I was already on board with a poster released earlier last year showing the bottom of Godzilla's foot in its gritty glory -- which I can't find at the moment, but there's a thread somewhere below I made with it.
Toho's return to Godzilla isn't guaranteed to be great, and I'm sad about the inhumanly tiny (and probably CGI) arms which will make any fighting difficult or extra-implausible. But the footage so far looks good. At least he looks like Godzilla and not like a mopey cow that sometimes roars like a T-Rex.
Although I watched the Legendary Godzilla again for the first time since theatrical last week, and felt slightly better about it with my expectations adjusted; my problems with its plot and execution still remain. I actually prefer the good-intentioned-but-clumsy Godzilla of the late Showa era (the "first" movie series), and I hope Toho will get there again, but I'm also okay with him being a threat in his first film of a series. How well the movie holds up, who knows yet.
Some minor updates: it's a man-in-suit (with some CGI I guess, especially for the tail?), but the suit is about 10 feet tall (twice as tall as an average man), allowing for more alien body proportions.
There were some rumors Godzilla's form will change over the course of the movie, so those withered arms perhaps will grow out to something better for fighting -- reportedly he starts out a scarred and withered mess before filling out through three modes. However, it's possible this rumor grew from a set report about how it takes three "operators" to make the whole giant suit work.
(https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fs3.birthmoviesdeath.com%2Fimages%2Fmade%2Fresurgence_1200_1693_s.png&hash=94dee646244bd94944c9ec5c57b50ad947a614ed)
More early leaked set pix of the suit at Birth.Movies.Death. http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2016/01/04/new-pics-tohos-new-godzilla-is-one-ugly-piece-of-work
(Note that the awesome thumbnail shot they use for the title of the article comes from a previous film, I think Godzilla: Final Wars. That film had a boatload of problems, but the suit sure wasn't one of them.)
Godzilla looks like a cross between Iron Maiden's 'Eddie' and a giant fried zombie squirrel in that clip.
The freaky looking eyes seem to be based on the eyes of the hand-puppet used in some close up head shots in 54G.
With a little less than a month to go until the Japanese release of the film, I've been both impressed and worried about how... effective?... the "Shin Gojira" is going to be up on the screen.
On one hand, the design choices are both bold and also deeply respectful of the original 54 Godzilla, not only in 54's final look(s) (both in the suit and for the close-up head-puppet), but in subtle little details. Shin Godzilla has no tongue, for example! -- an interesting point of divergence considering that 54 seems to have had one in its design, and yet so much of the new design hearkens back to pre-film designs from 54 where they wanted the monster to look more alien and angular. The creepy thin useless arms held upward as though clutching in agony? Part of the 54 final design, and a detail often forgotten. The gangly thin upper body and neck? Part of the concept art for 54. Why does Godzilla have 4 toes or 3 sometimes? Obviously a budget cut in the design, but he has 5 toes on this suit -- the 5th is just deformed and twisted small. (And has a trilobyte embedded in it! -- one fell out of the 54's foot into a footprint in an early scene.) Neither this design nor 54 had eyelids, those having been burned away, leaving him staring insanely forever from dark sunken pools of charred flesh, but this design is a little more obvious about it.
On the other hand, the design often looks goofy as hell, the fake eyes being a good example: so far in all production shots, when I can see them at all, they never look like anything more or other than styrofoam or ping pong balls with holes cut in them where the pupil is supposed to be! The impotent arms were the least impressive thing about the original 54 suit, and seeing them come back while impressive as a stylistic acknowledgement, just makes him look less powerful. People have wondered about the odd spike on his chest; I think that's only his rib cage with the flesh burned away, most especially from the neck up, which while again a bold design choice makes him look less scary-threatening and more pitiable, like he's going to collapse at any moment from wounds too great to endure.
The 'suffering' Godzilla design from the final Heisei Era (2nd series) film, Godzilla vs. the Destroyer, also kept him looking like in constant pain, but he still looked bullked and dangerous (even if he also looked too heavy to really move). Here he kind of seems to be staggering along with his last steps wherever he goes.
The mutated blob of amalgamated skeletons on the tip of his tail is suggestive and weird, but I'm starting to wonder if that's less suggestive of plot and more of random gooeyness.
This all makes it hard for me to accept that this Godzilla can stand up to any amount of modern firepower at all -- the first shot from anything should shatter him like a full metal jacket 5.52 mm shell through ice.
