Godzilla's Screen Time: Most and Least in the Series?

[Psycho Soldier]

Tonight, I've been trying to see if anyone's ever timed or calculated Godzilla's screen time from film to film. I haven't had much luck. Considering this fandom's obsession with numbers in respect to G2014, I feel more than a little disappointed. Does anyone know if a tally exists of Godzilla's total screen time per film? I would at least like to know in which film we see him the most. I can't properly make an estimate off the top of my head at this point.

[XvGojira]

Some one posted a video of all "his" screen time in the '98 movie.

[jellydonut25]

Without caring to research this in any significant way, I'm gonna guess Spacegodzilla for most. The final battle is like a hundred years long.

[Shin_Edda_Robo!!!!!]

^ One could say the same about vs Gigan, but I feel it's a bazillion times more interesting than Spacegodzilla's final battle.

[DannyBeane]

[H-Man]

[daikaijusaurus]

As much as I enjoyed Godzilla 2014, I think this is probably the shortest screen time of any Godzilla movie. I don't have the movie so I can't time all his scenes, but I am guessing 10 minutes or less. With the exception of the SF bridge and a handful of other scenes at the very end, every time Godzilla was on screen it was only a quick cut that lasted a few seconds.

I hope in the sequel they boost the budget to at least $200 million and give us more Godzilla, Mothra, Rodan and Ghidorah screen time. And for the love of God please ditch the quick cuts!

[Benjamin Haines]

Toho's special edition Godzilla: Final Wars DVD set included a feature that allowed you to select a monster and have all of its scenes play as one continuous sequence. Godzilla's was 25 minutes long but that was counting entire scenes in which he's involved, not solely shots in which some part of Godzilla's body is visible in the frame as these YouTube videos seem to be all about.

[Pkmatrix]

[Dai]

The guy who runs the Kaiju 101 podcast has recently completed this for all of the Godzilla movies. The results are discussed on the latest episode (the one about Hedorah). I believe the metric is total kaiju screen time though, rather than Godzilla's specifically.

[Hybrid Gojira]

I *thought* I read somewhere that Godzilla only has 8ish minutes of screen time in Gojira.

[Gman2887]

This blog is painstakingly going through each Godzilla film to find the most accurate screen time for each monster in every film. He's at Godzilla vs. Hedorah right now.

http://jokercluster.blogspot.com/

[daikaijusaurus]

Well here's youtube video of most of Godzilla's screen time from Godzilla 2014. He also included a short clip from the concept teaser for some reason. I would say this Godzilla's shortest screen time of the entire series.

[Gman2887]

^According to the website I posted it's actually Monster Zero. So far anyway. Godzilla is on screen for 5:44 and takes up roughly 6% of the film's run time. Godzilla is on screen for almost 8 minutes in the new film and takes up around 6.4% - 6.5% of the film's run time.

[daikaijusaurus]

[Legion]

[Dr Kain]

[walshiam]

Back in the early '70's, the CBS affiliate in Houston would have a program on Saturday afternoons called Science Fiction Theater that would show Godzilla and Gamera films if sports didn't cancel it. They would edit the films down to fit in a 90 minute time slot and Monster Zero was one of those films. What did they cut out? The battle on Planet X wouldn't you know. That definitely made a difference. They did the same thing to Destroy All Monsters. They cut out the attack on Tokyo. Nothing can describe how angry I was about these transgressions when they happened.

[Gman2887]

Yeah, admittedly Godzilla's screentime has always felt minimal in Monster Zero. When I was much younger it was very noticeable. These days I don't really care. I mainly watch it for Glenn, Fuji and the Xian Controller.

[Legion]

When Gamera vs Barugon aired on MST3K, didn't they cut out the entire first battle sequence and a little bit of the second one, effectively giving Gamera even LESS screen time than he already had.

[jellydonut25]

[MouthForWar]

[jellydonut25]

As I've been saying all along, people are JUST complaining about the screen time because the main character of the film isn't all that good or interesting.

Which IS a problem, and honestly, I'll not argue that beef with anyone...but at the same time, there are plenty of Godzilla movies I enjoy where I find the secondary characters (even if they're only in it briefly) to be better and more interesting than the main characters (Godzilla vs. Biollante instantly springs to mind, but I'd say the same is true for Terror of Mechagodzilla [Ichinose kinda sucks. To me at least], Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah [Terasawa is a terrible man who flirts with his granddaughter while his real girlfriend wants him to commit and put a ring on it], and probably others but I don't feel like overthinking this. These are just the examples that jump to mind).

And also, the score sucks, so it doesn't feel as memorable as it could and should. Seriously, I hope they tell Desplat to hit the bricks and go back to churning out generic filler scores for Oscar bait films and keep his unmemorable nonsense away from Godzilla forever.

[MouthForWar]

[Hybrid Gojira]

I'm not trying to be quippy, but I'm sure someone will point out that most Toho Godzilla films are usually around 90 minutes where as G14 was over 2 hours long.

But even then, the criticism that Godzilla isn't in the movie enough is kinda stupid when most of Godzilla's appearances are under 10 minutes. What matters to me more is the quality of the film. MZ has something like 7 minutes of Godzilla footage, but it's really fun. When I watch G14, it grows on me each time but the flaws are still what everyone has already pointed out ad nauseam - a weak score, a less than stellar lead character, and a few plot choices like killing off Cranston that I don't get. But overall, it's a solid G movie and it treats the source material more than respectfully. As fans, we should be happy with it.