New Godzilla Festival short for 2025

[Benjamin Haines]

Toho's Japanese Godzilla YouTube channel posted this teaser: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUpFAv9cCVY

It's great to see that they're making another of these after last year's short concluded the saga featuring the Final Wars suit. This time they're using one of the old Godzilla vs. Megaguirus suits!

Here's a Google translation of the video title:
Special News: "Festival Godzilla" New Special Effects Film Returns! See it at the venue on November 3rd!

[lhb412]

Hell yeah! They produced a ton of stuff from the molds of that suit, so it makes sense they'd have stuff to spare to use!

[Benjamin Haines]

^ There's a promotional featurette on Toho's 2001 GxM DVD set called "Tamao Sato and the Godzilla Lab" featuring more than 20 promotional Godzilla suits based on that design, although they all appeared to be cheaper suits with static jaws that couldn't close. Here are some clips from that featurette: https://www.facebook.com/groups/AnimeMatsuri/posts/2137277106321133/

In the Godzilla 2000 chapter of Behind the Kaiju Curtain, Norman England describes the day in August 1999 when Shusuke Kaneko first took him to visit Toho Studios during the making of G2K. They check out the big pool and find Kenji Suzuki's SFX crew shooting there with Tsutomu Kitagawa performing in the Godzilla suit. When Kaneko and Norman move into Stage 9, they find monster maker Shinichi Wakasa tending to another Godzilla suit and Kaneko clarifies, "There are always multiple suits."

[lhb412]

The unarticulated "stunt suit" for GFW was what they had been using. For the Godzilla vs. McDonald's promo they used a Heisei style promo suit and (I think?) a newly made more articulated puppet of his head and shoulders.

... with this? One of the actual filming suits or a refurbished promo suit? Maybe with an independent, more articulated head prop for closeups? (yeah, we only have two shots so far)

[Kailem]

And here it is: Fest Godzilla 2: Shinjuku Burning!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKHx9RYxric

And for anyone (like me) who missed it live, here's a link to the Godzilla Day livestream from earlier today:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HH-7KLGFWQ0

Get 'em both before Toho decides to scrub them from the internet again!

I'm so glad they decided to continue making these short films, especially since it sounded at the time like they'd intended last year's to be the last. This was really fun, simple but very effective. Burning Godzilla 2000 is such a cool look just in general, but it was really cool how they showed the transition from the classic blue atomic breath to the orange burning look. And that one shot was awesome.

I know they'd already announced this was going to be the first of a new series of Godzilla Day shorts, but that cliffhanger was such a tease! I can't say I've got any idea who/what the new monster could be. It kinda sounded like a mix of several other monsters' roars, no doubt intentionally to try and keep us guessing until next year. Either way it's a great way to get us immediately hyped for the next one!

[Benjamin Haines]

I just watched it too. That rocked! That old GxM Godzilla suit looks like it was made yesterday. Even beyond watching that suit in action again and hearing music from G2K, this short really captures that Millennium Series blend of classic and modern aesthetics, seeing physical suits and miniatures enhanced with digital compositing and computer graphics.

It was already kind of an anachronism at the turn of the millennium for Toho to keep releasing theatrical Godzilla movies with traditional effects techniques every year while Hollywood was continually breaking new ground in visual effects. Of course us fans will always treasure the Heisei and Millennium series for keeping those Showa effects traditions alive for so long but Toho's old-fashioned approach to making Godzilla movies had to end in this century in order for Godzilla to regain relevance with modern audiences. Shin Godzilla was that breakthrough in Japan and then Minus One was that breakthrough in the rest of the world, and it's fitting that Toho's Godzilla movies are back to being state-of-the-art showcases of modern effects techniques for the first time since the '80s, but it's still great to have these annual shorts keeping traditional suits-&-miniatures Godzilla going in some form.

[lhb412]

Lotta nifty moments here, and I think the higher quality of the Godzilla suit here increases the quality of the short overall.

... would've been nice to have Burning G2K as a suprise?