Still, the design is different and not something we've seen a hundred times before while also being definitely Godzilla -- indeed in many ways much closer to the 'original' Godzilla than anything we've seen since 54. Even 6 months later, for Godzilla's Counterattack, the new suit made the arms better capable of doing things, such as fighting Anguirus. But I get the impression sometimes that the new design is based less on hearking back to the original or true Godzilla (the Shin Godzilla) and more on production snapshots taken at moments where the original suit wasn't working as well as it should! ::) :buck2:
A video of two promotional statues released in recent months.
Second major trailer with about a week to go.
Toho has announced a definite distribution deal in Europe and North America; unsure if that means a theatrical run.
Godzilla should run for Prime Minister of Japan. Then after he wins, disband the armed forces. Who'd need them?
Quote from: Sir Slash on July 20, 2016, 12:18:21 PM
Godzilla should run for Prime Minister of Japan. Then after he wins, disband the armed forces. Who'd need them?
In my headcanon version of the sloppy time travel plot for the 2nd series G VS KING GHIDORA, the (American) time travelers are responsible for altering the original Showa continuity into the Heisei continuity because they wanted to attack the megacorporate power of Japan but couldn't thanks to its now-benevolent protector Godzilla. (Which is pretty close to what passes for the actual plot.)
I'll buy a ticket. I want to see Godzilla do some fancy new Bruce Lee moves. O0
So the new Godzilla movie opens on the same day that the free upgrade offer for Windows 10 ends...
Coincidence...? I think not!
Quote from: Staggerwing on July 20, 2016, 06:34:41 PM
So the new Godzilla movie opens on the same day that the free upgrade offer for Windows 10 ends...
Coincidence...? I think not!
Stagger.... you
have to come to Origins one year so we can go drinking and try and figure out where we were separated at birth. ;D
Quote from: Barthheart on July 20, 2016, 06:40:24 PM
Quote from: Staggerwing on July 20, 2016, 06:34:41 PM
So the new Godzilla movie opens on the same day that the free upgrade offer for Windows 10 ends...
Coincidence...? I think not!
Stagger.... you have to come to Origins one year so we can go drinking and try and figure out where we were separated at birth. ;D
Did one of your grand-dads serve in any of the Canadian units that liberated the Netherlands at the end of WW2? If so, then I have a related theory... :))
Quote from: Staggerwing on July 20, 2016, 07:05:26 PM
Quote from: Barthheart on July 20, 2016, 06:40:24 PM
Quote from: Staggerwing on July 20, 2016, 06:34:41 PM
So the new Godzilla movie opens on the same day that the free upgrade offer for Windows 10 ends...
Coincidence...? I think not!
Stagger.... you have to come to Origins one year so we can go drinking and try and figure out where we were separated at birth. ;D
Did one of your grand-dads serve in any of the Canadian units that liberated the Netherlands at the end of WW2? If so, then I have a related theory... :))
Nope... closest I've got is one uncle who was at Vimy Ridge in the The Big One, and another who was a pathfinder bombidier over Germany in a Lanc.
Damn.
Quote from: Staggerwing on July 20, 2016, 06:34:41 PM
So the new Godzilla movie opens on the same day that the free upgrade offer for Windows 10 ends...
Coincidence...? I think not!
Windows 10. The one foe Godzilla cannot possibly defeat.
Quote from: Sir Slash on July 20, 2016, 02:50:39 PM
I'll buy a ticket. I want to see Godzilla do some fancy new Bruce Lee moves. O0
This G doesn't look like he'll be doing any kung fu. ;)
Quote from: JasonPratt on July 21, 2016, 11:39:17 AM
Quote from: Sir Slash on July 20, 2016, 02:50:39 PM
I'll buy a ticket. I want to see Godzilla do some fancy new Bruce Lee moves. O0
This G doesn't look like he'll be doing any kung fu. ;)
What's the point then?
Shock and awe.
This does indeed look like a triumphant return for Toho and Gojira. I will see this movie somehow for sure.
A semi-trivial update: promotional materials recently revealed that Shin Godzilla (the official nickname for this version of the character) is fully CGI. Not three guys in a suit or anything else like that. (I suspect there are partial shot elements like a foot in models, his head in closeup, and his tail, which are occasionally not CGI, and so operated by live actors using puppetry, and this is where the confusion came from. Updated to add: there was evidently an 11 foot tall puppet at some point, worked by three operators, but this was eventually dropped from production.)
This is a little important, since that means this will be the first Toho Godzilla to not be primarily a man in a suit. That era has passed. But hopefully we'll get better looking movies as a result, while not disrespecting the amazing things Toho fx specialists were (occasionally) able to do with what they had previously.
Early reviews today suggest a visually artistic film; with particular note called on how the CGI is used to make Godzilla seem like a prop suit. Which is bananas. ???
