Godzilla's fiftieth Anniversary project, in which Godzilla travels around the world to fight his old foes plus a new, mysterious monster named Monster X.
Years into the future and the human race has been defeated several times by the new ruling force of the planet: "kaijus". And the ruler of that force is Godzilla, The King of the Monsters. ... See full summary »
Directors:
Hiroyuki Seshita,
Kôbun Shizuno
Stars:
Mamoru Miyano,
Takahiro Sakurai,
Kana Hanazawa
From Earth's pollution a new monster is spawned. Hedorah, the smog monster, destroys Japan and fights Godzilla while spewing his poisonous gas to further the damage.
An unknown accident occurs in Tokyo Bay's Aqua Line, which causes an emergency cabinet to assemble. All of the sudden, a giant creature immediately appears, destroying town after town with its landing reaching the capital. This mysterious giant monster is named "Godzilla".
An old-school Toho logo which appears at the beginning was re-created specifically for the widescreen of this movie by Hiroyasu Kobayashi, a graphic designer at Anno's Studio Khara, as appointed by the director. See more »
Goofs
The drug that the government uses to kill Godzilla is described as something that will "disable his internal cooling system". After the drug is used at the end, Godzilla freezes. If the drug was supposed to disable his internal cooling system, it would have overheated him, not frozen him.
But it's a bit more complex than that... In fact, in the movie the drug actually does manage to disable Godzilla's cooling system, but in stead of overheating him this triggers a SCRAM-shutdown (=Safety Control Rods Activation Mechanism) as a kind of involuntarily overreaction-thus freezing him in the procedure.
By freezing himself temporarily, Godzilla is able to survive this potentially critical trauma. See more »
Quotes
Kayoko Ann Patterson:
I won't see a third bomb dropped on the country of my grandmother, who lived through it.
See more »
The film takes a somber, serious tone as to what would happen if Japan were attacked -- in this case, by a seemingly unstoppable foe.
At present in Japan, there is an ongoing debate as to whether or not Japan should amend it's constitution to allow for an offensive military and this Godzilla film plays to exactly how powerless Japan would be in making it's own decisions during an attack of any kind. The reality is that the Japanese Prime Minister would have to ask for permission from the United States President before making an offensive move against a foreign threat and this film plays to that hard reality.
This new Godzilla starts out as an homage to its former man in a monster suit so that when you first see Godzilla, you'll disbelieve what you're seeing, but this Godzilla evolves into something majestic and utterly awe inspiring in its power.
What's more, this film makes it clear people die. In the Japanese release there's a lot of word play about how the government officials up high (on the fifth floor) make decisions that get passed down to people on lower floors that eventually hurt the people. I'm not sure how much will be translated, but the film is deliberately showing the disconnect between the political and day to day realities.
Overall, the performances are good. There is one character who they, for whatever reason, decided to make speak English in odd an inappropriate times.
This isn't a film for US audiences. The aesthetics will turn off a lot of non-Japanese young people accustomed to CG reality. But if you're open to learning about another culture, this is an excellent film, one of the best kaiju-films you'll ever see.
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The film takes a somber, serious tone as to what would happen if Japan were attacked -- in this case, by a seemingly unstoppable foe.
At present in Japan, there is an ongoing debate as to whether or not Japan should amend it's constitution to allow for an offensive military and this Godzilla film plays to exactly how powerless Japan would be in making it's own decisions during an attack of any kind. The reality is that the Japanese Prime Minister would have to ask for permission from the United States President before making an offensive move against a foreign threat and this film plays to that hard reality.
This new Godzilla starts out as an homage to its former man in a monster suit so that when you first see Godzilla, you'll disbelieve what you're seeing, but this Godzilla evolves into something majestic and utterly awe inspiring in its power.
What's more, this film makes it clear people die. In the Japanese release there's a lot of word play about how the government officials up high (on the fifth floor) make decisions that get passed down to people on lower floors that eventually hurt the people. I'm not sure how much will be translated, but the film is deliberately showing the disconnect between the political and day to day realities.
Overall, the performances are good. There is one character who they, for whatever reason, decided to make speak English in odd an inappropriate times.
This isn't a film for US audiences. The aesthetics will turn off a lot of non-Japanese young people accustomed to CG reality. But if you're open to learning about another culture, this is an excellent film, one of the best kaiju-films you'll ever see.