Talkback Thread #10: All Monsters Attack (1969)

[Legion1979]

Why is everyone bothering? Clearly he's made up his mind about the ending of the film and doesn't WANT to understand.

My two cents anyway...I always interpreted Ichiro aggravating the painter as him basically telling the other kids "This is what you dared me to do and harassed me when I didn't do it. You wanted me to do it? Fine, I'm doing it. I'm stronger than you think I am." He didn't want to hurt the guy and no one expected the man to take a comic pratfall. Ichiro did it knowing full well he shouldn't but it was his way of sending a final message to his tormentors. He sincerely apologized to his father immediately. The poor kid's life sucks. Really really sucks. He could have easily DIED the night before. Fighting Gabara and ringing that bell were two extremely minor steps to make his day to day life better. He's still going to come home to an empty house that afternoon, his only after school friend being a old toy inventor with horrible teeth. But at the very least, an entire gang of children isn't going to make his life miserable for just existing. It's mind blowing that people get their panties in a twist over this ending when it's part of a film series where a monster we're supposed to root for and identify with solves his problems by beating other monsters to a pulp.

Our problem is that we keep trying to discuss this film with a person who sees the entire thing as a piece of crap not worthy of this level of discussion. This entire fandom loves things like Godzilla, Gamera, Ultraman or Power Rangers where heroes solve issues with violence. But the ending of Godzilla's Revenge? Nope, terrible message. To hell with it.

I dont get it.

[godjacob]

I mean, I get the meaning of the ending I just don't think it frames Ichiro in a great light nor does it make the story more compelling for me anyway. I'm honestly happy people have these deeper dives into films even if I don't like it makes for good discussion points.

Just isn't gonna make me shift how I felt watching the film myself is all.

[miguelnuva]

Isn't the point of movies that the messages are suppose to be objective? I see AMA more from the eabaker and Legion side of the argument but I can also see why godjacob came to his understanding as well. My personal take is that Ichiro is one of the boys now and he pretty much is leader of the gang now and they are following him. Maybe the kids will be better now that Ichiro seems to be taking over.

As for kids solving their problems with violence I'm pretty sure the majority of kids were told to stand up to bullies up to like the 2010's. My mom hates violence but even she told me to protect myself when I was little. From my understanding little kids fought and when you grew up to around middle school age now you were expected to no better. As little boys the vast majority of our entertainment tells us a good guy must fight to protect others which is what Ichiro does.

The fact that we all have so many interpretations of AMA seems to me like the film is better than a lot of people thought.

[Terasawa]

Isn't the point of movies that the messages are suppose to be objective?

Not necessarily.

And even those that may be designed that way don't always turn out that way.

[LSD Jellyfish]

There is this sort of overarching zeitgeist and cultural assumption that media produced for children needs to have a morale or somehow illustrate a role model; otherwise it's unfit for children and societal appreciation as a whole. To be redundant, there's a lot of extreme media that would be bad for children to consume, but All Monster's Attack is very inoffensive otherwise.

I'm not the first to bring this up, nor the last, but AMA was very clearly inspired by Good Morning, another Japanese film about mischievous and acting up children:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Morning_(1959_film)

It's usually considered a classic amongst classic Japanese media fans, but the resolution of the film is that the children that are acting out get their way. They get a television that they pleaded for. AMA was made 10 years later, and while roughly the focus on children are the same, the problems presented in AMA are different enough to justify it's existence and not be labeled as a "clone" of Good Morning.

I haven't seen the original, but it's also possible that the ending is in line with another film by Ozu (which good morning is a remake of):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Was_Born,_But...

