Lunatics Radio Hour
Episode 126 - The History of Kaiju Films: Part 2
Buckle up and bring plenty of popcorn, because we're embarking on a colossal journey through the cinematic history of Kaiju films. Ever caught yourself wondering about the origins of characters like Ghidorah, Mothra, Rodan, and Godzilla's son? Prepare to have your curiosity satisfied as we deep dive into the Showa era of Kaiju films.
This week we talk through the evolution of the Godzilla franchise through four eras.
lunaticsproject.com
Get Lunatics Merch here. Join the discussion on Discord.
Check out Abby's book Horror Stories. Available in eBook and paperback. Music by Michaela Papa, Alan Kudan & Jordan Moser. Poster Art by Pilar Keprta @pilar.kep.
Sources
- The Kaiju Film: A Critical Study of Cinema’s Biggest Monsters by Jason Barr
- Criterion article by Steve Ryfle: Godzilla’s Conscience: The Monstrous Humanism of Ishiro Honda
- Unesco.org article on the history of Kabuki theater
- Hollywood Reporter article by Ray Morton: Origin of Kong.
- No film school article by Alyssa Miller: Killer Kaiju: How the Giant Creatures Made Waves in Cinema
- Sideshow.com article by Shane Smith - A Complete Film History of Godzilla
- CBR.com article by Jim Johnson Cloverfield Monster's Confirmed Origin Is Actually Pretty Heartbreaking
- Den of Geek’s multi-part series on the history of Ultraman by Stephen Harber.
- Wikipedia, IMDB + Many Films!
What's it like to be a Cattle Rancher? FBI Special Agent? Professional Santa? Find out!
Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
Buckle up and bring plenty of popcorn, because we're embarking on a colossal journey through the cinematic history of Kaiju films. Ever caught yourself wondering about the origins of characters like Ghidorah, Mothra, Rodan, and Godzilla's son? Prepare to have your curiosity satisfied as we deep dive into the Showa era of Kaiju films.
This week we talk through the evolution of the Godzilla franchise through four eras.
lunaticsproject.com
Get Lunatics Merch here. Join the discussion on Discord.
Check out Abby's book Horror Stories. Available in eBook and paperback. Music by Michaela Papa, Alan Kudan & Jordan Moser. Poster Art by Pilar Keprta @pilar.kep.
Sources
- The Kaiju Film: A Critical Study of Cinema’s Biggest Monsters by Jason Barr
- Criterion article by Steve Ryfle: Godzilla’s Conscience: The Monstrous Humanism of Ishiro Honda
- Unesco.org article on the history of Kabuki theater
- Hollywood Reporter article by Ray Morton: Origin of Kong.
- No film school article by Alyssa Miller: Killer Kaiju: How the Giant Creatures Made Waves in Cinema
- Sideshow.com article by Shane Smith - A Complete Film History of Godzilla
- CBR.com article by Jim Johnson Cloverfield Monster's Confirmed Origin Is Actually Pretty Heartbreaking
- Den of Geek’s multi-part series on the history of Ultraman by Stephen Harber.
- Wikipedia, IMDB + Many Films!
What's it like to be a Cattle Rancher? FBI Special Agent? Professional Santa? Find out!
Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of the Lunatics Radio Hour podcast. I'm Abby Brinker sitting here with Alan Kudin.
Speaker 2:Hello.
Speaker 1:Today we are bringing you the second installment in our series all about the history of Kaiju. Yeah, and before we get into it, I really want to say that, alan, I'm not going to say this often, but you are the MVP of part two.
Speaker 2:That may be true on paper, but I remember about six of them.
Speaker 1:So you watched. Okay, so you remember six, but how many Kaiju films do you think you watched for this?
Speaker 2:Dozens.
Speaker 1:Dozens.
Speaker 2:And I loved most minutes of it.
Speaker 1:Well, I can't wait to get into your favorite and least favorite.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, there's quite this smattering of quality control among Kaiju films.
Speaker 1:But isn't that part of the charm? Like some of the campy films have a special place in my heart.
Speaker 2:You know, Kaiju films are very much like metal. If you just jump into the ones that were made simply for the already diehard fans, then you're going to be turned off immediately.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:However, if you work your way up and become a diehard fan and then watch these films, it's incredible what an experience. I remember seeing some like random Godzilla films growing up and being like this is fucking stupid. It's we're watching people in rubber suits.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:You know this is so unbelievable. And now watching this as an adult, after watching dozens and dozens of these movies over the course of my life, and then especially like the rewatch for this episode. And then you get to things like Son of Godzilla and you're watching Godzilla go through the parenting tropes, right, and a little tear comes to your eye when you know Minilla finally, like, defends himself for the first time against another monster.
Speaker 1:It's very heartwarming.
Speaker 2:Also I say Minilla. The pronunciation is a little varied.
Speaker 1:Of Godzilla son.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, it's mini Godzilla, right, but Minilla is the more correct transliteration if you will. Sure, but it's little Godzilla, not to be confused with Godzuki, who's also a little Godzilla. But that is from the Hannah Barbera cartoon from the sixties.
Speaker 1:Your wealth of knowledge is already fascinating to me. I know it's been a little longer than usual between episodes, so just as a reminder.
Speaker 2:I'm going to pause you right there. The reason for this delay is no small feat Lunatics as a unit, but mostly you is directing a feature film right now, the first Lunatics feature film, so you're a very busy person. The fact that this podcast is still in existence while this film is being produced is no small feat.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you.
Speaker 2:So everybody should just give Abby a big round of applause just because she's directing a feature. We can't give any details about the movie because of NDAs, but it's a really hard movie to make happen in the first place and it is indeed happening, and it requires not only an insane amount of mental bandwidth but basically the selling of your first born to make possible. So it's amazing that we are still here recording an episode about fucking Godzilla movies.
Speaker 1:And that we're still together. Yeah well, we'll see. Just kidding.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I mean, you know it's. I really love Godzilla. He's a really fun guy.
Speaker 1:Godzilla is a fun guy. That's very true.
Speaker 2:But that wasn't always the case and I guess we'll get into the history of his character arc. But wow, I'm really getting ahead of myself here.
Speaker 1:You are as usual, alan 101. But thank you for the kind words. But yes, it's been a little while since part one. Apologies, I know that's bad timing to sort of break a series up that way, but we are back. Part one was all about the historical influence that would have come before Kaiju as a genre, kabuki, theater in Japan, japanese folklore, and we spent the majority of the episode really talking about the first Godzilla film, which again remains, in my opinion, one of the best Kaiju films that exists. But it's very, very cool to see what comes after that. So today we are going to talk about the rest of the Godzilla franchise and so much more. So bear with us before I kind of turn it over here into the wild. I want to give you guys some sources. Of course, our main source today is actually Kaiju films in their entirety.
