Hi everyone. Derek here.
So this episode was actually done almost two months ago, and
the reason that there's been such a huge delay despite season
three moving at a pretty good clip, there's been such a huge
delay in getting this episode to you all.
Is that less than three days after recording this episode, my
mother died and I'm not look I'm not you know, seeking the the,
you know, a bunch of of solace. Like obviously this is the thing
I am working through. It's a whole process.
But you know, we recorded this on a Tuesday evening and then
Friday morning I went over to pick up my mother to help her
with some some necessary errands and she had passed in her home.
And then I found her. And I mean, obviously I have
been busy. We have been busy.
It turns out that editing and putting out your Godzilla
podcast is kind of not as important as things like, you
know, settling somebody's affairs and preparing a funeral
and and informing family and and trying to keep life moving in
the aftermath of all that. And and you know, frankly this
this was an awkward and weird 1 to get back to just because I
was very overwhelmed. I don't think we say anything
about it in the episode, but I was very overwhelmed while
recording this episode because I had been spending the last
couple of months increasingly like taking care of of my mother
with her dementia. And it's it's hard going back to
something where I know in the back of my mind I was that
frustrated and then I was going to lose her so soon after that.
And that's that's just the thing I've been grappling with.
I'm I'm talking to people like, you know, I'm able to be frank
about this and about how complicated this all is for me.
Because, you know, I have. Because my parents taught me to
be open about these things. Because I have do do have good
friends and and family who are emotionally open and who
encouraged that emotional openness.
And I am I am sorting through and processing and talking about
these feelings. This is a long, long, rambly
thing, but the long and short of it is Castle Bravo is going to
be getting back on track here shortly.
You know, we still have a little, little little hubbub
about the actor strike that we'll worry about when we get to
Godzilla 98, but we're getting back on track.
I just wanted people to understand why there was this
random big gap. It's it's because mom died and
dealing with family stuff is I love you all.
I love this podcast. This is this has been a
wonderful little artistic exercise for me and it's been
great to re explore my relationship.
With these movies. But like, that is clearly a
thing that gets put on hold when you have much more important
life stuff going on. So don't worry about me, don't
worry about Charlotte, Don't worry about us.
Like, everything's good. Just understand that.
That's, that's why we disappeared for a little bit.
But we're we're coming back. Don't let this drag down the
energy of the rest of the episode because it is a weird
episode and a weird movie, and it is, you know, Godzilla versus
Space. Godzilla is a movie that managed
to do something very rare, which is drag, kind of like the writer
out of me, and make me think about what would need to have
happened different to make this movie.
Something that hit me better. But you know you, I digress.
There's an episode ahead. You can see you're listening to
it now. And we'll get to all of that.
Thank you all for your patience. Not that you know.
I needed it in the 1st place episode.
Hello everyone, and welcome to Castle Bravo, A Godzilla Verse
retrospective. I'm Derek.
And I'm Charlotte. And we're two siblings here to
examine the history of the Godzilla franchise, one movie at
a time. We're joined today by podcaster
and fellow SDGC host Matthew Finneman.
Matthew, to us, but Finn within our hearts.
Finn, How you doing, buddy? You know what I'm doing?
I I'm. Doing, I would say, yeah, we're
doing this at a super unusual time for this show, so the
energy is going to be a little weird yet.
Normally we're like early on the early in the day on Sunday kind
of thing. But like you have been we, you
and me both have been so ridiculously busy.
It's been a rough, yeah. Yeah, several years, right?
No, no. Like, like the the past couple
weeks have just been really busy.
Yeah, I had birthdays, trade shows, Expos, Caitlin's
birthday. Then it was PAX, then it was a
work show. And now I'm finally back and
we're like, you know what? And then it was Martha's
birthday and I was just like, you know what?
That's cool. Yeah, I know.
But yeah, we are. We are here.
We are ready, Charlotte. Hello.
How you doing today? I'm all right.
Got a little throat thing, but general things are pretty OK.
Most people have a little throat thing stop.
Doing your Godzilla voice before right before the show.
They do call it you. They do call it a uvula.
I I believe Uvolva probably not that.
No. No.
I I'm pretty, I'm pretty sure that's actually the correct
pronunciation. Derek, you you've.
Done surgery, you would know. I've been in the OR have you?
No. So it does make you more of an
expert than me. That's true.
This is facts. So.
Let me set the stage, yes. Oh no, no, please go.
Oh, I was going to start getting into like the pre movie history
stuff before he went to the movie, but what did you have to
see? Keep going.
You just had a bad bullshit joke, didn't you?
You're. Damn right, son, and I cannot
wait to unleash it upon. You.
I am ready for a just a torrent of awful puns this episode.
So where we currently are in time, it is 1994.
We are in. Finn, you're.
Correct me if I'm wrong, you don't know like Jack shit
Godzilla, right? OK, let me tell.
You. Yeah.
What's your history with it? My history.
With Godzilla is the Matthew Broderick film is the peak of
cinema, and nothing else in the Godzilla verse will ever come
close to it. I'm kidding, but that is one of
the first I've ever seen in theaters.
Like most of America, I knew it existed.
But, like, I knew it existed in the same way that, like, you
knew how Power Rangers actually were, right?
Like. Yeah, that it was originally a
Japanese show. And so, like, I knew about it.
I had a friend that was really into it.
It it was never really my thing because I've never been like
really big on like old stuff. That's just that's just a me
thing. But but I appreciated the impact
it had and also it had some pretty cool video games.
Yeah. Shout out to PS2 War of the
Monsters. But but also, I actually ended
up working for the Godzilla company.
They were one of my clients for a for a a.
Very brief moment in time. Like I I don't want to say
brief, but like, we worked alongside of them for a while
because the boss of the the firm I worked for, his girlfriend,
was like a higher up in the Godzilla universe.
So we, like, snagged that contract.
Super dope. Yeah.
But anyway, it was super great and all the people at the
Godzilla, Godzilla, Versa were awesome.
And I actually have an interview floating around the Internet
from San Diego Comic Con where I got to interview the people from
Godzilla because they came there for that big anniversary that
year. I think it was like, I don't
know, they they were releasing some Shin Godzilla stuff and it
was like a huge anniversary for Godzilla.