Added in 10 minutes 5 seconds:
I'll say something that might also reframe my appreciation for AMA:

I think All Monsters Attack is still one of my least favorite Showa Godzilla films and certainly ranks low on my overall Godzilla-watching plate. Gabara is easily one of the lamest Godzilla monsters ever created. While the concept can be refreshed with ease (see Sarunga), there's no doubt that Gabara is just an ugly troll that lacks the cool, or camp, factor of many of the other monsters in the franchise.
All Monsters Attack is also the film where Godzilla is the least important aspect of the film. Sure, he beats the crap out of Gabara in the end, but the film isn't about Godzilla, nor is it like IOTAM/EHOTD where monsters (and in particular Godzilla) are a major plot device. Despite heavily featuring footage of Godzilla, Godzilla is more of a backdrop and inspiration for the characters than anything. Other than maybe a shift in being targeted at kids, it's also one of the least consequential films in the franchise. No monsters like Gigan or MG are introduced, there's no high stakes or major ripples to the franchise as a whole.

Yet I still like it a lot as a film in general, particularly as a film that was made towards the end of Japan's golden age of film.

I feel like a major issue with people discussing and watching this film is that they can't see it as something different. I group it with the two aforementioned films I listed earlier.

[Spuro]

It's mind blowing that people get their panties in a twist over this ending when it's part of a film series where a monster we're supposed to root for and identify with solves his problems by beating other monsters to a pulp.

Other movies in the series don’t have a bully narrative.

As I mentioned before, “fight your bullies” was the message I took from the film when I saw it as a kid. Never did I take that message from other Godzilla films, because those films were about monsters and dinosaurs fighting each other. They didn’t have stories about little kids like me trying to deal with their bullies.

And at that age as kid I was bullied a lot. I was small, on the spectrum, and had only a few friends. And so Godzilla’s Revenge was the movie who’s message I took to heart. I started getting into playground fights and had multiple trips to the principle’s office, and I don’t think it was coincidental that I was first exposed to Godzilla’s Revenge during same timeframe.

You guys can argue about what the correct scholarly interpretation of the film is all you want. I’m just here to say that kids can, and do, learn the wrong lessons from this film, based on my own personal experiences.

[LSD Jellyfish]

And at that age as kid I was bullied a lot. I was small, on the spectrum, and had only a few friends. And so Godzilla’s Revenge was the movie who’s message I took to heart. I started getting into playground fights and had multiple trips to the principle’s office, and I don’t think it was coincidental that I was first exposed to Godzilla’s Revenge during same timeframe.

You guys can argue about what the correct scholarly interpretation of the film is all you want. I’m just here to say that kids can, and do, learn the wrong lessons from this film, based on my own personal experiences.

Thanks for sharing this. I do think this is a relevant story to show how kids can be affected and interpret media.

Just curious, what did you tell the school/principal? "Godzilla says I gotta learn to fight my own battles!" Would've been a boss move.

[Spuro]

And at that age as kid I was bullied a lot. I was small, on the spectrum, and had only a few friends. And so Godzilla’s Revenge was the movie who’s message I took to heart. I started getting into playground fights and had multiple trips to the principle’s office, and I don’t think it was coincidental that I was first exposed to Godzilla’s Revenge during same timeframe.

You guys can argue about what the correct scholarly interpretation of the film is all you want. I’m just here to say that kids can, and do, learn the wrong lessons from this film, based on my own personal experiences.

Thanks for sharing this. I do think this is a relevant story to show how kids can be affected and interpret media.

Just curious, what did you tell the school/principal? "Godzilla says I gotta learn to fight my own battles!" Would've been a boss move.

Sadly, I didn’t have that kind of charisma. My parents stood up for me, though, so there’s that.

[godjacob]

I think we've all wanted to use a Godzilla quote in our day to day lives lol

[miguelnuva]

And at that age as kid I was bullied a lot. I was small, on the spectrum, and had only a few friends. And so Godzilla’s Revenge was the movie who’s message I took to heart. I started getting into playground fights and had multiple trips to the principle’s office, and I don’t think it was coincidental that I was first exposed to Godzilla’s Revenge during same timeframe.

