Watched another movie last night, cause it was streamed, and then a different movie altogether this afternoon...so I'll rant about both!
Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II: The only Heisei Godzilla film I haven't seen, which means all that's left are various millennium movies!
Anyway, Mechagodzilla is a neat concept, and the recreation of his design was kind of neat, but...honestly, in the end, he's just not good at making interesting fights. Its just a lot of LASERS and shit, while Godzilla tries various means of Melee, or Atomic Breaths and...yeah...he just ends up being not as cool as he should be.
However, beyond the tame, repetitive fight scene with Mechagodzilla, the movie itself wasn't too bad. Main reason? It had Rodan. WHy Rodan? Cause Ghidorah was killed 2 movies ago (actually, this is an important plot point, cause they mention Mecha-King Ghidorah) and Mothra's busy going off, attempting to thwart Sephiroth's plans by blowing up an evil meteor HEAD ON...so they resort to good old death Pteranodon. Which is fine by me; Rodan's pretty awesome. The arbitrary fight between him and Godzilla early on lifted the movie a bit, especially since its nice to see they haven't forgotten the whole "yes, Rodan can hold his own against Godzilla", and I finally got to see the so called "Fire Rodan", which is to say "Rodan who can shoot Atomic Death Beams like Godzilla", which was certainly nice. Also had a more interesting fight with Mechagodzilla than Godzilla himself. Just nice to see Rodan in action again, having a prevalent role, rather than a minor one like in Final Wars...
MIND! His Final Wars appearance, brief as it was, was pretty damn good, especially since he probably had the single best entrance of any monster, and some of the best visuals were associated with him. I believe I said it once before, but I'll repeat myself anyway:
Rodan, for a simplistic idea (giant Pteranadon) is made completely and totally bad ass.
Also this movie introduced Godzilla's alternative son, Godzilla Jr...aka Baby...aka Little Godzilla...it depends which movie really. Unlike Minya, HE SERVES A PRACTICAL PURPOSE THIS MOVIE (and in the following two as well), other than just being "hey look at the cute little Godzilla, and isn't Godzilla a sweet daddy ^^." Not going to get into details, just to spare you, its just nice seeing a Baby Godzilla who doesn't look like a total joke, and serve a genuine purpose (make no mistake; the baby *IS* clearly trying to be cute, but it actually looks like it might be related to Godzilla, instead of "Reptilian Pillsbury Dough Boy")
So yeah, it was decent enough, much like the rest of the Heisei Series (Godzilla 1985 til Godzilla vs. Destroyah), so I can safely say now that the entire stretch of movies was overall nice.
The other movie...rather than go onto Godzilla vs. Megagarius (2nd movie in Millennium series, and next one I haven't seen), Hatbot said I should change my pace, and go back to 1960s Kaiju movies, and start a series I haven't really any experience with! That being...
Gamera the Invincible:
Its a black and white Giant Monster movie, so I wasn't expecting much. Its about what you'd expect; cheesey special effects, fake looking monster, what have you. I'm not sure why it was popular enough to merit its own series though...I guess the idea of UFO TURTLE has some sort of appeal, but the movie itself didn't really do anything ground breaking. There's a lot more boring human talking nonsense than should be in a Kaiju, as its all just "What are we going to do about Gamera!?" and the actual execution of the plans is like 10% of the movie total, and the giant monster destroying things is probably about 5 minutes of footage total? Ok, understatement, but still, its not much.
Contrast this to the original Godzilla: King of the Monsters for a second. It did take a while for him to appear (Gamera appears earlier, I'll grant that), but...a good deal of the movie is him stomping all over Tokyo, destroying shit. Its slow, accompanied by
Godzilla's Theme, which adds that ominous feel to it, and sets a much darker mood. Gamera's version is just "Rar, GIANT TURTLE SMASH!" and its over pretty fast before they go into "WE MUST DESTROY THE MONSTER!" The music didn't help either; no, I don't really expect something to match Godzilla's theme for fitting "GIANT MONSTER KILLS ALL" but Gamera's music didn't really add anything to the scene. I picture Godzilla's famous destruction of Tokyo to different music, and it definitely loses something.
Gamera himself...well, there were times he actually looked menacing; mostly the close up facial shots of him. Those did look genuinely scary, but the full body shots looked more ridiculous than anything else. Again, compared to Godzilla where these far full body shots had this somewhat intimidating appearance to it, especially since he was ENTIRELY BLACK (partially cause of the whole Black and White footage thing, but that just added to the movie, if you ask me), so he gave off this image of being an evil destructive force, rather than just a generic giant monster. No, Godzilla didn't really LOOK realistic (he's still a guy in a rubber suit), but just the way he was portrayed felt more effective than Gamera, where they had a lot of overhead or far distance shots, which are ineffective ways to make a monster look menacing.
Oh, and the roar is generic too! Godzilla's original roar...well, it sounded primitive and hard to understand, but hey, it did sound like it could be scary! Gamera's more a generic wail.
Again, this is all compared to Godzilla: King of the Monsters, NOT later films, so this is still fair game. Why am I doing this comparison? Cause Godzilla: king of the Monsters was an immense success in regards to the genre and somewhat revolutionized things from what I understand, in the sense of how Giant Monster Movies were handled after it; most of them emulate Godzilla style rampage. Gamera, being as big as it was for making a series, I expected more out of, but...it just felt lacking a lot compared to Godzilla.