Gotcha. Hold on, I'm I'm going to find
it. But anyway, also Shin Godzilla
and. Evangelion Crossover was fucking
just the Bomb diggity. Yeah.
So you're coming at this from where I think a lot of people
are, which is like people in America are like familiar with
the concept of Godzilla being this big franchise that they
didn't watch. A lot of people have memories of
the the The 97 or 98 Tristar movie.
Yeah, people obviously are to some degree, whether they've
seen them or not, like aware of the ongoing Warner Brothers,
like Legendary, Godzilla, and of course Shin Godzilla.
Like a surprising number of people saw Shin Godzilla because
that movie particularly kind of blew up.
Oh, also the most famous part of Godzilla ever, which is let them
fight. Yeah, right.
Also, so I pulled up. I interviewed someone named
Akito Takahashi. On for Godzilla's 50th
anniversary. OK, I'll have to look up who
that is in regards to like Toho and and and what their like
role. Is was it San Diego Comic Con?
Anyway, there was some reason Godzilla was huge there.
Yeah, it was the 65th anniversary of Godzilla during
the 50th anniversary of Comic Con.
OK, gotcha. So where we currently are.
Is we are coming towards the end of what's called the, hey say
era of Godzilla. You know, Godzilla had this long
continuous run, you know, from 1954 up through like 1975.
And eventually the franchise went on ice for almost 10 years,
came back in 1984, and they were like, hey, you know what?
You know, we kind of really want a fresh start with Godzilla, so
we're going to make a new Godzilla 2.
So still recognizing the original 1954 film, but starting
with a new fresh sequel to that and moving forward and this like
80s, nineties run of movies has for the most part been really,
really good. We've been really, really
surprised by the the quality of the production work.
The quality of the directing and writing and acting there is a
lot of clear love for the kind of themes of the older movies.
Cause a lot of the old movies needed to be like about
environmentalism or about like imperialism and colonialism like
they found ways to to bring social commentary, you know in
the in the vein of all great like cult like.
Pulp sci-fi of the era, right? Right now, yes, This last movie,
Godzilla versus Mechagodzilla 2, was one where me and Charlotte
were like, OK, this is a really good movie in terms of it's a
fantastic blockbuster. But it kind of lost the plot in
trying to be about things the way that we are used to.
Godzilla being, what are you? Talking about it was all about
the dangers of space pollution. Totally.
So, so the original plan after Godzilla versus Mechagodzilla 2
was OK Well this did well. We need another one.
What are we going to do? The plan.
Was originally let's bring back King Ghidorah again, which has
been their plan for like 3 movies in a row and once again
got scrapped. Actually Charlotte, you will be
really interested in this. The plan was to actually have
like the real Ghidorah come in. So the idea would be that
Ghidorah actually was the Shoah incarnation, where it's this
like. You know, Galactus like
conqueror from space that came to devour the planet, but when
it gets defeated, it would end up on the ocean floor, thus be
found and be used as the basis for but, which I think would
have been super cool. Maybe cooler than what we got,
but whatever. The Godzilla like the history of
Godzilla's so full of unmade movies, we could almost do like
an entire podcast series just on that.
And I'm not going to the new plan.
Coward. Yeah, the new plan was the right
before. This was pretty similar to what
we got the idea of a mutated Godzilla like clone from space,
but with a rebuilt Mechagodzilla as a sort of sidekick to
Godzilla. And eventually Mechagodzilla got
reworked into Mogara, as we see I.
Was going to say yeah because the this.
I had to look it up because it had the dumbest acronym of all.
Time. It's pretty bad.
Can I can? I please just read.
Yes, give us the the acronym for Moguera.
Moguera is spelled MOGUERA and it stands for something because
some. Mobile Operations Godzilla
Underground Expert Robot Arrow type if I remember correctly.
I might be wrong. First of all, how the?
That's something but but it's actually accurate, so I want you
to understand. It's Universal Expert Robot
Aerotype, not underground. But yeah, mobile operation.
Godzilla. Universal Expert robot Aerotype
goes underground, right? Horrible, horrible acronym.
This is coming from a guy that reads comics so much.
That and that is a world where I can truly appreciate some dumb.
Dumb acronym. Yeah, now this comes too much
even for me. This comes from So Mogara is
also like a classic Toho Kaiju that they kind of reinvented for
this movie. Originally, Mogara comes from a
movie called The Mysterians, where it is the like robot
minion, the giant robot that these alien invaders used to
attack. And it's called Mogara because
it's like a pun on the Japanese word for mole.
So they kind of took an existing name and then like, made a
bullshit acronym out of it. As you do.
Yes. But yeah, so you know, it kind
of went through a few revisions before we got to where we are.
But you know, eventually they were like, OK, well,
Mechagodzilla's already had a chance.
Let's bring back another old obscure thing.
And we got Mogara, which I mean, I kind of think was a good talk,
like a good call. We'll get into that as we get
into like the Plot Summary. But I'm of the opinion that was
the right choice. The writer for this movie was
Hiroshi Kashiwabara. I'm probably butchering the the
like, stress on the last name. But Kashi Kashiwabara also wrote
several of the like early Millennium Godzilla movies.
Many of them not very good, like, still have fond memories.
I don't think there's a Millennium era movie that I
truly dislike, but. Yeah, Oh no, right.
Muvu's directed. This is a newcomer in terms of
the director seat for the Godzilla franchise.
This is Kensho Yamashita, who does have some history with the
franchise, though they they were assistant director on Terror of
Mecha Godzilla and Return of Godzilla.
So not necessarily a newcomer to the franchise, just somebody
getting promoted from the assistant director chair up to
the director chair. Special effects work.
Koichi Kawakita's SFX supervisor.
Obviously I've said repeatedly that this person is is in charge
of all special effects through the 80s and 90s era.
Now the music gets interesting because up to this point music
has mostly been by original Godzilla composer Akira Ifokube,
who is a a fucking legend. And usually when it's not
Ifokube, it's some nobody that we don't see or hear from again.
In this case we got Takayuki Hattori who this is their first
time working on Godzilla, but after this movie he would go on
to compose for like more Godzilla movies and also a
couple of famous anime like motherfucking Mobile Suit Gundam
maybe maybe you've heard of it. And I've only heard of G Gundam.
That's the one with the racist countries that.
