Godzilla Festival 5: Great Monster Battle

[Kailem]

A teaser for this year's Godzilla Festival live-action short has been released! As teased at the end of last year's short, it's a direct sequel featuring Godzilla and Jet Jaguar teaming up to fight King Ghidorah:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ku0HtKut0tA

I'm both hyped that they're continuing with these, and also a little worried with the description saying that this is the culmination of the director's work on them. Maybe he's just not going to be returning if they do another one next year, but it'd seem weird to stop doing these altogether when there's still one more 50th anniversary left to go from the Showa era. Though this is clearly going to be more of a GtTHM 60th celebratory short rather than a Mechagodzilla one, which does seem a little odd. But I imagine Mechagodzilla will be represented in the Gemstone short that we'll hopefully be getting next month too.

Either way, more classic, practical live-action Godzilla action is always a big plus in my book!

[Benjamin Haines]

This looks terrific!


And at the 27-second mark, that is totally King Shisa's roar! Or Toho Kong's roar, technically, but there's no way he's showing up. Maybe they refurbished the King Shisa suit from Final Wars for this short?

[Kailem]

Of course! That'd totally be how they might tie this in with Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla's 50th, given that there was no crowdfunding call for a new Mechagodzilla suit to be made this year. But maybe that suit is still in good enough condition that they could still acknowledge it even without Mechagodzilla himself making an appearance.

[lhb412]

Thought Ghidorah looked a bit ratty last year. I imagine the prop must've been heavily refurbished?

[Kailem]

Yeah it was clear the undersides of the necks had all been replaced. They look slightly better here than they did in last year's short though, a little less square and angular. Though maybe that's just me.

[Benjamin Haines]

This new short debuted during the 2024 Godzilla Fest livestream. Here's a recording of the livestream, and this link will start playing the video exactly when the short begins:

https://www.youtube.com/live/P-y9dzKixzY?si=-_1iNSxCi41ZId0A&t=17472

This is the best one yet! They've clearly upped their game with each of these. I'll avoid describing any details until everyone else has seen it.

Also, Toho announced a Japanese blu-ray disc release containing all five of these live-action Godzilla shorts on April 16, 2025!

[Dai]

They really cut loose and had fun with this one. And with all that it still didn't feel quite as crazy as GxK. It would be great if the western Godzilla Youtube channel could subtitle that livestream, but that seems unlikely considering that it's seven hours long!

I'm mulling over whether to get the blu-ray next year, since at this point I don't remember much of anything about the previous shorts. Were they all around 10 minutes or were some of them shorter?

[Kailem]

^^ I think the first one they did was the shortest, but they've all been of around similar length. I'd have to go back and check to be sure though.

This was indeed a really fun short! I think I might have enjoyed last year's one a little more, but I loved certain specific moments in this. Hopefully they post an English-subbed version soon like they did for the previous live-action shorts before they took them down so we can get the full experience, and also one that doesn't enter bitrate hell at various points.

The way this ended though, the fact that they described it as the culmination of the director's work with these shorts and the fact that they're releasing all five on Blu-ray next year makes me think we're not going to be getting another one next year though, and that's going to be a real shame if that turns out to be the case. I was expecting they were going to do another crowdfunding campaign to recreate Showa Mechagodzilla for this and then reuse it for Terror of Mechagodzilla's anniversary next year too, but obviously that didn't happen. And the lack of a Gemstone short this year as well makes me worried about the future of these anniversary shorts.

Still, if this really was the last of at least the live-action shorts, then at least they had a great ending! Even if they ended up making a brand new suit for any future ones and finally retired the Final Wars suit though, I'd love for these to continue. They've literally the closest we'll likely ever get again to new Godzilla films being made with the old, practical ways.

Is there any indication the Blu-ray is going to get an international release and not just be Japan-only? I'll certainly pick it up if it does, since it'd be nice to be able to watch all these through back to back on a TV screen rather than just my laptop.

[Kailem]

Here's a cool little behind-the-scenes article with lots of great set pics from the making of the short:

https://hjweb.jp/article/1854425/

It's super cool not only to see new live-action stuff done with the old practical techniques, but also to see the *behind the scenes* pics from the making of them too!