You guys can argue about what the correct scholarly interpretation of the film is all you want. I’m just here to say that kids can, and do, learn the wrong lessons from this film, based on my own personal experiences.

Thanks for sharing this. I do think this is a relevant story to show how kids can be affected and interpret media.

Just curious, what did you tell the school/principal? "Godzilla says I gotta learn to fight my own battles!" Would've been a boss move.

Sadly, I didn’t have that kind of charisma. My parents stood up for me, though, so there’s that.

Sounds like the same experince I had growing up but it was Gigan, Mechagodzilla and Star Wars before I saw Revenge.

[JAGzilla]

I mean, I get the meaning of the ending I just don't think it frames Ichiro in a great light

This is kind of telling. The goal was never to paint Ichiro in a great light. This isn't a Spider-Man movie. We aren't here to watch our hero make the big sacrifice play and give up the girl and fix everything for everyone. We're just watching a kid face semi-realistic problems and find a solution that gets him through his day. It's not perfect because life isn't perfect. Ichiro took the hand life dealt him and managed to solve one of his problems. That's a real-world happy ending. Yeah, he screwed a painter over to get that happy ending, but like... look around. How many times do you do similar things every day? That's how the world is.

[Terasawa]

There is this sort of overarching zeitgeist and cultural assumption that media produced for children needs to have a morale or somehow illustrate a role model; otherwise it's unfit for children and societal appreciation as a whole. To be redundant, there's a lot of extreme media that would be bad for children to consume, but All Monster's Attack is very inoffensive otherwise.

I'm not the first to bring this up, nor the last, but AMA was very clearly inspired by Good Morning, another Japanese film about mischievous and acting up children:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Morning_(1959_film)

It's usually considered a classic amongst classic Japanese media fans, but the resolution of the film is that the children that are acting out get their way. They get a television that they pleaded for. AMA was made 10 years later, and while roughly the focus on children are the same, the problems presented in AMA are different enough to justify it's existence and not be labeled as a "clone" of Good Morning.

I haven't seen the original, but it's also possible that the ending is in line with another film by Ozu (which good morning is a remake of):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Was_Born,_But...

It's also been compared to Nagisa Oshima's Boy (also 1969).

[LSD Jellyfish]

Has anyone ever brought up the events that most likely inspired the money theft plot? I came across this while studying Japanese, it's supposedly a really famous story in Japan:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/300_million_yen_robbery

This happened in late 1968 and was national news! I don't think it's a stretch to assume that it played a role in inspiring the robbers in the film.

[Major sssspielberg!]

Has anyone ever brought up the events that most likely inspired the money theft plot? I came across this while studying Japanese, it's supposedly a really famous story in Japan:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/300_million_yen_robbery

This happened in late 1968 and was national news! I don't think it's a stretch to assume that it played a role in inspiring the robbers in the film.

Big Action Bill mentioned that robbery in his AMA video I believe. All Monsters Attack is like the gift that keeps on giving in a funny way, I love all the little 60s cultural nuggets it preserved.

[LSD Jellyfish]

Another thing: I wonder if a large basis of this plot is partially based on the story of Momotaro. It's a stretch, but I noticed some similarties, and it would make sense in a Japanese context to draw inspiration from it.

Ichiro is Momotaro and he befriends a talking animal (a dog in Momotaro, Minya in GRA) and alongside a monkey/phezent (Godzilla, this is the big stretch), they defeat various monsters and oni (Kumonga, Giant Condor, Ebirah). Gabara is sort of the dead give away. The major plot of Momotaro is recovering stolen treasure, and while Ichiro doesn't do that on monster island, he certainly does that with the robbers in the fortress.

To be clear, I'm not saying the inspiration is direct, but I found a lot of the stories contents overall to be similar in tone and contents to many Japanese children's stories at the time.

[edgaguirus]

The Ultra Q episode Grow Little Turtle, another child centered story, was also based on folklore. You may be right.