That was the first gun that I ever heard of.
Oh, and then also composed for a lesser known, but I think
incredible and worth watching anime called Martian Successor
Nadeshico. And anyone familiar with
Nadeshico, Their ears just perked up because that that show
has a truly incredible soundtrack.
Charlotte, had you watched Nadeshiko?
Or are you just familiar with it because of like Super Robot Wars
and shit? Yeah, I'm I'm familiar with it
because of SRW. Yeah, that's basically it.
Well worth watching. Very Charlotte core, but like I.
Will watch it. Here's the thing.
This is easily my favorite person who has not been Akira
Ifokube to work on the score for these movies.
I think the score for this movie fucking ruled.
It's easily like the strongest point to me.
Eva Kube's Grumpy Ass apparently declined to return for this
movie because the script was really bad and because they
wanted to use rap music in a scene.
And like Eva Kube, it's called having principles.
Like, bless your heart, I guess you know you're incredible at
your job. That doesn't mean mean.
Like, here's the thing, we've also come to love if Akube.
Because if Akube is known for being very like, outspoken and
fuck you about you know like for example, the lead producer on
the series, Tanaka being a money hungry Dick bag.
Derek, would you say that that would make him a if?
Fuck you, BAE. That's.
So bad dude. Is this just a thing that
happens when you become a dad like?
No Finn's been like this. Yeah, let's not pretend that
this was anything to do, do with that.
In fact, it was just me training.
Your your Your absence from the SDGC live show has brought us
like a 98% reduction in awful puns, and I do kind of miss
them. But yeah, so you know, Toho has
assembled a cast and crew for this.
You know, we've got our plan in place.
Charlotte, why don't you tell us what happens in Godzilla versus
Space Godzilla? OK, so we start out in space.
Godzilla's floating through space and there's like a barrage
of light that appears and it blasts the Earth.
And then there's the title card, Godzilla versus Space.
And then we go to land Moghera undergoing a a system check and
it's like being rebuilt. And then they discuss the the
tea project, which is an attempted to telepathically
control Godzilla. And Miki, who's a doctor now,
doesn't want to do that, but considers it because, you know,
the alternative is that they're going to take the psychic
children to do it. Which would be where I want to
interject for a moment. Because for us, we're like, OK,
there's our girl, Miki Segusa, and her big monkey ears.
She's back, right as she must be.
They're going to telepathically try to control Godzilla, Sure.
But I had a moment where I was like, imagine not watching any
of the, hey, say movies and then jumping into this one.
Yeah, and imagine. Imagine that.
So what is what is the opening of this movie like so far for
you as somebody who is like coming into this with no psychic
defenses? So you know, you know, so I I
loosely understood that like everything built upon itself,
you know, But I I didn't know that it did it in a way that
like. If you didn't watch previous
ones, you were like, what the Hell's going on?
Yeah, this was a bit of a problem with the last movie.
And I was kind of, I had the same feeling here too early on.
It's just like Mothras flowing through space.
And I'm like, oh, OK And he's like shooting off baby Mothras.
And you're like, that's cool, doesn't come up again.
Not a part of anything. Here comes space Crystal
Godzilla here to fuck your day up.
Blow up some NASA stuff. I just giant robot just there.
I don't. It apparently already existed.
They're trying to mind. Psychic people exist and they're
trying to mind control. They got they got Xavier School
for gifted telepathic Japanese kids.
I'm just like, I'm just like, and then apparently yakuza
people are there to fuck around and find out.
I don't know, man. A whole lot of stuff was going
on here. We're getting into like the late
stage MCU problem of like very, very.
Quickly, I was like, you know what?
Whatever, I'm just going to. Sit back and not think too much.
It's hard because this is only I think the 6th movie which like,
OK, 6th movie in a well, technically 7th if you include
the original whatever. But like, I just brought up,
like, the late stage MCU problem of like, hope you watched a
bunch of other things in order to be ready for this one.
But that had not been a problem for any of this stretch of
movies until the last movie. And I feel like we've hit that
same wall again here where it's like we're really just gonna
assume you know a bunch of shit and we're not gonna bring you
the homework. And I do think the movie suffers
for it. Like, I really like that you
could pick up Godzilla versus Mothra and that could be the
only one you watched. And there's no part of it where
you felt like you were left out of information.
So, yeah, psychic kids, Mickey Sagusa.
Monkey ears. Let's go.
So yeah, she senses Mothra
heading towards Earth, and Mothra is leading, leaving a
trail of like smaller Mothras. And I'm going to be honest, they
don't really get into that. No, that's new for us too.
Yeah, but then we go to some some UNGCC soldiers named Koji
and Kiyo. And they land on on an island
after the explosions go off from from earlier, and there's a
massive crater surrounded by crystal, and they're met with
Major Yuki, who immediately saves them from like a venomous
spider that they didn't notice on them.
And then we meet little Godzilla, which is what I I read
that it was called as opposed to to Minira or something.
Yeah, they're they're leaving the name Minia, Mini RA, Minila,
whatever behind. But this is clearly like the
attempt to make and. And for what it's worth, I think
way more successful at making a cute little Godzilla then.
Yeah. No, I don't hate this one at
all. You don't.
You don't immediately want to stab him.
Finn, you missed out on the horror that is the original Son
of Godzilla. Let me find a picture I can
throw in the chat for you. But it's I'm OK.
Are you sure? No, just do it.
Why not? I think.
I think, I think that you deserve to understand what we're
dealing with. Here gonna say you deserve to
suffer. Well, also that.
But let's see. We put this in the chat.
Where the fuck did that photo go while Derek is here?
It is. Here it is.
Charlie. Keep going.
Ta da. There he is in the chat.
Oh my. God, why?
OK, why does it look like, why does it look like the teenage
version of the baby dinosaur from the 90s sitcom dinosaur?
It looks like he's just about to hit someone on the bunk, someone
on the head with a frying pan and say not the Mama.
Yeah, not my real dad, I keep saying.
I keep saying he looks like a Cokehead Pillsbury Doughboy.
It's pretty bad. So.
So by comparison, little Godzilla in this movie is a is a
massive success. Yeah, yeah, and little
Godzilla's also friends with the Major and walk and walks up and
like greets the Major. There are Oomphies, But then an
emergency meeting is called because NASA's missing a
spaceship. And they don't know why they're
missing a spaceship, but they just go, you know what?
