You know, back in those days, you simply believed in a giant
monster near your island or Village that you regularly
sacrifice maidens to that, just seems to be a universal constant
in society. Yeah, of course.
I'm no. And also do that.
Hello, everyone. And welcome to Castle Bravo.
A Godzilla versus retrospective I'm Derek and I'm Charles It and
we're two siblings here to examine the history of the
Godzilla franchise one movie at a time.
So for those of you who didn't listen to episode 0 which was a
sort of preview sort of explainer for the series to
come, what is Castle Bravo, basically.
Charlotte and I are going to sit down and work our way through my
consideration of the Godzilla franchise from its humble.
Humble beginnings, in 1954 all the way up to the modern day.
We've broken this. These movies up into several
seasons where we will try to examine kind of a Story arc in
the overall formation of the Godzilla franchise.
So we're not exactly reviewing these movies where more, you
know, watching these movies, we're going over them.
We're finding what we like and dislike Charlotte you.
And I also just have very different histories with
Godzilla. Yeah, I know that you basically
know everything about Godzilla and I have played some Godzilla
video games, and I think I've watched like, two movies with
you. And I, of course, I saw the like
the American one, and it's going to be rough to got to, but we'll
deal with that and in Several seasons.
But yeah, yeah. Now that's the extent of my
Godzilla knowledge. Yeah, it's very funny because
you're going to recognize a lot of these like Monsters and their
designs from playing some video games on like, you know,
GameCube and PS2 and so on versus I'm somebody who's
manically watched so many of these movies.
So it's going to be very interesting for us to go through
these and kind of re-experience the franchise from the beginning
and watch how it grows. Watch how the special effects
grow talk about some of the politics of the series, when
there actually is, Takes to the movies because some of them
really are big dumb monster romps and some of them like the
very first movie. We're going to talk about very
famously is a fairly political film, but yeah, not not anything
as self-serious is like a review podcast.
I'd rather talk about the overarching sort of narrative of
how the franchise came to be. Because I think that it's
interesting, how all of these separate basically unconnected
movies form together to become what we now consider Godzilla.
But for a long, Time really was not.
So, we're starting today as as one should, with the 1954
original. Now, I obviously had seen this
movie multiple versions of this movie because when multiple cuts
of it that have made their way to u.s.
Shores, Charlotte had you seen this movie before we started
this podcast know? So this is one of those ones
that has this legendary sort of reception and status as a Old
sci-fi horror movie with some actual real strong social, and
political messages in it. But I also think it's a movie
that not a lot of people have actually seen despite its
status. And I think part of that's
because it's 1954 and black and white which I know is not an
issue for you know I watch a lot of old horror movies and stuff
so yeah and you're also a big fan of like Kurosawa.
So you you're not even unfamiliar with a lot of black
and white you know this era Japanese Cinema.
Ah. Yeah, I've seen quite a few of
those movies mostly for film classes and stuff, but I enjoy
that stuff, too. Yeah, so for those who haven't
watched the movie Charlotte, why don't you tell us roughly what
this movie is about? What?
What happens in the original Godzilla, okay?
So ship start disappearing in the Seas near Tokyo bay and they
start sending out boats to try to recover them, and then those
ships disappear to and a Survivor gets to Shore and
states that a monster. Did it the people Of the island
that the Survivor gets to have deemed that monster Godzilla
after their Legends, they used to sacrifice women to it, which
you do it. You know, back in those days,
you simply believed in a giant monster near your island or
Village that you regularly sacrifice maidens to that, just
seems to be a universal constant in society.
Yeah, of course, I'm known to also do that.
So Godzilla starts, you know, pushing further and further and
deeper into Tokyo bay the government.
Keep trying to find ways to Keep it out.
And also to try to keep the story contained as to not cause
Panic, dr. Yamane is trying to determine
the origins of the creature. And he wants to keep it alive
and study It While others hope to use dr.
Serizawa has new weapon, the oxygen Destroyer, which is
essentially a bubble weapon that vaporizes fish.
The kill it. It's a great, it's a little
simplified but you're not wrong. Hey this is a summary So
eventually dr. Serizawa agrees but he decides
to This is too dangerous of a weapon to have.
So he takes the weapon down underwater with himself and sets
it off, because he doesn't want anyone else to use his work.
