The Godzilla Cycle: Deathiversary Week 2015: Day 2

So last time my post was more or less in line with the sort of thing I did last year. Lots of personal stuff, a lot of kicking around kind of big, lofty ideas around, and generally just being big about the whole occasion. Now, last year that makes a lot of sense since I, you know, didn't think I was going to to around much longer. This year, as I've said, is different, and I've really just been kinda watching these movies and drinking, trying to have a good time and keeping grounded. I don't really want to take too much of my time writing these posts because it's detracting from the part where I'm, you know, watching the actual movies.

So for this day I'm gonna try and drastically trim it to maybe one or two paragraphs per movie, plus the drinking game rules, which I should mention I am not committing to memory although I have written them up for all the way out to 1977 which should last me until tomorrow. I do remember the core ones, and I at least think I remember all the stuff I came up with, and additionally I'm sort of coming up with new stuff on the fly since I need more excuses and I'm drinking lighter stuff today. I've jotted these down as notes and will incorporate them into the post later.

But yeah, I think except for the Biollante day and the last day, I kinda wanna keep this light and just focus on one or two ideas that came up during the movie. Whether I'll be able to keep that light is a whole other thing, but because of time restrictions and my dwindling desire to bother writing anything at all, I think I can stick to it. For example; I just finished watching Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster and I really don't have any interest in writing this post yet, I'm only writing this intro now because of the limited time issue. But, anwyas, here's some more things:

6. 1965 - 怪獣大戦争 • Godzilla vs. Monster Zero

Drinking Game Rules:
1 Drink - In case any chemical, geological, meteorological, or psychical, other than physical, sign of G's action is confirmed
2 Drinks - In case any physical sign of G's action such as voice and motion is confirmed
3 Drinks - In case G appears
4 Drinks - In case G's landing on any specific coast of Japan is positive
1 Drink - Godzilla uses his Atomic Ray
1 Drink - When the Godzilla Theme plays
1 Drink - During a conference scene
1 Drink - When direct casualties of monster attacks are shown
1 Drink - Appearance or arrival onto a mysterious or monster inhabited island
1 Drink - If Godzilla can't be located or reappears in a totally different place
1 Drink - When a Kenji Sahara character appears
1 Drink - Akihiko Hirata plays a scientist
1 Drink - Hiroshi Koizumi plays a scientist
1 Drink - Jun Tazaki plays an authority figure
2 Drinks - Jun Tazaki plays a general
1 Drink - Yoshio Tsuchiya plays/is controlled by aliens
1 Drink - Whenever Kumi Mizuno is being awesome
1 Drink - Whenever Nick Adams is being awesome
1 Drink - If a fight ends with either the losers running away or the monsters falling off a cliff into the water
1 Drink - When Godzilla wins
1 Drink - Gratuitous English
1 Drink - If Godzilla stops taking a fight seriously
1 Drink - King Ghidorah appears out of a burst of flame
1 Drink - Godzilla dances
1 Drink - If the Ladyguard Alarm© goes off
1 Drink - Whenever Xiliens mention computers
1 Drink - If the Mothra fairies sing her theme song
2 Drinks - If the Mothra fairies sing a different song

So first of today is some coffee. Yep, like a shot of coffee in my mug full of French vanilla cream and Bacardi. I actually jotted down so many little notes, so few of which could lead to larger paragraphs, that I think I'll just do a quick list of things I was thinking during this movie:

• At the beginning of the film Glen and Fuji mention both an Earth time and a "Spacetime." This is hilarious.
• So by the end of the 1960's in the Showa Tohoverse, we can travel to Jupiter in like a month. But the discovery of the 13th Moon came only slightly before it did in real life. So we have all this hyper advanced space travel technology but we're still using backyard telescopes? What?
• There's a cute little moment when Fuji asks if his sister is there and when Tazaki turns to look she, standing juuuust far enough away to not be visible in the videophone monitor gives Jun this "fucking NO" look before he tells Fuji no without skipping a beat. Jun Tazaki is like a cool uncle or something.