It was probably a huge monster, to be fair.
At this point in time, that's a reasonable assumption to make.
Right, So I wrote the Shobi Gin. They're called the Cosmos now, I
think. Yes, appeared to Miki and
explained to her that this monster has appeared because it
wants to destroy Earth. But that's not the concern of,
like, the soldiers. Right now, because the soldier
boys are are going around digging holes to place
explosives for Godzilla. Oh, the soldier boys are in
this. Yeah, little soldier boys.
Sorry, I I was stopped. I was somewhere.
I'm real fast. So Major wants to use like a
blood coagulator to hit Godzilla in a major organ and kill it.
Because Godzilla's like the white whale to this guy, like.
He wants nothing more than to kill Godzilla.
To be fair, Godzilla has killed countless people in this
timeline. So.
Sure. Well, on every time, really.
Yeah. Although, like as they kind of,
I think they've brought up by now already, but we'll reinforce
later. Since the appearance of the
little Godzilla in the last movie, like Godzilla's mostly
been chilling on this island, Godzilla's been a lot less
active. So, like, you probably just
leave him alone. Not gonna, but you could.
Yeah, the soldiers think that they're there to, or they state
rather that they're there to work on the T project.
You know, the thing to control Godzilla.
But the majors, like, I don't really want to do that.
I just want to kill it? I asked the Tyrant project.
We're going to harvest. I'm trying to remember exactly
what it was. It was like hormonal fluid from
teenagers. That's how they meet the T
virus. I thought it was from a flower
Resident Evil. Lore's weird.
No, that's that's like oroboros or something.
God. The the original there was like,
I repeat myself, Resident Evil lore is weird.
In the original, it was something that that people only
made during puberty. Anyway, space Godzilla's rapidly
approaching her. It's Etrina Chrome.
Jesus, Q was right. Leave it at a hold.
Of your Get a hold of your life, dude.
The crystals are like undulating right now, by the way.
I don't like that as a verb. I wish you would set a
different. Verb Oh, undulate.
Yeah, they had to undulate because they were so moist.
They were not moist at all, because they were.
Undulating. So good I'm in hell.
So Miki and and the others that are in charge of the tea project
show up, they arrive at the island, and they had this one
conversation. They're like, why are you so
fond of Godzilla? I mean, you know, Godzilla's
people too. It's like I've been in six
movies so far. I've got to be 5.
She wasn't in Return of Godzilla anyway.
Five. So they launched Mogara Derek.
Don't look in chat. And Miki meets with little
Godzilla, who tries to play. And then Major Yuki says, like,
I think probably the hardest line in the whole movie, because
someone's like, why don't you just give up hunting Godzilla
and Major Yuki's like, it's man's burden.
You can only keep on living if you have something you can't
give up on. This was a sick ass line.
I mean, it was basically the Griffith speech.
This was this was like moments that go hard for sure.
Yeah, so the mines start going off, but it's little Godzilla
setting off the mines. Well, if he's just bouncing
around on top of the tear gas mines as they go off and this,
like, pink smoke is everywhere. And he's just like like.
Right. And it's like, that's not going
to hurt Godzilla. Like, you've basically managed
to kind of spook and startle the little Godzilla.
I don't think you're going to do much to the big guy.
Right, so they decided to launch the the T Project, and while
they're cleaning up the mess left behind by the mines,
Godzilla arrives and the soldier boys are instructed to approach
Godzilla and deliver the transmitter by launching it into
Godzilla, shooting it into its neck.
But at the same time, the Major is of course readying his his
blood coagulator while the boys are trying to line up their shot
with the transmitter. But they do manage to get the
transmitter into its neck. And so they they activate the T
project and Miki takes control of Godzilla and likes walks down
a beach. But I also played super
Godzilla. Right.
The Major's not ready to give up.
My voice just cracked so bad keeping it in.
Fine. You know, if I was in Resident
Evil, they could technically harvest the T virus from me.
The Major isn't ready to give up and like, starts running
alongside Godzilla down this beach, right?
And meanwhile, Mogara is flying into space towards space
Godzilla to try to head it off. Mogara's systems start to
scramble. And they trade like laser
attacks, but they get swiped and they careen out into space and
space. Godzilla just kind of keeps
going Space. Godzilla's like flying form is
incredibly goofy. It's just a big balloon.
He's just, he's just a hedgehog. Yeah, he's just crystal
hedgehog. Where do the legs go?
They're not tucked in anywhere. I think that I thought they just
like became crystals. Why can't he only morph between
these two forms? I don't know.
I don't know if I was him I would make like a cool like
space gym sword or something. Yeah there's not.
There's yeah it's it's just it's a very silly and it's kind of a
little cheap this sequence. Oh, also, I think the sequence
in space is the first time in the Hey Say series I saw a wire,
so they missed 1 editing it out, which is just a just worth
noting that you know, whether it's a budget thing or a time
thing, they missed a wire holding up one of the toys.
Oh, well, that's very unlike them.
It is. It is.
They're usually really good about that stuff, and I, but I
keep a pretty clear eye for that sort of thing, 'cause usually
like. Derek is looking for your
mistakes. Yes.
Well, look, the production work on these movies has been so good
so far that like, it is kind of worth looking for where they
dropped the ball. Yeah.
No, you're right. So Mickey's mind control helmet
backfires. Godzilla's released the the boys
are really, really excited to fight Godzilla and make a name
for themselves. Major's like sneaking up behind
it and around this time Space Godzilla shows up to the island
'cause it's not time for for Major's final final battle with
Godzilla yet, no? Little Godzilla approaches, but
quickly tries to flee and Space Godzilla like.
Threatens little Godzilla's life to goad Godzilla Gohan is Gohan
accidentally approaches Raddatz and.
Yeah, exactly. Godzilla like walks up, starts
blasting space. Godzilla continues to use little
Godzilla like as a liability. But little Godzilla manages to
to scramble the Godzilla's side and space Godzilla starts flying
around. Using its little crystal balloon
form and shoots both of them below.
And Godzilla just kind of falls over.
Yeah, that was kind of Godzilla. Fucking chumps this fight.
Like he like, he definitely, he just gets tips like a cow.