So, he ends up, killing Godzilla and himself and before he died.
He, of course, destroyed all of his notes.
So no one can use it again. So Godzilla's killed.
And at the very end, they're basically saying this is going
to happen again, if the nuclear test don't stop and that's the
movie. Yeah, it's actually very
interesting. I like this movie, it starts off
very like fractured and Mented, right?
Like you don't even know who the main characters are.
I don't think you have any semblance of a cast until almost
half an hour like right like 20 30 minutes into the movie,
because before then it's just a bunch of scenes of like
government buildings and like people reacting to what's going
on. But you don't have a firm idea
that like there's any continuous cast until you get to that
Island. After the Survivor washes,
ashore and you have dr. Your Mane, you know,
investigating like the footprints and testing for
radioactivity. Being and then touching the
radioactive water, which I would.
I would like to believe that. Yeah.
That like a professor or somebody with that degree of
Education would maybe know like hey the geiger counter is going
crazy. Let's not touch the water but he
sure does do it. Yeah like he just grabs a groups
of people and he just hangs out in this radioactive water.
Yeah. Like it's not that.
Yeah. Just like yeah this is big S big
as footprint. What's up, man?
Here's some prehistoric fossils in the footprint.
That tells you that what made this is old because that's how
it works. You and I regularly Early, walk
around with snail, stuck to the bottom of our feet or whatever.
Oh, it's very, it's very interesting because when it
comes around to actually trying to figure out what Godzilla is
and think unlike a lot of movies of the time, the original
Godzilla is kind of willing to let Godzilla's Origins be a bit
of a mystery, they think he's some kind of prehistoric
dinosaur-like creature that got mutated by atomic tests but they
don't know if he was mutated or woken, they don't, they don't
know what he is something to do. Racine before and they'll never
have an answer to what Godzilla is at least within this movie.
Yeah, a lot of newer movies like to focus on the what and the why
but in this movie it's just like you don't know but we have to
stop it. Yeah.
Destroying every yeah and I like that kind of focus on like this
is not, it's not so important. What its Origins are so much as
it's causing problems right now and killing people and
destroying Tokyo night after night.
That it comes back, and we've got to do something.
Thing about it. But also the one thing that they
do seem to figure out is this was very definitely created by
American nuclear testing and and we'll kind of get into some of
the politics of this because there's a fantastic scene where
the diet which is sort of like Congress, I guess would be the
best way to describe it to a lot of Western listeners.
It's yeah, it's yeah, it's basically like a Japanese
government assembly or like debating, whether or not it's
worthwhile to expose that Americans accidentally created
Godzilla or not. But yeah, and then Resolver is
kind of interesting character. Who again, we'll get into as we
talk a little more deeply about the politics of the movie, but
Sarah is always is very interesting character aside from
the fact that you first see him like on a dock full of cheering
people looking somber with his eye patch and you're like, huh?
I wonder which of these is a major character like, you know,
he's a very interesting kind of look into a character who's
dealing with a lot of kind of I don't know exactly how to
describe this but he's definitely Definitely not
neurotypical in regards to, he's definitely dealing with some
PTSD and rage and things like that kind of under the surface.
Yeah. And for some reason his, his
outlet for that was to create the oxygen Destroyer.
Yeah, I have a theory about that.
That's not actually explicitly described anywhere and I guess I
should explain this now, rather than continue to put this down
the road, but Sarah's Allah is by word of God, a former
Japanese soldier during World War, To which to be fair.
If you were a man, his age in 1954, you probably were one way
or another part of the Japanese Army in World War 2.
That's just how time works and how drafts work.
But that really does the idea of him as a kind of scarred, former
Japanese soldier who is now gone into Academia.
But invents this super weapon like the movie, doesn't say it,
the directors never said it, but it makes a lot of sense that
maybe He's looking for something that is kind of a counter-attack
to the American bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
That's, you know, what that it's full on headcanon but it makes
too much sense with some of what we know about Sarah zawa and I
love that. There's a lot of this sort of
detail that you can infer from basic details about the movie
which then makes his i.d. You know, his realization that
the weapon. He's created the oxygen.
Destroyer is is simply too dangerous and that if he Was it
to make its way into the mainstream?
That it will simply be part of a continued cycle of escalation of
mankind, creating new weapons with which to kill each other
and he chooses to destroy his notes and die in order to end
that cycle. I think that makes that a lot
more powerful. If you consider that, he may be.
