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1984-12-15 14:34:55 Return of GodzillaAlternate Titles: Godzilla 1985
Return of Godzilla marks the beginning of rebooted continuity for Godzilla in what is known as the Heisei era (although this movie technically was not produced in the Heisei period; see our About page regarding that). The Heisei period is notable for being the period with the strictest continuity. When watching the mainline Godzilla films from the Showa era, you can usually see that one movie is beginning after the previous one ended, but the story rarely acknowledges that and sometimes even contradicts it (and that's not even counting the cases where the movie takes place in the future or where it's a Godzilla movie but was really intended for King Kong or all the cases where a monster from a non-Godzilla movie later shows up in a Godzilla film with no explanation). And each of the movies of the Millenium era are only in continuity with themselves and the original 1954 movie (with the exception of one pair of Millenium films that are part of the same continuity). The Heisei era films, by contrast, are all direct sequels of the previous film (at least until we get to the Mothra-only films at the end of the era). Not only does each movie acknowledge Godzilla's status from the end of the previous movie, but the stories actually build off each other, and we even have some recurring human characters played by the same actors throughout the series (something that never happened in Showa). That's not to say that Toho was operating with a grand overarching plan beginning with this first film. After the continued failures of Godzilla to meet ticket sale expectations towards the end of the Showa era, Toho decided that they were done with Godzilla. But longtime producer Tomoyuki Tanaka (one of the creators of the original Godzilla film) disagreed with that decision and instead started plans for a reboot of the series. According to Wikipedia this began immediately after the release of Terror of Mechagodzilla, which means it took nearly a decade for Tanaka to get Toho to agree and see the film to realization. It doesn't seem like Tanaka had plans beyond this film, since we'll see a few twists and turns in the format over the next few films. But the point is that the Heisei period is the period with the tightest continuity between films ("continuity" in the sense that Marvel comics fans would understand, for example). It seems Ishiro Honda agreed with Toho and declined the invitation to direct the film when offered, saying that the series really should have been put to rest when special effects director Eiji Tsuburaya passed away. This film was also supposed to feature longtime Toho regular Akihiko Hirata, who was with us through the Showa period since the very first film, but he died from cancer before production began. In his role instead is another Showa era regular, Yosuke Natsuki. Since it's been nine years since the last Godzilla film, it's reasonable to expect that there are advances in the special effects. But since in our movie watching marathons we wind up watching this soon after Terror of Mechagodzilla, the differences feel pretty extreme. And our preferences actually run towards the goofy, playful, cute Godzilla of the late Showa period. This film is very much the opposite of that. Godzilla is redesigned to be much more menacing, much bulkier, and he's once again a bad guy. This will be true throughout the Heisei period (although things do move a little closer to the Showa era again after Biolante). Innovations for this Godzilla include more articulation in the mouth so that he can bare his teeth without opening his jaw, a longer tail, articulate tail, and better teeth and claws (especially on his feet). He's also put on a lot of weight around the hips, and there's also something going on with the way his arms move. Some of the new look is achieved through animatronics, and doesn't look that good when the camera lingers too long. But with these changes, Toho is more willing to attempt to show Godzilla directly interacting with the humans in the movie. Not always to great success, but it's definitely an interesting difference from the Showa period. Godzilla is also said to be larger. 