessions

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Terasawa wrote: Fri May 14, 2021 11:11 am
eabaker wrote: Fri May 14, 2021 11:00 am
Terasawa wrote: Fri May 14, 2021 10:58 am I don't think there's much truth to the "Godzilla Must Be Killed" story.
Though, honestly, I don't think that title is entirely unsuitable for the movie, or at least its second half.
I also think if the Japanese title was meant to evoke the 1960s Toho monster movies, then it's fitting to have an American title that would likewise evoke American (or British, in this case) monster movies of the same period.
Yeah, that's pretty much my feeling as well.
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Re: Kaiju Fan Confessions

Post by UltramanGoji »

Not really a confession per se, but nowhere else to put it: The recently revealed theme park Godzilla design is seriously rising to be one of my all-time favorite designs. I love it to bits.
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Re: Kaiju Fan Confessions

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UltramanGoji wrote: Fri May 14, 2021 2:46 pm Not really a confession per se, but nowhere else to put it: The recently revealed theme park Godzilla design is seriously rising to be one of my all-time favorite designs. I love it to bits.
This isn’t even an opinion at this point, just a singular, unanimous agreement Seibu-En Goji is a fantastic design :lol:
Last edited by Jermobooka on Fri May 14, 2021 2:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Kaiju Fan Confessions

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^ I think the proportions are a bit wonky on it (and not in a suitably grotesque Shin sort of way), and the Ghidorah design doesn't appeal to me at all.

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Re: Kaiju Fan Confessions

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I don’t really understand ranking theme park designs up with official movie versions to begin with. In my eyes, including something like Shin Ghidorah in a design poll even though likely none of us ever got to experience the ride is akin to placing a design from a fan animation on YouTube into a design poll. Just doesn’t make sense to me.
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Re: Kaiju Fan Confessions

Post by UltramanGoji »

KK42 wrote: Fri May 14, 2021 5:05 pm I don’t really understand ranking theme park designs up with official movie versions to begin with. In my eyes, including something like Shin Ghidorah in a design poll even though likely none of us ever got to experience the ride is akin to placing a design from a fan animation on YouTube into a design poll. Just doesn’t make sense to me.
What's not to understand about ranking official designs amongst each other, no matter the medium? It's not at all like your example in any way. The new theme park designs are as officially Godzilla as anything from the movies, TV shows, comic books, etc. Comparing them to fan designs is ridiculous.

Also, ranking designs =/= ranking incarnations. I don't have to have experienced the ride to have an opinion on the physical design of Godzilla from that attractions.
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Re: Kaiju Fan Confessions

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UltramanGoji wrote: Fri May 14, 2021 2:46 pm Not really a confession per se, but nowhere else to put it: The recently revealed theme park Godzilla design is seriously rising to be one of my all-time favorite designs. I love it to bits.
Big same. I'm getting Showa vibes from it.
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Re: Kaiju Fan Confessions

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I know it is unfair to judge older films by modern standards of scrutiny...but I have always been a fan who was a bit obsessive over details in things I loved to watch. Films and shows, I would notice things like characters being re-cast/re-voiced, continuity errors from episode to episode or film to film, contradictory statements/facts/story elements. It drove me nuts when things didn't line up, add up, or make sense.

I know the vast majority of Godzilla films were made in a day and age where those things just didn't matter, or did not matter as much...or were not considered as important as making one entertaining movie at a time.

But gosh watching old kaiju films and Godzilla films really pushes a ton of those little buttons for me. I can kind of get over the 'giant monsters are everywhere thing'...I mean, that's the ticket I bought. Just overall inconsistencies in narrative/continuity from film to film, this sort of nebulous realm of pseudo-continuity the Showa films occupy, where things go from quite serious to quite silly from film to film with no tangible 'in universe' explanation for any of it. Stuff just kinda happens.

There is charm to it..but those are absolutely elements of the series that haven't aged well. From what I understand, a number of the classic Bond films suffer from a lot of the same kind of oddities.

I despise time travel as a plot device as it always feels like a combination of a cheap gimmick, a stunt to solve some kind of crazy plot development, a cheap excuse to do the whole 'characters visiting another time' stunt...that always ends up just over-complicating a number of notions relating to continuity, consistency, and logical execution.