The origins of this weapon were in kind of an angry attempt to
to get sort of Revenge for the attacks on Japan, which I'm sure
a lot of people in Japan weren't too happy about.
About. I'm sure.
Yeah I mean what 1954 this was less than 10 years right after
the right, clear bombings of Japan.
So you know Most people alive at the time.
Remember them very clearly. Yeah, I can imagine.
Yeah, honestly. So before we delve back into the
politics of the movie because I just really didn't want to punt
that that thought process too far.
Down the road, I want to talk real quick about the monsters in
this movie of which, of which there's only one and it's
Godzilla himself itself, it's not really clear.
I think, from what I've heard Godzilla is consistently
referred to with With non-gendered terminology a lot
of times in Japanese but that's I'm not an expert.
My understanding is that's not too uncommon for things like
Monsters to not be referred to with he or she kind of words.
That's a very that's a thing we do in English a lot but in
Japanese it's a lot more of like that and it but of course we've
consistently used, masculine terms for Godzilla in English
dubs and Godzilla's got that title of king of the monsters.
So I guess Like me. We're just making it up as we go
along when it comes to Godzilla's gender identity.
Yeah, you know, and that's fine. Yeah.
But I really like, Godzilla's suit design in this movie.
I mean, first appearance of Godzilla and Godzilla's very
creepy. The suit is intentionally
designed where the scales resemble, the keloid scars that
you saw on the survivors of the nuclear bombings.
In Japan was kind of deep radiation burn scars.
Got those very creepy beady, eyes and weird kind of out poke
needle teeth. This is definitely not the like
fun. Weird Cookie Monster thing.
We'd see, you know, a decade from now, right?
Although they did switch between like the suit and then very
clearly a sock puppet. Yeah, yeah.
Well I got a sock puppet, they definitely had.
Yeah. Pop a hand puppet for a couple
of those close up shots on the head and the hand puppets a
little off model. Like the the suit design is
incredible and then the puppet is Just a little like uneven and
wonky looking. But, you know, I mean, 1954 like
this movie was ahead of its time on effects work.
Oh, yeah. So directed by ishiro Honda who
we're going to talk about a lot this season, this first season
of Castle Bravo because he's going to direct every single
movie we talk about other than the second Godzilla movie, which
seems weird and we'll get around to that.
And then the effects work were by longtime collaborator of
Hondas eiji tsuburaya. These two kind of became a
Godzilla Dream Team. Mmmmm well, really a Sci-Fi
Dream Team for Touhou for many, many years and tsuburaya kind of
pioneered, a lot of these soup mation techniques that were used
in this movie and a lot of future movies.
If you're a big fan of like, Power Rangers or Ultraman, or
Kamen Rider or anything like that, any of that kind of
Japanese suit television movie, sort of stuff, a lot of that
Artistry comes from doing the suit for the original Godzilla
because this original movie was actually going to be good,
Claymation, stop motion, like, harryhausen style, kind of look
with, was harryhausen doing effects at this point.
Do I have my timeline, right? They were inspired by a couple
of Western, like, American monster movies that had similar,
kind of, claymation and puppetry stop motion effects for
Monsters. And they're basically told that
would take way way too long to actually do the movie that way.
So they just, they built a giant suit to put a man in, and the
original suit is like 200 pounds of foam and rubber.
So the The poor actor inside, the suit was incredibly hot and
Incredibly tired, every day that he was shooting, I've read that
they would peel him out of that suit.
And then pour a literal cup of his own sweat out of the, the
rubber of the suit. Yeah.
Yeah, it wasn't great. But, yeah, so that the special
effects work in this first movie is, I think we look back on it
now and it seems very quaint. But for 1954, this was really
groundbreaking stuff. Yeah.
And then, yeah, I think at this
point, it's well-known trivia that this was movie was inspired
by the nuclear bombings of Japan as well as maybe less known the
1954 Castle Bravo nuclear test, which was us the Americans tell
you have, that's where that comes from.
That's where hurricane. Yeah, but it's, it's the 1954
nuclear tests that America did in the Bikini at all and
famously The Castle Bravo nuclear test.
