Personally, I loved the way he played a man suffering from PTSD and survivor’s guilt. He refuses to accept his role as a father because he doesn’t think he deserves a family - he deserves to be lying dead on Odo Island. The acting overall I thought was great, and the characters were all memorable. In Shin Godzilla, you barely get time to know the politicians and I could barely keep track of their names - here, Koichi and Noriko and Sumiko and Captain and Kid and Dr. Noda and Hotta are all memorable and have personality and feel like complete people instead of just window dressing. I honestly got teary-eyed when Noriko turned out to be alive. In Shin Godzilla, the monster is the star - here it’s the people.
I agree that the messaging was less heavy handed, but seeing the end of the war from a Japanese perspective was something I haven’t seen in film before and I would’ve been willing to watch a movie just about that. There is a similar overall theme, though - nobody else is going to solve Japan’s problems, so Japan has to stand on its own and get things done for the sake of a better future.
Interesting side fact I learned from the wiki article - all of the Japanese warships seen in the film were actual ships that survived WWII, and in real life were handed over to Allied navies or used for target practice after the war ended.
I really enjoyed it. And I liked the main character being so riddled with guilt and PTSD that he can’t commit to his found family. Godzilla was well done, and really came across has a destructive animal, as opposed to the Lovecraftian horror of Shin Godzilla. (Which I also liked)
Shin Godzilla’s motivation was pain - it was a creature that shouldn’t exist, in constant agony, lashing out at a world that was powerless to help it.
This Godzilla’s motivation is hatred. You can see the utter contempt in its eyes in the minesweeper scene. I was a little disappointed that the “This monster will never forgive us” line from the trailer got cut from the finished film, because it really seems to sum up why it’s attacking everything it can get at, even at the expense of hurting itself to do so like when its atomic breath (which was absolutely devastating and impactful to see, but maybe not as much as Shin’s) even burns itself.
Possible Easter egg; the radio announcement that Godzilla is approaching Ginza and everyone should evacuate immediately was extremely similar to the spoken word part from the Blue Oyster Cult song.
I saw it for the first time this weekend (it made me warm and fuzzy to see the Toho splash screen come up). Wow, that is a great Godzilla movie. It probably is the best Godzilla family ever, especially when you consider the extended family. Even though my sweetie and I teared up at different times, I did sometimes find the visuals lacking.
Wow, the black & white treatment seems to be just what it needed. That version might be the prettiest (for lack of a better word) Godzilla movie. And the original 1954 was a very pretty movie at times. Even the 1956 edit, which was all I had seen for decades, was a really well shot monster movie. If there’s a US subtitle of that version distributed, I’ll absolutely go see it.
I really enjoyed the movie until that ending. It was both seemingly out of nowhere but also only there for a sequel hook and I really think they should have just made this film standalone, if they want to make a sequel they can just make it we don’t need highly improbable survival situations.
Ehh, I’m of two minds about that one. It’s Godzilla, and he always can come back. So you can make another movie without explaining how he’s returning. On the other hand, they felt like they needed to.
I just saw it, and wow, that was not at all what I was expecting. I was expecting a movie about a giant monster smashing Tokyo. What I got was a movie with a giant monster smashing Tokyo, but about one man’s inner struggle with PTSD.
Excellent movie, that I’m recommending to everyone, not just kaiju-movie fans.
I saw it over the weekend (as I reported in the “Movies you’ve seen recently” thread). Pepper Mill refused to go, figuring it would be a stupid Godzilla film along the lines of the recent Godzilla vs. Kong movie. But it came solidly recommended by my long-time friend (and fellow godzilla fan). I didn’t realize until afterwards that I had gone wearing my Godzilla sweatshirt. But then, I have three Godzilla sweatshirts, all gifts from Pepper Mill.
Very good, and highly recommended. I liked it more than Shin Godzilla. It had good writing and a strong plot, with lots of shouts back to the original 1954 movie. These included the “Fighting Godzilla” military march , the scene with the journalists reporting frantically from a Tokyo building just before Godzilla destroys it, the bubbly device used to attack Godzilla (freon this time, instead of an “oxygen destroyer”), and the drum-like foot stomping of Godzilla and his roar, both played at the end of the credits. Oh, yeah – I hear they used the original roar (which, I’ve read elsewhere, was produced by rubbing a rosin-coated string hooked to a resonator with a leather glove)
I didn’t realize this movie had its own thread. I saw it a week ago and really like it, but dropped my commentary in the “movies you’ve seen recently” thread:
