Talkback Thread #8: Son of Godzilla (1967)

[Legion1979]

First off, NO ONE has EVER said Son of Godzilla is too deep for people to understand. Where are you even getting that from?

Second, we've known forever that Fukuda hated his Godzilla movies. This isn't news. Doesn't even seem like he liked Godzilla in the first place. But who cares, most of his Godzilla films are better than he thought they were.

Morbidly curious, how do YOU feel about the movie?

[MechaGoji Bro7503]

“Achtually, son of Godzilla is one of the best Godzilla movies, it’s just too deep for most people to understand”

Meanwhile, the director of the movie:

A director disliking his work doesn't detract at all from what he still inspired in the viewers themselves, or the emotional response they got. I mean, Fukuda's films (especially Duel in the South Seas & Son of Godzilla) brought so much flavor to the franchise that was necessary for it to expand. Or just to be enjoyable in general. I wish Fukuda had more respect for his own work, he contributed so much to the franchise that would be seen again in some capacity in the future. Ultimately though, from his perspective I can understand his thoughts beside the part about the original Godzilla not showing any emotions.

[HedorahIsBestGirl]

Maybe this should go in the "Unpopular Opinions" thread but people defer to the opinions of creators - be they authors, film directors or anyone else - WAY the hell too much. A great example is Alan Moore; dude has repeatedly denounced The Killing Joke (one of the most iconic Batman stories of all time) as garbage. He also hates every adaptation of his work, even HBO's fantastic Watchmen series. That doesn't make it invalid for people to love The Killing Joke, anymore than Fukuda's derision of the Godzilla series invalidates anyone's love for Son of Godzilla, or any of his other movies.

[JAGzilla]

^ There's no Like button, so pretend I hit the Like button.

[Legion1979]

Maybe this should go in the "Unpopular Opinions" thread but people defer to the opinions of creators - be they authors, film directors or anyone else - WAY the hell too much. A great example is Alan Moore; dude has repeatedly denounced The Killing Joke (one of the most iconic Batman stories of all time) as garbage. He also hates every adaptation of his work, even HBO's fantastic Watchmen series. That doesn't make it invalid for people to love The Killing Joke, anymore than Fukuda's derision of the Godzilla series invalidates anyone's love for Son of Godzilla, or any of his other movies.

Yeah that crap gets old. "Honda didn't like the direction Godzilla went in, so the later films must be bad!" Or "Fukuda hated his Godzilla films so thats proof those aren't very good!" It also works the opposite way, such as "Kitamura loved the '70s films so Final Wars is absolutely Showa!"

[edgaguirus]

This is a good film. On paper, the idea of Godzilla having a son or acting like a parent sound strange for a nuclear-powered monster that destroys cities and repels aliens. Godzilla doesn't seem like the kind of guy that would care about a kid. Yet, the story is well written, showing that Godzilla can be the nuclear menace and a dad, though he's not the most gentle parent at times. Still, Godzilla makes a good dad, and the image of him and Minya covered by snow cements that.

[mikelcho]

This film, I think, actually predates the modern discovery that many dinosaurs were nurturing parents, carefully tending their young until they were old enough to leave the nest, unlike other reptiles, which lay eggs or bear live young and then move on (the crocodilians, the closest living relatives of the dinosaurs, are the notable exception to this rule).

[JAGzilla]

This film, I think, actually predates the modern discovery that many dinosaurs were nurturing parents, carefully tending their young until they were old enough to leave the nest, unlike other reptiles, which lay eggs or bear live young and then move on (the crocodilians, the closest living relatives of the dinosaurs, are the notable exception to this rule).

Yeah, that is interesting. It's a rare case of a kaiju movie actually being ahead of the scientific curve instead of years behind or just off on some nonsensical pseudoscientific tangent.

[Dv-218]

Another amusing fact to consider is Godzilla being a caring father is ironically quite mirroring to the behavior of modern Ratites (Ostriches, Emus, Cassowaries etc) where the males are usually the ones looking after the offspring, which might have been present in some non-avian Dinosaurs as well. Talk about ahead of the curve lol.