Accidentally saw some unexpected and unintentional casualties
from Japanese fishermen who were near the testing site which is
where a lot of the opening of this movie comes into play with
the fishing boats disappearing, people actually at the time
called exploitive for Honda 02. Yeah, 22.
So, clearly be referencing events that were like six months
old at the time that this movie came out.
Okay. I could see that, I guess I'll
kind of, I don't believe that it's exploitive.
I have done. A lot of reading about issue.
Honda in recent years and I have grown a lot of appreciation for
him and his beliefs in these recent months as I've really
read more into him to prepare for this podcast and we'll get
into that in a second. The last little bit of trivia
thing, I want to bring up, I don't know.
You said you'd never seen Lee original cut.
Had you ever seen the American recut?
Godzilla king of the monsters? No, not just like I hadn't seen
either. Yeah.
Not the not the 2000. What was it, 2018. 19, whatever.
Legendary the one with, with Zella.
And I've seen shin guards. Yeah, so I have complicated
feelings on both of those. And the shin Godzilla episodes
gonna get me in trouble with Godzilla fandom, but I'll deal
with that when it comes. But yeah, so that we did an
American recut of movie called Godzilla king of the monsters,
slightly recut, the movie inserted a lot of scenes with
American gay icon, Raymond Burr. As this, you know, American
journalist named Steve Martin, which is a I'm that is hard to
say and not immediately think of a completely different person
nowadays. Yeah, but he is like stationed
in Japan when this happens, and there's a lot of scenes of him,
narrating things or kind of recording his audio Diary of
what's going on. And, and that was their way of
trying to sell it to American audiences.
And it's definitely a worse cut of the movie.
But at the same time, it's probably the only way you could
have given a black and white Japanese monster movie to
America. And see any success at all in
the 1950s. So yeah, they were going to sit
through. Yeah.
Subtitles people today, don't do subtitles like do you really
think people? Yeah, 60 years ago we're going
to do subtitles oh my God it's 65 plus 60, 70 G's.
I don't want to think about those words and numbers that's a
long Godzilla's old trying to think about Tom yeah.
Time is tough time. Sure do be hittin real bad.
Mmm, so Not every Godzilla movie is political.
In fact, many of them are very dumb but I do think extra-long
first episode is a great time to talk about kind of the politics
of the original film, as well as kind of get into issue, Honda's
backstory and what beliefs, we can maybe glean from it.
Because it's not like Honda ever came out and wrote like a book
about his life and like here's all of the things I believe you
kind of have to glean a lot of it from his Is work and from his
Origins, I'm going to, I'm going to start with issue, Honda's
personal life, if I may. Okay.
So the director of this movie, you sure do Honda, who in a lot
of ways. I guess, you could call may be
the most influential person behind the creation of Godzilla.
Like it's definitely not a one-person effort, tsuburaya
clearly had a lot of hand and helping to design Godzilla
because Godzilla had to be something that he could
physically create for a suit technology.
The Producer of the film, obviously, had some saying it,
but it does seem like, Honda has maybe the biggest hand to play,
and what we consider kind of the iconic meaning behind Godzilla,
Honda's father, and grandfather were both.
They both worked in Buddhist temples, is from what I've read,
and he comes from a heavily Buddhist family.
And he at a young age, gets drafted into World War Two.
He does not sign up for the Japanese Imperial.
Real army in World War Two. He gets drafted against his
will, which is not too surprising.
When you consider, what his beliefs must have been as a
Buddhist. He, there's not a lot of
information out about what he did during World War Two, I have
read that. He spent some time having to
guard the camps where the Japanese kept their comfort
women, which is a horrible. Yeah, a horrible horrible
practice where Japan basically kidnapped and forcibly enslaved
into sex work, a lot of Maine. And Asian women usually see
China and South Korea to this day.
Still kind of demanding that Japan acknowledge what they did,
which Japan does not like to do as a nation and as a government.
Yeah. So that and I think that detail
that he watched over or was a guard at one of these whatever
you want to call it, I mean, let's call it a sex slave Camp
because it's basically what it is.
Yeah. You know again, for somebody who
comes from a long, pretty pretty heavily Just family for many
generations that that must have been pretty shocking to have to
deal with. And I think some of it shows
through and maybe some later movies that we'll get to his
thoughts on that sort of thing comes back home.
He's actually in Japan when the bombings of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki occur, which can't be good for your mental health.
