GODZILLA FINAL WARS conquers New York, Triumphal debut at Subway Cinema's fest

Godzilla fans of all ages were out in force last night for GODZILLA FINAL WARS’ screening at Subway Cinema’s annual New York Asian Film Festival. It was fun to see a film that drew so heavily on forty years of Godzilla lore with a crowd that KNEW that lore. The film’s got 15 or so monsters, plus the occasional references to other Toho films, and the crowd applauded each one. The film also lobs some welcome jabs at the CGI-created iguana erroneously labeled Godzilla in the 1998 Hollywood film of that name.

Plus the cast! It’s got some old-school Godzilla performers in great parts: Kumi Mizuno (from SON OF GODZILLA, MONSTER ZERO, etc.) plays the black-booted, white-coated commander of the Earth Defense Force; Akira Takarada (star of the original GOJIRA!!!) plays the UN Secretary-General; and Kenji Sahara has a smaller part as a paleontologist. Mizuno in her late 60s and Takarada in his early 70s both get to do fighting action! Plus, there’s Jun Kunimura (Boss Tanaka in KILL BILL, Vol. 1) and Kane Kosugi (son of Sho Kosugi), who gets to do some MATRIX-style martial arts battling. There are a couple of gorgeous actresses as a pair of sisters, one a biologist (Rei Kikukawa) and one a newscaster (Maki Mizuno).

Don Frye is some kind of wrestler/martial artist/ultimate fighter/boxer who’s apparently more famous in Japan than here. He plays the tough-guy Captain Gordon (he kind of looks like/is dressed like General Bison from STREET FIGHTER II) and was a particular audience favorite last night. He says all his lines in English and pronounces Godzilla as “Godzilla” and not “Gojira.” One other character (the lead alien) pronounces it both ways while the other characters, as far as I could tell, pronounce it “Gojira.”

There’s more mass destruction in this film than in all 28 previous Godzilla films (and the Gameras) combined. The film plays like a re-working of DESTROY ALL MONSTERS by a crew of filmmakers on acid. It’s an absolutely insane masterpiece. Will Godzilla purists object? I’m sure they will, which means I’m not the Godzilla purist I thought I was, because I enjoyed it.

There was one boy in the audience, aged about ten or eleven and accompanied by his mother, who was surprised that there were so many other people as enthusiastic about Godzilla as he was. He claimed to have seen all 28 of the previous ones. There was a father-and-son team behind me (the boy had to be well under ten) who had clearly seen a lot of Godzilla movies together. The kids in the audience last night will remember this experience forever and thank their parents for it. (My parents never took ME to a Godzilla movie—sob, sob, wah-wah!)

I guess I just wonder what someone who’s never seen a Godzilla movie before would make of this film. I read somewhere that the film flopped in Japan. If that’s so, I can’t wonder why. The younger moviegoing audience there simply isn’t as familiar with Godzilla lore as the audience that attended last night. They would be no more able to identify each of the monsters than any kid in America would. Nor would they care. Something has been lost.

Alright, gotta counter Brian's enthusiastic response with a considerably less-than-enthusiastic response from yours truly, previously posted in an old FINAL WARS thread on this board:

I just saw GODZILLA: FINAL WARS yesterday afternoon in Seattle at the Neptune.

August is 100% right on the money. What a Godzilla-size mess.

Take the entire Showa Godzilla series (especially MONSTER ZERO), ATRAGON, RODAN, GODZILLA (Emmerich), THE MATRIX TRILOGY, STAR WARS, and a few random one-liner-ridden crappy American action films, throw them all in a blender, and press puree. What you get is GODZILLA: FINAL WARS.


SPOILERS BELOW!!!




What I liked about the film:

The reincarnation of Atragon and Manda. Great scene with those two, albeit too CGI-bound. The first shot of Manda is phenomenal.

The fight between Godzilla and Spiega (sp?), the giant spider from SON OF GODZILLA.

The delightful, all-too-short, old-school battle between Godzilla, Anguirus, Rodan, and King Seesar. Although we don't really get a good look at him, it seems like Rodan at least somewhat resembles his classic original 1956 incarnation, after years of looking like either Foghorn Leghorn or a too-realistic pteranodon. And Anguirus really shines...love his jumping tumbling attack. For once he's a force to be reckoned with. King Seesar's face is all wrong (for that matter, so is Godzilla's), but it's still great to see him working again.