Frankly this is one of those Showa movies that never get old no matter how many times you rewatch them. It has such a universally heartwarming vibe to it that it’s genuinely hard to earnestly dislike the overall plot and production value, even with Godzilla’a ugly mug in mind. It’s a nice little family island adventure with some bond terrorist allusions that gives Godzilla some closure to his loneliness and opens him up for future development. Also Kumonga’s puppetry is quite slept upon honestly, for the 60s it’s rather impressive in it’s fluidity.

[edgaguirus]

I've seen films that use live spiders magnified by camera tricks and miniatures, and Kumonga's performance practically looks just as alive.

[LSD Jellyfish]

Not sure how many of you are parents, or have nephews or nieces, but the more my daughter grows (she's around one year old) the more identical a lot of her interactions are to Minya. In the same way that Minya shouts, babbles and coos throughout the film, and laughs too, is pretty much identical to a baby/small toddler. Honda, Tusbaraya, or whoever was in charge of making Minya seem like a baby was on point. Same thing for all the small tantrums and shouting he does. The "Godzilla is trying to sleep and Minya is fooling around" scene is all too common, and a really spot-on representation of a parent trying to relax and get some sleep, while a child is up to some shennanigans.

[edgaguirus]

Reminds me of my nephew. I helped raise the kid, and some of the behavior you mentioned are familiar.

[emeGoji]

It’s taken me a while to get to this point (nearly 40 years ), but I’ve come to realize that Son of Godzilla might be my favorite Godzilla film. It’s the one I always come back to more than any other if I’m in the mood to put some Godzilla on. I love the lush jungle setting, the ensemble cast, the incredible Kamacuras and Kumonga fx, the comfy low stakes story, Sato’s incredible score (Godzilla vs Kumonga), Maeda Bibari, Godzilla and Minya’s relationship, and just the whole vibe of the film clicks with me. It’s not without its faults, Godzilla himself looks absolutely terrible…not sure what they were thinking with that suit. But taken as a whole it’s the most enjoyable film in the whole series to me.

[mikelcho]

It’s taken me a while to get to this point (nearly 40 years ), but I’ve come to realize that Son of Godzilla might be my favorite Godzilla film. It’s the one I always come back to more than any other if I’m in the mood to put some Godzilla on. I love the lush jungle setting, the ensemble cast, the incredible Kamacuras and Kumonga fx, the comfy low stakes story, Sato’s incredible score (Godzilla vs Kumonga), Maeda Bibari, Godzilla and Minya’s relationship, and just the whole vibe of the film clicks with me. It’s not without its faults, Godzilla himself looks absolutely terrible…not sure what they were thinking with that suit. But taken as a whole it’s the most enjoyable film in the whole series to me.

I read in the Godzilla article in Fangoria #1 that the suit in this film was probably Toho trying to make Godzilla facially resemble Minilla. Obviously, they failed miserably. It also opined that this suit was probably the worst one of all.

[LSD Jellyfish]

It’s taken me a while to get to this point (nearly 40 years ), but I’ve come to realize that Son of Godzilla might be my favorite Godzilla film. It’s the one I always come back to more than any other if I’m in the mood to put some Godzilla on. I love the lush jungle setting, the ensemble cast, the incredible Kamacuras and Kumonga fx, the comfy low stakes story, Sato’s incredible score (Godzilla vs Kumonga), Maeda Bibari, Godzilla and Minya’s relationship, and just the whole vibe of the film clicks with me. It’s not without its faults, Godzilla himself looks absolutely terrible…not sure what they were thinking with that suit. But taken as a whole it’s the most enjoyable film in the whole series to me.

I think the “lush jungle setting” really does make the film, and actually distinguishes it from its predecessor. While a lot of people discuss the island films, I think the one in SoG is pretty distinct. It’s a tropical paradise, well a messed up one, but it’s beautiful to look at. I don’t know where they filmed it, but they nailed the illusion of being on a tropical island.

I think Mikecho is right, but I think it goes beyond that. My speculation is the next is so long do that Godzilla could be much more physically larger than Minya. A lot of scenes and visuals can only be accomplished with that size discrepancy. Maybe I’m wrong, but if I had to guess, the SoG suit might be one of the biggest Godzilla suits. And it having weird proportion adds to its weird ugliness.