I would imagine not. And I've also read from a couple
different articles that he was forced to film.
For like, the government of Japan.
But I can't find out how much of that was before like, during
World War Two. And how much of it was post
World War Two? I do know that tsuburaya and and
Honda both had a passion for filmography and you would see
Honda. Once Honda got to make more of
his own movies delving, a lot into like, Pulp sci-fi, where
there would frequently be these kind of themes of when something
goes wrong, when a bad person does something, or a country
does something awful that, it's a failure of humanity, rather
than this country is bad. And when somebody does something
good, it is more of sort of a credit to humanity.
And it's showing the virtues within all of us.
There's definitely a lot of sort of humanists sort of like Global
human esteems within his Works which has, that's not
surprising. Yeah, given his back.
Right. What is surprising?
Is that these? I don't think any of the movies
that I'm familiar with her have seen are really anti-nationalist
specifically, but the complete absence of any strong
nationalist themes repeatedly through his work, almost all of
which is set in Japan. I think that's very interesting.
And I think that's very telling because nationalism has much
like in America, Japan has always had a really strong sense
of nationalism and modern Times. And I think it's hard to
necessarily explain things in the 1950s on like, a modern
right versus left, political Spectrum.
But to be to, to choose to consciously, portray things, as
being about Humanity, revving, about Nations.
I do think is sort of a political statement in and of
itself. Yeah.
I mean, I would not be surprised if a lot of the movies back then
were just like our country is good and the other countries are
bad. Well, especially giving them
somebody who was, who had to do. Propaganda for a while to break
away from that, you know, and maybe that's it.
Maybe it's just I got sick of doing nationalist stuff.
And I want to, I want to swing to a different perspective but
again like given a very strict Buddhist background.
I would imagine that that nationalism is really far less
important than sort of the human soul and human spirit and
potential. There is, we mentioned that
scene in the Japanese diet where they're arguing over, whether or
not to reveal that America likely.
Caused or created Godzilla or at the very least caused Godzilla
to wake up and start attacking Japan.
It's not like Godzilla knows who detonated a nuke on top of it,
right? But it's really interesting
because kind of the argument they're having in this short
scene in the diet, I think is very telling they talk about how
we have a duty to tell the truth about who is responsible for
this and why this is happening, but then the counter argument to
that is, okay? But the world's only just really
coming together and building these diplomatic Relationships
again, and we're building our relationships with America and
all of this is very important and we can't sacrifice that kind
of Global. Peace over this over an accident
is not at an act of War. This is you know a mistake.
It is that Global Peace more important than telling the
truth. No matter what.
And I think that when you consider this is less than 10
years after America, intentionally dropped two
nuclear bombs on Japan that you have.
Yeah. Somebody portraying the It
going, hey, maybe it's more important for us to remain
diplomatic allies with America and for all of these countries
to get along rather, than to cause tensions with the sort of
thing. You know, the scene doesn't
outright say that that is the correct Choice.
It definitely leaves it. Where like, these are two sides
arguing, and who knows who is correct?
But to even present that argument again, I think is
telling because that's a Japanese director saying there
is weight to this argument that, like, maybe it's better for us
to overlook these things and simply move.
Forward you know for the sake of the world not for the sake of
Japan. Yeah I can imagine that was
probably upsetting for some people.
Yeah yeah well and you know I think that's where you not to
overeat into this but I think it's where you get away with
having it be like a debate seeing like that is like you can
you can maybe sneak in scenes like this are great as a
Storyteller because you can sneak in what you believe and
leave it as one of two sides, but you can put it against the
popular thing and put them. On kind of even ground and go,
who's to say, and you're simply introducing that idea and that
that idea has equal weight to your viewers, may be trying to
heavily implied, right? Right.
Like, hey, you should give weight to this at a bare
minimum, which again, 1950s, Japan, kind of a brave thing to
say, kind of a brave thing to present.
That maybe Japanese nationalism is not as important as kind of
the, the global peace and Global Connections and diplomacy,
right? So like deeply Deeply political
movie, I do. I wonder if you wanted to maybe
talk a little bit about kind of what this movie has to say,
about the arms race, given. All of what we've been talking
about with like Sarah zawa and Honda's, backstory and politics
and so on. Yeah, so this movie is presented
as so they just fell out, I mean, a very loud noise in my
microphone. This is this movie is presented
as kind of a natural disaster. Disaster Movie for the most
part. Yeah.
