TALKBACK #14: Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla

[eabaker]

[lhb412]

A big thing with Mechagodzilla '74 that always made it stick out is the iconic bits: Mechagodzilla's reveal (basically the entire oil refinery scene), poor Angilas getting thoroughly defeated, the King Seesar song, Godzilla rising from the ocean, ripping Mechagodzilla's head off, ect.

[eabaker]

[lhb412]

I loved it as a kid.

[Gman2887]

[eabaker]

[Gman2887]

I can't help but laugh once the second verse starts.

[msunz27]

Happy 40th to MechaG and King Seesar!!! First of the 70's G films I saw in 1986. Always my fav from the 70's. Cheers!

[jellydonut25]

I adore this film. It's bright, colorful, energetic, and just totally off the wall with nonsense like space titanium, electrode interrupting pipes, ape-men, magical statues, and electromagnetic forces. And as the skeevy BioMajor guy in Godzilla vs. Biollante might say, Reiko Tajima's "not a bad sight".

The score's cool, and I gotta be honest, being a kid, seeing this movie for the first time, I was initially fooled by the Mechagodzilla thing. Granted I was maybe 6, 7 years old, if that, and this was the 4th or 5th Godzilla movie I had seen, but hey.....shut up.

[XvGojira]

[Russzilla]

As I got older, the one thing that I wish they had done was make the second Godzilla suit a little better looking. In the battle with Angilas and the fight with the real Godzilla, there were times when it just looked too fake. Know what I mean? And that battle with Angilas... Really looks like two rubber looking monster suits fighting. That said, overall though, I still love this movie.

[CWSmith]

Jun Fukuda was soooo underrated as a director and this movie is his masterpiece in my opinion. The characters are great, the villains are awesome (Alien Ape Men, come on... who DOESN'T love that?), and the music is my favorite work from Sato barring some of his Kurosawa work.

I really love the mixing of techno-sci-fi with the fantasy elements surrounding Seesar too. The contrast between them works beautifully. This is my favorite version of Mechagodzilla. Since the Showa series it seems like Mechagodzilla is always moved more to the heroic side of the spectrum, but to me, he's always been best here as a pure villain. There's a sense of arrogance and malice that just exudes from the suit actor's performance and its awesome. So much better than the "just a robot" version from the 90s. (I like Kiryu though, just not as much).

My ONLY gripe is the deus ex machina Godzilla pulls from his rectum to defeat MG. To me it seemed like the screenwriter got so caught up building Mechagodzilla up as the ultimate bad-ass that he got to the end and thought 'Oh ****, how do I get rid of him?' and needed a way out. To me the pipe that Hirata's character uses to destroy the control center was plenty. You could have easily just cut straight from that to Godzilla and Seesar going to town on an erratic MG and then ripping his head off. No magical electromagnet powers for Godzilla needed.

Still, small flaw that doesn't diminish one of my all time favs...

[angilas]

Having just rewatched my new world pictures tape that came out with the VHS of 1985 and has a preview for it in the beginning, on a modern screen, I can really make out the Siberia scene well and from Angilas bloody lower lip tell that the intro to the film takes place between Angilas battle with mg and when godzilla who he went to Siberia to retrieve's fight. So after megalon godzilla went to Siberia? As a kid I always thought Angilas was underwater randomly and that it was set before the film started like godzilla above telling Angilas to check out the situation like in vs gigan.

[Hybrid Gojira]

Fresh off my viewing of this film..

The plot is mostly standard fare - aliens want to conquer earth with monsters - or in this case, a robot patterned after Godzilla himself. What I loved about this movie is how briskly it moves. I was never bored and it kept my attention. The characters are all given specific roles, and while there isn't a ton of development, the movie's quick pace allows for it. Nanbara is easily my favorite character in this film and his facial expressions are hilarious every step of the way.

Fukuda's film is also bright and colorful, and Nakano's effects are mostly well done. I liked the battle between MG and Anguirus, and it was fun seeing Seerar get manhandled. However, the fact that Nakano decided to switch between using the actual Godzilla suit and the fake Godzilla suit in the midst of battles is quite jarring. King Seesar also kind of sucks. He's mostly worthless, and he is easily in my bottom tier list of kaiju. Godzilla's new found ability - becoming a magnet for all intents and purposes - is not my favorite idea. It's also rather stupid that a human would be forced to repair an alien robot he should know very little about - aliens engineered MG; you'd think they could also fix it.

Overall, my review might sound negative (I like this film quite a bit) but there is a lot to enjoy here. This film is charming and fun, despite my issues with it. I'd easily consider it better than Megalon and Hedorah, both of which I recently watched. I'd be remiss if I didn't say that I enjoyed Sato's score. It fits the movie very well.

Next up is ToMG. I'm curious to see how it holds up for me since I've been rewatching all of the series (ToMG is currently in my top 2 G films).

[Henry88]

loved this part when he went ape.

[lhb412]

^The ape stuff terrified kid me.

[Dr Kain]

I really love this movie. It is fun, has some great monster action, Masaru was on his A game when it came to the music, and I absolutely love King Ceasar. He and Titanosaurus really need to either be in the next Godzilla movie or have their own movie.

I brought this up in my review, but does anyone know why Nami's grandfather is lamenting that Godzilla is going to destroy Japan since they can not find the statue to awaken KC and then 15 seconds later is praying that Godzilla gets revenge on Japan for them?

[Shin_Edda_Robo!!!!!]

[Dr Kain]

[MekaGojira3k]

[Dr Kain]

[jellydonut25]

This movie is gloriously stupid. Seriously, "space titanium"? "An Earth man who knows space technology"?

It's impossible to take that seriouslyand hence, the movie becomes wildly fun and even some of its faults (like thefake Godzilla suit looking different from the real one so much that it's jarring) play as part of the fun

[Gentleman]

[H-Man]

[ebirahsmeg1]

Pretty interesting tidbit from Armand's blog regarding the Coral Queen Ferry, the boat where the main characters battle the Black Hole Agent over King Ceasar's statue:

http://armandsrancho.blogspot.jp/2014/1 ... r.html?m=1