• There's a typo in the subtitles (this is the Classic Media release I'm talking about) where it says "Plane X." Wild. Maybe we don't need space ships at all and can just take DMT to visit the Xiliens?
• The head stand joke. So Tetsuo (the inventor, not the metal fetishist) says on his way out of the restaurant after the meeting with Miss Namikawa "your brother [Fuji] said he'd stand on his head if I ever sold my invention." Cut to Fuji and Glenn in the P-1 rotated 180 degrees. But hey, you know, it's space. After an awkward pauses Glenn asks Fuji if he's okay, and then.... looks down at the instrument panel and notices they're rotated 180 degrees. Okay, degrees to what? It's such a KKvsG moment that only makes sense as a joke and I love it.
• "They are the best astronauts."
• What the hell are those little silver and black... pots? on the space outfits? What are those for?

• Later in DAM it's confirmed that Mothra can be mind controlled just like the other monsters, but I find it just a tad suspicious that the Xiliens happen to not ask for the one monster with two little fairies that speak for and are capable of influencing it.

• Gotta love that "housewife representative" wearing a kimono at an international conference ostensibly about a possible alliance with an alien planet. This is undoubtedly a Honda thing, but in context it's... just a liiiittle bit silly.
• The Commander inaugurates "Friendship Day." Why is this not a real thing? I want a Friendship Day.
• And then out of nowhere Akira Takarada is wearing some super kickin' rad shades. Shades away, I guess.
• All of the big, famous moons of outer planets are basically ice balls. Basically, ask your average Joe to name a moon of Jupiter and it'll be a big wad of ice. Why is water so scarce on Planet X? And even if it was... could they not just get all they want from Europa? Trying to deal with Earth seems like a waste of time to me.

• I know there have been plenty of fanfics about it, and it was even covered in Gigantis, the Fire Comic and Monster of Monsters, but strictly speaking whatever happened to the Xiliens? In the Americanization the last few lines are dubbed to have Fuji and Glenn become ambassadors to Planet X while in the original it was just a "survey" of Leda. But even then, unlike the Mysterians and the Natal we're not given a clear indication that the invasion force was the entirety of the Xilien population on Leda. Certainly none of the Namikawa clones were killed on Earth. Is there a future where humans and Xiliens can form some kind of understanding and alliance? They can't just constantly war with each other, right? I mean... well... to be honest, it's not like Xiliens haven't already been the bad guys in a monster-of-the-week formula show, so who knows?
• Much is made of the line "Ghidorah was always one of their weapons." People have a tendency to think this means he was a weapon retroactively in the previous movie, but... this is a Showa Godzilla movie, not a Heisei one, and it uses Showa continuity rules. This unfortunately probably confuses just as many people as the plot of GvsKG, and, just like that film, this is not in the least bit confusing and if you don't understand why this is nonsense you're stupid and you should feel bad.

7. 1966 - ゴジラ • エビラ • モスラ　南海の大決闘 • Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster

Drinking Game Rules:
1 Drink - In case any chemical, geological, meteorological, or psychical, other than physical, sign of G's action is confirmed
2 Drinks - In case any physical sign of G's action such as voice and motion is confirmed
3 Drinks - In case G appears
4 Drinks - In case G's landing on any specific coast of Japan is positive
1 Drink - Godzilla uses his Atomic Ray
1 Drink - When the Godzilla Theme plays
1 Drink - During a conference scene
1 Drink - When direct casualties of monster attacks are shown
1 Drink - Appearance or arrival onto a mysterious or monster inhabited island
1 Drink - If Godzilla can't be located or reappears in a totally different place
1 Drink - When a Kenji Sahara character appears
1 Drink - Akihiko Hirata plays a scientist
1 Drink - Hiroshi Koizumi plays a scientist
1 Drink - Jun Tazaki plays an authority figure
2 Drinks - Jun Tazaki plays a general
1 Drink - Yoshio Tsuchiya plays/is controlled by aliens
1 Drink - Whenever Kumi Mizuno is being awesome
1 Drink - If a fight ends with either the losers running away or the monsters falling off a cliff into the water
1 Drink - When Godzilla wins
1 Drink - Gratuitous English
1 Drink - If Godzilla stops taking a fight seriously
1 Drink - King Ghidorah appears out of a burst of flame
1 Drink - Chase scene!
1 Drink - Ebirah takes the fight underwater
1 Drink - Godzilla does the Young Guy nose rub thing
1 Drink - GIANT CONDOR!!!
2 Drinks - When Daisenso-Goji takes a dive
2 Drinks - Whenever it becomes painfully obvious this is supposed to be a King Kong movie
1 Drink - If the Mothra fairies sing her theme song
2 Drinks - If the Mothra fairies sing a different song