Yeah. Yeah, the the booking was not
good here. Yeah, little Godzilla ends up
getting taken away by space, Godzilla's tractor beam and
encased in crystal. And then all the humans are
like, we should go, so they go, they just leave.
Yeah, the the T Project folks deem the attempt of failure and
they're like, we we're gonna leave.
But Miki's like, I kind of want to stay with Godzilla, you know,
I kind of like Godzilla. And Kyo and Koji are like, we'll
stay behind and protect Miki, 'cause, you know, you gotta do
what you gotta do. They collect some Space Godzilla
cells from Moghera. And it's determined that the
cells are are like basically identical to Godzilla's.
And they theorize that a Godzilla cell from Biolante or
Mothra went through a black hole, merged with crystals, and
then turned into space. Godzilla and came back to Earth.
Genuinely insane theories. Although, although given those
two options, I do look at the the extra little little
horizontal teethy things on space, Godzilla in the corners
of his mouth and I go Violante. It's gotta be Violante.
But once again, like, did you do your homework for this movie?
We fucking hope so. Right.
Because they just mentioned those things.
They don't really explain what they are.
Yeah, there's not a lot of context for like, what is a
violante and why did it go into space?
Why the fuck is Mothra in space? Why does Mothra have Godzilla
cells on it? Like, you know.
Right, so they resolved to power up MO Guerra to fight again, and
Major Yuki is asked to to commandeer MO Guerra for the
coming battle. Miki's sitting on on the island
and receives a message from the cosmos.
That's just like, you know, if everybody worked together, I
think there wouldn't be an issue here.
And they're right. Mothra is always Mothra.
The Mothra Party is correct, but overly optimistic.
Right. Because then they go into the
fact that, like, some people only think about fighting,
right? Right.
That's just like their whole mindset, like the Major and also
space Godzilla. Right.
So the boys get beat up in their tent.
Miki gets kidnapped. But the boys and major tracker
to to the headquarters of this organized crime syndicate which
is like the Akos I mentioned earlier.
And it was one of the men in charge of the tea project that
took her because he wants to like, make a like scan her brain
in and then use that model to control Godzilla using his
brain. 1994 computers are very capable of this.
Yeah, of course. But he wants to use Godzilla to
destroy everything. Because reasons.
This is like a really underbaked side plot to me.
It is. Yeah, it doesn't.
This could have just not happened.
Yeah, like there's there's kind of no, I mean, I'll agree with
you, this happened. I'm like, why?
Yeah, I honestly everything to do with the telepathy subplot
and the T Project feels grafted on almost just as a reason to
have Mickey Sagusa in the movie, right?
Yeah, I could see that because it doesn't really play anything
into Mogara or Space Godzilla. So like a lot of these, here's
the, here's the the secret, right, a lot of these movies is,
is it's a lot like writing a good sitcom episode.
You have an A plot and AB plot, right?
And then you find out how these two things either mirror each
other or converge at the end to impact each other.
That is, that is always how like the good Godzilla movies have
worked. It is a rule for good sitcom
episodes. Those are the two things that I
know, Godzilla and Sitcoms. And this has like an A plot, B
plot, C plot D plot already because we have space Godzilla
thing that came from space to kill Godzilla and maybe take
over the earth or destroy it question mark.
We have Mogara which was built maybe to fight Godzilla I guess,
even though it never does that out of the wreckage of
Mechagodzilla. Never really a good reason for
why they have Mogara other than that, and they never try to use
it for that purpose. You have the C plot with the
like telepathy project to can mine control Godzilla, which at
least could have been a good mirror if like Space, Godzilla
was psychic in the way that it mine controls things.
But that's not the case, and controlling Godzilla seems
counterintuitive if Mogar is supposed to kill it.
So none of that. And of course this doesn't go
anywhere, like the the technology behind the
telekinesis or the telepathic project never like becomes
important for fighting space Godzilla or powering up Mogara
or anything like that. And then you have just the Major
who wants to kill Godzilla with his blood coagulant and and
again goes nowhere like and is not connected to anything else.
So it's it's very overstuffed with ideas that are not really
cohesive together. Right.
It's kind of weird, yeah. Fun ideas, just not puzzle
pieces that snap together for this movie.
Right. Also, it's a little weird that
space Godzilla's attack is called the corona beam.
I thought they were going with COVID-19 beam.
It's about it's about 25 years too early.
Oh, in that case, corona light beam.
God, I like a Corona. The beer, not the virus.
Right. Space Godzilla comes with a
lime. Those are actually salt crystals
on him. There we go.
We're pulling it together. OK, so here they act.
Tequila Gundam. We've made it go full.
We've gone full circle. They activate the tea project,
and it does seem like it's working space.
Godzilla arrives and like fries all the electronics in the city,
including the tea project machines, making this entire
side thing moot. The city evacuates and the boys
arrived to save Miki, who uses her telekinesis to help them
save her. Basically, And Miki's like, hey,
space, Godzilla's on the way. She does lift a bed.
She does lift the she lifts the sideways like Gurney that that.
Yeah. Impressive work.
Yeah, we. I didn't think she was
telekinetic. Up to this point, she has only
ever been the telepathic kind of psychic, but I guess she's
literally just Charles Xavier. Yeah, I think so.
Yeah. So they flee and the equipment
explodes. And now?
Mogira's prepped for lunch, but they have to find the major
because just like last movie, I think several times in this
series so far, the the person who's supposed to pilot a
machine is not there. Not a lot of people showing up
for work, man. Nobody wants to work these days.
That's right. Everyone wants to make a living
wage, right? I don't like supply and demand
in economics when it does not go my way.
No, it's the invisible hand. My hand, Yeah.
He eventually arrives. Moghera launches.
He gets to pick his crew, so he picks the boys, obviously.
Right. How could you not pick the boys?
Right, Space Godzilla lands in in Fukuoka and the city starts
turning into crystals because basically space Godzilla can
like, terraform the area to absorb power from these
crystals. Yeah, it's like he seeds the
crystals and then the crystals bro.
And then the crystals become like power conduits.
Sort of. Right.
Wireless charging. Tesla was right all along.
