TALKBACK #26: Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla

[Goji 84]

Here are those photos, for anyone that's curious

[MekaGojira3k]

[rockstarbd82]

[MekaGojira3k]

[rockstarbd82]

[MekaGojira3k]

[Goji 84]

[jellydonut25]

[MekaGojira3k]

[Goji 84]

I always thought he was kind of funny, personally. Not hilarious, (he's no GIGAN corn-on-the-cob eating hippie), but goofy enough. Definitely much more tolerable than the Cubs fan from MEGAGUIRUS. Now that guy is just obnoxious.

[MekaGojira3k]

[Cookie]

[The Real McCoy]

Not to mention the part where he asks her if she wants to have kids. That was hilarious.

[MekaGojira3k]

[The Real McCoy]

[jellydonut25]

[MekaGojira3k]

[jellydonut25]

[MekaGojira3k]

[Giganfan]

One really cool effect that is employed during Godzilla's second battle with Kiryu is how the ground seems to buckle and erupt from the stomping and the sheer size of the monsters. I always thought that was kinda neat. The entire final fight, I feel, was well-staged and realized. Plenty of tension and urgency, and both monsters got their licks in.

Ya know, I don't really have a problem with Godzilla playing "second fiddle" in this movie. The way I see it, Godzilla is ALWAYS the star of the movie, no matter how diminished his role may be. I remember watching Godzilla X Mechagodzilla with a friend who, while not a Godzilla "die-hard" like myself, is still the "comic book, fanboy" type. Once that brilliant prologue was over, he said to me "okay, where do you go from here? It's GODZILLA!! He's awesome. We got that, now how do you tell an original story about that?!" Godzilla is such an omnipresent, bigger-than-life mythology, he basically steals the show without trying. That's one thing I feel that the Heisei series got right. It played off that angle really well, even if the movies themselves suffered in quality as a result. In Tezuka's film, they atleast get the essence of the character. He still poses a significantly grim threat to civilization, and he is portrayed as a very real natural disaster. I credit Tezuka and company with, at the very least taking a subtler approach to the "King of the Monsters", in a movie that benefits from showcasing a damn-awesome Mechagodzilla reincarnation.

If it weren't for the fact that I am hopelessly biased towards practically all of the Showa Godzilla flicks, I would have no problem saying that Godzilla X Mechagodzilla is one of my ten favorites. I think that when you look at Tezuka's "trilogy" of Godzilla movies, as a whole it is mostly uneven. I enjoyed certain aspects of both Godzilla X Megaguirus and Tokyo SOS, however both movies suffer as a result of their director's lack of experience at the helm. The guy is an amateur, no question. Still, his films do not feel like "Godzilla by commitee", like most of the Heisei films do. They feel like "Godzilla by Masaaki Tezuka". Whether or not that's a good thing is, of course, endlessly debatable. All I know is that the man in on-record referring to King Kong vs. Godzilla as his favorite Godzilla movie, and based on "GxMG", I kind of understand why.

[MekaGojira3k]

[MouthForWar]

[MekaGojira3k]

[MouthForWar]

[jellydonut25]