After my morning Bacardi with a little bit of coffee in it, for lunch I had fried chicken and a 40 of Old English. This lasted me through two films but then magically disappeared.

This was just a frustrating experience. So, if you're not familiar with this concept, in addition to the original films, dubs/Americanizations, Champion Festival versions, and other assorted edits, there are these weird things that are half one thing and not quite the other. Before a Godzilla movie gets picked up for distribution, or at least this is how they used to do it pre-1984, Toho would do a totally in-house dub so they'd already have the movie ready to go for international (English speaking) distributors. No one ever used these, though. These international versions are basically straight dubs with a handful of minor alterations, such as new English title cards and removing the voice bubbles from Gigan. They also don't feature the few things that make the Americanization versions worth tracking down in the first place, like the song "Save the Earth," or in Gigan's case there is neither the voice bubbles nor the weird back-masked in-talking of Godzilla on Monster Island. Sony's releases are always the international versions, leaving you with neither the unaltered original film or anything different enough to justify watching. Last year I watched a bunch of the Sony DVD's, and all the Showa versions are... unsuitable. By contrast, the 00's films don't actually change anything and provide both the international dub (which is fucking awful) and the original Japanese audio track, so... it's a little roundabout but technically those versions do contain the original film.

But so for the rest I needed to track down the original films this year. This was successful... near as I can tell, and I'm pretty excited to be watching Godzilla 2000: Millennium for, yep, the very first time, but imagine the look on my face when the first of these newly acquired films just... just wasn't happening.

The first problem was the subtitles. At first I thought they weren't working, which caused a lot of frustrating nonsense right there as I ran it through different programs and the like, but soon (but not soon enough) I figured the subtitles actually started like two and a half minutes in. So this meant that I now had to learn how to make srt files. Luckily it wasn't too much of a learning curve and within 5-10 minutes I had figured out how to solve the problem and could actually watch the movie. Except not because this keep happening. This wasn't some sort of simple mistake that could have been caused by a bad file transfer or anything, this was a consistent problem, every five minutes or so the subtitles would suddenly start either too early or too late, and about the third time I had to adjust them I finally just ended up watching most of the movie inside the subtitle editor, which was its own issue as you couldn't edit the subs and then keep watching, when you watched the video inside the subtitle editor the changes didn't stick, you had to save the file first then back up a little then press play again. Every five minutes I did this. Oh, and then the fucking audio cut out in the middle of the second Infant Island musical number. So, in the end I went back to watching the damned international version for the back half of the movie, which I was not happy about.

The good news is that I've run into none of these problems with any of the other movies so far, so fingers crossed that's the last of this crap I'll have to deal with.