The one >subtle< in-joke: the two guys casually jamming to the excellent Masaru Sato music score from GODZILLA VS. MECHAGODZILLA (1974).

What I didn't like about the film:

Practically everything else. The ersatz-MATRIX action (complete with a Keanu Reeves lookalike) stops the film dead in its tracks whenever it occurs, keeping the monsters offscreen for way, way too long. Some monster appearances are only pointless cameos, like poor Hedorah, who drops in for literally only a couple of seconds before getting obliterated. Ebirah gets more action, but you never get a good look at him. Ditto for Rodan. A big deal was made of the fossilized Gigan, but after he comes back to life, he's dispatched pretty quickly, and with little fanfare. And what the hell was up with Ghidorah? At least I think it was supposed to be him, although I don't recall seeing his name appear in the subtitles. At any rate, his two incarnations in this film are the WORST EVER. He can barely move. Mothra gets another thankless guest-star appearance, showing up at the end to help save the day like in GODZILLA VS. THE SEA MONSTER. No thought whatsoever was given to the integration of the monsters into the ill-conceived story. None.

The music score is horrible...is this really the great Keith Emerson? What happened??? And why did they insist on throwing in a ridiculous main character who's a cross between Jesse Ventura, Steven Seagal, and Dick Butkus? Yikes!

Kenji Sahara (RODAN and many other Kaiju classics) and Kumi Mizuno (MATANGO, WAR OF THE GARGANTUAS, MONSTER ZERO, and many others) are sadly wasted in nothing roles.

The fact that there are a couple of things I really like thrown into this horrendous train wreck of a film makes things all the more frustrating. I almost wish I completely hated it.

I was simply thrilled to see Godzilla Final Wars. It is an excessive movie, so many good things, some really bad but overall, i really enjoyed it. I don't understand why it did not do well in Japan, if it is so. So many Kaiju, so many fights, so many explosions, still more action and mostly a great score. What i dislikes were the Minya bits, all silly, but it is in the spirit of these movies, the SON OF GODZILLA and it's sequel, so Kitamura really summed up 50 years of Kaiju movies. Thumbs up for Godzilla FINAL WARS !

"Alright, gotta counter Brian's enthusiastic response with a considerably less-than-enthusiastic response from yours truly, previously posted in an old FINAL WARS thread on this board:

I just saw GODZILLA: FINAL WARS yesterday afternoon in Seattle at the Neptune.

August is 100% right on the money. What a Godzilla-size mess."


Hmmm, Jeff, could it be...could there be the remotest possibility that the folks in Seattle felt somewhat slighted that the monster attacks in the film bypassed your fair city for your northern neighbor, Vancouver? I might be a little miffed, too, if, say, the monsters in the film ignored New York (which they most certainly didn't) and went after Boston. Oh...just a thought.

BTW, the Vancouver scene is pretty funny. It involves a young Godzilla fanboy and his kaiju action figures. (I forget which monster attacks, though.)

If you went into it expecting a serious Godzilla movie, I could understand your reaction. I had read August's sum-up and I might have skipped the spoiler part of yours, Jeff, so maybe I went in expecting a little less. Maybe it was simply the exhilaration of seeing it with so many like-minded souls. Granted, it's a lunatic movie, but the lunacy is done with such affection and conviction. There's so much pleasure in so many scenes of the type we used to get with so many kaiju films, including the scenes you mention liking. It's the kind of pleasure we get from so many Japanese genre films/TV shows, e.g. the live-action CUTIE HONEY and TV's sentai shows that supply the "Power Rangers" franchise with action scenes.

Granted, GODZILLA FINAL WARS lacks the poetry we got with the best kaiju/Godzilla films (e.g. MOTHRA, WAR OF THE GARGANTUAS, GODZILLA VS. MECHAGODZILLA 1993 version, GAMERA 3, etc.). But how many films in the genre manage to come up with that kind of poetry?

GFW was clearly a departure for the series, a different direction, a chance to pay true homage to the entire Godzilla series and a chance to go out with a bang. I can see why some will think they went wrong, but I thought they went wrong back with the horrible GODZILLA 2000 and the mediocre G VS. MEGAGUIRUS and GMK: GIANT MONSTERS ALL-OUT ATTACK. I thought they were coming back with G X MECHAGODZILLA and G: TOKYO SOS. I would have welcomed another serious film in that vein, but I got swept up in the hallucinatory madness of the new one and the wholesale piling on of references and classic monsters and was totally sucked in. It was a rare cinematic experience.