To me the entire time travel plot of Godzilla vs King Ghidorah is a vicious black eye on the entire Heisei Continuity...but that film has Mecha King Ghidorah, which is overtly utilized in Godzilla vs MechaGodzilla II, which introduces Godzilla Jr which is a staple of the final 3 films of the Heisei series. So the insanity and absurdity of the time travel plot and how inexpertly it is executed infects the entirety of one of the most entertaining stretches of Godzilla films.

Also...the fact that I love Shin Godzilla and the Monsterverse films so damn much really only makes the flaws and shortcomings of the first 50 years of films stand out all the more glaringly.

The first 50 years of films are one big wild jumble of inconsistency. The continuity, tone, style, designs, world, titles of the films, continuity and non-tinuity....it is buck wild and all over the place. For every bit as much fun and charm as that brings to the table, it brings just as many annoying and nit-picky frustrations along with it. Stuff I didn't care about as a youngster, but as I've grown older it annoys me more and more. I got older and became an overall more discerning viewer who looks for a bit more investment and integrity in the fictional stories I engage with...so a lot of those vintage films show their age more and more every year and I find nostalgia often being almost the EXCLUSIVE reason I am revisiting most of them.

It is frustrating, and I don't like the idea of ever being the type of fan that eschews the 'old stuff' because the 'new stuff is just better'...but for things that I find myself looking for in blockbusters/genre films/franchises...I find the older films have less and less of what I want in comparison to a lot of the modern entries.
Last edited by Chrispy_G on Sat May 15, 2021 12:07 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Kaiju Fan Confessions

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Chrispy_G wrote: Sat May 15, 2021 12:03 am I know it is unfair to judge older films by modern standards of scrutiny...but I have always been a fan who was a bit obsessive over details in things I loved to watch. Films and shows, I would notice things like characters being re-cast/re-voiced, continuity errors from episode to episode or film to film, contradictory statements/facts/story elements. It drove me nuts when things didn't line up, add up, or make sense.

I know the vast majority of Godzilla films were made in a day and age where those things just didn't matter, or did not matter as much...or were not considered as important as making one entertaining movie at a time.

But gosh watching old kaiju films and Godzilla films really pushes a ton of those little buttons for me. I can kind of get over the 'giant monsters are everywhere thing'...I mean, that's the ticket I bought. Just overall inconsistencies in narrative/continuity from film to film, this sort of nebulous realm of pseudo-continuity the Showa films occupy, where things go from quite serious to quite silly from film to film with no tangible 'in universe' explanation for any of it. Stuff just kinda happens.

There is charm to it..but those are absolutely elements of the series that haven't aged well. From what I understand, a number of the classic Bond films suffer from a lot of the same kind of oddities.

I despise time travel as a plot device as it always feels like a combination of a cheap gimmick, a stunt to solve some kind of crazy plot development, a cheap excuse to do the whole 'characters visiting another time' stunt...that always ends up just over-complicating a number of notions relating to continuity, consistency, and logical execution.

To me the entire time travel plot of Godzilla vs King Ghidorah is a vicious black eye on the entire Heisei Continuity...but that film has Mecha King Ghidorah, which is overtly utilized in Godzilla vs MechaGodzilla II, which introduces Godzilla Jr which is a staple of the final 3 films of the Heisei series. So the insanity and absurdity of the time travel plot and how inexpertly it is executed infects the entirety of one of the most entertaining stretches of Godzilla films.

Also...the fact that I love Shin Godzilla and the Monsterverse films so damn much really only makes the flaws and shortcomings of the first 50 years of films stand out all the more glaringly.

The first 50 years of films are one big wild jumble of inconsistency. The continuity, tone, style, designs, world, titles of the films, continuity and non-tinuity....it is buck wild and all over the place. For every bit as much fun and charm as that brings to the table, it brings just as many annoying and nit-picky frustrations along with it. Stuff I didn't care about as a youngster, but as I've grown older it annoys me more and more. I got older and became an overall more discerning viewer who looks for a bit more investment and integrity in the fictional stories I engage with...so a lot of those vintage films show their age more and more every year and I find nostalgia often being almost the EXCLUSIVE reason I am revisiting most of them.