8. 1967 - 怪獣島の決闘　ゴジラの息子 • Son of Godzilla

Drinking Game Rules:
1 Drink - In case any chemical, geological, meteorological, or psychical, other than physical, sign of G's action is confirmed
2 Drinks - In case any physical sign of G's action such as voice and motion is confirmed
3 Drinks - In case G appears
4 Drinks - In case G's landing on any specific coast of Japan is positive
1 Drink - Godzilla uses his Atomic Ray
1 Drink - When the Godzilla Theme plays
1 Drink - During a conference scene
1 Drink - When direct casualties of monster attacks are shown
1 Drink - Appearance or arrival onto a mysterious or monster inhabited island
1 Drink - If Godzilla can't be located or reappears in a totally different place
1 Drink - When a Kenji Sahara character appears
1 Drink - Akihiko Hirata plays a scientist
1 Drink - Hiroshi Koizumi plays a scientist
1 Drink - Jun Tazaki plays an authority figure
2 Drinks - Jun Tazaki plays a general
1 Drink - Yoshio Tsuchiya plays/is controlled by aliens
1 Drink - Whenever Kumi Mizuno is being awesome
1 Drink - If a fight ends with either the losers running away or the monsters falling off a cliff into the water
1 Drink - When Godzilla wins
1 Drink - Gratuitous English
1 Drink - If Godzilla stops taking a fight seriously
1 Drink - King Ghidorah appears out of a burst of flame
1 Drink - Ebirah takes the fight underwater
1 Drink - Godzilla does the Young Guy nose rub thing
1 Drink - GIANT CONDOR!!!
1 Drink - Minilla does something dumb and annoying
1 Drink - Characters refer to Minilla as "Godzilla" (which is all the time since no one says "Minilla" once in the whole movie)
2 Drinks - When Daisenso-Goji takes a dive
1 Drink - If the Mothra fairies sing her theme song
2 Drinks - If the Mothra fairies sing a different song

Mo' fo'-ty. Gotta say of the two island adventure films this one is clearly superior. I've been pretty outspoken about this before, especially about how cool Kumonga is and how that needs more exposition. I guess I'll just list off my notes again since I don't have many of them:

• I think I remember hearing that Hiroshi Koizumi was originally going to play the role of the professor but couldn't because of scheduling issues, so they dropped in Tadao Takashima instead in what is basically the weirdest choice ever. To his credit he does his part well, it's just... idunno, you know?

• So the story behind the Mosuko-Goji, the ugliest Godzilla design of all time, is that the tallness is a result of a new actor who was taller than Haruo Nakajima who was cast to increase the height differential between him and Minilla, and the face is a result of trying to make him look more like Minilla. But wait a minute, shouldn't you make a not-ugly face first and then reverse engineer a babby-faced version of that? Part of what makes Minilla so gross and ugly is that he looks like a phreaking mutant. So I guess Minilla's face was designed first, and the design thesis was "faces have only two eyes, right? Well then they better cover a pretty large area." It's kind of exactly the opposite of how nature works, and if you wanna learn how to make babby versions of animals cute, you're gonna wanna learn from nature, trust me on this.
• Does Godzillla beat his kids? @_@

• How much time passes between when we see infant Minilla and child Minilla? Professor Takashima says it'll be another three months to do take two of the experiment, but he also says that the first order of business is to check the equipment, so that's a pretty rushed time table, and also the actual experiment isn't ready until some time after the time lapse and ALSO when they did retry the experiment it was really hodge podge and wasn't about testing anything at all but just a means to get away from all the monster fighting.

• I forgot if the weather control aspect was also a part of Two Godzillas or not. The story goes that Batman vs. Godzilla was supposed to use this and the earliest BMvsG came up was in December of '65, which actually pre-dates the TV show, but there doesn't seem to be an extant copy of Sekizawa's synopsis anywhere that I'm aware of, and instead this probably comes from Batman Meets Godzilla which is a maybe-maybe-not treatment (a long treatment, though) of the film written by one of the '66 Batman TV show's producers, and this features all the Bat-Vehicles, mind control via super villain (who ISN'T the Joker, go figure), and the weather control plot points that are repeated everywhere the story is mentioned. The story behind BMG is that it was supposedly found among said producer's belongings after he died, so there's a number of ways this could be not a thing. Two Godzillas featured both the adult and infant Godzillas coming onto the Japanese mainland and... also Guam!? I've heard Japanese websites also repeat the story about the weather control in Batman vs. Godzilla so it's possible that my associating it with Two Godzillas is just me misremembering this, which is why I can't be sure.

