What would you have done for GFW or the 50th Anniversary?

[ScottA]

[MouthForWar]

Tell that to the tons upon tons of people that saw Zilla 98 when it came out and made it one of the biggest sellers of the year. Tell that to the people who put Godzilla 2000 in the top 10 on opening weekend when nobody thought it was going to make it that far. Besides with the current Japanese sci-fi/horror and anime boom going on in America, he's a lot more popular HERE than he is THERE, as admitted by Mr. Ishii at G-Fest this past summer.

People WILL see it. Star Trek is a household name with a very cult, underground fandom, and they still put those films in theaters, even though they are never, ever big blockbuster motion pictures. Star Trek fans are mostly all diehards, so nobody else ever sees those films. But I'd be willing to bet that Godzilla has as many or more casual movie goers that would see his films.

Also, Evil Dead is a massivley popular film series these days. Its gotten HUGE and beyond its old "cult cinema" status. Just about everyone my age that I talk to has seen all 3. Its even getting a remake, and (very likley) a 4th entry (depending on the remakes success)

[ScottA]

[Xenorama]

[kidnicky]

[MouthForWar]

[MouthForWar]

[ScottA]

[Xenorama]

[Garasharp K7]

[ScottA]

[kidnicky]

[MouthForWar]

[MouthForWar]

[ScottA]

[MouthForWar]

No, he wasn't "panned in Japan"- GFW just didn't pull in a big crowd and it got mediocre reviews, just like all the other millenium movies. Kitamura is still a big director, and many people are still anticipating his sequel to Versus. He'll always be a popular director because of Versus' as being one of the biggest cult classics to come out of Japan in recent years.

[ScottA]

[MouthForWar]

[StarhunterNebulaM]

[kidnicky]

[ScottA]

[MouthForWar]

[Gkiller]

[Gkiller]

[MouthForWar]

The biggest failure in Japanese movie history? That's just laughable. You clearly haven't checked any of the facts and figures. Its not nearly the worst failure of any Godzilla film, let alone Japanese films in general. I don't even see how anyone could say that, its such a ludicrous statement.

Toho asked Tezuka back after GMK because they thought he had more potential than Kaneko. That was the point of the MIllenium series, to decide what/who they want to continue with. In fact, go to Toho Kingdom and look at the box office reports and you'll see GFW pulled in more money than any of the Hesei Gamera films, as well as the Mothra trilogy. So by that logic, a film like Godzilla vs. Destroyah would be a blockbuster for Toho, and they still canned the series after that, thus proving that they really meant it would be the "last one" in that series, no matter how succesful. I believe the same holds true for GFW. They said GFW would be the last one before they even knew what kind of film they wanted to do. These films have very rarley made more than the budget they had to begin with and the most recent one to perform super well in Japanese theaters was Godzilla vs. Mothra in 1992. For the most part, figures have been on a decline ever since.

And Kitamura's films being underground hits as opposed to mainstream hits just furthers my point that it didn't "kill" anything about his career. He still has his fans and detractors, and his career is fine. He's gonna keep making what he wants and his fans will enjoy it, the detractors will not.

Not to mention, GMK pulled in twice that of GxM, which is 50%, not 78%. And either way, making more than GxM isn't quite hard to do, since that performed worst out of any of the films.

Besides, every movie in the Millenium series was "panned" in Japan, even G2K, which was the big comeback. ALL of them were flops, with the possible of exception of GMK.

Besides, looking at the figures showing GMK being the most successful of this series, harldy makes it "career suicide", since Kaneko is still as strong as ever. So if it did good or bad, either way, it obviously wasn't career suicide.