Monster Zero x SciFi Japan - Archive Only

I really like GMK. Overall it's the best film of the Millennium series (at least in terms of quality, if not entertainment value) by an absolute long shot, and better than many of the Heisei entries.

But I'm just going to say it: this raging, throbbing boner people have for this movie - enough to put in league with the original film as one of the absolute best Godzilla movies ever made - makes no frellin' sense to me. Movies like Mothra vs Godzilla and Monster Zero are still thought of as classics of the genre, where (barring a few exceptions) just about everything clicks. There's some great stuff in GMK, but it's flaws are large enough and detrimental enough that that it really doesn't reach the same status as some of the older films. Indeed, I love GMK until right after the Baragon battle and then in my opinion the movie loses it's way with the contrived human drama and the stop-start nature of the monster battle as Ghidora is constantly beaten and then revives.

The final battle between Godzilla and a pair of caterpillars in Mothra vs Godzilla is more dramatic and carries more emotion than anything in the final battle in GMK. At least to me it does.

Not sure I should chime in here, but I can say that director Kaneko doesn't hate his Godzilla film. But it's also true he had his hands full trying to deal with the committee mindset of Toho. But the truth with that is that any film made within a studio system is going to have to follow their wishes to a point. There is almost no film made that is 100% the vision of its director. It was the same for Gamera, but in the case of Gamera, Daiei had lower internal standards and Gamera doesn't mean the same to Daiei that Godzilla does to Toho. So, in that way you could say that Kaneko had more freedom on Gamera, but still not total freedom. And Kaneko had to work up to G3. It's too bad he wasn't able to make more Godzilla films as his control would have only increased.

I loved Kaneko's 2005 Godzilla Vs. Gamera.