9. 1968 - 怪獣総進撃 • Destroy All Monsters

So I finished off that 40 surprisingly quickly and with little consequence, so for DAM I had this beer called "208" by the Grand Teton Brewing company which they will not hesitate to tell you ten times on every label is from Idaho. It was okay. Naturally, as it was just one beer, it didn't last very long (I'm noooot sticking to these drinking games very hard, I mean I still pay a little attention but mostly I'm just drinking).

So there's a bit of a mystery about when DAM, specifically the original version, takes place. Not that it's actually mysterious - every version I've ever watched, subtitled or no, gives the same "It is the year 1999" line at the beginning - but that there is another year floating around, 1994, which is even repeated on Wikipedia. I've seen this number in both English and Japanese sites but not in the movie. Has every subbed version I've seen lied to me? Wikipedia, specifically, mentions a newspaper in the movie which was '94 on it. I... don't remember seeing a newspaper? I mean this isn't like last year where I half-paid attention while writing the post, I was watching the movie and I never noticed a newspaper. I guess it was really subtle or maybe I blinked or for some other reason just never noticed it. Now I don't really have time to comb over the entire movie again so I'll just give some possibilities here:

1. That such a prop in the film is a remnant of a previous draft where the year was either different or not set in stone, and appears in it because they either forgot or thought no one would notice, and of course I haven't noticed any newspapers at all and I've seen this movie probably on the order of 1,000 times.

2. As the kanji for "newspaper" used on wikipedia (新聞) also translates to "press" maybe it refers to a press release or brochure/film book instead of something in the actual movie. The only problem with this is that the prepositional phrases, according to skynet's robo-translator, ONLY translate into "in the movie." Of course skynet is not infallible, but still.

3. That there is just a five year old newspaper in the movie for some reason.

4. That all the subtitles I've been reading are lies and the beginning of the movie doesn't say 1999 at all but something more ambiguous like "the future" and it really is supposed to take place in 1994. But this creates a problem itself because as Jun Tazaki's character states 20 years ago was when they started collecting monsters which means 1974, and as far as I'm aware the only monsters on Monster Island at that time where those who lived there willingly like Godzilla, Anguirus, Rodan, and like one or two others. Then again this could just be a case of Showa continuity ambiguity and is supposed to be a thing we ignore when we watch the later film Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla, which is very possible and likely.

Also, I never realized how much damn blood was in this Ishiro Honda movie, what the hell is this all about? When I was a kid I had a hard time watching the scene where Akira Kubo rips Kyoko earrings right off her fucking ears and there's blood everywhere and as soon as she comes to she screams because there's fucking blood everywhere (hyper realistic blood too!), but there's a scene when the SY-3 crew is confronted by mind controlled scientists that you'd think they'd try to avoid hurting them except one guy gets shot in the fucking head. What the actual fuck? Also, one of the mind controlled scientists, named Shin Kuroi (True Blackness!) is played by none other than Ultraman himself, Hayata! I do not know the name of the actor which you might think is odd but... I mean, it's not Godzilla, so why should I care?