80 meters instead of the 50 from the Showa period. Bigger may sound better, but that means that makes interacting with the human elements of the plot that much more difficult and means that building models aren't necessarily as detailed. Godzilla actually doesn't feel that much bigger than he was in the Showa period, but that may be because of the increase in the number of skyscrapers in Japan by 1984. Instead of towering over every building, we'll see that he's often walking among them. The movie beings three months after "the eruption", with a ship in trouble in a storm near Daikoko Island, at the southern tip of the Izu islands. We then see the island moving and a brief silhouette of Godzilla, along with a somewhat modified version of the Godzilla roar. Then, suddenly, it's the 80s, with a synth beat pop song playing as we watch a guy cruise his boat around in the daylight. This is Goro Maki, a reporter (played by Ken Tanaka, no idea if he's related to producer Tomoyuki Tanaka). He sees the derelict remains of the boat from the night before and goes aboard, finding it abandoned. Well, Godzilla didn't reach his pinkies in there to eat them, so... Despite clear evidence of something having gone wrong, Goro continues to inspect the ship, going below deck and discovering an eyeless corpse. All of this makes Min very agitated. She wants Goro to leave the boat and go call the police at this point. But Goro keeps investigating, and eventually finds, in a room full of dead people holding weapons, a lone survivor hiding in a supply locker. The guy is catatonic, though, so he's no help when the monster responsible for all the dead bodies attacks. Eventually the guy in the locker comes out and helps Goro, killing the creature. And after all this, they still don't get off the ship! There could be more than one. Have you never seen Critters? GET OFF THE SHIP! The survivor is taken to a hospital. His name is Hiroshi Okumura. And he claims to have seen a monster much worse than the creature above, which is identified as a giant sea louse. Hiroshi describes the bigger monster he saw as an island come to life. His professor, a Professor Hayashida (played by Yosuke Natsuki) arrives at the hospital. We hoped that Hayashida was going to be shown the old dinosaur mug shots, but he's actually shown still shots from the first Godzilla film. Hiroshi confirms that the creature he saw was Godzilla. The sea louse must have been feeding off of Godzilla and grew thanks to Godzilla's radiation. It's said that the recent volcanic eruptions must have woken Godzilla up. The information about Godzilla is relayed to the Primer Minister of Japan, although it's said that there's no indication that Godzilla is going to attack Japan. The reporter Goro finds that his editors won't run his report on what he found on the boat. They believe him, but they're not willing to start a mass panic. The editors instead send Goro to interview Professor Hayashida. We learn that Hayashida's parents were killed by Godzilla. And all around his office, we see little models of dinosaurs. All of this has Min very excited for some Bad Dinosaur Science, and it seems we are about to get some when Hayashida pulls out the same children's dinosaur book that we've seen in previous movies. But Hayashida hands the book to Goro without comment, and Goro flips through it, occasionally looking up to ask questions unrelated to dinosaurs. He wants to know if Godzilla is "a creature, a monster?", and Hayashida responds that Godzilla was created by man, a product of nuclear weapons and is an animal, not a monster. But in both the subtitled and dubbed versions of this scene, dinosaurs are never actually mentioned. Very disappointing! He's a professor in a lab coat smoking a goddamned pipe while holding a children's dinosaur book. Why am i not getting any bad dinosaur science? Am i or am i not watching a Godzilla movie? It turns out that Hiroshi's sister Naoko (played by Yasuko Sawaguchi) works for Prof. Hayashida. She is unaware that her brother is alive, due to the media blackout. Professor Hayashida knows. He thought it was better for her to worry needlessly than to say "hey, your brother's alive"? Jerk. But after Goro talks to Naoko to the tune of some cheesy 80s romantic music, he reveals to her that her brother is alive. Toho may be trying to sneak that children's dinosaur book past us, but they're much more upfront about another favorite Godzilla element: the sinking submarine. The scene shifts to a Soviet nuclear sub under the command of an awesome mustache. They identify something coming at them and think it's a US sub. They say that if the enemy submarine attacks them, it means that the US has decided that it's time for nuclear war. This is the major theme of the film. But the object that they identify turns out (as usual) to be a lot closer than they realize, and instead of firing torpedoes at them, it rams them. The sub doesn't just sink, it blows up in a big time explosion. The Soviets announce the loss of their sub and claim that the Americans are responsible. The Americans