And the kids are like. Why not just show them the
robots? The kids are like, man, this is
lame. I.
Thought this was a slight of hand.
Trick. And this motherfucker only has
tiny robots. Hello everyone, and welcome to
Castle Bravo, a Godzilla versus 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 journalist and editor at The Gamer, Eric
Switzer. Eric, how you doing today, bud?
Hello Castle. Bravo.
Thank you very much for having me.
I'm so excited. I loved this movie.
I, I got to say I, I, I do love this movie that we're going to
talk about today for a wide variety of reasons, yes.
Yes, it confounded me. It entertained me.
I've got a lot to say about it. I got to say, so 1st guest of
Season 4, this is going to be really fun because everybody,
every guest just about that we've had we lined up back when
we were in the planning stages before we even fully started the
show. So that's like what years ago
that we talked about having you on.
So I'm sure at a certain point you were probably like, did
these fuckers forget about me? I never forgot about it.
I was waiting for my day. I, I literally have like a
spreadsheet document where I'm just going through episode by
episode. You know, again, we'd have we'd
have been on this like easily, like nine months ago if if it
were not for just like the horrors of 2024 that were
inflicted upon me. But yeah, it's it's fun.
We are here now. We have a a truly ridiculous
movie to talk about. I think we're going to have a a
fantastic time. Charlotte.
Yeah. How you doing today?
I'm all right, I have a sinus infection but I have mini drugs
in my system so I sound pretty normal.
Hell yeah drugs. We are pro drugs on Castle
Bravo. Other than that, I mean, yeah,
things are good. Castle Bravo is brought to you
by Purdue Pharmaceuticals. Probably.
Now that you mention it, I'm also on drugs.
I probably have to believe that, even if just for comedy's sake.
Yeah. God, this has been a really
weird. Like, I'm just going to put it
out. This has been a really weird
holiday season for me. We recorded the Godzilla 2000
episode the previous episode a couple weeks ago, Right,
Charlotte? Or has it been?
It's been. Longer than that because the
last two weeks were both holiday weeks.
Yeah, that's right. So it's been, it's been close to
a month. Yeah, it would.
Have had to have been four weeks because the week after we
recorded the last ones when we planned this one and then two
additional weeks out. So yeah, it's been 4 weeks.
Yeah, yeah. OK, well, that's fun.
But yeah, like, holidays have been insane.
I don't think anyone had a truly good holiday season this year,
this last year. I think we all just kind of went
through it a little bit and we all collectively crashed out a
little bit. And now we're all putting our
clothes back on and, you know, wiping the the paint off our
faces and pretending we're back to normal.
There's certainly some dread going into 2025.
For a. Variety of reasons.
I'm I'm afraid to go. Everyone's like, Derek, this
will be your year. Don't say that.
I don't want to jinx it.
They keep not being my year. I but I know you mean it was a
slightly spooky holiday season. I I think it'll be my year.
I think my year can only be a year that's like otherwise
horrible. You've got some good shit coming
up which you you you will reveal more of as it happens if you
feel like or not. Whatever.
Keeping the mysteries part of it.
Yeah, I think I, I will reveal that after it's happened.
Yeah. For good call.
Good call. So folks, let's talk about where
we are at in Godzilla history. So all through season 3 we
covered the hey say era of Godzilla up to the infamous 98
Tristar Godzilla. So for some sicko that decided
to start here and hasn't been listening up to this point, the
80s and 90s had this really fantastic rebooted run of
Godzilla movies and going into it, we were like pretty sure we
were going to get a little that like 90s edge.
The 90s was infamously fondly remembered for geek culture, but
actually a terrible time for most of the franchises we love
that had a 90s phase that didn't end up being true for Godzilla.
The 90s run of Godzilla's so fucking good up until, you know,
the Tristar movie. And the Tristar movie was so bad
and, and so poorly received that Toho rushed out Godzilla 2000 so
they could get like Japanese Godzilla movies going again in
under a year. And you know me and you had some
thoughts on that movie. It's a little messy, but it's a
very fun time. So the original plan, because
Godzilla 2000 did pretty good in Japan, it did OK in America, but
the marketing push on it was so big that they just didn't recoup
those costs 'cause it turns out, you know, you, you do a very
expensive relocalization, a pretty expensive redub and
marketing campaign to release it in a pretty wide theatrical run
that costs a lot of money. And not a ton of people went to
see a Japanese Godzilla movie in theaters.
This was not -1 So the original plan was Toho wanted to make a
sequel to Godzilla 2000. You know, this was going to be
just like the 80s and 90s era. This is our new start to a new
series. And like spoiler alert, there's
not a ton of behind the scenes information on today's movie
Godzilla versus Megagiris. What little we know is that at
some point, and it seems like it might have been pretty late in
pre production, the idea of this being a sequel to Godzilla 2000
was scrapped and it was made another full reboot.
I actually think there's some elements of this being a
Godzilla 2000 sequel that still snuck in.
I'll bring those up as they're relevant.
So we have a new director in the director's chair, Masaki Tezeka.
Tezeka, a deed on a bunch of hey say movies.