10. 1969 - ゴジラ • ミニラ • ガバラ　オール怪獣大進撃 • All Monsters Attack

Drinking Game Rules:
1 Drink - In case any chemical, geological, meteorological, or psychical, other than physical, sign of G's action is confirmed
2 Drinks - In case any physical sign of G's action such as voice and motion is confirmed
3 Drinks - In case G appears
4 Drinks - In case G's landing on any specific coast of Japan is positive
1 Drink - Godzilla uses his Atomic Ray
1 Drink - When the Godzilla Theme plays
1 Drink - During a conference scene
1 Drink - When direct casualties of monster attacks are shown
1 Drink - Appearance or arrival onto a mysterious or monster inhabited island
1 Drink - If Godzilla can't be located or reappears in a totally different place
1 Drink - When a Kenji Sahara character appears
1 Drink - Akihiko Hirata plays a scientist
1 Drink - Hiroshi Koizumi plays a scientist
1 Drink - Jun Tazaki plays an authority figure
2 Drinks - Jun Tazaki plays a general
1 Drink - Whenever Kumi Mizuno is being awesome
1 Drink - If a fight ends with either the losers running away or the monsters falling off a cliff into the water
1 Drink - When Godzilla wins
1 Drink - Gratuitous English
1 Drink - If Godzilla stops taking a fight seriously
1 Drink - King Ghidorah appears out of a burst of flame
1 Drink - Ebirah takes the fight underwater
1 Drink - Godzilla does the Young Guy nose rub thing
1 Drink - GIANT CONDOR!!!
1 Drink - Minilla does something dumb and annoying
2 Drinks - When Daisenso-Goji takes a dive
1 Drink - Gratuitous stock footage
1 Drink - A wild Kenny appears!
1 Drink - Ichiro mentions a monster's name
1 Drink - Ichiro solves a problem with violence
1 Drink - If the Mothra fairies sing her theme song
2 Drinks - If the Mothra fairies sing a different song

So for the last two movies of the night I didn't bother with any alcohol since the 40 and the other beer were catching up with me and I was starting to get tired anwyas. I actually was writing for this article through most of the... no wait, actually all of the movie. Which I don't think anyone would blame me for, based on how terrible it is. But... just to make sure I'm absolutely clear about this, I do want to go back and make sure anyone reading this understand what All Monsters Attack actually is and what it isn't:

So this was the first Godzilla movie incorporated into the Champion Festival, and in fact seems to exist only because of this. It isn't like Toho went back on their plans to make DAM the last one for no reason, the Champion Festival started and Toho understood that making a special little Godzilla movie just for the event was the best possible way to get things started. As such, this isn't simply a children's movie or a quickie sequel or anything like that, but a set-piece at a children's festival which only makes sense and serves a purpose in that context and nowhere else. This was not a movie made with the intention to survive for 100 years and be scrutinized by Godzilla scholars, this is a one-off lark designed to draw kids to a festival to watch other tv shows and movies, and is itself nothing more than an advertisement and "best of" and really technically isn't a part of the "Godzilla series" as we think of it today at all.

It is also a movie about the dissolution of the Japanese nuclear family and the struggles brought upon family life in large urban areas by pollution, crime, and, uh, busy parents. This is what would have happened if Ishiro Honda never made Godzilla, he would only be making movies like this, because this is the kind of person he was and these were the things he cared about. And while I of course have nothing but respect for the man, and I think he was better than most people, including me, I don't reeeaaally care about or enjoy this movie at all. Just because there's more going on here than Godzilla stock footage doesn't mean that it's interesting or worthwhile to say. People paid attention to Honda because of what he had to say about the big issues, about war and our shared humanity, not because he was sad that both parents have to work now. The concerns of the film aren't unwarranted, obviously being a parent is difficult and kids need your attention just as much as you need the rent, but why on Earth would I, a latchkey kid from the 90's, want to watch a movie about a latchkey kid from the 60's? These are matters for the real world, and it's not art, it's just a movie about things that are already happening with no unique viewpoint or message other than "'s sad, innit?" Yeah, I guess, but why is the same guy who told a story about the Bomb using a giant monster now telling me all about why we need grandparents by literally showing us a household without a grandparent?

There is one nice little Honda moment I really enjoy, though. At the end of the movie, when Ichiro is telling his mom it's okay for her to stay late at work because he understands the money issue, after he leaves she starts crying, not much, but enough to notice it. Is she happy that he's growing up? Is she mourning her child's loss of innocence? Is she reflecting on how ill-equipped she and her husband are to bring up Ichiro at all? This little moment says so much about the characters without having Minilla bash us over the head with an exposition hammer in a stupid voice that it's the only time in the film I actually feel like Honda gets it right.

