TALKBACK #12: Godzilla vs. Gigan

[Benjamin Haines]

^ Very interesting. For a title change like that to occur so late, I guess maybe they took a look at what they had during post-production and realized that King Ghidorah really took a back seat to Gigan in the film. Or maybe they just thought a new monster's name would be more marketable/enticing to kids.

[Russzilla]

[H-Man]

Was that picture taken at the end of filming or during it? It doesn't really make sense to take a huge cast and crew photo any other time but after production has wrapped, but the date on the plaque is 11/2/1971 (Showa 46). That seems like a long way off from the premiere date March 12, 1972. Surely there couldn't have been that much post-production to do.

[MekaGojira3k]

Well regardless of post-production weren't all of the Godzilla films lined up spring releases? Maybe they just finished the film earlier but stuck with the March release schedule.

[ebirahsmeg1]

[klen7]

[MekaGojira3k]

Neat stuff. I especially love that Megalon was an idea/name being thrown around that early.

[king_ghidorah]

Need to rewatch this again. This movie flips a lot in my ratings because the strongest parts of it have nothing to do with the kaiju stuff. The last time I tried to watch this I was very entertained for the human stuff, and kind of just nodded off when the kaiju bits started to happen.

[ebirahsmeg1]

Here are some random, interesting behind the scenes photos of the two lovely main ladies(Tomoko Umeda and Yuriko Hishimi) from GvsGigan:

[Jared]

I love this cheap little movie. The first half features some of the series' most entertaining characters with a creative comic-book effect, and the second is just pure-out monster spectacle, no holds barred. A lot of stock material abounds, for better (Ifukube) or for worse (stock footage used in extremely poor taste). Regardless, it isn't difficult to assume that the people who made GODZILLA VS. GIGAN had a hell of a time doing it.

[EricDent]

I watched this earlier via the recent Blu-Ray release from Kraken Releasing.
While it looks a lot better than I remember it ever did, I kinda wonder why there were no song subtitles for the ending song (and yes I tried all the sub options).

Does anybody know who actually drew all that manga style art?
It looks very similar in style to Speed Racer.

[MrShape666]

I always get a kick out of the fact that the theme park the cockroach guys are building looks pretty lame. If you look at it, it looks like it wouldn't take more then an hour or two to see everything. Of course, they're main plan was world domination, not competing with Disneyland, so it makes a certain kind of sense.

[battrafan]

[Gojira07]

Rewatched this last night, was fun to finally be able to see the speech bubbles - its funny, it didn't really add anything to the movie, but after 20 years of "mystery" knowing it existed but never seeing it was kind of rewarding. This one has always been a personal favorite, but I had a thought while rewatching last night that really stuck with me. Its such a shame how much this movie relies on stock footage, because (Ghidorah aside) the new SFX shots specific for this film are all great. Gigan's initial attack on Tokyo might actually be some of the best looking and paced destruction we get post 64 and before TOMG. Gigan has a few shots that are genuinely epic. I would love to edit that attack and cut out all of the stock footage and see how it plays.

[DannyBeane]

Testing this forum. I've gotten into collecting VHS tapes and the classic Godzilla vs Gigan is still one of my favorites

[Dai]

[quote="DannyBeane"]Testing this forum. I've gotten into collecting VHS tapes and the classic Godzilla vs Gigan is still one of my favorites[/quote]

A good idea. Very good.

[spoiler](actually, I'm just testing if BBcode works in new posts)[/spoiler]

<i>testing HTML</i>

EDIT: Oh well, at least we can see text now.

[Kailem]

In honour of Gigan's 50th I watched this again a few nights ago, and I still find it enjoyable. The human characters (and cockroaches!) are fun, the story is just the right kind of crazy Showa Godzilla silliness, and Gigan is a really great creation. The pacing's pretty good overall too, though I do think it drags just a little bit during Gigan and Ghidorah's initial rampage, albeit not as much as I remembered it doing from me previous years-old last viewing.

On the negative side though it's painfully obvious that King Ghidorah is only there for some extra monster star power, because 99% of the time he just stand there totally stiff and lifeless, like they couldn't find another suit actor to play him nor anyone in the studio to animate his heads or tails. It's quite bizarre. Does anyone know the exact reason behind that? Was the suit just in such bad shape at that point that they didn't want to risk it completely falling apart? Either way it's a shame because his appearance feels completely unnecessary as a result, most of it being relegated to stock footage.

And speaking of the stock footage, it's a bit of a mixed bag. Stuff like the monster montage at the beginning during the discussion about Monster Island is totally fine, as are many of the shots of the military and some of the destruction. But straight-up recycling Ghidorah's fights from earlier movies only with a darker image to try and make it look like they're happening at night just.....isn't so hot.

