Random Godzilla bullshit.
Writing about giant robots smashing Las Vegas has got me in the mood to reflect on Godzilla a bit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEEXydQc9KE
I don't know how to feel about this clip. At first, HOLY SHIT IS THAT EVER FUCKING AWESOME!? J.J. "The Good Parts Aren't Original And The Original Parts Aren't Good" Abrams likely feebly clawed for this sort of feel when he made Cloverfield. But at second glance... CGI Godzilla? We went that route once, it was awful. So I'm torn between my ideals and my cynicism, like never knowing who to root for or against when a cop tasers a hippie.
--
The above though is pretty hypocritical when viewed alongside this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOISbaA2G18
In which sweet rubber suit Godzilla soundly trounces the choppily-animated rejoinder to Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich's 1998 take on Godzilla in a one-blow fight that takes up all of 00:45 of screentime. This was basically a statement made by the producers that "Godzilla will always be a dude in a suit." Then of course, he's shown in the link above as being full on CGI. I feel betrayed.
--
While my formative years were spent watching and re-watching VHS copies of the Showa-era tokusatsu/kaiju* movies until the tapes stretched and we got that distorted stagger effect on the top eighth of the screen, I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for the Showa-era, despite how ridiculous the films got toward the end. That said; I do so adore the Millennium series, starting with Godzilla 2000:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mK8GVlkl9tY
I loved the redesign. Godzilla basically looked the same from around 1964**-1995***, despite the Heisei-era's "dark and edgy like an obsidian knife" reboot to the franchise (beating Christopher Nolan to the punch by over two decades), Godzilla's design stayed basically the same as it had since "vs. Mothra." There was a gradual sleekening of the Godzilla suit over the span of the Heisei films, leading us to the finalized design for the Millennium series.
With Millennium, Godzilla began to look more like a giant bipedal lizardmonster and less like a guy in a rubber lizard suit. The lines were sleekened, his snout was made a bit pointier, his spikes had a more organic stegosaurian aesthetic, his skin looked more like the pebbled texture of a crocodilian's and his posture looked more "correct." Millennium Godzilla didn't stand erect, dragging his tail behind him, rather stood with tail and torso in more-or-less a straight line, tail acting as a counterbalance to his body's extreme bulk. Millennium Godzilla looked more "real" than his Heisei and Showa counterparts and this verisimilitude made him actually scary.
Well, as scary as a duder in a rubber suit bonking foam rubber buildings and stomping on RC tanks can be, but that's the fun of tokusatsu as an artform.
Godzilla 2000's ending was hysterical. Dipshits on TVTropes would say it was [narm], but I think it basically encapsulates everything that's right with Godzilla as a franchise. So over the top that it looks down on the top from its secret base on the moon. That classic exchange at the end just seals it for me.
"Then why, Why does he keep protecting us. Why didn't he kill us?"
"Maybe because... Godzilla is inside each one of us..."
(stomp stomp breath breath)
--
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jb0sLrS0kdU
Godzilla's death in "vs. Destroyah." It's okay to cry. Everybody cries when they see this. It's like Kamina dying but cranked up to ten thousand. The way Big G goes out at the end with the most pitiful mewling instead of his trademark triumphant roar is heartbreaking, it's like that final whimper your beloved family pet wheezes out its terminal breath at the veternarian's office. When Big G went down in 1984/The Return he bellowed, he let us know that as he sunk into the firey magma of Mount Fuji, that he'd be back, and there'd be a whirlwind to reap. But as he went in "vs. Destroyah," we're reassured and relieved that this is the last we'd ever see of him, that he finally went and with him, went an era. "vs. Destroyah" was the last of the Heisei-era films.
We had a five year break until Godzilla 2000**** when the big rubber monster was reborn as a tongue-in-cheek revival, keeping the good, throwing out the bad, returning to the humor of the Showa-era but leaving the camp with the Coleman stove in the garage.
Here's to another fifty years of a guy in a rubber lizard suit stomping on radio controlled tanks while another guy in a rubber pterodactyl costume sprays fire extinguisher foam out its mouth at him*****.
* I really hate being that guy. You know, the dipshit Japanophile douchefag who insists on calling things by their Japanese terms than by an English equivalent. I loathe how there's a distinction between "anime/manga" and "cartoons/comics." They're the same fucking thing. But the term "Tokusatsu" doesn't have a hard-and-fast English transliteration. It's like another favorite loanword of mine - schadenfreude. So forgive me if I come across like a dipshit Japanophile douchefag when I use and abuse the term.
** Godzilla vs. Mothra is where his look seemed to stop evolving, the four films before appeared to have new, and redesigned costumes in each, but I'm more an dabbling enthusiast than any sort of serious Godzilla historian.