This is like the move for Toho, right?
When they can't get back the director they've been using,
they go to the last AD they could get their hands on.
And it's worked out to varying degrees of success so far.
In the writer's chair, Watari Mimara and Hiroshi Kashiwabara
both return. So they both worked on Godzilla
2000 together. Remember?
If I remember correctly, Mimara worked on the Heisei Godzilla
versus Mecca Godzilla, which we thought was dumb but fun.
And Kashiwabara has an extensive list of credits including like a
bunch of Lupon the third. But then on Godzilla, Wise
worked on Godzilla versus Space Godzilla, which was a mess, and
Godzilla 2000 on the writing standpoint was nothing to write
home about. So don't know how this duo was
doing other than just the fact that they showed up to work that
day. We'll find out.
No, He chuckles in the special effects chair.
Kenji Suzuki returns from working on Godzilla 2000 and I
believe at least one of the rebirth of Motha movies before
it. So and and I think like special
effects wise, you know, it mostly holds up with some
notable exceptions that once again we will get to and and
I'll be kind of curious to break down why that may have happened.
The one really fun thing in terms of of people in in the
creative chairs for this movie was our new composer is Michiru
Oshima, who long list of credits, but you may know for
composing the soundtrack to a little show called a fucking
full metal alchemist. Maybe you've heard of it.
That makes so much sense. Yeah, you can hear that shit
now, can't you? Yeah.
And like, I do think that this
movie ends up having very much its own sound that's very
different from a lot of previous, well, almost any
previous Godzilla movie. It's kind of like when we had
the the Nadeshiko composer in for Godzilla versus Space
Godzilla. It was like, OK, OK, you brought
something that's not just poorly recreating Akira Yifukuba score.
It's the thing that stands out the most in this whole.
I would say so, yeah. So we've got a pretty
straightforward idea, right? We, we Godzilla 2000 did OK,
We're rebooting, you know, we're going to make a sequel.
Except, oops, no, we're not. We've brought back most of the
same creative people. The the main switch around
really is the composer, which you know, is, is important for
changing up the texture, but shouldn't change too much
creatively about the movie. So, Charlotte.
Yeah. Why don't you tell us what
happens in Godzilla versus Megagiris?
OK, so breaking news, Godzilla raids Tokyo in 1954 again.
But like, it's a really good looking recap.
Like I liked this part, I thought it looked really nice.
It's really interesting that they did.
I don't know if that was just like straight up footage from
the original movie or or recreations, but then they've
got like the modern Godzilla in the 19, which is so weird to see
because up till this point we've only ever seen crusty old 1954
Godzilla, which is a design I love in these old flashbacks.
So yeah. This he is crusty, I mean.
Yeah, let me, let me ask you guys about the timeline here
because this gets reiterated throughout the movie a bunch of
times. And in this timeline, it's the
original Godzilla. And then.
And then no other movie. And then nothing until attacking
Osaka in 1996. Yeah, it seems kind of like
according to what this movie is establishing, which is weird
because I think everybody coming in is expecting a sequel to
Godzilla 2000 and instead they're like, let's re establish
that only original movies happened.
But also we have this very specific couple of like
alternate history things that have happened as a result of
Godzilla's existence because they talk about like moving the
capital of Japan, which is not a thing that happened famously.
And shutting down all nuclear power.
Yeah. And then developing plasma
energy and then also shutting that down.
Yeah. I don't want to jump ahead too
much, but I do want to talk to you guys about heavy hydrogen
plasma derived electricity. Maybe, maybe we can, we can wait
till we get there. But what?
What? What is that?
Are you are you are? I was going to say, are you
secretly like a fucking electrical engineer or
something? Because we had, we had a guy on
for Godzilla versus Bayonte who turned out to be a geneticist
for his real job. And I didn't know.
I just knew him from writing about video game shit.
So. Yeah, no, I I play Super Mario.
OK, well, here, I'll keep going. And then I actually have a spot
right after the plasma energy thing where it's just empty for
a second. OK, perfect.
Look, Japan moved its capital to Osaka.
I think that has never happened before, like you said, and they
rebuilt it. Godzilla returns in 1966,
destroys the first nuclear plant.
And they're like, you know, maybe nuclear is not not the not
the move here. Maybe maybe we don't do that.
And they're they're trying every kind of power, but they can't
find anything that's efficient until we get to 1996 where they
are searching for replacement energy and they managed to
create plasma generated electricity.
What does that mean? I don't.
Like I have, I talk about discovering plasma energy, but I
as far as I know plasma is fire, right?
Plasma is a state of matter. I thought right and it like a
fourth. I look, man, I am not this guy,
right? But I'm pretty sure plasma is
like a fourth state of yeah, it's a state of matter.
So it's like you solids, liquids, gases, plasmas.
So it's the thing that's above gas.
So it's. But it's highly ionized.
Yeah. Well I mean I think that could
be true. Don't quiz me on this.
Plasma is a weapon type in video games.