A summary of the first Japanese press screening reviews: https://skreeonk.com/2016/07/26/the-first-japanese-reviews-for-shin-gojira-are-in-hailed-as-a-masterpiece/
"So far, all signs point toward a film the Japanese will embrace, and western fans perhaps will scoff at as "boring" and "political"."
Catching up on things: reviews have been steadily good. My impression is that the film is not at all "boring" and "political" but rather a science-fiction procedural with relevant cultural-political elements, very much in line with Godzilla vs Hedorah (aka the Smog Monster). The focus stays very much on the 'problem': identifying that there's a problem, investigating the problem, dealing with the problem.
In fact, reviews indicate this Godzilla is, conceptually, a combination of the original 54 Godzilla, the Smog Monster, and the Destroyer (or "Desotroyah" or whatever the official Toho English spelling is supposed to be that they can trademark. ;) )
Lots of spoilery things can be found on the web now, which I won't link to. But I'm excited to see the Bluray whenever Toho lets Filmation distribute it in North America (and with Filmation on the job, we should get both good dubs and good subtitles, as well as a clean, crisp production transfer.)
Some slightly spoilery bullet points, which don't actually spoil things any further than commercials now do (and rather less so since I won't be linking to how things 'look'):
* Since Legendary Pictures seems committed to making 'heroic' G movies, Toho went for the 'threat' G again: and this Godzilla is more of a threat than any previous version. The tone of the film, except for being not so shadowy, is much more what we thought we were going to get from the original trailers for G2014.
* Most of this film happens in broad daylight, but there are at least a few striking scenes at night.
* We're so used to Godzilla having a fiery breath weapon (if I may apply D&D terminology there), that it's easy to forget that for original audiences back in 1954 the foggy fire was a novelty, introduced late in the movie and then used heavily. As in many other ways, ShinGoji follows G54's cues on this, too: Godzilla does have a fiery breath weapon which shows up relatively late in the film but hits hard and frequently when it does show up.
* This is a new continuity, not a sequel to G54 or to any previous established Godzilla continuity. However, Godzilla's alien roar starts off directly sampled from G54 and evolves over time.
* Akira Ifukube's classic score is indeed used at least once, and not just the main G theme (not sure yet that's used at all) but one of the related creepy horrifying destruction themes which didn't get used much or at all after G54.
* The filmmakers take the fan theory that Godzilla's form in the first series (the classic "Showa" series that ran until the mid 1970s) kept changing because Godzilla kept mutating into less primitive forms, and make that the new canon within the film! -- and they really run hard with it! They even go so far as to nod to how the suits were often falling apart and rotting in the Showa series!
* This Godzilla is meant to be a rotting, festering abomination, increasingly scarred and burned from humanity's counter-attacks as well as from his own burning radioactive energy.
* Godzilla is very much an enemy to all life, including humanity (though not especially so, or not yet anyway), because going back to early drafts of G54 he's growing larger by eating other lifeforms. (This point is practically eliminated in G54, aside from an ancient legend of maidens being sacrificed on a raft to him.) His whole reason for being on shore originally is to eat the plentiful humans; and once he gets too large to effectively eat humans, he's still absorbing them by crushing them into his skin!
* Godzilla's traditional segmented tail design is an actual plot point in this film: the tail is basically growing out into its own creature as G's body absorbs and redirects organic material!
* G goes through at least 4 forms in the film, although we never quite see more than 3 of them. The first trailer (linked to in the thread above) showcases G's 4th form, which is still mutating into a fifth form. (It gets about halfway there before the film ends.) The first form provides the unseen mystery threat slowly revealing itself in the first act of the film.
* The first shown form (at least the second in his development), is a sickly yellow, and doesn't look much like Godzilla aside from the dorsal spines. It does feature the original G54 roar, which may have been added to assure fans that this is in fact Godzilla; but this multi-form developmental plot also allows the filmmakers to give us multiple kaiju, in effect, despite Godzilla being the only monster in the film.
* The yellow form is highly aquatic, with gills that gush blood! For reference this is typically called the first form or Form A. It's meant to be the size of G54, about 50 meters.
* G's Form B is larger (around 80 meters), and closer to standard G shape but still with a lot of differences. Among other things, he looks like his skin has been flayed off! The googly insane lidless eyes (borrowed in design from G54) feature prominently in Forms A and B.
* G starts growing into Form C while on land, so we get to see a transitional version. When this process starts, the creepy horror destruction Ifukube score from G54 also starts!