I still say it would have been perfect if the Godzilla films had stopped with GODZILLA VS. DESTROYER. Now THAT was a perfect ending to a monster saga. No Godzilla film I've seen that was produced after that has been very good IMO, although I did like G VS. MEGAGUIRUS a bit.

Brian-
Damn, I missed this. Will they be showing this again? Have any info or links?
-Bill

Yeah, Bill, it's showing again on Tuesday night at 9PM at the Anthology Film Archives. The links for info are in the NYAFF thread.

Ahh, a fan boy never has enough time! Unfortunately, I am seeing a free advance screening of LAND OF THE DEAD Tues evening and heading straight to a party from there. Life is hard sometimes.

Jeff, i would say that anybody that does not like GMK cannot like GODZILLA FINAL WARS, and it is your right to not like it, I have respect for that. GMK is to me the almost perfect Godzilla movie, full of parts that i so much wanted to see and a Godzilla so powerful, and it's what i find in Godzilla FINAL WARS, a powerful Godzilla and scripted parts that are so much fun, like the Ebirah part, so much action, incredible, from a monster that was so.... almost boring, that is pure magic for me, to take a silly monster and make him an out of this world power force.

Godzilla Final Wars is something else and may not be to every one's taste, but it is one hell of a monster movie, for me and some others.

I just came back from the sold-out Tuesday night show. It's such a radical departure from the norm (which, to be honest, had gone staid if not stale) that I don't know where to begin. It has all the excesses I hate in a movie like VAN HELSING (it's almost the kaiju VAN HELSING) but, somehow, brought to bear on Godzilla in its present, somewhat ho-hum incarnation, they sort of...worked. It's ridiculous and intriguing, all at once, and, to paraphrase another comment, if it had been any better, it might have been just plain unwatchable. More monsters and less MATRIX would have made for a more even experience but the crazy quilt approach yielded a few dividends.

Of course, it helps to see a film like this with an appreciative audience, and NYAFF audiences are nothing if not enthusiastic. If I'd been watching a DVD of the film I'd probably have calluses from the constant fast-forwarding but the crowd hit every curveball lobbed at them.

And I was pleased to be a part of the experience. My friend and I had two extra tickets that we sold (at face value) to a father and son who were first on the standby line. When the boy won the top prize of the night (a Godzilla model) during the evening's trivia contest the host singled us out for giving them the tickets in the first place. That lent a nice, Godzilla glow to the evening for us. The kid must be thrilled! [So, too, the Toho reps in attendance.]

By the way, I saw GODZILLA: FINAL WARS a few hours after a screening of Ingmar Bergman's SARABAND. That's the direction kaiju should take: Bergman. Godzilla and Rodan conversing in Swedish, in cries and whispers, about mortality.

This post has been edited by Bob Cashill on Jun 21 2005, 11:43 PM

I'm especially envious of those who managed to catch the festival screenings after reading this in Dennis Harvey's generally enthusiastic Variety review:

"In the States, it's slated for July DVD release in English-dubbed form."

Dare we hope for a subtitled import disc?

That seems off mainly for the reason that the last couple of G films have recieved subbed releases. Oh its been confirmed that despite some reports that GFW R2 will have no Eng subs

I watched GODZILLA TOKYO S.O.S again a little while ago. After the end credits finish there's something that certainly is a set-up for a sequel. If you've watched S.O.S. all the way to the end, you know what it is. I'm just curious if this was followed thru and used as part of the plot of GODZILLA:FINAL WARS or was it conveniently forgotten?

This post has been edited by Chas Lindsay on Jun 22 2005, 08:54 PM

It's not that I was looking for a "serious" Godzilla film with GFW... I love the goofy '70s films (HEDORAH, GIGAN, MEGALON, MECHAGODZILLA and TERROR OF MG)... I was just expecting a well-made film with a cohesive self-identity... GFW is just to schizophrenic and tries to be all things to all people. It's a mess. I would rather sit through GODZILLA VS. GIGAN (not a perfect film by any means) than GFW... GODZILLA VS. MEGALON is a better film, because it has no illusions of itself. Glad that people enjoyed it, though...