deny it, but tensions continue to mount between the two nations, raising the possibility of nuclear war. The image above is not blurry. There's something weird going on with the map backdrop behind the news anchor. Are we supposed to be wearing our 3-D glasses? Eventually it comes out that Japan knows - thanks to a photograph taken by what is called an anti-sub plane - that Godzilla was responsible for the sub's destruction. Japan calls a summit, inviting the US and the Soviets to attend, but first lifts the media blackout by holding a press conference showing the photo. It's worth pausing here to remember that in the original Godzilla film, Godzilla was killed by Oxygen Destroyer, and in all the subsequent Godzilla films it was actually a second Godzilla that was appearing. That's not the case in this one. It's simply said that Godzilla "still exists". In the dubbed American version (more on that later), it's also said that we never actually saw a corpse (which isn't true!). So this is the original Godzilla. This makes a certain kind of sense. The original Godzilla was a true monster and a bad guy, whereas the Godzilla in the Showa series quickly became more of a misunderstood monster than truly evil and ultimately became a super-hero. The version throughout the Heisei series will remain true to his monstrous roots. I should note that for our Monsters Appearing section we don't make any distinctions; if you're familiar with my Marvel comics project, i'm approaching the character tags much more more loosely than i do there. Back to the story. Hiroshi, the surviving sailor, declares his hatred and desire for revenge on Godzilla for killing all his shipmates. It's not Godzilla's fault! All he did was stand up! Later, when the reporter Goro comes to visit Hiroshi and Naoko at Prof. Hayashida's lab, Hiroshi runs out of the room saying, "Godzilla is driving everyone crazy!". And Naoko is mad at Goro, although it's not clear exactly why. He did pop in to take pictures when Hiroshi and Naoko were reunited, but that's not so horrible, is it? He also broke his editor's edict and probably the law when he told her that her brother was alive. She's mad at him cause she thinks he's been pretending to be her friend so that he would be in a position to get exclusive photos of their Hallmark moment. Which is kinda true. At the "Godzilla Emergency Counter-Measures Headquarters", a man gives an important speech: "We will attack Godzilla with everything available. Until we defeat it. That is all I have to say." This guy runs the best meetings! So short! At the joint nation summit, they get into a little more detail about their plans. Japan has secretly been working on a warship called Super X. (What happened to regular X?) Super X has a titanium-platinum hull that will be able to survive Godzilla's "death-ray" (Who translated this?) and cadmium shells that will be able to hurt Godzilla, since cadmium can withstand the temperatures and radioactivity found in nuclear reactors. It should really be Super Tiger Dragon Ultra Monkey XXX 3. We're then treated to some traditional Toho marching music accompanying a fleet of ships and planes being deployed. The deployment is labeled as "Increased aggregate power nation-wide warning system" which seems like it should be an acronym like "Supreme Headquarters, International Espionage, Law-Enforcement Division", but IAPNWS isn't very catchy. Pfft - "warning system". I bet Godzilla totally sneaks up on them. The camera lingers for a while on one large plane, and i wondered if that plane was supposed to be Super X, but we don't see Super X yet. The scene then shifts to a model of a nuclear power plant. It's dark and foggy. We hear breathing sounds, and then thumps. He snuck up on them, didn't he? He did he did he did he did! Yup. Our first shots of the new Godzilla. IAPNWS may not be able to keep track of the 80 meter monster, but they're good about putting it up on a television screen for the Prime Minister and his cabinet. Godzilla tears through the power plant. We do get to see Godzilla's increased interaction with the sets. There's a cool scene (too quick to screengrab) where we see Godzilla's foot come crashing through the inner wall where people are still working inside the plant. WHY ARE THESE PEOPLE STILL HERE?! Unlike the IAPNWS or the Super X, Professor Hayashida, with Goro and Hiroshi, manages to show up at the reactor. Uh..guys? Are you sure you want to be standing that close to a nuclear reactor that's being torn apart? Also, Godzilla. They observe Godzilla walk right up to the reactor and stick his face inside, sucking up the smoke like it's a giant bong. Finally he pulls out