Speaker 2:They're going to say Alan.
Speaker 1:Alan, who has watched all the Kaiju films that have ever been made.
Speaker 2:That's not true, and this is one of the reasons why we didn't record immediately after part one.
Speaker 1:There was a lot to get through.
Speaker 2:There was so many movies to watch. I just did a little, so I don't know. I don't listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1:I know that shows.
Speaker 2:Yeah, which is one of the reasons why our quality is terrible. But yeah, I just I don't listen to podcasts. So, just out of curiosity, just because, like I love Kaiju films, I love Kaiju lore, I read a Kaiju book, right, and just like, okay, well, what's next? Is there a Kaiju podcast? And I Googled.
Speaker 1:And then you came up to Lunatics Radio, our part one.
Speaker 2:And no, there are entire podcasts that are dedicated to going through different Kaiju films.
Speaker 1:Well, they're all on their entire podcast dedicated to everything.
Speaker 2:Well, this is news to me, and so I started.
Speaker 1:He's gonna become a podcast guy.
Speaker 2:That's never gonna happen. Podcasts are terrible to dying media, but I realized that there are so, so many movies that are hinge pins. Is that a term? Hinge pin, lynch pins, lynch pin, I don't know Like a hinge, like it would swivel I'm with you Like a turning point.
Speaker 1:I understand. I don't know.
Speaker 2:Is that a term?
Speaker 1:Well, how are you using?
Speaker 2:it. They're important.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:So I do the growth of the Kaiju genre, and there are some movies that I had not watched at that point, that well, since then, I've still not watched all of them, but I've watched more of them. There are just so, so many. So at some point we are. You know, I just realized that I can't watch them all, Of course.
Speaker 1:It's not possible. You're only one man.
Speaker 2:Have people done it, certainly, but you have a job. I have a job and I also have this feature film that we're working on.
Speaker 1:And we should also say that you wrapped on a big show that you've been working on for many years today, so congratulations to you as well.
Speaker 2:That's true, but we can't talk about that because of even further NDAs.
Speaker 1:We won't talk about it, but we'll just say that.
Speaker 2:Great. At some point I had to just say we're doing the episode. Is this going to be complete? No, Are any of our episodes complete?
Speaker 1:No, we've watched every single Kaiju film and then talked about it. It would be so fucking boring.
Speaker 2:No See, that's where I'm at. That's what I want to listen to.
Speaker 1:That's why I'm the editor.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there are so many oddball films that have helped shape just how even Godzilla as a franchise has evolved, Like, for instance, there's Gorgo, which is the British version of Godzilla. Before you know, Godzilla was so ingrained in, like on the pedestal of Can't Touch Him. They made their own Kaiju movie. That's just kind of out of left field and it's fucking incredible and I've just only seen clips so I can't really talk about it because we haven't seen enough. There's just so much that is just out there.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'm with you. I understand the depth of your concern about having a holistic view of the Kaiju genre, but I'm going to step in here and just give the sources of the day so that we can unleash onto the audience.
Speaker 1:Wikipedia, the Kaiju film, a critical study of cinema's biggest monsters by Jason Barr, criterion. Article by Steve Rifle, godzilla's Conscious the monstrous humanism of Ashiro Honda, sideshowcom article by Sam Smith, a complete film history of Godzilla, cbrcom. Article by Jim Johnson, cloverfield's Monsters Confirmed Origin is Pretty Heartbreaking. Den of Geek's Multi-Part Series on the History of Ultraman by Stephen Harbour. And yes, wikipedia and IMDb and Allen's movie watching over the past few months.
Speaker 2:Plus years.
Speaker 1:The Godzilla franchise is typically broken down into eras to help categorize it, because, again, there are so many films. Quoting from the Wikipedia page for the Godzilla franchise, quote the first, second and fourth eras refer to the Japanese Emperor during production the Showa era, the Hisei era and the Rewa era. The third is called the Millennium era. End, quote. The first era, the Showa era, spans from 1954 with the release of the original film through Terror of Mechagodzilla from 1975. The first sequel was Godzilla Raids. Again, this era gives us films such as Ghidorah, the three-headed monster, son of Godzilla, which Alan and I will let you talk about even more, and All Monsters Attack. And we also get Mothra introduced in this era. So I know there's a lot to talk about and we're going to pause and do that because we get some of these iconic, I guess competing kaiju to Godzilla, right. Ghidorah, mothra, son of Godzilla.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, I wouldn't say Son of Godzilla is a cornerstone.
Speaker 1:I know. But Mothra I have a lot to say about, but maybe tell us a little bit about Ghidorah. What?
Speaker 2:You're really all over the place here.
Speaker 1:I'm going through chronological order so really Ghidorah comes before Mothra. Ghidorah's in the original. I'm going era by era Sure, so we're in the Showa era.
Speaker 2:So you got to take a big step back and realize that before Godzilla was the cultural phenomenon that everyone knows him to be, that he was just a monster in a monster movie, so that there was a lot of competing films. So before Mothra was a character in the Godzilla universe, mothra was in their own movie. Yeah, I should say she, mothra is definitively of. She.
Speaker 1:She was in a film called Mothra from 1961. Yes, but it was produced by Toho.
Speaker 2:Studios. Right, yeah, it's all in the same umbrella. Yeah, it's not always under the same umbrella, but it's usually under the same umbrella. Yeah, same as Rodan. So, rodan, I'm surprised you didn't bring up.
Speaker 1:Well, I will.
Speaker 2:Rodan is what 57, I believe 56. Sorry, 56.
Speaker 1:Giant monster of the sky, Rodan.
Speaker 2:Well, so that was the thing. They had a lot of success with Godzilla and then Godzilla rates again, but they started just making other monster movies to see, like you know, what clearly this genre was possible. Time to branch out, and so you had these standalone films where it's usually a monster attacking a city and then the military or populace has to step in and deal with it. Yeah, it wasn't until later that Godzilla became the cornerstone of the entire franchise, and then everyone else became a side character, where it's either they became villains that Godzilla would have to fight or anti-heroes that would team up with Godzilla, while still, you know, maybe destroying a few cities here and there.
Speaker 1:I understand. So let's double click, if you will, into Mothra, because Mothra is my favorite. Why? Because she's delicate and she's beautiful and she has little tiny twins. She's like a fairy godmother. She protects the planet and she believes in nature and the power of nature.
Speaker 2:Ever since I stopped browsing Reddit, I now get served most of my articles via Google News. Somehow, I keep getting served all of these garbage articles that like rank top 10 things. That's like it's really BuzzFeed, you know. But one of these things were the top 20 Kaiju ranked in terms of parenting abilities. You would expect Mothra right, the mother of all Kaiju to be pretty high ranked, yeah. However, mothra ranked pretty low.
Speaker 1:According to some BuzzFeed editor.
Speaker 2:According well, this wasn't BuzzFeed, it was like game ranks or something. It's like off-brand BuzzFeed, which makes it even worse. But regardless, they made a good point. Mothra keeps spawning children and sending them to die. When you think of Mothra, you think of what A Moth? Right? But and I'd say over half the movies where Mothra is featured Mothra is not a Moth, it's a larva.
Speaker 1:I have a counterpoint.
Speaker 2:Please.
Speaker 1:I think that Mothra, who spawns a child, has a child, is, in essence, sending them to their. She's no different than any other woman on this planet.
Speaker 2:Okay, say you're a mother, hypothetically, hypothetically, and you have a child. Yeah, would you send them to fight Godzilla?
Speaker 1:Do they have superpowers?
Speaker 2:You can shoot silly string.
Speaker 1:All right, I'm not gonna stand for this Mothra bashing. I'm gonna instead read you some quotes. So again, Mothra Rodin have something in common, which is that they both had standalone films before joining the Godzilla universe. Technically, Mothra was visually inspired by silk worms and silk moths.
Speaker 1:You don't say Quoting from the Wikipedia page. Quote the character is often depicted as hatching offspring, in some cases twins, when approaching death, a nod to the Samsara doctrine of numerous Indian religions. Mothra is one of Toho's most popular monsters and second only to Godzilla in her total number of film appearances. Polls taken during the early 1990s indicated that Mothra was particularly popular among women, who were at the time the largest demographic among Japan's moviegoing audience, a fact that prompted the filming of 1992's Godzilla vs Mothra, which was the best attended Toho film since King Kong vs Godzilla. Ign listed Mothra as number three on their top 10 Japanese movie monsters list, and Complex listed the character as number seven on its the 15 most badass Kaiju monsters of all time list. End quote I mean Mothra's great.
Speaker 2:There's nothing not to like about Mothra. It's a gigantic moth that somehow holds their own. That fact alone is fun. However, a lot of plot armor is needed to protect Mothra. All that they can do is shoot silly string at their enemies, which I'll guarantee. It's fun to watch, watching either Godzilla get wrapped up in all the rope or whoever Godzilla is fighting get hit with the goo. And then you have the much later movies where Mothra is kind of a badass, but also very much because that's just how the writers are trying to make it appear. In the legendary version of Godzilla you have Mothra fly in and they do a closeup and Mothra scowls and then, just like you know, starts stabbing with her little fingers. It's you know it's fun, but I'm sorry. It's a giant moth compared to an atomically powered lizard that can breathe radiation. It's kind of hard to hold your own.
Speaker 1:Well, what about the tiny twin fairies from Mothra?
Speaker 2:Okay, Mothra is also the only Kaiju that I can think of that has its own little avatars that speak for her. In this case, yeah, they're tiny little Polynesian women and yeah, that's a really cute thing. You open a little box, you got these little, these two little twin women, and they speak for Mothra. So that immediately humanizes this giant monster you get to because they have a psychic link with this giant moth and they can speak Mothra's thoughts. So what you know, it's Mothra insects, right, you know it's kind of hard to emote based off an insect's face, but instead you have these like these tiny, cute little women that just say, like, oh, Mothra's really sad, Like, and it's like, yeah, okay, I get it. Now we're humanizing this giant bug.
Speaker 1:Do you know what the Mothra novel was called?
Speaker 2:No, there's a novel.
Speaker 1:It was like a serialized novel that came out the same years, the movie.
Speaker 2:No idea.
Speaker 1:The Luminous Faries and Mothra.
Speaker 2:That's cute.
Speaker 1:And so just to say, the general idea I believe and you could tell me that I'm wrong, alan is that the two fairies are the last survivors of this ancient tribe of people on this island. That's all about worshiping nature and Mothra is sort of like their god right, but these are the remaining two people that, like, worshiped her. Is that right, or am I just remembering that wrong?
Speaker 2:Uh, I don't know. The problem is, after you've watched dozens of Kaiju movies with very forgettable plots, they really all mesh together, so, and also they. What also doesn't help is every like 15 to 20 years they start from scratch and rewrite the lore. I don't know. I know that Mothra is from Infant Island and every time Mothra dies which happens a lot, it's fine because guess what? Mothra laid an egg and hatches again because it's Infant Island and I guess infants come from there and then new Mothra comes, or maybe it's one Mothra, and they just keep sending their children to die. I'm not really up on my Mothra lore.
Speaker 1:Okay. So yes, I'm just fact checking myself here. Mothra is actually based on the serialized novel called the Luminous Faries in Mothra and again, the film was directed by Ishiro Honda, who also directed the original Godzilla. Since 1961, mothra has been in almost 20 films and yeah, the only other thing I'll say about the tiny fairies is that they are actually the priestesses of Mothra.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that makes sense. What about Batra?
Speaker 1:What's Batra? That's new to me.
Speaker 2:That's a big Batra, is evil Mothra and it's a man.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's tracks.
Speaker 2:Once you just take away the fact that, like wow, we love Mothra. Once you take away that one fact, Mothra's kind of lame. It's a giant Moth that shoots silly string.
Speaker 1:Mothra is not lame.
Speaker 2:See, okay, you're coming in with a bias.
Speaker 1:You're coming in with a bias. Why does Mothra have to be lame just because she's not as violent and aggressive as Ghidorah, you just nailed it right there. So it's your bias, not mine.
Speaker 2:Anyways, batra is just like the hardcore version of Mothra that actually can go like toe to toe with Godzilla and it's actually very spooky looking. It's, instead of just like being this like beautiful butterfly looking thing, is far more insect, with like talons and stripes and everything. It's just look menacing and it's one of the kaiju that really gives Godzilla a run for his money. And it was a direct answer to like man, we love Mothra, but we've established Mothra as, like, the friend to humanity.
Speaker 1:Batra looks like a Pokemon.
Speaker 2:Very much so, Like you know, Of course.
Speaker 1:Art it has, like red lightning bolts on its wings. No, it's like. B-drel you know Sure.
Speaker 2:It's the same trope of when Pokemon went into like Mega Pokemon and they lost their like cute little fun factor and just became these like giant monsters.
Speaker 1:If Mothra is Weedle, then Batra is B-Drel.
Speaker 2:Yeah, or if Mothra is, what's the fucking butterfly Pokemon, butterfree, butterfree. Yeah, then Batra is what's the Moth one? Venomoth. But Venomoth looks kind of cute too, if Venomoth is like I mean, so does Batra.
Speaker 1:Batra looks kind of cute too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know If Venomoth was in a biker gang and just like did some hard time uh-huh maybe some POW camp activity, that's Batra, okay.
Speaker 1:Batra, now I know, tell us about Son of Godzilla.
Speaker 2:We're really pivoting here. So, after a good run in the Shoah era, where Son of Godzilla's in the Shoah era. Yeah, after a good run of it, where Godzilla was an enemy or sometimes an anti-hero, the franchise began to have a shift into Godzilla being more of the hero of the series, where a monster would show up and then Godzilla would save the day. The franchise as a whole has jumped so many sharks that it's impossible to keep track at this point.
Speaker 1:That's why I don't feel like I. I feel like I can talk about anything I want and it's all relevant because it's such a vast net of monster and campiness.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, but that's the thing. It goes through waves and then they reboot it and now we're no longer campy, now we're serious again. Now we're campy again. Now we're it's like, try to. Is there another character that has been through as many iterations?
Speaker 1:There's not another franchise that has as many films.
Speaker 2:Trying to think of anything that's even remotely similar.
Speaker 1:I mean, you have things like Power Rangers, but they're always campy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, the Power Rangers is consistent. I got nothing.
Speaker 1:Maybe like Spider-Man, because you have things like Spider-Man Rain and some of the tone of some Spider-Man stuff can be very oh sure, but then you also have very campy versions of Spider-Man.
Speaker 2:Okay, if we want to get into comic books, sure, Because then it's like whoever's writing them, yes, very different takes. Batman is a great example, where sometimes you have the ultimate dark, gritty, dirty Batman and then you have Batman Brave and the Bold where he just goes on crazy, silly, fun adventures with Plastic man. I digress, Son of Godzilla. Tell us, Son of Godzilla. This for me, was the first time that the series just got fucking silly. This is Godzilla lays an egg.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, I'm with you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but at no point they make it very crystal clear that Godzilla is a man.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And they even talk about it. It's like Godzilla is a man and lay an egg. Yeah, okay, cool Moving on.
Speaker 1:Great, that's how it should be. It's none of our business.
Speaker 2:And it hatches and it's a little Godzilla named Minya or Minula, and then the rest of the movie is all about Godzilla tackling the challenges of parenthood. How do you keep your infant entertained? How do you keep them out of trouble? How do you teach them that at some point you can't solve all their problems and they have to start solving problems for themselves? And, like I don't know, it starts getting kind of a bit philosophical in terms of parenting, and you just don't expect that from a movie about a giant atomic lizard. But there you go, you have it, it exists.
Speaker 1:Hiju Joner has something for everybody.
Speaker 2:There's a whole sequence about Godzilla just trying to get some sleep and the you know, and Minilla is just wants to play or just doesn't want to fall asleep and go and take a nap, and there's like this whole sequence about that, like that's not something that I really expected I would see for Inakaiju film, but it exists, and it's not just there, it's in multiple other films.
Speaker 1:It's very interesting.
Speaker 2:It really is, and it's very entertaining too. So after Son of Godzilla, you have an amazing movie called All Monsters Attack, which is one of the best premises. That's such a softball that it's a no brainer. That didn't happen, but it's still. It's just executed so well.
Speaker 1:Tell us.
Speaker 2:So the premise of this movie is that it's a young boy's fantasy.
Speaker 1:It's like Toy Story.
Speaker 2:Sort of well, toy Story is like. There's this whole secret world that the kid doesn't you know it's not his imagination.
Speaker 1:But if it was?
Speaker 2:Well, in this there's a. There's this young kid who is getting bullied. He like disassociates, basically, and just starts imagining that he's on Monster Island and his bully is Akaiju and he befriends Minilla and Minilla is going through the same things that he is and he's getting bullied by the other, like Minilla is getting bullied by the other monsters. But you know, the little kid is like well, why don't you just ask Godzilla for help? Godzilla can beat anybody. And he's like yeah, that's very true. But Godzilla says I have to learn to fight my own battles. And it's like oh, wow, that's a good lesson. And also there's this whole side plot about these robbers that broke into this bank and are on the run. And then this kid gets abducted by them and then channels the inspiration that he learned from his fantasy version of Minilla and then takes down the robbers. It's actually a really complete movie, nice With so many layers, and it all wraps up in a nice bow at the end.
Speaker 1:We love that.
Speaker 2:In that case. You know this little kid's bully. I think the monster is named Gabara. Like, the monster version of Gabara is very similar to Godzilla but has, like electricity powers and just like it's just a total dickhead. And just like fucks with people, teases them, shocks them, and it's just like constantly picking on Minilla, beating him up. Minilla finally, just like stands up and like does okay. Right, he doesn't win, but he does okay, like he holds his own. And that's like the point, right, you face somebody that is stronger than you, you're gonna get beat, but you're not gonna give him the satisfaction of seeing you cry.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:You know, that's the moral of it.
Speaker 1:It's very deep.
Speaker 2:But then Gabara tries to fuck with Godzilla and Godzilla, just like fucks him up real hard, real fast, which is also just like okay. So he still gets his just desserts.
Speaker 1:There you go.
Speaker 2:There's always a bigger fish, and that big fish is Godzilla.
Speaker 1:So, as is obvious, at this point right, the franchise really has a shift towards campiness. Quoting from the sideshowcom article, quote yes, which canonically works right.
Speaker 2:Like cause they can read Mothra's mind. At some point they just say you know, fuck, that we're just gonna add subtitles to the monsters and they can just talk.
Speaker 1:Picking up the quote, the monsters argued for a while before deciding to team up and drive Ghidorah back into space. After this delightful bit of storytelling, the movies grew more lighthearted with every installment. Godzilla was now the protector of mankind, not its executioner. He even did silly things on occasion, such as slow drop, kicking his enemies or flying a rocket powered by his atomic breath. The films were cheesy, funny and sometimes psychotic or psychedelic. In the case of Godzilla versus Ghidorah, which had a monster represented pollution, against a backdrop of loud music and party goers wearing hippie clothes. End quote Hidora is terrifying by the way it's also as pollution.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, but it's a giant sludge monster that you can't really fight with physical violence and like that's Godzilla's thing it's physical violence.
Speaker 1:It's a good lesson for us all, though.
Speaker 2:Also, like I realized, these movies are so just blended in my brain because you have very complicated. First off, you have overlapping titles. You have some movies that are straight up the same name, just from different years. You have all monsters attack versus destroy all monsters, and which is which? I don't really remember at this point because I've seen them all. One is a child's fantasy and the other has to do with a weather machine, which is which? Who can say?
Speaker 1:The next era of the Godzilla franchise is the Hisei era, From the mid 1800s through the midnight from the mid yeah, I really loved the story arc where Godzilla has to write by candlelight. From the mid 1980s through the mid 1990s.
Speaker 2:There was also the episode where Godzilla invents the printing press.
Speaker 1:Kicking off with the return of Godzilla in 1984, a reboot of the Toho series. Also part of this era is Godzilla versus Bio Lante from 1989, which is one of my absolute favorites, and it's a film that we talked about quite a bit during our killer plant series. On this podcast we also have Godzilla versus King Ghidorah during this era.
Speaker 2:Which is so complex. Again, I have really a lot of trouble keeping track of Godzilla versus King, ghidorah versus Godzilla versus the space monster versus Godzilla versus Ghidorah. It's the same Godzilla versus the same character, but in different films, which is which I'd have to revisit.
Speaker 1:Do you have a favorite from this era?
Speaker 2:Well, Godzilla during the 80s is just.
Speaker 1:A fun guy.
Speaker 2:Late 70s and 80s Godzilla is just fucking silly. There is no serious Godzilla during this era. At no point does it try to give heavy social commentary, it's just.
Speaker 1:Rock and roll, sex and rock and roll.
Speaker 2:Monster attack city. Godzilla says oh, fuck, no, and shows up and does silly things Before this. So I guess the Showa era was before this. The end of the Showa era is when you introduced some of the most iconic Godzilla monsters that are going to become staples from then until today.
Speaker 1:Great.
Speaker 2:So after Destroy All Monsters, which was like the first, it was like the first Avengers, it was all the different movies come together when you see all the different heroes or villains come together and just fight. After that you introduced Ghidorah, which we talked about, which was like the big sludge monster. You have Gigan, which is a fucking cool monster. It's half lizard, half bird, half robot and just has like a big chainsaw on his chest which is just kind of cool and he's from outer space and he's really evil. He just kind of checks all the boxes for, like I'm a villain. You also have Megalon, which is this like insect thing and Megalon is Godzilla versus Megalon is a very underrated title. That movie has so much to offer. You also introduced Jet Jaguar.
Speaker 1:Jet Jaguar, it's mouthful. It is Tell me more.
Speaker 2:So Jet Jaguar is a robot that was made by humans for random purposes just to help around the house, I think but then he also has the ability to grow to Godzilla size, which is really convenient. They give him artificial intelligence. And then he teaches himself to grow Cause that's what robots do. After that movie, there was a cease and desist because he looked too much like Ultraman.
Speaker 1:Oh, we're going to get to Ultraman.
Speaker 2:We are. But Jet Jaguar was a crowd favorite. He's the ultimate good guy because he's made by humans for humans and he does nothing but help. And also in this movie he never has his own movie. This is Godzilla versus Megalon and again Megalon is just a giant bug, but this movie has so much to offer. It's one of the few movies where, like those side plot of the humans just struggling to do whatever the fuck they're trying to do is actually freaking cool. And there's like this whole like spy thriller aspect and this like corporate sabotage.
Speaker 2:And you also get to see Godzilla's famous flying kick. It's become a meme. According to the game Gigabash, which is a recent game, the move is called Tail Slide, but it's a flying kick. They basically put the guy in the Godzilla suit on wires and just carried him across the screen to just pretend he was doing a flying kick and he just like kicks. It's hilarious. It looks ridiculous, but this is a pinnacle example of the Godzilla franchise. Jumping the shark, you know like what looks silly, but what's a fun idea. Godzilla flying 300 feet in a flying just doing a karate kick is great.
Speaker 1:It's like if there was a child who was given the role of executive film producer and had no checks and balances.
Speaker 2:That's destroy all monsters. That's what you get, yeah.
Speaker 1:Or all monsters attack.
Speaker 2:That's the thing. I don't know which is which. But also, if you're gonna watch one movie and just try to decide, like for me, this was the pinnacle example of if you just try to jump in, you're gonna be like what the fuck am I watching? But if you just like have a love for Godzilla, Godzilla versus Megalon will just like forever be in your heart Because, like, that is just like, you're in it. You're in it and you're seeing some weird fucking shit and it's cool.
Speaker 1:That's sweet. We played the Godzilla board game recently, which I had gotten for you, and while we played it, Godzilla Tokyo Clash. In the background. We put on some Godzilla films, right Cause we were on theme, and they were ones that I hadn't seen before, and I was mesmerized by watching these films on mute because the plot are. It's just so crazy, these films.
Speaker 2:It's very rare.
Speaker 1:Time travel, all kinds of laser guns, aliens.
Speaker 2:It's very rare that the plots are like captivating. It's usually just like a slap together B movie, whatever. It's usually just a glue stick at best to try to hold together a reason for Godzilla to fight other monsters. Every so often you get one that is actually cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So in Destroy All Monsters you have a young child's fantasy where all the other, all the monster battles are allegories for the shit going on in his life. Right, cool, that's good writing. But other times you have a species of alien cockroaches that turn into humans to try to blend in, open up an amusement park to try to lure humans in, and then also send out a giant space telephone to King Ghidorah in Ghaian to try to rope in Godzilla so that they can brainwash him. Like that's a plot, right, sure, that's. Somebody wrote that and said you know what? We're going to spend money on this and make it into a movie.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 1999 through 2004 is marked as the Millennium Era. Only a five-year era. In 1999, Toho again reboots the franchise with the film Godzilla 2000 Millennium and ended with Godzilla Final Wars, which coincided with the 50th anniversary of Godzilla.
Speaker 2:Just because you always blindside me with these transitions.
Speaker 1:You have the outline in front of you.
Speaker 2:One thing that I really like about the different eras of Godzilla is they usually have very strong transitionary movies. The movie that transitioned the Hise Era into the Millennium was Godzilla vs Destroyer, and in this movie was one of the very few examples of Godzilla losing or dying.
Speaker 1:Dying, so it was meant to be the end.
Speaker 2:Godzilla dies in the very, in Godzilla 54. Right, and then they just reboot it. They don't reboot it, it's a new Godzilla. Godzilla is a species which is canon.
Speaker 1:So it's not like Mike Myers in a following.
Speaker 2:Correct, it's a species of animal. But Godzilla vs Destroyer. There is this bio-engineered thing right that just like fucks him up. But also Godzilla his own anatomy is going critical. He's a nuclear power lizard and the reaction is unstable. And it's a fucking rock and roll movie where he's constantly battling the fact that he's about to go nuclear.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And he does his atomic breath simply as a venting method to not die. So he's like fighting all the time against these things that are stronger than he is doing his ultimate attack again and again, and again, just to not go nuclear Right, and then eventually just succumbs to Spoiler. Yeah, but it's the transition right, that's how we transition from the end of. It was a send-off. They knew that this was the last movie in the era and they wanted to go out with a literal bang.
Speaker 1:And they did.
Speaker 2:Yep. And then we welcome in the Millennium Era with a very brief interlude before Godzilla 2000, with Godzilla 1998, with a Matthew Broderick version in the US.