*** 1995's "Vs. Destroyah" was the last of he Heisei-era films, leading to 1998's lukewarm Devlin/Emmerich film.
**** See above. Most of us have stricken the 1998 film from our personal canons.
***** P.S. bring back Jet Jaguar.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEEXydQc9KE
I don't know how to feel about this clip. At first, HOLY SHIT IS THAT EVER FUCKING AWESOME!? J.J. "The Good Parts Aren't Original And The Original Parts Aren't Good" Abrams likely feebly clawed for this sort of feel when he made Cloverfield. But at second glance... CGI Godzilla? We went that route once, it was awful. So I'm torn between my ideals and my cynicism, like never knowing who to root for or against when a cop tasers a hippie.
--
The above though is pretty hypocritical when viewed alongside this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOISbaA2G18
In which sweet rubber suit Godzilla soundly trounces the choppily-animated rejoinder to Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich's 1998 take on Godzilla in a one-blow fight that takes up all of 00:45 of screentime. This was basically a statement made by the producers that "Godzilla will always be a dude in a suit." Then of course, he's shown in the link above as being full on CGI. I feel betrayed.
--
While my formative years were spent watching and re-watching VHS copies of the Showa-era tokusatsu/kaiju* movies until the tapes stretched and we got that distorted stagger effect on the top eighth of the screen, I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for the Showa-era, despite how ridiculous the films got toward the end. That said; I do so adore the Millennium series, starting with Godzilla 2000:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mK8GVlkl9tY
I loved the redesign. Godzilla basically looked the same from around 1964**-1995***, despite the Heisei-era's "dark and edgy like an obsidian knife" reboot to the franchise (beating Christopher Nolan to the punch by over two decades), Godzilla's design stayed basically the same as it had since "vs. Mothra." There was a gradual sleekening of the Godzilla suit over the span of the Heisei films, leading us to the finalized design for the Millennium series.
With Millennium, Godzilla began to look more like a giant bipedal lizardmonster and less like a guy in a rubber lizard suit. The lines were sleekened, his snout was made a bit pointier, his spikes had a more organic stegosaurian aesthetic, his skin looked more like the pebbled texture of a crocodilian's and his posture looked more "correct." Millennium Godzilla didn't stand erect, dragging his tail behind him, rather stood with tail and torso in more-or-less a straight line, tail acting as a counterbalance to his body's extreme bulk. Millennium Godzilla looked more "real" than his Heisei and Showa counterparts and this verisimilitude made him actually scary.
Well, as scary as a duder in a rubber suit bonking foam rubber buildings and stomping on RC tanks can be, but that's the fun of tokusatsu as an artform.
Godzilla 2000's ending was hysterical. Dipshits on TVTropes would say it was [narm], but I think it basically encapsulates everything that's right with Godzilla as a franchise. So over the top that it looks down on the top from its secret base on the moon. That classic exchange at the end just seals it for me.
"Then why, Why does he keep protecting us. Why didn't he kill us?"
"Maybe because... Godzilla is inside each one of us..."
(stomp stomp breath breath)
--
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jb0sLrS0kdU
Godzilla's death in "vs. Destroyah." It's okay to cry. Everybody cries when they see this. It's like Kamina dying but cranked up to ten thousand. The way Big G goes out at the end with the most pitiful mewling instead of his trademark triumphant roar is heartbreaking, it's like that final whimper your beloved family pet wheezes out its terminal breath at the veternarian's office. When Big G went down in 1984/The Return he bellowed, he let us know that as he sunk into the firey magma of Mount Fuji, that he'd be back, and there'd be a whirlwind to reap. But as he went in "vs. Destroyah," we're reassured and relieved that this is the last we'd ever see of him, that he finally went and with him, went an era. "vs. Destroyah" was the last of the Heisei-era films.
We had a five year break until Godzilla 2000**** when the big rubber monster was reborn as a tongue-in-cheek revival, keeping the good, throwing out the bad, returning to the humor of the Showa-era but leaving the camp with the Coleman stove in the garage.
Here's to another fifty years of a guy in a rubber lizard suit stomping on radio controlled tanks while another guy in a rubber pterodactyl costume sprays fire extinguisher foam out its mouth at him*****.
* I really hate being that guy. You know, the dipshit Japanophile douchefag who insists on calling things by their Japanese terms than by an English equivalent. I loathe how there's a distinction between "anime/manga" and "cartoons/comics." They're the same fucking thing. But the term "Tokusatsu" doesn't have a hard-and-fast English transliteration. It's like another favorite loanword of mine - schadenfreude. So forgive me if I come across like a dipshit Japanophile douchefag when I use and abuse the term.
** Godzilla vs. Mothra is where his look seemed to stop evolving, the four films before appeared to have new, and redesigned costumes in each, but I'm more an dabbling enthusiast than any sort of serious Godzilla historian.
*** 1995's "Vs. Destroyah" was the last of he Heisei-era films, leading to 1998's lukewarm Devlin/Emmerich film.
**** See above. Most of us have stricken the 1998 film from our personal canons.
***** P.S. bring back Jet Jaguar.