Well, almost. There is one line early on that's a close contender, when Minilla says "monsters don't lie, not like people do." Actually I take it back, there's two moments in the film where Honda gets some good stuff in. There's also another line which I love to death because not only is it hilarious but it's also emblematic of the passing the torch down from religion-based mythology to the modern imagination and science-based (sci-fi for the hip kids) mythology when Eisei Amamoto tells reporters what Ichiro's talking about, he says Minilla is a mythological figure popular with children, and just as adults have God "children have their own god. Minilla the God." Undoubtedly he was saying "kami" which is a polytheistic Shinto concept having nothing to do with the singular "God" the translation is implying, but it's still pretty hilarious.

"Godzilla says if someone asks you if you're a god, you say 'yes.'" Thanks Minilla. Thinilla.

11. 1971 - ゴジラ対へドラ • Godzilla vs. Hedorah

While it's now officially not heretical to place Biollante higher than Godzilla (more on this later), doing the same for Hedorah probably is. Yet... you know, I just don't like watching Godzilla. It's a fantastic movie in that it's supposed to be a miserable, soul-crushing experience, and it preforms those duties wonderfully, but when I want to watch a Godzilla movie I'm not really looking for that sort of thing. The importance the original film has can't be overstated but, to be honest, Hedorah is basically perfect and I have a hard time thinking more highly of anything other than Biollante. That said, I think because of tradition and some other things, Godzilla vs. Hedorah is "officially" my third favroite Godzilla movie, but unofficially...

The combination of the younger target audience (powerfully illustrated by the appearance of a Kenny whose name is literally Kenny), the bold teenager and young adult influenced musical and visual style, and the unrelenting grim and pessimistic portrayal of the enemy monster is great because it allows the movie to present itself "as is" with a detached look at the events as they're seen from multiple angles, while at the same time not being afraid to make some pretty bold statements. You basically have your cake and eat it too, a movie with a dry scientific approach to the monsters that documents the action in a documentary style that just so happens to be populated with wild characters and wilder interstitials. Again, perfect.

During the segment where a cartoon helps illustrate to the kiddies how a nuclear reaction occurs, I got the feeling that I was watching some kind of demented kid's show. Like imagine if Bill Nye's show but with kittens covered in tar and acid rock. Something half-way between a creepypasta and a kid's show parody for adults. The notion is kind of humorous, but the in the context of the movie it just makes the whole thing more dissonant and... odd. There is really nothing else like Hedorah and there will probably never be again, with each of the "weird" Godzilla films of their eras being different not only from the other films of the time but also from each other, and none of the "weird" G-films are quite as weird as Hedorah. And none of them are anywhere near as good.

After Godzilla is satisfied that Hedorah has been killed at last and walks away, he briefly turns to the humans "operating" the giant electrodes with a grim look and turns away. He doesn't roar after his victory, which is his usual customary reaction. The reason? He hasn't actually won anything, nothing has changed. Like the original film Banno added the "and yet another one?" stinger as more of point to make to the audience about the real world than a simple sequel hook, and also as in the original he didn't hesitate to use it as as sequel hook anwyas, but unfortunately Godzilla never got a chance for a rematch. In the real world, we've already lost the battle against Hedorah. Though environmental concerns and international policies grow stronger each year, the damage is already done, and it was probably already too late in the 70's, but we have facts to tell us that it's too late now, and all we're doing is delaying the inevitable. Things are going to get much worse before they get any better, and the floods will come in time, whether it's a matter of decades or centuries is up to us, but we can't stop it. In 2010 British Petroleum dumped a metric fuck-ton of oil into the Gulf of Mexico and with the knowledge that this wasn't simply going away (the oil is all still there settled at the bottom) and Banno's bid to finally make Hedorah 2 was finally coming to fruition with the help of hollywood money, I thought for sure Godzilla might get his rematch that he's been waiting for for 40 years. Instead, he died. So, congratulations Hedorah, you've earned it.

Contents

2015/05/12

Deathiversary Week 2015: Day 2

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