[LSD Jellyfish]

So I rewatched this on Japanese Hulu (can’t give you specifics, but I believe the quality is blu-ray level). Can’t believe I’m going to say this, but I feel even more positive about the film than I have before. I’d move it from a C to a B- with several caveats. But I figured out why I may like it more than others, and the higher quality release played into that.

A lot of it has to do with the first 12 mins. People sleep/skip the Ichiro stuff, and solely view it as a “Minya and an annoying boy futz around for an hour” but that really isn’t the case. The opening scenes of the movie are full of quality film making, of an emphasis on showcasing Ichiro and the other kids living in a rapidly industrializing hellhole. The way that Honda captures scenes of these gigantic trucks, loads and loads of them, zoom on by, in contrast to kids just trying to get home, is really something. It really builds up to a natural conclusion of Ichiro being a lonely child and explaining why he’d fantasize on traveling to the land full of monsters.

Although the budget was probably less than a lot of other Godzilla films, those opening 12 mins, and throughout the film, are filled with a lot interesting editing choices, and extras, that don’t make the film feel cheap, in comparison to a lot of other kid oriented Kaiju flicks. A specific example is when Ichiro goes to Monster Island by taking a plane. There’s, very briefly, a plane cabin filled with extras, and the way the editing is done really gives it a fantasy kick. This type of stuff is throughout the movie: when Ichiro is transported back from Monster Island due to a phone ringing and briefly everything goes black other than him, or the moment where Gabara is chasing Ichiro while everything is transposed. The entire film is filled with a lot of creative editing and film making choices. They’re subtle, but pretty great.

The other thing, is the sets. I’m assuming that abandoned building is real, but if it isn’t, they did a good job at making it look like a broken and abandoned place. Maybe this is something that the lower quality versions don’t show nicely, but there is a lot of garbage strewn around and the broken windows feel authentic. Like the other urban stuff, this juxtaposition of the industrial versus fantasy monster stuff works well. I want to get a screenshot, but the only exterior shot we get of the abandoned building as a weird ephemeral/oppressive feel to it.

In terms of stock footage, that’ll always be a big issue for some people, but it doesn’t bother me. I’ve stated this before, but it’s much less egregious than Vs Megalon or Gigan, and it allows for the film to work as a nice showcase of the three Godzilla films before it. Gabara is okay, probably one of the lamest Godzilla monsters, but he’s fine for what he’s intended to be. I forget that Godzilla does have a brief fight with Gabara, and it checks most of the boxes for what I think people would enjoy. Godzilla appears a lot in the movie, but the new footage is sparse.

In regards to Ichiro beating up the bully at the end, I’ve changed my mind. I think people exaggerate it. Ichiro does grab Gabara by his clothes and throw him to the ground, but it’s not some unprovoked violent struggle that people make it out to be. It’s a brief skirmish with no punches thrown. I’m not saying it’s a great to have children fighting, but it strikes a nice balance of not being overly violent and showing Ichiro sticking up for himself. This would have been a (more) acceptable message in Japan in the late 60s/70s when children were much more violent and alone, than contemporary society. My point here is I think people exaggerate the violence at the end as a detracting point, where it really isn’t that bad.

Then there’s the painter. Again, people exaggerate this. Ichiro is being obnoxious, but I don’t think he intended to do what happened. He honks the bike horn, which startles the painter to get paint all over himself. Ichiro didn’t throw a bucket of paint at the guy, he honked a horn for attention, and it caused a stupid accident. Like the the “fight scene” that precedes this, people overblow what happens and use it to showcase some fault in morality when the film isn’t that concerned with showcasing Ichiro as some upstanding boy.

The film also has a great cast and extras. You can see Ichiro’s story unfold with the adult angle of the bank robbers and a commentary of adults acknowledging how difficult the country was at the time for small children. What I realized this time, is I like GRA for the same reason I like Mother 1/Mother 2(Earthbound. It’s a neat cross-section of childish and adult themes in an industrial environment that clashes with that of fantasy. With all sincerity, GRA sort of is way ahead of its time against a lot of other classic films like Stand By Me.