It is very much more like structured.
Like a like a disaster movie than like a monster movie.
That's a good call. Yeah, and you know they very
very brazenly State. This natural disaster was caused
because of the fact that we use nuclear weapons on each other
and maybe we shouldn't do that. But the entire movie, they are
going into radioactive locations, there's a scene where
a bunch of people are sitting around getting scanned with
Geiger. Ders and like separated from
each other, and oh my God, does he do, they start scanner
scanning people and they scan the, like eight-year-old boy,
and the counter is going. Yeah, hearts.
And you just, you just immediately know, like, oh, that
little boy is gonna die slowly from radiation poisoning.
That's often it wouldn't it. Wouldn't surprise me if that was
something that he had seen fog. I mean, yeah, how much of that
extended section of the movie after Godzilla's first attack
in, Tokyo must have been inspired.
And directly by the aftermath of the American nuclear bombings in
Japan that scene where the, the mother is pronounced dead and
taken away as the little girl, the like three-year-old girl
starts screaming and crying. That was hard.
Yeah, that was real screaming and crying.
I don't know where they sourced that from.
But Wharf. That was yeah, rough to watch
and listen to yeah. And I think that whole thing
makes a very clear statement about what Leaving behind.
When we use a weapon yet, you have the scene where there's
like the mom and her kids who were in the middle of Godzilla's
attack. Going like don't worry.
We'll be seeing daddy soon like she's yeah, fuck that's dark
bro. That's kind of dark.
Honda my guy. Are you okay?
Yeah, this is a heavy movie. I think people don't realize
before they see this movie, that like this movie has some shit to
say and show. This is not a big dumb monster
movie, right. And on top of Of all that it's
talking about the fact that we just don't know what what's
going to happen. Because of the fact that people
use weapons like this, it could awaken a giant lizard.
Yeah, for all we know, we don't know what kind of aftermath, you
know, that kind of radiation has.
Because it's a thing we hadn't studied really at the time.
Well, I'm down to the last, I mean, a, the fact that you had
the whole subplot with Sarah's Iowa and venting the oxygen
Destroyer. This weapon that would vaporize
all oxygen atoms in water within X radius, and was this
horrifying weapon, even more potential.
Devastating than the nuclear weapons and realize that he was
contributing to the kind of cycle of escalation.
Yeah. And that that's what I was going
to get to this is that it's just a statement on the fact that if
we continue to escalate, you know, we're all going to die.
And that's and him being is humanist.
As he is, that's the most important thing he could take
away from all this. I think, is that we just need to
stop because even after Sarah zawa sacrifices himself and
stops that part of the, the cycle of escalation.
Yeah. Mate, at the end of Movie is
still like hey there's gonna be another Godzilla because we're
if we keep doing Atomic test if we keep fucking with the shit we
already have, this is still going to continue.
It wasn't enough for us to just cut off the next step.
We're still here at this point which I mean really ends the
movie on a pretty dark and somber note, to be honest with
you. Yeah, I gotta say it's a good
thing that the oxygen Destroyer doesn't wake anything up or?
Yeah. Well, you know well we got a
couple Seasons before we get to that.
One of one of everyone's favorite Godzilla movies in 95.
So, is this movie good? That seems like a stupid
question to ask for this particular movie.
I think it's incredible. Yes, I love.
I actually think this is one of those movies that despite being
incredibly old and in black and white.
And I think you have a hard time, convincing, a lot of
people to watch a very old black and white movie much less like
Godzilla. Like it's hard to get people to
watch a Godzilla movie because everyone has this idea that
they're all very dumb and don't get me wrong.
And many of them are, they're very entertaining dumb and we'll
get to those ones. But like I think this is a movie
that a lot more people should see if anybody's going to watch
one Godzilla movie. I wish they would watch the
original and I think even if you're not interested in
Godzilla, I think people should watch the original.
It's a film classic. It has inspired and led to so
much in special effects advancement is just a good ass
movie. It's a good movie and I think
that the structure of the V is very simple and I feel like a
lot of movies after it used its structure.
Yes, I think it's interesting again.
Like we talked about it a bit but at the beginning of the
movie it's this very chaotic. It's all over the place.