the reactor core itself and just hugs it for a while, absorbing its energy. Eventually Godzilla notices some cartoon sea gulls (i think it's the animatronic Godzilla in the first scan below)... ...and he follows them back out to sea. He's got the munchies, and he's hoping the sea gulls will lead him to a McDonald's. This leads to our only mention of dinosaurs in the film... ....and a phrase that sounds like absolute madness, but which does have some grounding in actual science: "it uses magnetism for radar, like a guiding light". Birds really do use magnetic fields to navigate while migrating, in some way still not fully understood by scientists. But what's missing from the conversation is that Godzilla is a dinosaur, and dinosaurs are birds. It's also the case that birds use the magnetic fields to navigate while migrating, not that you can create some magnetic signal to pull birds towards you at any time. And it was clear in the scene with Godzilla and the sea gulls that he saw them and followed them back out to sea. There wasn't suddenly some magnetic field getting activated. Nevertheless, Toho scientists are always right and generating a magnetic field to attract Godzilla will be a key part of his defeat in this film. The other part comes from Prof. Hayashida's colleague, a Professor Minami, played by Hiroshi Koizumi, another long time Toho actor (although he winds up not playing that large a role in this film). Prof. Minami is a geologist, and Hayashida sends Hiroshi (the character) to Minami. Minami has ideas on how to cause a volcano to erupt on command. We soon see Hiroshi walking around in a field with Minami near the volcano whose eruption presumably was referenced at the beginning of the film. I swear Minami's just tricked Hiroshi into carrying his equipment. Whatever they're doing in that field has nothing to do with Godzilla. Minami just figured he could get the young guy to carry his stuff around for him. The magnetism plot slips one degree further away from reality when Goro walks into a room that Prof. Hayashida and Naoko are in, and they are loudly replaying bird noises. While, hilariously, wearing headphones. (Uh, i don't think your headphones are plugged in, guys.) We have now gone from "birds navigate using magnetic fields" to "magnetic fields attract birds (and Godzillas)" to replicating bird noises. Despite the "lure him to a volcano and cause it to explode" plan, Hayashida insists that he doesn't want to kill Godzilla. He says that 30 years ago, Godzilla appeared and humanity reacted with awe. Godzilla is a warning, telling man to not be so prideful and to punish mankind for delving into the secrets of nuclear weapons and nuclear power. Hayashida says that he just wants to send Godzilla home. (You know, by throwing him into a volcano.) The idea is that Godzilla is just a force of nation, and now that mankind has hopefully received his warning, Hayashida wants to send that force/warning away, and sending it away won't actually kill it. We know that Godzilla is actually a living thing, not just a walking metaphor, so it's a hard idea to accept and Min, especially, does not like that idea. No, i don't! The professors then go to the Japanese government with their plan. Here's Minami. One of the government officials is played by Yoshifumi Tajima, who played the Happy Enterprises businessman in Mothra vs. Godzilla and appeared in a few other Showa films. The Americans and the Soviets both have a much more direct approach to all of this. They want to use nuclear weapons on Godzilla while he's in Tokyo. At the conference, the US envoy speaks in English, and it's always funny to hear people speaking the slow, overly dramatic English that they use in foreign films. Another interesting thing is that in the dubbed version, all of the Russian dialogue is not translated or given subtitles. The Americans promise that the nukes that they would use would be only "half the size of Hiroshima" ("Only" half.), and of course Tokyo could be evacuated first, but one of the Japanese aids raises the question of nuclear fallout. The Japanese Prime Minister is horrified by all of this (No shit.) but says nothing until he goes into a private conversation with his ministers, and comes back to tell the US and Soviet envoys that Japan will not lift its policy on forbidding nuclear weapons within their borders. He says to the pushy envoys, "What right do you have to say that we should follow you?". A major amount of time and drama in this movie is devoted to the international politics. The movie is of course returning to its roots as an anti-nuclear film in the spirit of the original, but it's also reflecting the