TALKBACK #8: Son of Godzilla

[DannyBeane]

He can be seen as having human mannerisms and characteristics. He's like a professional wrestler in this movie in both his fighting style and mannerisms.

[jellydonut25]

[Hybrid Gojira]

I've never been a fan of Minilla or this Goji suit, but the movie itself is pretty good. Kumonga's wire work is fantastic, and I do like Kamacuras quite a bit. The movie does feature the awful Minilla prop after hatching, but overall this is a solid film.

[eabaker]

Despite my not loving the suit, this movie is way, way above a 5/10 for me. I love the human story, I think the awakening of parental instincts for Godzilla works as an advancement for the character, the sequences involving the Kamakuras and Kumonga are brilliant, and I really, really like Minilla.

As for the discussion about the little scamp's name, every source I've ever seen said that it was mini+gojira=minira, which would naturally be Romanized to "Minilla" to match our spelling of "Godzilla."

[Dr Kain]

It could have been worse though. It could have been Chibi Zilla.

[Reaper G]

The giant bugs, the cast, the music... the only thing wrong is the suits made for the title characters.

[jellydonut25]

My recent random pull.

I love this movie. It's far from perfect, what with the hideous Godzilla suit and some of the scenes with Saeko, but it's pretty unique in the pantheon of Godzilla films and the human/kaiju interaction is probably in the top two in the entire series.End of the day, it has very little to do with nostalgia for me, actually as what I like about it today is different from what I liked as a kid. As a kid, I liked the amount of monster action. Today, I'm wowed by the execution of Kumonga and Kamacuras, and the bright colorful cast of characters. Such a fun flick.

[briizilla]

[Jorzilla]

I tried in earnest to like this movie, and have watched it twice in the last 3 or 4 months. I can see why people like it, but I find boring. It might be okay as a giant monster on the loose type movie, but I cannot get into it as a Godzilla movie. Godzilla fighting giant bugs feels beneath him (exception Mothra)...most of the fights I was wondering why Godzilla didn't torch them sooner. The SPFX are some of the best of the Showa, but the monster designs for Minya and Godzilla hold the film back.

The inverse happened to me for Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster. Go figure.

[jellydonut25]

Kumonga is kinda sorta resistive to Godzilla's breath and by the end, the last Kamacuras has built up something of an immunity due

[metal_bryan]

[Jorzilla]

Except that they totally burst into flames when Godizlla ultimately gets a good shot in. It might be the case that they have resistance against radiation given the conditions of their birth, but they don't play it up in the movie enough if they really wanted the audience to understand that.


On a different note: was Kumungo always a giant monster or was he the size of the original Kamacuras? Kaeko knew about him and his layer, but I mean would a human sized monster really require an area that large?

[jellydonut25]

Kumonga takes SEVERAL good shots from Godzilla before finally succumbing, and the final Kamacuras takes like two straight to the face.

How are those "weak"? Seems pretty well played to me. Kumonga doesn't finally actually die until he gets hit by Godzilla and Minya.

[Jorzilla]

It still feels selective for the sake of creating dramatic tension. There's nothing special about the shots that hit them unphased and the shots that actually gave a death blow. It's not light Godzilla's ray looked any different like you might see in Heisei, or you saw anything like armor/exoskeleton burning off in the shots that don't work. It really is just: Doesn't work, doesn't work, doesn't work, BURST INTO FLAMES. The times that it didn't work it wasn't ever thinking "hmm, well considering the radtion and heat wave on this island...." I was wondering why the hell Godzilla's breath was so weak.

[metal_bryan]

[jellydonut25]

I always took this as an egg just being around from...some other time. Godzilla kinda becomes an unwilling FATHER, not the actual egg-layer.

[metal_bryan]

I was kidding.

[jellydonut25]

[eabaker]

[Jorzilla]

That's what I was thinking as well. This segues to my next question: Was Minilla originally a Godzillasaur in an egg; was he even irradiated? Did the egg grow to such large size because of storm, or was he much smaller originally? If he was smaller and not Godzilla-fied, how was he able to psychically reach out to Godzilla? If he was already Godzilla-fied, how did the egg get there?

I might be nitpicking, but these details also affect my enjoyment of this movie.

[Gman2887]

They're also details that I don't mind not knowing the answers to. I loved how the Showa movies played it fast and loose with most origins. It keeps a certain mystery behind the monsters, allowing the audience to join in with the, "science can't fully explain these creatures" sentiment brought up multiple times in these films. Instead of just telling us scientists can't fully understand these monsters' existence, we join in their befuddlement. Minya is, joyfully, no different.

[eabaker]

I really feel like, by the time of SoG, Godzilla had already moved into a sufficiently iconic place in cultural mythology that the filmmakers were really no longer concerned with acknowledging his origin/backstory, and so giving him a son really didn't require any particular logical considerations. The Godzilla of that movie might as well have no meaningful connection to dinosaurs or nuclear energy, he's just Godzilla, the image, and his son is just... his son, because, obviously, look at him.

[jellydonut25]

As I've been re-watching the movies recently, I've come to realize that this whole notion of Godzillasaur mutated and enlarged by radioactivity was never really explicitly stated until Gvs.KG...

in the original film, they merely mention that the H-bomb woke Godzilla up and is the cause of his radioactivity...they never say it's the cause of his immense size. Thus, Minya would have hatched at Godzilla height regardless.

[Jorzilla]

While true, are we supposed to believe that Godzilla breathed radiative fire that looked like blue nuclear light prior back when he was chomping on Brontosaurus?

[eabaker]

While the nature of the bomb's effect on Godzilla was never stated, "nuclear energy makes things into giant mutants" was enough of a staple elements of 50s sci-fi cinema that I think it was largely taken for granted by audiences well before GvsKG made it explicit.