Speaker 1:And if any of you listeners which some of you are are patrons, then you may have gotten a pack of collectible cards from Godzilla 1998. Also, one of my very clear memories from childhood is listening to the soundtrack on CD from that film. What my sister had it Wow.
Speaker 2:Why.
Speaker 1:She liked the soundtrack and when I inherited her CDs, that was one of the CDs I inherited.
Speaker 2:I say why but?
Speaker 1:I don't know that I ever watched the movie, but I got the soundtrack.
Speaker 2:I watched this movie. When you were yeah, get kid, this was my very first exposure to Godzilla. Was this movie Pinnacle First off? This movie is absolutely despised in the Godzilla community.
Speaker 1:Because is it the first US release of Godzilla? The English release yes.
Speaker 2:It's the first US reimagining of Godzilla Whitewash. It is nothing like any other Godzilla film. Godzilla's character design alone is so wildly different that it doesn't fit with any of the other mythos.
Speaker 1:Looks like a crocodile right Almost.
Speaker 2:Well, the creators of it wanted to make a really badass Godzilla. That wasn't slow, Like Godzilla was traditionally a guy in a suit that would stomp around real slow. You know like the slow motion stomping was very iconic for Godzilla, right, they wanted him to be like a velociraptor. You know this was post-Jurassic Park and it's like well, okay, so you're just going to make a dinosaur that can breathe fire? Why are you trying to?
Speaker 1:It literally looks like a dinosaur from Jurassic Park. Yes, not like a crocodile.
Speaker 2:The big criticism was that's fine, but why are you calling it Godzilla? You know?
Speaker 1:you call it, jurassic Park goes to Manhattan.
Speaker 2:Yes, well, that's also Jurassic Park too. This movie was my first exposure to Godzilla and I loved it. I had no scope of what Godzilla should be, so for me watching this as a 10 year old, this movie was fucking cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I just rewatched this for this episode and it is fucking awesome, especially being a New Yorker. Sure, they do so many really, really cool things that you can only appreciate if you live in New York, like watching Godzilla put a giant fucking hole through the Met Life building. You're like, oh shit, I live by them and also it's kind of terrifying, yeah.
Speaker 2:I think most people would be scared because, like all these very old school New York things, I say old school but it's 1998. So it's what? 20, 25 years old at this point, that's old school. Wow, we're old, yeah. But yeah, there's all these iconic things like Godzilla destroys the Chrysler building in very cool ways. It's a very New York movie and when I watched this for the rewatch, it's just, it just really checked all the nostalgic boxes.
Speaker 2:But, under no circumstances, no circumstance, is this a traditional Godzilla film going forward in this franchise Cause like this was uh, godzilla was licensed from Toho. Yeah, godzilla in 1998 is still owned by Toho. The, the imagery, the imagery and everything. The name of that monster going forward from this movie is not Godzilla, it's just Zilla. They remove the God part.
Speaker 1:Is there an apostrophe?
Speaker 2:No, it's just Zilla, because he's fucking stupid. Um and we'll, we'll get to that in in just a bit, because he does make a reappearance later on.
Speaker 1:Okay, so that was the American sort of interlude, if you will, but going back to the official millennium era, yes.
Speaker 2:So next up and the official start of the millennium era was Godzilla 2000. And I I saw this in theaters and I was so excited because I love the Matthew Broderick Godzilla and I just wanted the sequel. And there I am, 12 years old, going to see this movie.
Speaker 2:And Japanese right, yes, and first off, I'm like what subtitles? This means it's a bad movie and it's not anything like the American version, because it's a very classic Godzilla movie. It's, it's okay. You know, I rewatched this as well. Um, it's fun. It's not amazing, it's just fun. But seeing as a kid, I'm like this is fun, stupid. And then that turned me off Godzilla for a very long time. Well, there, there was a Godzilla TV show.
Speaker 1:I remember that we watched some of that.
Speaker 2:We did. And this, uh, because originally the 1998 Godzilla was supposed to kick off a trilogy, but it everyone hated it so much that it never got anything. But the writers had already done a lot of work on the sequels, so when the TV show came around they took those ideas and just immediately translated into the cartoon.
Speaker 1:The cartoon Godzilla isn't quite as large as the film Godzilla.
Speaker 2:That's not true. The 1998 Godzilla is kind of small.
Speaker 1:He's a small guy.
Speaker 2:Gotcha. Um, he's, yeah, like Godzilla is like what taller than buildings, right? Yeah, massively 1998 Godzilla like runs around between the buildings and shit.
Speaker 1:Oh, what's that game? We played the video game.
Speaker 2:Gigabash, which we talked about, but we'll circle back again if you want to talk about Gigabash.
Speaker 1:I'm just remembering the part where we picked up buildings and threw them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a great game while we were Godzilla. But anyways, after Godzilla 2000, we get into the really fun era of Godzilla, tokyo, sos. Now we just start to get back into crazy, crazy, campy Godzilla. First off, we're in a new era. Everything has to be hyper edgy. Lincoln Park is top of the billboards. Right In this. Also, you have X-Men. X-men is a 2001 is a cultural phenomenon, and so now you have humans that are mutants and they're basically superheroes.
Speaker 2:And then you have Kaiju and they're fucking things up, and so you have a super powered team that can be deployed to fight Kaiju, but every so often you get a Kaiju that is just so powerful that you're fucked.
Speaker 2:So instead you call Godzilla, but then Godzilla turns on you and you're even more fucked.
Speaker 2:So you have to build mecha Godzilla to combat real Godzilla, and it's just like layers on light, exactly, and it's just like so, so over the top, and this all culminates in Godzilla final wars 2004.
Speaker 2:So all of this has been building to Godzilla final wars, which is basically the Avengers endgame of the entire Godzilla franchise, where every single Godzilla villain or hero or everybody comes together because there's aliens from outer space, of course, and they show up, yeah, and they're like, hmm, time to end the earth. We're going to do our mind control race and we're going to control all the bad guys, all the evil monsters, and they're just going to destroy the planet. And the only one that can stand against us is Godzilla, and he just goes around kicking ass from continent to continent, fighting monster after monster, and you just, it's just nothing but fan service, including that's when Zilla from 1998 comes back, and all the other battles of Godzilla versus Geigen or King Ghidorah or Mothra, right, all these people like it's like big climactic battles, and then the 1998 Godzilla shows up, and Godzilla punches him once and he dies.
Speaker 1:Damn Spoilers in this episode.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, I'm sorry he goes down and then Godzilla does his atomic breath on him, right? The idea was that he was just such a stupid version of Godzilla and they just wanted to shame him. And this is straight from the creators that they just hated this version so much and they just wanted to show that he was not.