That's right, Godzilla arrives and they start heading towards
each other. Mogara reaches Godzilla and
Major Yuki's like, OK now I'm going to kill Godzilla, but Koji
and Kiyo knock Yuki out, take over Mogara and like, turned it
around and go to space Godzilla. And then they use an attack
called the spiral grenade missile, which is neither a
spiral nor a grenade. Those are rockets.
To missile yeah, it hits. I mean, it does hit him, but you
know, don't do much, but it it it is a cool attack.
Yeah, Mogara got lots of cool little attacks.
True. Godzilla's like, pissed now.
Like charging through buildings, you know.
Mogara and Space Godzilla like physically clash, but Mogara is
like immediately overpowered by a blast and has a struggle to
come back online. But they do manage to fly away
just as Godzilla shows up. Godzilla and Space Godzilla
fight, and there's like some telekinesis happening and
they're just kind of floating around.
Sure, there's like crystal pillars flying.
Godzilla fire some energy blasts.
But space Godzilla can can deflect Godzilla's atomic breath
using like a crystal shield that it kind of makes around.
It's like really transparent. It's an AT field.
Basically, yeah, We are still several years before Evangelion.
And yet, I do feel a lot of Evangelion in this movie
because. I do too, because ano, the
criminal invented nothing. Shin Godzilla's going to be an
episode Mickey. Mickey Sagusa.
Fucking pilot Godzilla. Or we'll make the kids do it
again. Literally the plot of the
beginning of this movie. If in case, we've already.
Forgotten. Did you know that?
I had a conversation with people recently because somebody
watched that again and that line, that line specifically is
not in the dub of the sub. No, it's it's it's a horribly
truncated version from our memory that made it that we can
popular on like image macros, but that is not how it's, that
is not even close to how it's worded at any point.
No. So right, They're fighting
space. Godzilla's deflecting atomic
breath. Godzilla goes, OK, it's clearly
these crystals that are giving space Godzilla power.
So he he starts attacking the crystals, which is I think like
the second or third time Godzilla has done more than like
try to wrestle things to the ground he plans sometimes.
Usually when you can't wrestle, wrestling comes first.
It's plan A. So the Major prepares to to
pilot the star Falcon, which is like the top half.
The * Falcon is a legitimately great fucking name that rules so
much. If you tell me you've got
anything, a car, a plane, a robot, and it's called the
fucking * Falcon, I'm there. Honestly, Yeah.
You can contribute at any time. I did just now is.
Great did did. I said big mood.
Yeah, I don't know if you were there.
I I said. The energy on this one was going
to be a weird one. So let's keep going.
The Star Falcon and the ground unit.
And the ground unit can travel underground, which is, you know,
more of a call back to the original Moghera.
And it it even goes underground to attack a tower, which is what
the original Moghera did. But it's the tower that space
Godzilla's getting energy from, and Yuki in the * Falcon
harasses space Godzilla as they advance, they keep them safe and
he ends up working with Godzilla to take down the tower.
And then they recombine Moghera, so he had to work with his
little white whale. Space Godzilla is now stuck like
between Mogara and Godzilla, and Mogara starts firing like a full
volley. From one side, Godzilla's using
atomic breath. On the other side, they use
another spiral grenade missile, and this time they shatter one
of the crystals on Space. Godzilla's back.
Horrible, horrible image when that giant shoulder crystal
explodes and there's just meat under there.
No, I don't like that. Yeah, I'm reminded that these
movies can get gross and violent sometimes when they want to be,
and it looks horrid. Yeah, it's something.
They fire lasers and they hit Godzilla more than anything as
as as it falls over and they managed to destroy the other
crystal before getting grabbed by by space Godzilla's tail and
tossed aside. The Major leaves Mulgara to try
to hunt Godzilla again. Because that's the thing you
should be doing right now. Yeah, yeah.
Get out of the giant robot designed to fight giant monsters
and chase him on foot. Right.
But he he's just like, I have to kill Godzilla before Space
Godzilla kills. OK, that's not how this fight's
going, bud, But. Right.
Godzilla's like full of energy from all the recent attacks on
it. So it So it gets back up the the
major Rams Moghera. Into Space Godzilla.
And then they like, they crash into a building and Godzilla and
Space Godzilla continued their fight.
Space Godzilla's absorbing energy from Godzilla, and now
the concern is that it'll explode.
So they're like, we got to get people out of here, 'cause
that's going to blow. And Godzilla starts using like
red atomic breath. Yeah brings back the the spiral
ray that he's briefly against Mechagodzilla at the end of the
last movie. A thing that they did not
attempt to recontextualize here. Right.
Like not. Hey remember how how this
happened like after a power up like no, it's just hey, Godzilla
did a red beam this time. It also doesn't look any more
impressive. You think at this point you you
should like we've joked that this is the DBZ one, right?
But like, I feel like Godzilla should have to charge that thing
up and it should be, like, more impactful than.
I was waiting for a beam struggle, right.
Oh my God, they they did that last movie.
How are you going to not have two Godzilla's do a beam like
clash against each other? Yeah, missed opportunity.
Yeah, it could be the blue, you know, the Godzilla's regular
breath, and then the corona beam meeting in the middle,
struggling. And then Godzilla fucking powers
it up into the spiral beam. And then that's what overpowers
it. Like, you know, Well, I'm
writing this movie for them. Right.
You could have done. You would have done it better.
I would have. In fact, I will.
In an extremely rare moment when we're done with the Plot
Summary, I will say exactly what this movie needed to fucking do.
But. OK, but when we're done, so
Godzilla's the the last one standing, all the humans get
together. Relieved.
Major Yuki finally is like, you know what?
Maybe I won't kill Godzilla. Nikki removes the transmitter
from Godzilla's neck and Godzilla like looks back at her
and actually looks pretty appreciative.
Kind of gives like a like a bro nod.
Yeah, yeah, the cosmos are happy and they thank her.
And then they're like, we should stop polluting the earth.
And also men. Have to fight each other, to
understand each other or whatever, and then Godzilla
walks into the sea. Don't police, don't space.
They're going to make this fucking anime called Planetus in
a large number of years and it's going to be so good.
Y'all. Yeah, I don't think space
pollution is why we have space, Godzilla.
Because I don't. I don't.
It's black holes in crystals. Nope.
Space. They were like, hey, these
movies are supposed to have meanings.
Let's throw something in. In the final act.