difference in Japan's status in the 1980s by putting the government in conflict with the US and the USSR. By contrast, there's very little in the way of an interpersonal plot in this movie. There is a little bit of a romance thing going on between Goro and Naoko (He wooed her with bird calls. They were drawn together by an irresistible force.), but it mostly develops off camera. Despite the Prime Minister's decision, we still see US and Soviet nuclear satellites at the ready in space. And then, mass panic as Godzilla is detected approaching Tokyo. I guess without the warning system, Godzilla would have to already be in Tokyo before anyone noticed. This new system gave them a good 10 minutes of lead time. Hey, look, a FAHP! There's a long stretch of film with the military preparing stuff. But then Godzilla disappears again. He somehow manages to evade everyone and then just pops out of the water right off shore. The military's hit rate is definitely better than average. Most of the planes' shots seem to hit, and we don't have cases of the planes flying directly at Godzilla. The fight scene switches between the suited and animatronic versions of Godilla. His breath weapon is really impressive, wiping out the entire shoreline. We even see him setting people on fire and just melting entire units. What doesn't look so good is a scene where Godzilla is supposed to be diving under water and instead it looks like he's falling over. During this battle, a Soviet agent on a control ship disguised as a freighter accidentally starts a nuclear countdown, and is unable to stop it. Oops. Meanwhile, Godzilla makes his way out of the water and into downtown Tokyo. Note that he's basically the same size as the buildings, not towering above them. Godzilla kind of stands there and takes it all in for a second, or else he's waiting for that helicopter to come around the building. Once it does, he blasts it with his breath and it crashes, causing a chain reaction and major destruction when it hits the cars below. When we watched the subtitled version, the helicopter was completely silent and we weren't sure what it was hoping to accomplish, but in the dubbed version it turns out it was a news chopper. One complaint from Roger Ebert about this film was that when the buildings get torn apart, they look like they're made of cardboard because there's nothing inside them. In a scene reminiscent of one from the original, Godzilla comes across a train, and picks it up. He peers inside (it's full of screaming people) and then lowers it, holding it to his side as he starts walking forward again. Tokyo sucks at evacuation. Why is that train even running? They got the warning that Godzilla was approaching hours ago. Why are people still commuting?? Then he casually drops it, as if he forget about it. I think it's really an articulation/interaction problem, but it's pretty funny. Brain the size of a marble, you know. Here's a sample of Toho trying to show a crowd of people directly in front of Godzilla. One major problem with the older films was that the giant monster always had to be way off in the distance. Toho seems to be trying to solve that problem here by super-imposing a giant claw over the people. It still doesn't look that great, at least on our DVD (the original film may have been more forgiving, and a VHS tape even more so), but at least it makes it clear that Godzilla is supposed to be right there among the people, not always far off by himself. In what i assume is an attempt to add humor to this movie gone horribly wrong, during Godzilla's rampage the scene shifts to a homeless guy or something rummaging through a fancy restaurant, making himself a feast. Then Godzilla comes rampaging through and i guess it's supposed to look like Godzilla is harassing the homeless guy, and the homeless guy yells back at him to leave him alone. It looks terrible and it's all pretty nonsensical. Then Godzilla passes by the window of Prof. Hayashida and his minions Goro and Naoko, and they, umm, fire the bird noise gun at him. Wait. Isn't that supposed to attract Godzilla? Why are you trying to get Godzilla to come closer to your building? We've really lost the plot on this, haven't we? Even when they switched from the magnetic field to bird noises, i thought the idea was that they were going to set up a beacon somewhere to lure Godzilla there. Instead we seem to be shooting Godzilla with a gun. How will that make him go to a volcano? Told you that was all a ruse to get Hiroshi to carry Professor Minami's stuff. What it actually does is make Godzilla, who has already been lumbering forward very slowly and with frequent pauses, completely immobile. Luckily