* G also starts growing into Form D while on land, toward the end of the film, and this is when the breath weapons develop -- although there may be a Form C breath weapon, too: at some point Godzilla exudes a fuel-air explosive mist which he ignites, firebombing the city, and this may happen before the more focused beam form develops.
* The breath weapon(s) are evidently a way for Godzilla to help regulate the radioactivity tearing apart his body. In the unseen pre-A Form(s), he has to stay in the water; in the twisted amphibious Forms A and B, he still needs to go back to the water to cool down. (This calls back to G54 again, explaining why after G's first major rampage on land in the dock area, where the metro train hits his foot, he just turns around and goes back to the sea of his own accord.) Form C has developed a hard burnt shell (shown in the trailers) containing the radiation better, but it's building up inside, so to stay out of water indefinitely he has to exude it. (Again giving a plot explanation for why in G54 he just starts randomly breathing a radioactive firestorm even though he hasn't been effectively attacked yet. In ShinGoji, he has been counter-attacked several times, and his beam weapon develops to fight this.)
* The iconic train-slamming-his-foot scene from G54, which takes a concept from King Kong and ramps it up to show how much bigger and more dangerous Godzilla is (I remember finally watching G54 as a kid, late at night with my brother, waking up around 3am to see it in the days before VCRs, and how impressive it looked when Godzilla picks up the train in his mouth and throws it), gets an epic re-imagine: it's done on purpose with several trains to try to knock him down! The idea here being that in Form C, he's too large to get up again easily so they'll have an easier time dealing with him once he's knocked over.
I could get into plot spoilers about Godzilla's origin in the film, and why he's developing the way he does, but that might be going too far -- I don't think the commercials are spoiling this yet. Anyone familiar with the plots to Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster (from the Showa era) and Godzilla vs the Destroyer (from the Heisei era), will be able to make an educated guess, combined with a national disaster for Japan in recent years.
That man knows his Godzilla.
Literally the first film I ever saw at a theater: G vs Megalon. :smitten:
Quote from: JasonPratt on August 18, 2016, 10:49:24 AM
Literally the first film I ever saw at a theater: G vs Megalon. :smitten:
Believe it or not same here. I had to practically beg my mom to let me go with my friend to see it. When I told my mom that my friends mom was taking us I got to go! :)
The first movie I actually remember seeing in the theater was 'Latitude Zero' (though I had probably been to a disney film or two when younger) and, what do you know, it was a Toho film:
The first theater movie I can recall is Across the Great Divide.
^^That looks like it was a good movie. Gonna have to check that out.
For that matter, the first movies I was ever in the proximity of (so to speak) were kung fu and kaiju films late at night when Dad had his turn giving me a bottle. O0
The only way that could be earlier would be if Mom pressed her tummy regularly to the TV so I could hear what was going on! :2funny:
Meanwhile, limited theatrical showing for 9 days in American this October, presumably as marketing for Filmation's Blu/DVD release which, on this theory, would likely be Halloween.
So coming to America sooner rather than later. But alas, no showings in theaters anywhere near me yet... :'( :'(
Almost 210 theaters booked so far, but none near me yet.
(https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FXSyGBHP.jpg&hash=e967f1304a692fe9e790c7dc21fbdf1be268e734)
https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?mid=1o92p7TLPg6T7VZjkhJ-byeea8ic
That map is better than Funimation's map search, which on my updated Firefox browser on a Surface Pro 3 anyway shows absolutely no theaters pegged -- and thinks my zip code should be somewhere in the South Pacific basin between Rungata and Baker Island... :crazy2: :uglystupid2:
Tickets theoretically went on sale today, Sept 9.
At the Memphis Mendenhall Malco! -- two hours there, two hours back, 1 pm on Saturday Oct 15! O0 :smitten: :smitten: :smitten: :smitten:
http://variety.com/2016/film/festivals/shin-godzilla-film-review-1201872105/
Yeah, a few venues got an early promotional release. It's more than a few cities, though. I keep trying to remember to tease a friend of mine that she'll have nine theaters in San Antonio to see a Godzilla film in (she's never seen one), or ten if she counts a theater in the first big town going out on the road to Houston! >:D
That Latitude Zero promo clip upthread reminds me that I recently learned that Toho not only seriously considered a Batman vs. Godzilla movie, two years before the TV show became a hit (with a few plot points that eventually found their way as the main plot of Son of Godzilla), but they would have been the first production to bring Batgirl (or a version of her) onscreen before the show (eventually) did!
(We're used to Batgirl being Barbara Gordon, daughter of James Gordon, but I don't know if the Toho script would have done that although Robin and the Commissioner would have been in it. Before the TV show, Batgirl was someone completely different and connected to the Batwoman character as a sidekick paralleling Robin.)