[StreamOfKaijuness]

It’s taken me a while to get to this point (nearly 40 years ), but I’ve come to realize that Son of Godzilla might be my favorite Godzilla film. It’s the one I always come back to more than any other if I’m in the mood to put some Godzilla on. I love the lush jungle setting, the ensemble cast, the incredible Kamacuras and Kumonga fx, the comfy low stakes story, Sato’s incredible score (Godzilla vs Kumonga), Maeda Bibari, Godzilla and Minya’s relationship, and just the whole vibe of the film clicks with me. It’s not without its faults, Godzilla himself looks absolutely terrible…not sure what they were thinking with that suit. But taken as a whole it’s the most enjoyable film in the whole series to me.

I think the “lush jungle setting” really does make the film, and actually distinguishes it from its predecessor. While a lot of people discuss the island films, I think the one in SoG is pretty distinct. It’s a tropical paradise, well a messed up one, but it’s beautiful to look at. I don’t know where they filmed it, but they nailed the illusion of being on a tropical island.

I think Mikecho is right, but I think it goes beyond that. My speculation is the next is so long do that Godzilla could be much more physically larger than Minya. A lot of scenes and visuals can only be accomplished with that size discrepancy. Maybe I’m wrong, but if I had to guess, the SoG suit might be one of the biggest Godzilla suits. And it having weird proportion adds to its weird ugliness.

Son of Godzilla was shot in Guam.

Book: Monsters Are Attacking Tokyo! The Incredible World of Japanese Fantasy Films
Author: Stuart Galbraith IV
Publisher: Feral House
Publication Date: 05/01/1998
Still available from third-party sellers on eBay and Amazon
Page 87:

Jun Fukuda: [We shot Son of Godzilla] in Guam. We really had fun. It was very hard for Japanese people to travel overseas back then, and also at the time there was only one hotel on Guam. The wife of the Chief Immigration Officer was Japanese, and her Japanese Wives organization really helped us be able to shoot there. The government backed them up, and so the Guam officials provided us cars, anything we needed during our stay for free. They were very helpful, as they were in America. In Japan they don’t understand shooting films very much. Whenever I go outside of Japan, I get jealous about how film-conscious the rest of the world is. I had the experience of shooting a film in Spain, in the Canary Islands. The police stopped traffic for half a day — that would never happen in Japan.

The Godzilla suit in Son of Godzilla was indeed taller than previous suits, which is why Haruo Nakajima only played Godzilla for the water scenes using the Monster Zero/Sea Monster suit. Seiji Onaka initially played Godzilla in this movie but he had to quit due to a hand injury shortly after filming began, so Hiroshi Sekita wore the Godzilla suit for the majority of the film.

[LSD Jellyfish]

That’s a really interesting factoid I somehow missed. Guam is part of the United States, so doesn’t that mean that Son of Godzilla might be one of the first Godzilla films to have a substantial part of it filmed abroad/in the United States?

Also, it changes my perspective of the film, knowing that there was some difficulty (of assumed difficulty) in shooting the film abroad. I’ve always internalized that Son of Godzilla was made to be cheap by choosing its island setting after another film (EHOTD) also had an island setting. However knowing that SoG was shot in Guam, which surely must have been more expensive than filming in Japan for Toho, and knowing the production history of EHOTD makes me feel a lot differently now.

Thanks for sharing!

[JAGzilla]

That is an interesting and important bit of background info. Really helps to put the movie in a different light, adding some unexpected prestige and awareness that it was a challenge to produce. It's already just a good, solid movie, but this ratchets my respect up another notch.

[Follinollante]

Finally got around to watching this one. It's probably one of the most laid-back Godzilla films you can watch, so how well you enjoy the movie probably depends on what mood you're in. The fight sequences were pretty amazing, especially the final showdown, and the Kamacuras theme absolutely kicks ass. The characters also stand out really well (except for the pasted-in "shy beautiful woman' character) by Godzilla standards. In all, the film is a fairly long way from being one of my favorite Godzilla films, but I definitely see the merits and the appeal in this one.

But good gracious, the suits are awful.

[edgaguirus]

The Minya suit isn't bad. The features are child-like, which makes the character endearing. I do agree that making Godzilla's head look more like Minya is a step down from previous suits.

The puppet work is outstanding, however. Kumonga moves and acts very convincingly.