I think the big problem of GRA is that is a definitive end of an era. It came post DAM, and definitely shifted the direction the franchise was going. However, I don’t think it’s a black sheep of the franchise, and actually sets up the tone of the 70’s Godzilla films nicely. It does feel like a “proto-Hedorah” with some of its slight psychedelic editing, tone, and juxtaposition of children and monsters. It’s short, never drags it’s feet, and feels like it has something to say versus a lot of other childrens kaiju flicks (Gamera vs Viras, Vs Zigra). I couldn’t sit through ROM2 recently, so none of this is me being some weird contrarian. I think that too many people unnecessarily hate on it.

A final comment: unfortunately I have to disprove the yellow hats. Ichiro is just wearing a baseball cap, the Yoshimura giants.

[Legion1979]

I gotta say, it's gets tiring seeing so many fans go to bat for Godzilla movies that truly ARE mediocre general audiences entertainment, but then take a massive dump over a short, sweet children's film like Godzilla's Revenge. It shines a light on the immaturity of most of this fandom that a movie like this is still vehemently hated and Minya tends to come up amongst younger fans only when they want to talk about how much they'd like to kill him.

[HeiseiGodzilla117]

I gotta say, it's gets tiring seeing so many fans go to bat for Godzilla movies that truly ARE mediocre general audiences entertainment, but then take a massive dump over a short, sweet children's film like Godzilla's Revenge. It shines a light on the immaturity of most of this fandom that a movie like this is still vehemently hated and Minya tends to come up amongst younger fans only when they want to talk about how much they'd like to kill him.

I've got an anecdote to share about that, actually. I went to a local trading card shop the other day and I was wearing my Ghidorah shirt from the Godzilla store. A dude came in and asked me where I got the shirt and started talking about Godzilla and how "the one with Minya" sucks. I asked if he meant Son of Godzilla. He said, "it's the one where he talks." And kinda ranted for a bit about how awful it was. Dude was definitely not a younger fan. I respect his opinion. But I really wanted to ask if he's ever seriously watched it for what it is. I didn't, because I didn't want to seem rude to a stranger who was very excited to talk to me about Godzilla. I just don't think it gets a fair shake. It will never be among my favorites. But when you watch it as a movie that is about a little boy learning to be courageous, it's pretty good.

I think it goes back to people parroting James Rolfe's Godzillathon opinions. I really like the Godzillathon. But, man. It'd be nice if people watched the movies instead of just watching compilations and reviews like that.

[LSD Jellyfish]

I think it goes back to people parroting James Rolfe's Godzillathon opinions. I really like the Godzillathon. But, man. It'd be nice if people watched the movies instead of just watching compilations and reviews like that.

It’s interesting to note that when Rolfe watched that it was 2007/8ish. The quality of the films he could see (as in visuals) weren’t so good then: GR suffers a lot from this. Likewise, I know since then Rolfe has had a family and children. I wonder how he’d feel about it now, if given the proper chance.

One last comment I’d like to make, is that Minya (in the Japanese version) isn’t annoying and that goes for the tone of the film as well. Minya is surprisingly calm. A lot of children's media, especially more recent stuff, bombards children with excessive gags and overstimulation. Godzilla’s Revenge still has tons of action in terms of the monsters, but the film, In my opinion, is actually a lot more relaxed than a lot of other kids media I’ve seen recently. The stimulation comes from the monsters fighting, but there’s not constant quips, or potty humor, to keep children watching. It’s surprisingly chill.

I’m not expecting or asking him or anyone to suddenly share my views of the film. But, I’d like to change/move the needle to where people actually give the film an honest chance rather than A) parrot common opinions on it or B) feel that it’s somehow a film that Godzilla fans need to be completely shunned/laughed at like in your anecdote.