TALKBACK #20: Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II

[jellydonut25]

[Gman2887]

[king_ghidorah]

[MouthForWar]

[lhb412]

[Inferior Rodan]

[Tyler E. Martin]

[kiryugoji04]

[MouthForWar]

[king_ghidorah]

[heroforhirerob]

[Inferior Rodan]

I would say some of my more favorite Godzilla suits are from the Heisei films, Godzilla vs Mothra comes to mind. It a boring as crap movie but Godzilla gets some beautiful shots in this film, Godzilla 93 also has few these too.

[MekaGojira3k]

I guess I don't exactly hate the Heisei films so much as I don't care about them. vs Mothra and vs. King Ghidorah being the two I tend to feel the closest to hate. Still, none of them bother me as much as X Megaguirus, a Millennium film.

[Legion]

The Heisei series can be a lot of fun with great music (the Ifukube stuff at least) some spectacular effects and one of the very best Godzilla designs. The issue is that they're really soulless as a whole and don't really work as films. There are many glimmers of excellence throughout these movies, but there's no one Heisei film that you can look at from a critical standpoint, factor in all it's elements and actually say, "Wow, that was a terrific film".

[MouthForWar]

[kiryugoji04]

[MouthForWar]

[kiryugoji04]

Face it, we will never come to an agreement, you and I. I, for one, have basically come to hold GHIDRAH as my personal pinnacle of entertainment (well, I mean, everything is second to GIGAN but that's so obvious it need not be mentioned!) and, really, I don't see what about it makes it such a mess, apart from, yes, some jarring editing in places. I guess being a kaiju fan is a big part of why I appreciate it so much but it's becoming one of my go-to films for new fans for a good reason! That being that it's NOT a bad film at all!

It IS true that very few of these films are deep and complex but they don't need to be to be good films. A FUN film CAN be a GOOD film, though I guess it depends on what your definition of good is. The Showa films are, on the whole, breezy and fun, typically skillfully directed for the kinds of movies they are, with characters that may not be deep but are functional and interesting and fun to watch, played by skilled actors who look like they're thoroughly enjoying their jobs. The effects may not always be perfect but they're almost always creative, inventive, and fun to look at. Conversely, when I see a 90s Godzilla movie, I almost always see a plodding, hack work, with abysmal, point-and-shoot effects that are bested by movies released FORTY YEARS PRIOR with only minor moments of brilliance that come of as almost accidental. The extreme antithesis of fun, if you ask me.

And I almost always complain about the effects in the 90s films IN RELATION to the films within the tokusatsu genre that came both years before it (50s-80s) and the films that came directly after it (the Heisei Gamera films). When I complain about the effects in Mechagodzilla '93, I'm not complaining about how unrealistic Baby Godzilla is when compared to Stan Winston's dinosaurs from Jurassic Park. I'm complaining about the fact that Kawakita's LAME excuse for special effects that he utilized to bring Rodan to... well, not to life but to.... flopping about like so many fish - are utterly destroyed by the original Rodan, which was probably made with less money, less time, and, again, forty years prior. I'm not complaining about the miniatures not looking as good as those used in, say, Independence Day - I'm complaining about them not looking as good as the ones in the Daicon Return of Ultraman parody, which was made by a team of Otaku just tooling around, making FX work that put Kawakita's to shame on a shoestring budget in the 80s, before Kawakita even took up the mantle of Toho's chief SPFX director. I don't care how these films compare to films outside of their genre because I feel like the genre represents a unique style of filmmaking all its own, which is something that I hope never fully dies out and that I fully intend on working in myself in the coming years. Based on that, the 90s Godzilla films still simply don't measure up. At all.

Sorry if that's all kind of rambly. It's also kind of five o'clock in the morning right now.

Josh, ignore that last statement, please.

[MouthForWar]

[planetxleader]

[MekaGojira3k]

[Inferior Rodan]

[jellydonut25]

[MekaGojira3k]

[Inferior Rodan]