The clip mainly reminded me of this because Toho did get Caesar Romero (and his moustache, sort of) to play a crazy supervillain. O0
So, in accordance with the prophecy, I got to see Shin Godzilla in Memphis Saturday afternoon. (It's still playing in many American cities until tomorrow, Tues Oct 18th.)
Theater was at least 3/4 full, which I was surprised but pleased about. A couple of large groups arriving at the last minute had trouble finding seats. It was a good audience, capable of reading fast enough and understanding nuances enough to appreciate some of the very dry humor sprinkled into the script -- there were many chuckles and several lols at appropriate places.
Also when G first shows up, since as noted above in my collected information list he's more than a little silly looking at first. I was expecting his first form (actually his second, since we don't see his first) to be like some kind of flopping undead thing that cannot die, thrashing around uncontrollably. But he's really more like a destructive puppy -- a comparison that bit home aptly for me that weekend since we had been puppysitting a Goldendoodle for Bro's family that weekend. He just cheerfully wallows forward tossing things in his way, happy to be on land even if he's gushing blood from his lungs occasionally.
That, by the way, was another surprise -- not the blood-gushing thing (that had been in the trailers), but how relatively harmless Godzilla is. As the scientists point out a couple of times in the film, all he seems to do is walk forward, so they're having a hard time trying to get clues to his nature from his behavior. I don't think he even tries to eat nuclear or other energy sources, although the scientists expect him to be trying, and eating nuclear waste was part of his origin. After his playful bout as a baby (and I wonder if the writers and designers had a bet going about whether / how they could make Minya, the often-loathed son of Godzilla, feel threatening), he doesn't go out of his way to destroy anything. It's just an inadvertent side effect of him, well, walking forward. The serious destruction only happens once the military finds a way to truly hurt him. And then he hibernates for a couple of weeks afterward!
The effects were usually good, although a few parts looked iffier than they should have.
I was somewhat wrong about G's origins in the film -- the backstory seems like a combination of one or two of the better storylines from the classic Patlabor anime series (especially the films). If that sounds obscure, it's because I'm trying to avoid spoilers. ;)
Some reviewers suggested G doesn't show up any more often than in America's recent G2014 (about 6% of the run time in that film). The proportion seems more to me, perhaps because the movie itself is 30 minutes shorter. There's a long stretch (of two weeks or more in-film) where 'nothing happens' except a lot of discussion and planning, with occasional cuts back to showing G briefly or in the distance. Even before then, there is a ton of talking, mostly in various boardrooms. (I counted no less than ten of those sets! -- and not science-fiction boardrooms either. ;) )
This brings up the plot, since to quote The Court Jester, "Plot we've got; quite a lot!" There isn't actually a lot of plot, just a lot of plot-time -- but that's subversively part of the point of the film. So let me talk about the main theme, since this is going to make a huge difference whether someone will appreciate the film.
The film is essentially a visual essay, using Godzilla as a colorful prop, about bureaucracy and politics. And the underlying message, from what I could tell, is that politics and bureaucracy aren't inherently bad things. On the contrary, politics is simply people cooperating with each other to achieve goals, and any large organization, including for politics, needs bureaucrats to function.
Sure, inefficient politics leads to disasters, and to disasters being worse than they otherwise would have been, and people suffer and die as a result (this is also part of the hidden backstory of the film). And even when bureaucratic politics are working efficiently, there's a real tendency for the people involved to act to protect themselves and to treat other people as ciphers or statistics. So the film is being critically realistic about that.
But quite daringly, especially for North American audiences, the film still comes down in strongly favor of the importance of humanity's political nature. Politics (and even bureaucracy) are how the human species has risen to triumph so hard over nature, even in the face of a Godzilla-level disaster. We can beat the unbeatable Godzilla because bureaucratic politics can get enough of the right people, including effective scientists, into position to execute effective plans with effective support.
Also, the Japanese-American liaison is a cute burst of fresh air whenever she's on the scene. :smitten: And she fits a slightly more American version of the same theme: as the granddaughter of a survivor from Hiroshima or Nagasaki (the film doesn't specify), her family has worked hard and made good marriages to the point where she's seriously capable of being the first Japanese-ethnic American president someday! -- if she doesn't blow this political opportunity. The film likes to use her character to work out the tension between the problems and the strengths of politics, and between ambitious pragmatism and personal care; also between the more flexible American lifestyle and the regimented Japanese lifestyle, both of which are shown to be helpful in different ways.