You're just seeing kind of the during the mystery phase of the
movie before you have any idea, what's going on?
You also don't have any idea of like a cast or a central
location or anything. It's just jumping around and
then once we get more into the hardcore investigation, then we
start meeting characters by name and then we start.
About Godzilla. And then we get into like the
love triangle between Ogata and Amico and dr.
Serizawa and then things start to come together, right?
And I kind of like that, it's, it feels amateurish at first,
but then it pulls together and you're like, oh, this was a very
intentional, structural choice and that's cool as shit.
Yeah. As simple as it is, it works.
And I think that people should watch this movie, it's just a
good movie. If you like Godzilla at all, if
you like monster movies, if you like natural disaster movies,
Like horror movies to good watch.
Yeah. So I'm going to I'm going to
throw one more little thing under what did we like?
And this might just be a case of my very broken by sexual brain,
but everybody in this movie was hot as fuck in, like a weird
old-timey way. Do you know what I mean?
Yeah, I know what you mean. Yeah.
Like, oh God has got that kind of like real rugged.
Handsome, kind of look going on. Amico, be cute as fuck.
Sarah, zawa he good-looking even dr.
Yamane old ask, dr. Yamani has some kind of like
Dapper Japanese Colonel Sanders shit.
Going on that. Like I appreciate that.
I'm just saying. So so what did we dislike about
the movie? I'm going to let you roll first.
I got a couple things in mind that I think could have been
better but I'ma let you see what you hit first, I don't know.
That's a hard question because it's minor nitpicky shit for
sure. Like yeah, I feel like some of
the times that they had to use the little puppet took Out of it
a little bit, you're the puppet be a little off model.
Kind of was a little rough but you deal with it.
I guess. I don't know.
It's I'm viewing this in context.
It's 1954, is their first go around.
So it was really hard for me to be nitpicky.
Yeah. Because a lot of stuff, they did
with special effects. Nobody was doing what these what
these guys were doing at the time.
So I mean, this is this is really ground breaking shit for
1954. The one thing, the only scene
that I have any nitpicks about is there a sassy?
Seen. I think it's at the tail end of
Godzilla's first attack on Tokyo as he's walking back into the
bay and they've finally scrambled the fighter jets to
attack Godzilla. And the Jets are like shooting
missiles at Godzilla and I think the effects work of like the
these little tiny model Jets which looks super good and super
detailed shooting these missiles which I don't know how they did
it. I don't know how physically they
did these little kind of firework shots out of these jets
in such an obvious way. It looks great, but they have
this long sequence of the Jets making passes and shooting
missiles and every single one of these little group, firework, e,
missile Shots, mrs. Godzilla-like by quite a bit.
Yeah, and goes into the ocean and it's just a little weird
way. All right, my theory if I try to
make like an excuse for this is that the Godzilla suit was
probably really flammable. I know that some of the future
Godzilla suits were still flammable and caught fire a
couple of times. So so maybe they knew that they
couldn't land these like firework shots on the suit
without risking lighting the actor on fire, but it makes
sense. You still have a several minute
long sequence of jets me passes and shooting missiles at
Godzilla. Who is not attacking them back.
He's just ignoring them and walking into the sea.
And it's weird given how good the special effects are in other
places. Like you look at the scene where
Godzilla melts the the towers with the high-tension wires and
uses the atomic breath. First time and that's great.
This cool Misty. Sort of whatever it's almost
certainly like smoke being shot through a hose or something.
Yeah, but it's a great effect and you watch the tower like
start to Glow white and sag under its heat and all I can
think of is that like maybe the towers were made out of some
kind of meltable material, right?
That like, melts at a fairly low temperature and then they just
like used up a hair dryer or something, like a Heat fan just
off camera to start melting it. because it's a really, really
good really great practical effects work and then you have
this scene where the Jets shoot at Godzilla and it's it's,
that's all I can think of but it's it's it's the one thing
where I was re watching this movie and going, you know, I
might have cut this down about half the length and had like a
couple of close-up shots of a missile exploding on a scale
pattern where maybe it was like a piece of fabric that wasn't
attached to the suit that you were close up on not for me to
give directing advice to a Legendary Japanese director.
Me is a complete nobody agent that one sequence was weird for
me, but I mean beyond that. Yeah.
I was immediately once we finish that scene and moved on like I
moved onto like it's a super gripping movie.