But yeah, overall it's still a movie I enjoy, perhaps even more than I was expecting to. I also kinda love how you have one big "investigation" montage, then the characters all meet up and discuss their findings and are like "we need to investigate further!" and it goes straight into another montage! It's also 70's as hell how many key parts of the film depend on characters being heavy smokers. It's just fun.

Oh, and I love how the main character is listening to the director of this "Children's Land" just casually talk about how they're going to destroy Monster Island and kill all the monsters at the beginning of the film and doesn't for one second think "wait a minute, how the hell is a dude running a charitable children's theme park organisation going to do that?!" But in this kind of movie? Stuff like that just totally works!

[lhb412]

On my last rewatch the only real negative that bothered me is how the integration of all that stock footage makes the prolonged kaiju battle feel disjointed and awkward. Otherwise, I'm very fond of this one. Love the characters. Dig the vibe.

[Benjamin Haines]

Happy birthday, Kailem! The front page of the board says it's still your birthday here on this side of the Atlantic!

On the subject of King Ghidorah in Godzilla vs. Gigan, he certainly does spend more time standing around with a lot less motion than in prior years but he was always intended to be included and he was originally meant to be the main draw. From the start of the writing process, the working title of the film was The Return of King Ghidorah. Even when they shot the movie, the title at that point was still Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah: Earth Destruction Directive (ゴジラ対キングギドラ　地球攻撃命令) judging by this cast & crew wrap photo from November 2, 1971 (Showa 46): https://wikizilla.org/w/images/c/c8/Island_bts_cast-photo.jpg

Godzilla vs. Gigan is still one of my top favorite G flicks.

[Kailem]

Thanks very much! It's been so long now that I forgot I even put my birthday on here, let alone expected anyone to actually mention it!

And yeah, it just struck me a bit more watching it this time round how little Ghidorah really does in the film, which just seems odd given that he was always meant to be the main draw like you said. I imagine it was just a case of his suit not being in great shape anymore. And the obligatory cost-cutting measures meant the stock footage combined with his general lack of movement really make it stick out like a bit of a sore thumb.

Luckily the movie is fun enough on its own that it's not a major issue, but it's certainly a noticeable one.

[Benjamin Haines]

^ According to the 1991 Gamera retrospective featurette (included on both Shout Factory's DVD and Arrow's BRD of the original Gamera), Noriaki Yuasa had been planning for Gamera to fight a two-headed dragon monster in the 1972 Gamera movie because he knew that Toho was bringing back King Ghidorah and he felt like he needed to compete. He would have been planning that between when Gamera vs. Zigra was released in July 1971 and when Daiei went bankrupt that November. It's crazy to think that Toho, for whatever reason, ultimately treated Gigan as the main selling point of their new film by the time they released it in March 1972, considering how their plan to sell audiences on King Ghidorah had already gotten around to their competition and even influenced Daiei's plans for Gamera, even though that Gamera film never happened.


Here is my own contribution to Godzilla vs. Gigan's 50th anniversary: a complete English-language dialogue translation comparison for the entire movie!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1doiNnAS-ODG4zxPw_BuNTKO4Qz7j3IGzA0y7ZDAE8l8/edit?usp=sharing

Godzilla vs. Gigan has 45 scenes with spoken dialogue and they're divided into 45 tabs on this spreadsheet. Each tab compares the English-language dialogue from Toho's international dub recorded by Axis International in Hong Kong, the subtitles from Sony/TriStar's 2004 DVD, the subtitles from Kraken's 2014 DVD & BRD, and the subtitles from Criterion's 2019 BRD and subsequent streaming releases.

I posted a lot of comparisons like these a few years ago for scenes from several different movies but this is the first film that I've completed in its entirety. I've also improved the formatting from how I used to do these. If a character spoke multiple lines of dialogue in a row, previously I would combine all of their consecutive subtitles into one cell, consolidating the number of cells as much as possible. For Godzilla vs. Gigan, I've presented each individual onscreen subtitle as its own cell, and I've broken up the dubbed dialogue cells so that the horizontal gridlines designate exactly which subtitles are onscreen during specific words of dubbed spoken dialogue.

That Google Sheets link is viewable to anyone. On my personal laptop, I have to zoom it out to 75% to fit all of the columns on the screen, so please adjust the zoom level to whatever your setup needs. I also notice that sometimes when tabs are loading it will cause the images to appear scattered across the cells, but that's just a display error that can be corrected if you click over to another tab and then return to that tab. I hope that display error is only occurring on my browser and isn't a common occurrence for everybody. I don't have a lot of experience with Google Sheets so if anyone has any tips for how I can present this better, please let me know.