Monster Zero x SciFi Japan - Archive Only

I've always loved the effects in Mothra Against Godzilla...in fact, I still find this to be my favorite incarnation of her. The movements of the larva and the actual flapping of the adult wings and legs...awesome! True there have been some other decent attempts (the larva in Rebirth of Mothra, and recently in S.O.S. are great! And so is the adult from S.O.S.), but the monsters in the 1964 film will always be my favorite.

I find the effects in Godzilla vs. The Thing to be spectacular. Especially for the time in which they were done. The thing that I really admire about the work of Tsuburaya is that it was never just one method that he was dealing with, when creating effects. For instance, when Godzilla and Mothra are grappling up-close, Tsuburaya used puppets instead of the suit and the Mothra prop. Why? Because, as is the case in similar scenes staged by Koichi Kawakita and Eichi Asada, it just looks dull when you look at a guy in a monster suit grappling with a prop hanging from wires. Sure, the puppets aren't true to life, but they keep up the tempo of the battle. The ferocity with which these two beasts are battling is really eccentuated in this way. The same can be said of Godzilla and Rodan's fight in Ghidrah The Three Headed Monster. Puppetry adds extra drama, mattes create a sense of scale, miniatures enable the artist to actually destroy an entire city and 'suitmation' gives the audience the opportunity to see what a real monster looks like. Throw some stellar camera work in there, and you have something that can really affect an audience, to one degree or another, depending on personal preferences. This is just how I see it though. I don't expect to convert anyone that doesn't agree with me, but I, for one, have an enormous amount of respect for Tsuburaya and his crew. They put there hearts into what they did, they experimented with what they had and the result is a genre of films that was stylish, unique and completely unlike anything else that was being done at the time. I can live with unconvincing puppetry, uneven matte shots or props that aren't up to snuff with reality. To my liking, of all the things that have been done over the years in the science fiction and fantasy genre, PRACTICALLY NOTHING possesses even HALF of the imagination that Tanaka, Honda, Tsuburaya etc.'s films do.

But then again, that's just my opinion. However late in coming it may be. So based on all of that, I say that the effects work in Godzilla vs. The Thing is FLAWLESS. Deal with it.

I'd say "amen" to that. The filmmakers today really do lack some of the imagination of those that came before them. But give Koichi Kawakita credit. He always viewed Godzilla and his kaiju brethren as mythical, god-like beings that used their god-like powers against each other, rather than living animals that fought tooth-and-nail to the death. Which explains why there were so many beam wars in the Heisei series. This philosophy was really a hit-or-miss deal, and Godzilla vs. Mothra '92 was, for the most part, a miss.