Not even the final like 30 seconds of the movie.
Throw the end title card. Bam.
Done Space. Pollution.
Watch Planetus. Don't don't know what else to
say, but watch Planetus all. Right.
Keep going. So here's the thing.
Like I said before, like the problem is we've got like 4
different major plot lines that get varying amounts of
attention, but also broadly do not intersect, right.
You can say that Mogara and Spacegodzilla intersect in that
they are both part of the final battle, but like there's never
any larger point to Mogara, right?
Here's here's what I think. I think that this part of the
problem is that this is a a much less experienced writer, right?
This is not the guy who's been writing most of these, hey say
era movies. You know, this is somebody who
will write some better or later movies, but like at this point
we can, we can assume is much less experienced.
No, I'm going to leave that in for sure.
But I think what needed to happen, I think you got to cut
the telepathy stuff out entirely.
I think what you've got to do is you've got to, you've got to
save space Godzilla for the second-half of the movie, right?
I think you need a, you need an opening chunk of the movie where
they are building Mogara out of the ruins of Mechagodzilla.
One movie ago, the the fucking world government was building
Mechagodzilla to kill Godzilla, right?
Like, right, The idea. Like, surely that's what Mogara
is there for. But they don't really lean into
that. The movie should start being
about, OK, we've built Mogara, we're picking up where
Mechagodzilla left off, right? Which also allows you to better
contextualize, you know, some background for why we have a
giant robot, right? Hey, we've tried to kill
Godzilla with Mechagodzilla. It's not working.
We have this thing we've built out of the wreckage.
You know we can it can split in two.
It has some new specialized weapons, like we're going to
figure this thing out, right? Goes after Godzilla, Godzilla
and Mogara fight Mogara, maybe threatens Baby Godzilla like
space Godzilla does. Gets ass beat down by Godzilla
because you don't touch the baby.
Right. So what we've done now so far is
we've contextualized why Mogara is actually there.
And we can you can even still have like the major like having
a grudge against Godzilla. Like why does he need to be like
he has a he can have a robot instead of blood coagulant.
You know, you don't need the blood coagulant to have that
character with that grudge. He lost somebody in the last
movie, right? Like, you know, who died in the
attack on Kyoto. So now what you have is this
idea of like, OK, you know, we are setting up that we have
attacked Godzilla over and over and over again, right through
the movies. And this repeated plan of it's
our job to kill Godzilla is not working.
And it's especially, like, less justifiable now that Godzilla's
spending more time on the island with the baby, right?
So it actually puts us in a worse position than the previous
attempt where it's like, OK, you know, we've rebuilt
Mechagodzilla into Mogara. We're trying again, but we don't
need to. Now this is purely about a
grudge, rather than trying to, like, stop Godzilla from causing
more damage. Then Space Godzilla shows up,
right? And then Mogara, like, gets
wrecked by Space Godzilla as well.
And then it takes Godzilla to fight off Space Godzilla.
And then your message in the end is like, OK, we've got to learn
to live with this guy. Because nothing we build,
nothing we make you know, can match it.
But also, you know, Godzilla's our best chance against external
threats. Like, it's still not a deep and
meaningful plot, but it is at least a coherent A&B melding
together into something. And a lot of the pieces are
there. But this just feels like an
amateur scriptwriter's attempt to throw in all the cool ideas
he had, right? So I know, I never, ever, ever
do like, you know, and this is off the top of my head right
now, right? But like, I never do fan rewrite
stuff. Like, I think that's usually
pretty obnoxious, but we were like a pass or two away from
this potentially being really great.
And to be clear, like, it's still a big, fun, flashy movie.
It kind of rips when Space Godzilla impales Mogara with its
tail and like, flings it around, you know?
Yeah, yeah, you know Space Godzilla is at this point a cult
favorite Godzilla villain. And I get it because like Space,
Godzilla has a really cool design, but like, doesn't get a
lot of opportunity to do much other than stand around
menacingly and and spit fun curvy laser beams.
Yeah, so you know, you you were DM ING me as you were watching
the movie and you said that for you, Mogara was the highlight of
the movie. Yeah, it was.
Because I think Mogara's really cool.
It's a cool design. There's lots of cool like
special effects stuff where parts open up and separate and
transform and. I like when robots are made of
other smaller things. So Voltron changed your brain
chemistry for good back in the day.
Yeah, I mean, for some now, when I think about that, it's, it's
Getter. Yeah.
Getter Robo, right? Yeah, Yeah.
Yeah, you were. I remember you were a Power
Rangers kid, for sure. I was, yeah.
Getter done. That's right, Finn.
Man, this must have been a truly confusing roller coaster ride
coming from the position that you were in at the start of this
movie. Yeah, I think you could say
that. What?
Is there anything you could even take away from this other than
man, a lot of lights and colors sure did happen.
No, and that's fine. You know, like, not everything
has to have deep meaning. What it was enjoyable to watch,
maybe enjoyable. It was entertaining to watch.
Things happened and it was fun. This is definitely like the 90s
Godzilla equivalent of just jingling keys in front of us for
an hour and 20 minutes. Yeah, you know what it is, what
it is. Right?
Like it's fine. It's fine.
It's it's, it. I don't think it would ever be
anybody's first recommendation to get someone into the Godzilla
version. Yeah, I just think it's so funny
because like, I picked this to bring you on because I obviously
like wanted to get all the SDGC folks on at one point and I was
like, I know. Actually, no, that's that's not
nepotism. We're not related.
Yay, crony. Yeah, but I was like, I really
want this one, 'cause I remembered that this is like,
this is just like the Saiyan saga, right?
This is this is just that. This is the most DBZA Godzilla
movie gets. And I'm going to be real.
It's because you called it that. When you first told me about
this movie that I kept expecting like a bleep beam clash, I know
I could swear there was one in this movie.
How's your boy gonna say it's like Dragon Ball and then not?
Give me. There's been so many beam
clashes that I was, like, surprised there wasn't one in
this, right? That should have been what
happened. They should have done the beam
clash. And then Godzilla like, charged
it further into the spiral, right?
And it would have been like, hike moment, you know?
But yeah, it's it's, it's it's weird.