Speaker 1:Not equal.
Speaker 2:Not equal, but this was such a beautiful, beautiful send off to this entire era of Godzilla. If there's one Godzilla movie that you see, this is it.
Speaker 1:I think you've said that about five films now in this episode. Yeah but this is really the one.
Speaker 2:If you've watched all the others, you got to see this one too, okay.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about the Rewa era, which started in 2016 and is still active. It is the era of our times.
Speaker 2:Well, there's two technically here, because there's two competing eras there's the Rewa era and there's the legendary.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so there's the US franchise with Millie Bobby Brown, but then, of course, there is the Shin Godzilla franchise happening in Japan.
Speaker 2:Well, Shin Godzilla is a standalone as of now.
Speaker 1:But that's what kicks off the Rewa era in Japan. A personal favorite in the Branker-Kudan household is Shin Godzilla from 2016.
Speaker 2:Okay, if you're gonna see one Godzilla film.
Speaker 1:No, I don't.
Speaker 2:It's Shin Godzilla I don't know.
Speaker 1:So Shin Godzilla for me is really interesting because it's a parody of bureaucracy, which is certainly a recurring theme with Godzilla films and Kaiju films. But it's so much a parody that it feels very different to me than other Godzilla films because so much of it is literally bureaucrats in office buildings, moving conference rooms, like maybe 20% of the film is that.
Speaker 2:Which is hilarious because it's like there's a giant monster attacking everyone. Gather. Okay, what is our decision? Our decision is we need to form a committee to decide what to do. All in favor.
Speaker 1:I Okay. And then we need to go to the committee forming room and then you know it's like that for so much of the film that it's, it's parody, it's parody but it works and it's still the Godzilla creatures also very unique, because it sort of evolves in this way as it attacks. It's just interesting, it's. I think it. To me it feels like one of the most bespoke and unique Godzilla films that I've ever seen.
Speaker 2:Unique is a very interesting take on it, simply because the iterations that Godzilla goes through, which sometimes look fucking stupid as hell, right, sometimes there's a big rubber eyes, you know, yeah, on this very CGI monster. The reason for that is because it is direct references to super low budget versions of Godzilla from earlier it's fan service. It's done very, very subtly and well.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But it wasn't until the giant rewatch that I'm like oh right, when Godzilla's pupils went in different directions because they just said fuck it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's what this is. That's why they did this deliberately.
Speaker 1:Got it. So Shin Godzilla is actually the 31st film in the franchise and it's followed by a trilogy of anime films Godzilla, planet of the Monsters, godzilla City on the Edge of Battle, godzilla the Planet Eater, and again, those are the Japanese versions of what's happening right now. As Alan mentioned, there's also a separate American films.
Speaker 2:Before we pivot to the legendary series. The trilogy that you just mentioned is a Netflix anime series and they really rewrite some Godzilla mythos. In this, godzilla has destroyed most cities and has forced the surviving humans to abandon Earth. It's hundreds of years later that humanity returns to Earth to be like well, godzilla's probably dead. We can finally live here again, only to find that the entire time Godzilla has just grown and he destroyed humanity once, and now he's even bigger, and now you have spaceships in orbit that he can hit with his atomic breath.
Speaker 1:Or his what's it called his flying kick.
Speaker 2:No, he can't.
Speaker 1:He could, technically he could.
Speaker 2:He's so slow in this he walks like he's literally a mountain. He walks, he's so slow. No flying kick, Too campy they try to. For me this didn't really resonate. It's too serious. There's no humor in this. Everything is taken as like the absolute, you know, bleeding edge of humanity and everything is at such high stakes and there's no fun. This was not a fun series, outside of seeing Godzilla at his absolute most powerful. I understand.
Speaker 1:So in 2014, we get the film Godzilla, which is the first of the legendary series. Quoting from Wikipedia, because it's complicated, quote Godzilla King of Monsters is a 2019 American monster film, a sequel to Godzilla 2014. It's the 35th film in the Godzilla franchise, the third film in the legendary pictures Monsterverse and the third Godzilla film to be completely produced by Hollywood studio. End quote. So this legendary series stars Millie Bobby Brown from Stranger Things, kyle Chandler and Vera Fermiga. What about Brian Cranston and Brian Cranston?
Speaker 2:Yes from Breaking Bad and Malcolm in the Middle.
Speaker 1:The director wanted to quote put the God back in Godzilla end quote. Here's a quote from. Here's a quote from the director on his vision for the monsters, quote. So the concept we're running with is that this world belongs to them. If anything, we are the invasive species and we've simply rediscovered something that's always been there and that they are in some ways the old gods, the first gods, and that's something we're also trying to bring to this film for a more mythological, almost biblical backdrop to the creatures end quote. I really like the legendary series.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's very fun. My only caveat to this entire series is that its entire strength holds on the spectacle, the pure, just the pure spectacle of seeing Godzilla in an incredibly high Hollywood budget.
Speaker 1:I think that's partly true. I mean to me like seeing all of the other monsters as well in the budget are. But I also think that there's something to be said for the drama of it. You know there's a familial through line, if you will, it's not kind of just empty?
Speaker 2:They also carry characters through. So Godzilla 2014, Godzilla King of the Monsters and Godzilla versus Kong have similar characters right as a through line that connects everything, and this is the whole legendary monster verse.
Speaker 1:And Hollow Earth Theory.
Speaker 2:Yes, which is originally introduced in Kong Skull Island. I think the idea of returning characters isn't new, but it's uncommon. The first returning characters, I think, happened in the Millennium Era with Tokyo SOS, and then there was one other before Final Wars which we can talk about. Oh, it's Godzilla against Mechagodzilla, which is yeah, not versus against, and these are just batshit crazy movies that are so, so fun, which, again, it's just like.
Speaker 2:What do people really want to see? They want to see Godzilla in the best graphics, in the best everything, just kicking ass, doing crazy shit. That's what people want In the legendary version in 2014,. They deliberately don't show monster fighting, and this is from the director that they deliberately kind of blue ball you, where Godzilla is facing off against the Muto's, which is the only monsters in the first one, and then, just like, just when Godzilla is about to engage with, like the first Muto, the cameras from the perspective of the safety shelter and the doors closed just as the fight begins, and it's not until the very end of the movie that you see any monster battles, and that was supposed to be a cinematic tool, but it ended up being a criticism of the film.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So when you get to Godzilla, king of the Monsters, it's just monster battles for the vast majority of the film.
Speaker 1:Look at that. They took the feedback and they iterated.
