tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14812333.post9002919460985810023..comments2023-11-05T02:01:53.847-06:00Comments on Antagony & Ecstasy: REVIEW ALL MONSTERS! - STUPID AND YET CUNNING. A VERY RARE SPECIMEN INDEEDTimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09491952893581644049noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14812333.post-25287788407447299442016-08-01T19:12:21.114-05:002016-08-01T19:12:21.114-05:00Dull? Godzilla vs Gigan has its fair share of stoc...Dull? Godzilla vs Gigan has its fair share of stock footage, which does it absolutely no favors. And the soundtrack is thoroughly recycled. Though the human characters are fun and the monster action is actually quite strong. By objective standards this film doesn't hold the best. But I've always found its entertainment value to be a major redeeming factor and I'd rank it nowhere near the list of worst Godzilla films.Ultrahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13551556991136833521noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14812333.post-53526457691250754772014-01-12T20:59:40.431-06:002014-01-12T20:59:40.431-06:00As a kid, I owned exactly two Godzilla films on VH...As a kid, I owned exactly two Godzilla films on VHS, despite being a pretty big fan. I watched whenever Godzillafest happened, things like that.<br /><br />One was King Kong vs. Godzilla, because of course it was. On an absurdly cheap commercial VHS. A neighbor borrowed it and somehow accidentally taped over it (It apparently had the tab on it that allowed such things, for... reasons?)<br /><br />The other was Godzilla vs. Megalon. So, it holds a very, very special place in my heart. But I haven't seen it since I was probably 12ish. So, I kind of dread ever rewatching it.Brianhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04546972990126033036noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14812333.post-67071894385964001622014-01-12T20:24:34.572-06:002014-01-12T20:24:34.572-06:00I'm definitely on team "Megalon is the Wo...I'm definitely on team "Megalon is the Worst", but you're right that it's less draggy. In fact, I don't know if <i>any</i> of the films are this draggy.<br /><br />And Sssonic, I can't believe I didn't realise that about the blood! I mean, it's obvious that this film is bloody, but it didn't occur to me that this was the actual first time we saw Godzilla bleed. Good call.Timhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09491952893581644049noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14812333.post-6966186301271072592014-01-12T20:18:18.198-06:002014-01-12T20:18:18.198-06:00I pretty much hate Godzilla vs Gigan. I think the ...I pretty much hate <i>Godzilla vs Gigan</i>. I think the general consensus is that the next film in the series is worse, but as inane as it is I find it to be not half as draggy as this one. Probably my next least favourite from this entire era of Godzilla after <i>Son of Godzilla</i>.<br /><br />The only things that really stand out to me at all here are Gigan's design, the newfound bloodiness that Sssonic mentioned (the scene of Anguirus getting his face sliced up by Gigan's chest blade fucked me up and I saw the film for the first time last month) and the faintly delightful scene where the cockroach aliens are played by actual cockroaches, although it's too little too late.<br /><br />This movie also really doubles down on what I've always thought was one of Fukuda's worst habits: apparently thinking poorly-staged scenes of human characters awkwardly struggling with each other is in any way an adequate replacement for kaiju action or any kind of meaningful incident.Chris Dhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07633087241215626035noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14812333.post-20959948005779401452014-01-12T18:18:02.419-06:002014-01-12T18:18:02.419-06:00Oh, I also find it kind of hilarious that its orig...Oh, I also find it kind of hilarious that its original U.S. release title was "Godzilla on Monster Island", despite Godzilla spending a grand total of, like, a minute and a half of screentime, tops, on Monster Island; as the Angry Video Game Nerd put it, "that's kind of like calling 'Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom' 'Indiana Jones in Shanghai', but even that's being generous."<br /><br />It does, however, bring up another interesting little tidbit about this movie I forgot to mention before, which is what it does to the continuity of the original Godzilla movies. Which, of course, was never all that tightly knit to begin with but which here gets just completely shot to Hell. This movie, after all, is explicitly contemporary to the time it was made, yet it acts as if Monster Island is a thing that has always existed...except that "All Monsters Attack" only ever used it as a Dream Location, while "Destroy All Monsters" makes it clear it's not supposed to exist for another twenty-odd years. <br />That would seem to suggest that the movies have started retroactively treating "Destroy All Monsters" as if it did, in fact, take place in the present (which in and of itself isn't too far-fetched, honestly; it's not as if the technology seen in DAM's vision of 1999 was all that different from what the series had already begun making fairly frequent use of). But that raises the question of how Ghidorah is still alive, since we pretty clearly see him die on-screen at the end of DAM.<br /><br />This is, to be clear, a result of nothing but sheer laziness on the part of the film's writers, but it's another of those bizarrely interesting little details I can't help but sink my teeth into. It does speak volumes about the move itself, however, that the most interesting things about it are all obscure little this-and-that's rather than anything to do with, y'know, its plot or visuals or anything actually important about it.<br /><br /> Sssonichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08540745505361960873noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14812333.post-66084615359956180522014-01-12T11:19:22.181-06:002014-01-12T11:19:22.181-06:00"Godzilla vs. Gigan" is a weird movie fo..."Godzilla vs. Gigan" is a weird movie for me. It's not, as you say, even remotely close to good; the first half is frightfully dull and confusing, and the second half is frightfully dull and incredibly stupid, the near-omnipresence of stock footage to stand in for actual Effects Work rivals "All Monsters Attack" in how thoroughly and lazily the film relies on it (even the soundtrack is comprised of nothing but re-used tracks from other Ifukube scores), and the Alien Invaders Using Monsters As Their Weapons plotline had run well past "running thin" at this point with this film offering nothing new or at all exciting about it.<br /><br />And yet, for all that, there are all these little details, many of which are most likely not even intentional on the part of anyone involved with making this movie, that add up into juuuuuuuuuust barrely enough that I cannot outright hate this one.<br /><br />Gigan, you've already covered; his is a design plainly more in keeping with the then-burgeoning Tokusatsu television shows like "Ultraman" or "Kamen Rider" than anything relating to Godzilla, yet for that very reason he makes for a surprisingly memorable enemy. It probably helps a lot that he is the first of Godzilla's enemies to make the King of Monsters himself bleed (and profusely, at that; when I was a kid, watching my favorite character of all time get his shoulder torn open and start gushing blood out of it tramautized the SHIT out of me), and takes such visible glee in doing so. That latter point is especially important, I think; Gigan has a clear and particularly vicious personality, and taken together with his Living-Weapon design, it makes him hard to forget or ignore.<br /><br />The other detail of note for me is Anguirus. As you say, it is entirely a matter of cost-cutting that casts him as Godzilla's ally, but for that very reason this movie did a lot to define his character, because it's the first time Godzilla's really HAD an ally. In previous films, when Godzilla's teamed up with other monsters, it's always as a result of circumstance more than active choice; here, though, he deliberately picks Angurius to accompany him, and as such it's hard not to view the mutant ankylosaur in a new light; he may have been Godzilla's first opponent, but now, for a lot of fans, he is much more akin to Godzilla's first real friend. I find that oddly endearing, honestly, and this movie is responsible for that, so I feel it deserved a bit of credit there.<br /><br />Just...not for much of anything ELSE it does. Sssonichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08540745505361960873noreply@blogger.com