Yeah. So we've talked a bit about kind
of the lasting impact of this movie, right?
That like if you're a fan of Japanese you know kind of action
in sci-fi. So much of the effects work
you've seen was pioneered on this movie, the suit designs of,
you know, shows like Power Rangers come Comes from this
movie, which I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah, it's actually really
cool. I didn't realize that that this
is basically the origin of that style and that format of suit
mation, which makes sense, because I think of other like,
black and white horror movies of the time and the monster always
looks like a dude, and like a felt suit with like a helmet on,
you know what I mean, as opposed to Godzilla's suit is, I mean,
like, if you know, anything about modern cosplay, like, it's
very much that style of like, you take the foam and Building
the sections with the foam in the latex and the Rubber and
painting and applying and you're taking it like, section by
section and applying it to your actor.
It's very interesting and intricate stuff.
But yeah, the way people do cosplay nowadays is basically
just a cheaper and with modern technology and modern materials
version of the same stuff they did for Godzilla back in 1954.
Yeah. So we got to talk about kind of
the overarching story of this season of Castle Bravo, which my
thesis here is that while we think of Godzilla as this huge
franchise, it really took a while for Godzilla to become as
big as we think of him nowadays. So, as of this point, there's no
Godzilla verse. We've got one movie obviously,
and it's clearly intended to be kind of self-contained, but may
be open for a sequel. You know, Godzilla's.
Yeah, story is not really gone into like, oh, maybe it was an
underwater dinosaur that we either mutated or woke up.
Whoo. Hose.
Yeah. The note.
They leave it on. Seems like it was made just to
keep it open. Yeah.
Hey, there could be another one of these.
Yeah, but like Godzilla, this Godzilla dies, when we see
future Godzilla movies, it is not this Godzilla with one
exception somewhere in the 2000s.
If I remember correctly, and I'll deal with that in season
four, whenever we get to that, but we, that sounds confusing.
Yeah, I know. Well, the 2000s are a weird time
for Godzilla, for sure. Not that there's any not weird
time but it gets weird. Order.
So, one thing that's interesting is Godzilla has been broken up
into a few different eras and a couple different like timelines
of movies. And from now up through the mid
1970s, every movie featuring Godzilla or one of the things
that appears in a Godzilla movie but maybe appeared elsewhere
first hint hint is is one big long timeline and then the
mid-80s they reboot everything and they start over.
But the first Godzilla movie still counts They sort of make
like a new Godzilla to in the 80s and then go from there into
the 90s and then through the 2000s there's and, and on,
there's been a bunch of random individual Godzilla movies, that
acknowledge the first movie, but then nothing else not even each
other. So, this is kind of like a Nexus
point, right? This is every just about every
movie, except for the American ones and one specific Japanese
one acknowledge this movies. Existence makes sense.
Yeah. But ultimately, it is very
stand-alone and it doesn't play deeply into future Godzilla
movies with a couple of very rare exceptions.
But yes, this movie comes out, it's not a tremendous success at
first, it takes a little bit of time to find its corner and
really become as respected as it is nowadays.
And it will take by my estimation.
And by the estimation of this season of Castle Bravo, roughly
a decade for Godzilla to really become kind of the figure that
we Jin him to be nowadays. I don't know if you have
anything else. You want to bring up before we
wrap any other, final closing comments?
Um, I don't think so. I don't know.
I like this movie looking forward to the next movies.
Yeah, well don't say don't say that too quickly about this next
one. Oh, yeah, okay, so that's a wrap
on this episode. Thank you all so much for
joining us, both on our journey. And for this film specifically
next week, we'll be traveling forward to 1955 for the direct
sequel. To the original Godzilla.
Ella, Godzilla, Raids Again. Also the only movie in this
first season of Castle Bravo not directed by ishiro Honda.
You can follow us on Twitter for more of our sparkling
personalities. I'm at Derby City, Derek and I
am at this Arrow complex. It's V is C ero complex-2 and
you can follow the show itself at Castle Bravo.
Pod for production updates. Take care everyone.
Castle Bravo is a production of Derek Van Dyke and Charlotte
landel. All editing is performed by
Derek Van Dyke. Special thanks to julienne,
Lamont for Designing our original art assets and to David
Van Dyke, for providing our theme song pools of memory.