But you know, comparing it to Godzilla is a bit unfair; that's like saying a Fighting Game in the early 90s didn't live up to Street Fighter 2. Actually, that is a good comparison; Godzilla is the Street Fighter 2 of Daikaiju movies (Immensely popular, revolutionized the genre, etc.), Gamera's kind of like the Fatal Fury (a somehow successful clone of the other, despite not really doing anything THAT original.)
...but then I noted when Gamera was made, and this is what really makes me disrespect the movie:
1965.
I know you're thinking "Why do you expect more out of a 60s movie? Come on!" Well, thing is? You know how I'm comparing it to Godzilla?
Godzilla was made in 1954. 11 years before Gamera. That means they had 11 years of stuff to work with, and there's really no excuse they couldn't at least live up to the standards as a result. If it was only a few years later, and there weren't many movies made? That'd be one thing, but by the time Gamera came out, Toho already released Godzilla Raids Again, Rodan and Mothra; that's 3 movies that did it more interesting than Gamera after Godzilla King of the Monsters came out...and 2 of them were even in color! I left King Kong vs. Godzilla off that list, since that movie is a completely different style, as is Godzilla films made afterwords; I won't get into that.
That's the thing that makes me wonder; why was Gamera so big? Wasit really just cause he's an interesting designed monster? That's about all I can think of. I look at other popular monsters and can see at least something big about the monster or the movie they came from:
King Kong, while not Kaiju (he's American), was pretty much the true Grandfather of Giant Monster Movies. While not the first, this movie was possibly the most successful one of all time, had AMAZING special effects for the time, and...yeah. For a movie made in 1933, its really quite a "HOLY SHIT" perspective. It didn't really dawn on me until relatively recently just how ground breaking this movie was; I use to think "oh, good special effects for the time, but its just a giant ape." recently, I thought about it and went "This movie was made 21 years before the original Godzilla" and suddenly, my respect for it rose dramatically. I understood why it was a classic, but now my general thought is "If you cannot respect this movie, you really have absolutely no taste and cannot put things into perspective AT ALL."
Point is, King Kong deserves every single ounce of respect he gets, and those who say otherwise are Batman and Robin fanboys!
Godzilla: King of the Monsters is essentially the Street Fighter 2 of Daikaijuu movies. Its the movie that set the standard for how Giant Monster Movies should be from that point on. It set an overall tone that Giant Monster Movies should have, made him look actually menacing (King Kong...never came off as quite scary beyond his initial appearance I felt, but then, I don't quite think King Kong was suppose to be absolutely menacing in the same way; they did portray a sympathetic side of him, and in the end, you kind of pity the monster.) While the series did decay quite a bit from its original purpose (even ignoring the propaganda nature of it) until the mid 80s where it regained the "Godzilla is an evil monster destroying everything!" aspect again, this does not detract from what this movie did to the genre.
Rodan...didn't really do much special...EXCEPT that from what I can tell, it was the first Giant Monster Movie to be done entirely in color, and it followed Godzilla by only 2 years. So yeah, in that regard, its got something.
Mothra took a unique take on the giant monster for once. Rather than portray the monster as something clearly evil (Godzilla), misunderstood (Rodan), or an innocent creature who just gets pushed to its limits where its rampage is understandable (King Kong), Mothra was clearly benevolent. The bad guys were clearly the douche humans who were killing people, imprisoning the fairies, etc. and Mothra was meant to be heroic, coming to save the day, despite the destruction involved. Yes, she destroyed stuff along the way, but that's more a case of collateral damage. They make it clear Mothra's not actually trying to destroy anything, its just kind of happening along the way; once she gets what she wants, she leaves. She could have very easily taken revenge, destroy everything, etc. like you'd expect...but instead, it actually leaves. This is a rare movie where the monster is dealt with completely not by aggression. Look at the other movies above:
King Kong? Shot down from the Empire State Buidling.
Godzilla? Oxygen Destroyered.
Rodan? Blow up a volcano until it basically erupts on top of them.
Mothra? ...give her what she wants, the good humans give her a nice farewell.
I suppose I'll toss one more movie up, even though its a change of pace, I can still see why its popular:
Ghidorah: The Three Headed Monster. From what I can tell, this is the first time so many monsters appeared together; Godzilla, Mothra and Rodan apparently are Toho's biggest monsters at the time, to see all three of them actually work together against a 4th, new monster was probably a big deal. As I once heard in a review "3 Heads are better than 1, and 4 monsters are better than 2!" best sums up the nature of that movie. It was also the first time you actually had a chance to route for Godzilla as a good guy, Rodan got reintroduced, and they even had Godzilla and Rodan fight, so there was a lot of action before the dramatic Ghidorah fight. This isn't to say that Ghidorah's got a neat design and what not, but I can't help but imagine that this being the first big monster brawl in Kaiju, so I'm sure that raise its popularity.
And even THAT movie predates Gamera, by nearly an entire year!
So my question is...what made Gamera such a big hit? The only thing I can think of is the whole "Flying Saucer Fire Eating Turtle!" thing, as the movie really just feels like another cheap monster flick, and it had several movies to base its standards off of, and...yeah. Its a movie made 11 years after Godzilla, but it certainly feels like it came out much closer.
...and yet, I still intend on watching more of those movies :\