for him, the army must be cross-eyed, because they can't seem to hit the 80 meter stationary target with their FAHPs. Instead they hit Hayashida's building (Mebbe the magnetic field generated by the bird noise gun caused the lasers to be drawn to them. Science!). This prompts Hayashida and his team to try to head to the roof, but they are stymied by the fact that the elevator is not working. Uh... Min's Survival Tip #0: You do not use an elevator when the building is in endangered by power outage, fire, giant monsters, or blind soldiers. Come on! Everybody is supposed to know this! The scene continues to shift between humans productively doing random things, to Godzilla doing nothing, to the Prof. Hayashida and crew trying to get to the roof of the building, to the army shooting at Godzilla with less than pinpoint accuracy, to Godzilla doing nothing. Those are lasers! They will just keep going until they hit something. When Hayashida finds the door to the roof locked, Goro keeps disappearing and coming back with different tools to futilely try to open it. Where is he getting them from?! At this point Super X shows up. And ok, it's not just a cargo plane. It approaches the still immobile Godzilla. Do something! The Super X crew's plan is to shoot a flare into the air, and when Godzilla opens his mouth to eat the flare, they shoot him in the mouth with a cadmium shell. What is he, Varan? Unbelievable. This is done a few times until Godzilla is oozing at the mouth, and we hear his heartbeat slowing down. He eventually falls down, crashing into a nearby And that would be the end of the movie, if not for the Russian nuclear missile. The good news is that the US, known for its Star Wars defense program with its world famous proven effectiveness, has agreed to shoot down the missile with another missile. But no one knows for sure that it's going to work. Meanwhile, Professor Hayashida, Goro, and Naoko have gone from being trapped in a building to being trapped in the Phantom Zone. Ahahahaha!!! This is a valiant attempt to make it look like there are actually people in the little buildings. Valiant, but failed. Luckily, Hiroshi shows up in a helicopter to rescue Professor Hayashida from the Phantom Zone and take him to the volcano. Just Hayashida, though. Goro and Naoko can make their own way out, down the shattered staircase, getting help from the hobo character from earlier. Meanwhile, the US counter missile does manage to find its target in space... ...but the resulting EMP explosion causes Super X to lose its engine power and sprinkles a magical dust all over Tokyo, all to the tune of some trippy Tangerine Dream style music. That...looks...unhealthy. And now guess who's awake. If you watched the later Showa films, you'll be happy to see that lightning is part of Godzilla's revival. Godzilla wakes up mad. Who doesn't? But he reserves his anger largely for the Super X, which is starting to come back online. The problem is that they are out of cadmium shells. All they have left are regular shells. What? Seriously? They only fired like three times. What dummy put regular shells in this thing? Why not all cadmium? Even if cadmium shells are bigger or something, i'd rather have one more cadmium shell than 10 regular shells that are completely ineffective against Godzilla. One of the reasons why this is our least favorite Godzilla film is that there are no other monsters to fight. Godzilla fighting the army and knocking down buildings is a good warm up, but in the end you need a giant monster fight in your Godzilla film. But this is a serious Godzilla film, with an important message. So no giant monster fight for us. The inclusion of Super X is an attempt to appease us. It's no substitute (Cause it turns out to be so lame. It was better back when planes would ineffectually, but endlessly, shoot missiles somewhat near Godzilla.), but i admit to being moderately appeased. The coolest scene in the movie comes during this fight, when Godzilla blasts Super X through a skyscraper. Another awesome scene is after Super X is down, Godzilla knocks a building on it. Basically just out of spite. And then takes a long lingering glare at the wreckage. Godzilla can be a real dick. That's why he's so awesome. Then we're back to Goro and Naoko and the hobo. Goro and Naoko decide to go to the volcano, and the hobo decides to steal a briefcase off an abandoned bicycle. This leads to the biggest WTF scene of the movie, a sequence that seems to be modeled after Raiders of the Lost Ark, with Godzilla chasing the hobo with his stolen briefcase. No idea why there's all this attention on this guy. Was he a famous comedian in Japan or something? He's a weird distraction, and not at all funny. The sequence ends with him yelling at Godzilla again, and then i assume getting stepped on, although it's not at all clear. I hope he got stepped on. Godzilla eventually is lured to the volcano. So i don't know what the bird noise gun was. Just a prototype, i guess? But then it was pretty dumb to aim it at Godzilla while you were standing in that building. Anyway, we're still going with the "lure him with noise" approach. Prof. Minami, the geologist, is not here for this final scene, and maybe that's out of shame, because it turns out that his groundbreaking plan to cause volcanoes to become active upon command is really just done by detonating some explosives around the base. Of course we don't find that out right away. First Godzilla has to very slowly lumber towards the volcano, and then fall into the volcano (landing on a side cliff, not all the way in), and then just stand there interminably. WHAT ARE THEY DOING? EXPLODE THE VOLCANO! Finally, we see the big volcano activation process begin, and it really is just some dynamite getting detonated, causing Godzilla to fall off his cliff into the volcano. All done to the tune of some beautiful ballet music. But the ballet music has nothing on the vaguely Kate Bush-like end credits song, which we have included here for your enjoyment. Be sure to make it to the chorus at 1:15. Goodbye now GODZILLA! Goodbye now GODZILLA! Until thennnnnnnn! Yep, that's how the Godzilla movie ends. But we're not done yet! There's still the American version, released as Godzilla 1985, to consider. I kept this a secret from Min, so she didn't know that Raymond Burr was reprising his role as Steve Martin here from the original 1954 movie until we got to the opening credits, at which point she shouted, "No! You're lying!". And for a while i thought maybe i was, because aside from a brief flash in the beginning... ...he's not seen at all for the first half of the movie. But even so, there are differences, with a lot of scenes truncated and the insertion of some terrible actors portraying US army characters and sneaking in some product placement. The main purpose of these scenes seems to be to kind of smooth things over for an American audience. Like, in case you were wondering why Japan has to organize a summit between the US and the Soviet Union, we're told that the red phone hotline between the two countries is "down for repairs". And while the subtitled version of the movie makes it seem like much more of a sure thing that the US is going to be able to shoot down the Soviet missile, it's acknowledged in the US version that it's a longshot. The non-English dubbing is as terrible as the Showa era films, full of random pauses to sync up with the lip movements. And as mentioned above, the Russian dialogue is not translated, leaving us to guess what they are saying. Godzilla, on the other hand, is re-dubbed. His roar is modified so that it sounds much more like the roar of a lion than his characteristic and awesome weird combo of growls and high pitched whale noises. You can kind of still hear the original roar in there, but a much more generic roar is the prominent sound. I dunno why they always do this. We all know what Godzilla's roar is supposed to sound like. We are all expecting to hear that. You did not make it "better" by changing it. This version does do better explaining the bird/dinosaur/Godzilla connection than the subtitles. Eventually the army sends for Burr, in a scene that i believe Quentin Tarantino borrowed for Pulp Fiction. Burr comes out saying he's been expecting them. Then who did he get to watch that kid? Because it's clearly his turn for babysitting. To prepare for Burr, the army watches the original Godzilla movie. The hilarious thing is that whenever Burr shows up, they play Japanese woodwind music. Are ninjas going to show up? It's probably not worth saying that the scenes with the Americans could be cut out of the film without affecting anything, since that's literally what the Japanese version of the film is. But there's much less effort to integrate Burr into the movie than there was in the original version. The original revised the story so that he was friends with the main characters, and they even got stand-ins to turn their backs to the camera and talk to Burr as if they were those characters. In this movie, the scenes with Burr and the army are completely separated. Nothing Burr says or does can affect the main plot in any way. So all he can do is stand by and repeatedly warn the army how dangerous Godzilla is. Which of course is meaningless since it's not the US army fighting Godzilla anyway. The