Speaker 2:They did, but they should have done a balance. It's kind of overblown. Not overblown, but just like we're kind of now getting back into the realm of like weak plots for Godzilla movies. I don't like like. The problem is that they build up Godzilla's character to be. These are serious movies. They're not campy. And then you do reaction shots of Godzilla scowling when he's upset. It's like that doesn't fit in a serious Godzilla film. So you know the tone is a bit inconsistent.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:They're fun. I want to see more Godzilla movies that have multimillion dollar budgets because they're fucking great. But yeah, I just want to also see it done super, super well. Shin Godzilla is the pinnacle of a high budget Godzilla film done well.
Speaker 1:Okay, shots fired.
Speaker 2:You get to Godzilla versus Kong. That's when they just say you know what we're going to make. This silly and silly Godzilla is peak Godzilla. You have to pick a side. You have to make a 1954 Godzilla that is like super sad and tragic, or you got to make him super silly and he does karate moves against giant bugs.
Speaker 1:It's funny you say that because actually we have two articles in lunatic's projectcom. One is the 10 best Kaiju films. The second, which will be published soon, is the 10 campiest Kaiju films, because there's a very clear line in the sand between and I'm not saying campy films aren't good and I'm not saying the good films can be campy but I'm saying that there's a very clear line in the sand between films like Godzilla, the original, and films like Son of Godzilla, and there can be a place in your heart for both, but they're very, very, very different genres, almost within the Kaiju genre.
Speaker 2:So, in Son of Godzilla, one of the main antagonists is Gimantis, which is a giant mantis, and when Godzilla fights Gimantis, it's incredible. It's a giant puppet right. Because it's a mantis, you can't fit a human inside the suit.
Speaker 2:It's just like you can see the strings when Gimantis is moving around you know, but when Godzilla just goes to town, they just remove the strings and it's just a rag doll that Godzilla just whaps back and around, you know, and it's just like that's so fun. You just want to see him swing the fucking mantis around his head and then just slam it on the ground, you know, like that is campy as hell and it's so fun. Peak.
Speaker 1:Camp Cinema. Yes, as you can tell this series, there's so much to say. It's super fun. I hope everyone goes out and watches a bunch of Godzilla films.
Speaker 2:It's the best use of your time that are for volunteering for the orphans.
Speaker 1:There you go, another very honorable way to spend your time. But if you're going to watch movies, godzilla is pretty noble.
Speaker 2:It's so great, it's so fun.
Speaker 1:We are actually going to unbeknownst to us, but Alan had a lot to say. He watched a lot of films.
Speaker 2:I watched so many films he deserves the airtime.
Speaker 1:We're going to turn this actually into a four-part series, so we're going to come back next episode with all of the non-Godzilla Kaiju films, which there certainly are a lot to talk about, and then, of course, we will round it out with Kaiju theme stories for you.
Speaker 2:I would like to apologize for how much I pontificated about Godzilla, but he's a big part of my life.
Speaker 1:This is Peak, alan, and I'm living for it. You better. Also, I want to say that we have Godzilla merch in our merch shop. If you head to lunaticsprojectcom and you click on merch at the top, our very, very talented friend, olive Inc, made us an incredible Godzilla Kaiju design. So head to lunaticsprojectcom, click on merch. We have tons of other designs in our shop as well. I really am a big fan of our merch personally. We get a lot of compliments. We do get a lot of compliments. Alan reps it all the time. Also, like I mentioned, we're publishing a ton of shoulder content. If you will, all about Kaiju articles on lunaticsprojectcom. If you go to the website, click on articles, follow us on Instagram. On YouTube, we have a ton of Kaiju themed video content also coming out. We're really feeling ourselves in Kaiju month right now, even though it's really going to be Kaiju summer, if you will.
Speaker 2:That's the best kind of summer.
Speaker 1:Okay, alan, I'm going to give you the mic one final time. In this episode you said multiple times this is the movie to watch from this series, but if people walk away, they're still listening to this now and you want them to watch one film from the Godzilla franchise that is not the original. What one film should they watch?
Speaker 2:I'm going to give you three.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's better than I expected.
Speaker 2:One of the best iterations of Godzilla is going to be Shin Godzilla from 2016. It's a reboot of Godzilla. You don't have to know anything about it and you're going to enjoy it.
Speaker 1:It's very standalone.
Speaker 2:It's designed to be standalone. It's just a really solid, incredible movie. The peak can't be Godzilla. If you just want to get the meatiest of the meaty. For just silly Godzilla movies, that's also still very good is Godzilla vs Megalon.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Again, it seems like an oddball. Why the fuck would you watch this? It seems like you're just jumping in the middle of a franchise and you kind of are. But that's also the beauty of these movies you can watch anything If you have a basic understanding of Godzilla being a giant fucking lizard that fights other monsters. If you can understand that, then you can understand the plot of this movie. Great, all these movies are standalone. There's no lead-up, there's no mythos that builds on top of other things, outside of the fact that Godzilla exists. The third one, which is the crux of a giant franchise come together, is Godzilla Final Wars, and I had not watched that until very, very recently, and it was only after watching the dozens of Godzilla movies. And it is the. Again, it's the Avengers Endgame. Like, can you appreciate that movie as it's standalone? Yes, because it's quite the spectacle. Sure. Will you appreciate it more if you've watched all of the other movies to be like hey, that's Gigantus, you know from this one random movie.
Speaker 1:Son of Godzilla.
Speaker 2:Yes, that's fun. Gigantus actually comes back another time too, but it's not the point. The idea is that, yes, there's tons and tons of fan service done in this movie, but it's also a very grandiose plot.
Speaker 1:It's like an episode of Sesame Street.
Speaker 2:What.
Speaker 1:It's for the kids and the kids love it. If the kids are adults, but if you're a, parent, you pick up on the subplot and the humor. Sure, it's something for everybody.
Speaker 2:Okay, I'll give you that. That's a good example.
Speaker 1:Thank you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so Shin Godzilla. Godzilla vs Megalon and Godzilla Final Wars.
Speaker 1:As always. Thank you all so much for being here. Alan, thank you so much for your service and all of the films that you've watched.
Speaker 2:Thank you, I will continue to do my part. Great, great, only for this series. After that, you're on your own.
Speaker 1:Yes, it's been nice to have a little help on that front. I appreciate that shift in energy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you never watch movies.
Speaker 1:I'm too busy researching.
Speaker 2:Too busy making your own fucking movie.
Speaker 1:We will be back next episode with a very fun look at some of the kaiju films and franchises that exist outside of Godzilla. This includes some very, very major franchises in Japan. It includes Korean film. It includes tons of different movies from the US, so lots to talk about next episode.
Speaker 2:And one from Britain.
Speaker 1:And one from Britain. In the meantime, head over to lunaticsprojectcom. Click on merch, check out our Godzilla storefront we have a Godzilla storefront and read some of our opinions. If you haven't gotten enough today in the article section All right, everybody, talk to you soon. Bye, bye, bye.