Masaaki Tezuka's GODZILLA AGAINST MECHAGODZILLA (2002) and GODZILLA: TOKYO SOS were essentially parts one and two of the "Kiryu Saga" ("Kiryu", or "Machine Dragon", is the name of the Mechagodzilla robot). There was no intention of a third film from the get-go.

Well the people have spoken - both shows sold out - and in the audience ballots it was like 80% excellent, 15 pct good, 4% fair and 1% "What were you thinking". Its messy - incredibly messy - like the director had 2 hours to live and wanted to get everything he could on the screen - it was chaotic craziness that was wonderfully entertaining.

It would have been ten bazillion times better if all the ersatz-Matrix garbage was ixnayed. But it still would have been pretty messy.

you said it well enough, even though MEGALON was interesting, yes, Godzilla Final Wars is so much over the top, i don't think there's any way you can put them on the same tray, if i can say that.

Long live Godzilla !

Okay, I finally tracked down this old thread. I rented GFW on DVD (hoping to brush away some of the stress from the transit strike/freezing weather combo Santa gave NYC) and I must say I really, truly hated it. I respect the opinions of those kaiju fans who enjoyed it, but I find such joy really puzzling. I've never been so embarassed to be a kaiju fan. Thankfully, I didn't ask anyone to watch it with me. Even more thankfully, I didn't go see it at the Subway Cinema screening, as I would have probably walked out and loudly demanded my money back. I was happily prepared for something crazy and goofy, and I certainly have love for stupid genre flicks, but I could never get into the mood with this mess. The best of the kaiju films opened my imagination to what it really would be like if enormous monsters started ripping apart the world I live in. This film was barely a kaiju film for almost an hour, then showed me an extended trailer of guys in monster suits pulling off fantasy kung-fu moves. I kept comparing it to hyper videogames for sugar-addicted kids, except I kept remembering so many videogames that were more subtle, evenly paced, and more emotionally engaging. There were a few monster moments I liked, but it certainly was no GMK for me. Inserting endless monsters from my childhood kaiju memories does not make a flat MATRIX rip-off into a Godzilla film.

A Godzilla film should make me feel like a kid again. This film made me feel very old.

Wow, someone had to go to a thread from back in June to break the monopoly the Twins' music video thread was having on this board over the past few days.

From the Twins to Godzilla, what could be better? Oh, well...I'm sorry you had this experience, William. I couldn't swear to you that I wouldn't have had a similar reaction to the film if I first saw it at home alone. There was something about seeing it on a big screen with a packed house full of roaring kaiju fans that enhanced the experience. I mean you just got taken away to a different universe and threw your preconceptions away. I'm sure as I was watching it that there were very quick flashes of superego critical thinking trying to temper the out-of-control id with thoughts like, "Isn't this just a little TOO ridiculous?" and "If the crowd weren't here, would you accept this nonsense?" But they quickly got suppressed. I'm planning to get the new DVD in the new year and we'll see how it holds up on a second viewing.

I'm sitting out the transit strike at home. With computer, e-mail and phone (and plenty of people who did make it into the office coming from NJ and LI), I can get key work done at home. Why join the entire commuter population of the Central Bronx at the Fordham Rd. Metro-North commuter stop when I don't have to. I remember the 1980 strike. I had a less secure job and NEEDED to get into work, the weather was nicer (it was April) and people were more in harmony. Plus I was 25 years younger and could stand the long walks and long waits.

This post has been edited by Brian Camp on Dec 22 2005, 02:59 PM

Despite being friends with Godzilla suit actor Tsutomu Kitagawa, who was the Monster Action Director on GFW, I *hate* this film -- it's a mess because of director Ryuhei Kitamura's smug excesses and flippant attitude in approaching the material. I wanted to like the film when I attended the Hollywood Premiere last year (as a guest of Toho), but as the film unspooled, I felt as embarassed as William D'Annucci was. Mind you, this was less than two weeks after sitting through 20 movies during the seven-day "Godzillafest" I programmed http://www.sfgodzillafest.com

The earlier films -- even Tezuka's last pair (GODZILLA AGAINST MECHAGODZILLA and GODZILLA: TOKYO SOS, which were better tributes to the legacy of Ishiro Honda and Eiji Tsuburaya) -- were far superior in their purity than the unmitigated pop-cultural nightmare that is GFW. IMHO.

This post has been edited by August Ragone on Dec 22 2005, 08:51 PM