scripting is also awful. Burr describes Godzilla as a force of nature. Like a tidal wave or a hurricane. And all we can do is deal with it, or maybe try to talk to it. Raymond Burr constantly opens up his windows and tries to talk to hurricanes. Later, when one of the army doofuses, watching Godzilla on the monitor, says, "That's quite an urbal renewal program they've got going on over there", Raymond Burr just shudders. That wasn't acting! That was him reacting to the script! Now, if you didn't know that Burr was inserted into the movie after the fact, you may get the impression that he's actually some kind of super-villain secretly controlling Godzilla. There's the mysterious woodwind music, the fact that no matter what happens he keeps doom-saying about how Godzilla's going to destroy us all, and a few shots of him fingering a dragon talisman. And why is it so smokey in that room? But don't get your hopes up. Burr's only role in this movie is to stand around. At the very end of the movie, when Godzilla is falling into the volcano, we see the Prime Minister and his cabinet all lined up to honor the monster's defeat. And the losers in the added scenes do their best to get into the same configuration. I can't tell you how confident i feel about the US military, knowing they operate out of some abandoned storeroom with some folding tables as furniture. The dubbed version still hits on the same themes, maybe a little lighter on the anti-nuclear message: "Nature has a way, sometimes, of reminding man just how small he is. She occasionally throws up the terrible offspring of our pride and carelessness..." Like i said above, this is our least favorite Godzilla movie. Plotwise it's essentially a remake of the original. The Godzilla here is a lot meaner and bulkier looking, whereas we prefer the friendlier, fun version. The attempts at better special effects, while a leap forward, still look dated, and the movie being more earnest about it all makes it worse. And most importantly, there's no giant monster. The sea louse and Super X can't possibly make up for no scenes of Godzilla bodyslamming another giant monster into the ground. Obviously we have different requirements for a Godzilla movie than most people. I've seen this movie make a lot of people's top ten lists. But in the SuperMega Household, this movie is in the Most Likely To Be Skipped category (tied with Godzilla's Revenge). Monsters Appearing: Godzilla CommentsWell I love Return of Godzilla/1985, I believe this was my second Godzilla movie just after Smog Monster. So from a young age I saw right away that Godzilla could be hero of the Earth or a tragic force of nature. I do like it when every once in a while there's a more grounded Godzilla movie like this one, I just love the Cold War atmosphere. The U.S. cut actually made the sea louse scene scary and the Russian sub attack was made better. Posted by: david banes | August 14, 2015 8:56 PM Seems a little irrelevant wherever its a reboot or not when one of your boxes is "people refuse to believe in the existence of a giant monster even though they've already acknowledged that Godzilla exists." You could really use that rule to decide just about anything is canon to each other. xD Posted by: Max_Spider | August 15, 2015 6:45 PM I've really become fond of the heroic (or occasionally anti-heroic) second Showa Godzilla, so even knowing what to expect it still felt a little disappointing to go from the later Showa movies to this one with it's grim engine of destruction of a Godzilla. I'm not sure what, but I feel like they should have done something to ease viewers back into the "Godzilla as a villain" mindset. I found Godzilla's "rampage" in Tokyo rather boring. It also really annoyed me how his eyes were rolled upward in most of the shots; combined with his mindless wanderings and his tendency to stand around doing nothing, I got a really strong impression that Godzilla was quite out of it (even before they shot him with the cadmium bullets). While not nearly as bad as Godzilla's Revenge, this definitely isn't one of my favorites either. Incidentally, my BluRay copy features the "English International" dub rather than the "Godzilla 1985" version. In addition to having no added scenes, they dubbed all the Russian dialog in English (but left the Japanese subtitles for both the Russian and original English dialog). I was a little disappointed about this, being curious what the "1985" version is like, but on the other hand based on everything I've heard this is probably the better version. Posted by: ChronosCat | May 13, 2018 11:55 PM Comments are now closed. |
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