TALKBACK #5: Ghidorah, The Three Headed Monster

[klen7]

percentage wise i might be better at naming Toho kaiju than US Presidents

[Kailem]

Sounds like the right kind of patriotism to me.

[eabaker]

[lhb412]

[eabaker]

[lhb412]

You think that the Shobijin take the money they make from personal appearances and put it back into the welfare and conservation of Infant Island?

I bet they do. In fact, they probably have a charity organization or some such. In the movie we probably cut away from the TV just before they were about to give out that information.

[Gentleman]

So the movie is on right now, and while watching it a thought occurs to me. If it's been brought up before, sorry.

Could King Ghidorah actually have destroyed the Earth? If so, how long would it take?

Seriously. Yes, he flies and fires destructive energy beams. He seems to be immortal, so he's not going to age out. But come on. It'd take him hours to actually "destroy" a single city, and that's if he actually put his heads together and concentrated on the task. If he moves in a pattern, it'd take him years to fly from one end of the world to the other, destroying cities. If he flew randomly, it'd take him forever. Not to mention that when he's razing Moscow, Tokyo is rebuilding. By the time he works his way around to Madagascar, the Russians are patching things up. And so on.

That's also only if he focuses on the major cities. What about the small towns? Is he going to pay attention to small coastal vistas in Maine or France? What about small villages in Africa or the Middle East? Could he actually do a clean sweep of the planet?

[Rodanex]

This might seem like a weird question, but has anyone ever seen a poster with the title "Monster of Monsters, Ghidorah" on it? I could have sworn I saw a jpg of that particular movie poster in this thread, but now I can't find it.

[H-Man]

I know there's a press booklet from Toho with that title. I can't recall having ever seen a traditional poster but I'd bet one's out there somewhere.

https://postimg.cc/gallery/1np5giz90/

[Rodanex]

There it is! Thanks. Just out of curiosity, where did you find that image?

[H-Man]

[lhb412]

[quote="H-Man"]Can we talk about how great the final drama unit scene at the airport is? The last shots of Shindo waving farewell to the princess' plane and especially his final close up are so sad.[/quote]

It reframes the entire movie that came before it. That's an astounding thing for a last scene to do and I've always wondered why it didn't get more credit in that respect. Turns out, the movie was a love story!

[H-Man]

I seem to recall someone here once described this movie as "Roman Holiday with monsters," and I think that's a pretty apt description.

[kiryugoji04]

[lhb412]

^ The Honda bio Steve and Ed wrote makes it seem like Honda had a bit of an Audrey Hepburn obsession.

[lhb412]

This film is a classic. I've always liked it, but I've also leveled some criticisms at it over the years, mostly because of how much more polished the films it's sandwiched in-between are. The big editing mistake, the Godzilla/Rodan fight being mostly puppets smacking against each other - that sort of thing.

... but this last couple of years we've had these Godzilla streaming channels always ticking away in the background, and it feels like I've caught Ghidorah TTHM a disproportionate amount of times. As a result of the repetition I've become more familiar with the film than ever before, and all the positive things about it just stand out more and the negatives recede in my mind. This movie is just so delightfully fun to watch. There's a new interesting thing practically every scene and it links together so gracefully.

I think this might be Sekizawa's most confident script in how it weaves all these different genres together. It serves the cast of human characters and monsters in such a satisfying way. And it's so funny! Maybe the funniest Godzilla movie? It feels ahead if it's time I how it builds on the series continuity up to that point. So much of this movie relies on the fact that the audience has completely accepted the Shobijin as normal.