And like, I can't talk about this until we get into the next
movie. But this movie kind of breaks up
a little of the pacing of something that's to come in a
way that that like just slightly redoing the the the Last Battle
to like have Godzilla like charge up more and like use more
you know like do more. Godzilla doesn't do much in this
movie, right. Like Godzilla kind of get falls
over in the first just gets he he basically.
Jobs the first like 3/4 of the movie until Megara comes in and
like saves the day. Yeah, and like Megara's got to
destroy the the tower so that space Godzilla's not getting any
more energy. But like, Space Godzilla didn't
have that when they fought on the island.
So Godzilla should have been able to just like, fucking merk
him right there, you know? So yeah, I don't know.
But like, it is still. There's some, I mean the the
designs for MO Gara and Space Godzilla are really cool.
A lot of the special effects work and like the, you know, the
special effects on like the corona beam and on MO Gara's
various weapons are sick. The soundtrack is, I mean,
again, like love, love, love. The musical space that this
movie takes place in, you know? It's it's cool.
It's just not. It's not much more than cool.
And I think I agree with you then.
Like, if I was going to convince somebody to watch any Godzilla
movie to try to get them into it, this would probably be
really low on the list. Which means that I've probably
just blocked you off from ever watching another Godzilla movie
again. So I've actually been
counterproductive here. Nah, you're good.
I, me and Charlotte talked a lot about our fears that that we
would eventually see the death of themes right in the showa
era. Like we knew that the the 60s
and 70s movies were eventually just going to become Big Lizard
wrestling matches. And they did.
Eventually they stopped being about things and started being,
you know, big Lizard. And we loved those.
We still loved them. Then the 80s came back so strong
and we were like, holy shit, each one of these is hitting so
well, you know, But we knew it was coming.
And Godzilla versus Mechagodzilla Two was a major
drop in what we expected thematically from these movies
and was just a big blockbuster. And I feel like this kind of
doubled down on that. And, you know, it's hard not to
pretend to like, to pretend not to be a little down about that,
but there's still a lot I'm going to take away from this
movie in terms of like, memorable scenes, memorable
designs, things like that. So what?
What would you want out of a Godzilla movie, Finn, if I was
going to hand you before you watched this, what were you kind
of hoping you were going to get? I believe I've already been very
clear about that. A Beam Clash, motherfucker.
No. Like like I would.
I'll tell you what I wasn't expecting was psychics and a
weird yakuza subplot that led nowhere and just padded at the
time. I just wanted Godzilla versus
space Godzilla and then with with humans that were initially
determined to fight Godzilla but then progressionally teamed up
because enemy of my enemy is my friend.
And then, Oh no, now we're kind of friends and it's basically
Goku and Vegeta. Then yeah, I just double checked
and this movie's 107 minutes. It's, it's it's it's an hour and
47 minutes long and I don't believe that.
I I cannot think of an hour and 47 minutes worth of things that
happened in this movie. I feel like you could recut this
into like an 18 minute short film, right?
Like on YouTube. I don't give you the Topher
Grace cut. So, Charlotte, what?
You've been a little quiet since we ended the Plot Summary.
What do you think really sticks with you out of this movie?
I've kind of made my like what my expectations were and where
my hopes were, but I just haven't heard so much out of.
You. I mean, that's Mulgarra was my
favorite part, you know? And that's weird because it's a
it's a movie that's supposed to be about Godzilla versus Space
Godzilla. I wish Space Godzilla was
better, Yeah. You know, I just wish it was
better. I wish it did something.
It's a really cool suit design and like the one thing he does
other than slightly move and let special effects happen is the
tail impaling Mogara, which is a cool shot, but it happens once.
Right. I don't know.
I would have done something crazier with Space Godzilla
since it definitely looks like like make it something else at
1st and then make it like go out into space and get.
Sells from Violante and then turn into that or something.
I don't know. Give it like multiple forms.
Yeah, it's it's got to be hard coming from like the PS2
fighting game, right? Or like other like Godzilla
games where space Godzilla fucking rules.
And then in this movie, he mostly stands menacingly.
Yeah, no. In the games you can like summon
crystals and then like you have like an area that you're way
stronger in if you're near that crystal.
And then he just looks cool, Yeah.
You know, well, you know, we we knew this one was coming.
But I think, I think it's worth, you know, rapping on like this
movie let me down some, but even one of the worst times I've had
with a Godzilla movie has still mostly been a pretty fun like
blockbuster. It's just hard.
It's also not easy to be super head empty about this movie when
it is very upfront. At least it's very dependent on
you being like in the know about what the fuck is happening in
the Godzilla world, which stops being important after about 30
minutes. So anyone got anything else to
to throw in? No.
I don't think so. Well, that is a wrap on this
episode and mercifully on the shorter side for once.
Thank you all so much for joining us on our journey so
far. Finn, do you got anything you
feel like plugging for our listeners?
You know I'm on some show It's all right.
It's. I've I've Nola Nerdcast oh.
No, I was talking about SDGC. No, NOLA Nerdcast is my comic
focused one, but SDGC Super Deluxe Games cast is is where
the real action is. Feel good, people.
Doing cool things. Our packs coverage is going up
soon. You know Twitter, I'm at Nola
Nerdcast for as long as that website's still a thing.
Well, I'm also at Nola Nerdcast. Everywhere else to let me be
yeah, find me on threads. Pretty sure I'm Nola Nerdcast.
dot, Blue Sky. Find me on Hive.
Yeah. Give me on Hive.
I'm on Nola Nerdcast. You know, living my best life,
you can find me at phone number. Hashtag sake Bless.
You can find me at phone number 4/07 867-5309.
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Because social media ain't working for shit for us anymore.
Nope. Sucks balls.
Not been great for SDGC either. What can you do?
Persevere. Outlast, you could pay 799 a
month. Never.
Apartheid Clyde. Apartheid Clyde is not getting
my $8. It's not happening.
Principle. I'll scream into the void to
nobody. Nobody will be able to see
because I I don't have my $8 account.
I would rather spend $8 on a second Paramount Plus
subscription. That is all we've got this week,
so see you next whenever and take care everyone.
Castle Bravo is a production of Derek Van Dyke and Charlotte
Landale. All editing is performed by
Derek Van Dyke. Special thanks to Kyrie Lamont
for our art assets and to David Van Dyke for our theme song
Pools of Memory.