It is frustrating, and I don't like the idea of ever being the type of fan that eschews the 'old stuff' because the 'new stuff is just better'...but for things that I find myself looking for in blockbusters/genre films/franchises...I find the older films have less and less of what I want in comparison to a lot of the modern entries.
*reads all of this, stops and rereads that sentence about the Monsterverse films, raises eyebrow confusedly*
Last edited by JAGzilla on Sat May 15, 2021 1:07 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Kaiju Fan Confessions

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JAGzilla wrote: Sat May 15, 2021 1:05 am
Chrispy_G wrote: Sat May 15, 2021 12:03 am I know it is unfair to judge older films by modern standards of scrutiny...but I have always been a fan who was a bit obsessive over details in things I loved to watch. Films and shows, I would notice things like characters being re-cast/re-voiced, continuity errors from episode to episode or film to film, contradictory statements/facts/story elements. It drove me nuts when things didn't line up, add up, or make sense.

I know the vast majority of Godzilla films were made in a day and age where those things just didn't matter, or did not matter as much...or were not considered as important as making one entertaining movie at a time.

But gosh watching old kaiju films and Godzilla films really pushes a ton of those little buttons for me. I can kind of get over the 'giant monsters are everywhere thing'...I mean, that's the ticket I bought. Just overall inconsistencies in narrative/continuity from film to film, this sort of nebulous realm of pseudo-continuity the Showa films occupy, where things go from quite serious to quite silly from film to film with no tangible 'in universe' explanation for any of it. Stuff just kinda happens.

There is charm to it..but those are absolutely elements of the series that haven't aged well. From what I understand, a number of the classic Bond films suffer from a lot of the same kind of oddities.

I despise time travel as a plot device as it always feels like a combination of a cheap gimmick, a stunt to solve some kind of crazy plot development, a cheap excuse to do the whole 'characters visiting another time' stunt...that always ends up just over-complicating a number of notions relating to continuity, consistency, and logical execution.

To me the entire time travel plot of Godzilla vs King Ghidorah is a vicious black eye on the entire Heisei Continuity...but that film has Mecha King Ghidorah, which is overtly utilized in Godzilla vs MechaGodzilla II, which introduces Godzilla Jr which is a staple of the final 3 films of the Heisei series. So the insanity and absurdity of the time travel plot and how inexpertly it is executed infects the entirety of one of the most entertaining stretches of Godzilla films.

Also...the fact that I love Shin Godzilla and the Monsterverse films so damn much really only makes the flaws and shortcomings of the first 50 years of films stand out all the more glaringly.

The first 50 years of films are one big wild jumble of inconsistency. The continuity, tone, style, designs, world, titles of the films, continuity and non-tinuity....it is buck wild and all over the place. For every bit as much fun and charm as that brings to the table, it brings just as many annoying and nit-picky frustrations along with it. Stuff I didn't care about as a youngster, but as I've grown older it annoys me more and more. I got older and became an overall more discerning viewer who looks for a bit more investment and integrity in the fictional stories I engage with...so a lot of those vintage films show their age more and more every year and I find nostalgia often being almost the EXCLUSIVE reason I am revisiting most of them.

It is frustrating, and I don't like the idea of ever being the type of fan that eschews the 'old stuff' because the 'new stuff is just better'...but for things that I find myself looking for in blockbusters/genre films/franchises...I find the older films have less and less of what I want in comparison to a lot of the modern entries.
*reads all of this, stops and rereads that sentence about the Monsterverse films, raises eyebrow confusedly*
I had a stroke reading that part :lol:
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Re: Kaiju Fan Confessions

Post by Jermobooka »

I love the MV and Heisei era equally. They both have strengths that easily make them a lot of people’s favorite eras (I.E me), but there’s also weaknesses which their detractors, understandably, criticize them for

I would say that the MV has a bit more of an inconsistent tone, style, and continuity than the Heisei era. It started off as a “dark, serious, realistic reboot” because that was the cool Hollywood trend at the time. Now the MV has become “big, colorful, bombastic action-fest”...cuz it’s the cool Hollywood trend right now and probably will be for the foreseeable future. Not saying that i don’t absolutely love both tones and approaches to the MV, it’s just that complaining about the Heisei era’s “lack of tonal consistency” and immediately praising the MV afterwards because of it is kind of hypocritical

The Heisei era generally has had the same tone from Biollante onward. Yes, the time travel was weird and kinda shaped the future story in a couple ways that some don’t like, but IMO it was an interesting concept to bring to the “Godzilla franchise” table.
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