And is is the implication that they couldn't make this black
hole weapon until they discovered plasma driven
electricity? Well, I think the the black hole
like that the the movie famously revolves around, you know,
actually they don't. Those aren't really connected at
all, right? I mean, they no, Yeah, because
we're going to have to, we're going to have to put I, I just
realized why that can't be true, but I can't talk about it
because we're talking about a thing that happens very late in
the movie. So I'm going to, I'm going to
put a pin in this. To make a black hole, don't you
have to like generate so much power in one spot or something?
No, it's his mass. A black hole is is simply
enough. OK so this I actually this is
physics shit. I do know because a black hole
is when you have so much mass condensed into so small an
amount of space that the gravitational pull eventually
become so strong that even light cannot escape.
That's the event horizon in a black hole.
Black holes are generated because stars go through nuclear
fusion. That's how they generate energy,
right? So they are continually fusing
the matter in the star into denser and heavier atoms.
Elements, right? Like things off the table of
elements that we have. And eventually those become so
neutron dense that the amount of matter packed into such a tight
space basically collapses in on itself into a pinpoint.
There's still some astrophysicist who's going to
correct me on some small part of that, but that's actually a
pretty accurate description of what a black hole is.
You can't just turn a machine on that makes a black hole.
And fire it like a big bullet, yeah.
Like it's a fucking Duke in space.
I will. I want to say though, about this
intro. I do really like this idea that
they they started by trying to live with Godzilla.
They were like, we have to get rid of nuclear so that Godzilla
isn't tempted. It wasn't immediately like, how
do we kill this big fucker, right?
It was it was how do we keep keep ourselves safe from him?
And I feel like in America, American interpretation of
Godzilla, it's immediately go straight to what's the biggest
weapon we can make. Well, what's interesting is is a
lot of the Japanese movies have done that too.
But I really think this is an interesting approach
philosophically because it does put Godzilla more in line with
being something like a natural disaster rather than like an
enemy to defeat, which is an attitude that the the franchise
has frequently kind of tried to go towards, right?
It it goes back and forth on the sliding scale between Godzilla
as a demon versus Godzilla as a hurricane.
Yeah, yeah. And that and that's great,
right? Like when, you know, I live in
California and we had a crazy earthquake in the 90s and then
we started building, making buildings a different way, you
know, so this is sort of the same thing.
Like we have to find a new way to to safely produce energy
because of this natural threat of Godzilla.
Yeah, I thought that was pretty cool.
So it's really interesting that this movie starts with a very
committed to the idea of Godzilla as a hurricane, but
then we come to find out that actually that is the.
Wrong approach for this Godzilla because this Godzilla is a
demon. Yes.
So yeah, 'cause they pretty early on say, like, Godzilla is
not actually just drawn to nuclear energy as if he's, you
know, feeding on it, he comes and fucks up the plasma energy
generators too, kind of just to fuck up our day.
And then Moon walks back into the sea.
Yeah. Basically, which is
characteristically the thing that was kind of unique about
Godzilla 2000, that Godzilla 2000 was explicitly kind of
malicious towards humanity and just showed up to wreck our day
every so often because he thought we deserved it.
Yeah, yeah, I one of the most interesting things about
Godzilla to me is sort of just trying to interpret his will,
you know, like, what is it that he wants?
Why is he doing what he does? Yeah, like what level of sapiens
even is there on any given incarnation?
Like. Exactly.
Yeah. And it is fun to think like,
obviously he wants to destroy our power, but is that just to
hurt us maliciously? Is that to protect himself from
what we might do with that power?
And I think that's always an interesting element, yeah.
Yeah, so Godzilla's in Osaka. Military's trying to kill it, I
wrote in my notes here. Flying flaming car.
So good. Yeah.
The car do we fly because. It was, yeah.
Yeah. The so the military keeps trying
and failing to do damage to Godzilla.
They move in, you know, they they fire on him only to, for to
to be sent away multiple times. Suji Mori, which is our our girl
in the military here at the beginning, she stands ready near
near this factory to fire her rocket launcher at it.
And she does score a direct hit, but it does nothing, just like
everything else does. And she's like, no, no, I
really, I have to kill this thing.
And she wants to fire again, but she gets ordered to retreat.
Godzilla attacks like a nearby building, and that building
falls on her commanding officer. She grips his dog tag and
screams and fires again. And that is her motivation for
the rest of this movie, basically.
Then there's a title drop, Godzilla versus Megagiris.
So then we jump to 2001 and we're in Akihabara.
There's, there's some guy and he, he's kind of a doofus and
he's teaching kids a magic trick using some food.
Some, some folks walk in and they have hats that say G
grasper. And I was like, there's no way
that there's something called G grasper this.
Is. I love, by the way, his magic
trick is like he puts like a couple grains of like uncooked
rice. It like a couple little tiny
like dabs of ingredients down and puts a bowl on top.
And then when he lifts the bowl a moment later, he has like a
little, little tiny spat of Curry.
Yeah. And he's like telling the kids.
Man. Yeah, yeah, the lady's like he's
lying. It's not magic.
He actually has fucking micro machines inside the bowl that do
the the cooking and mixing in in seconds.
And also the bowl is a is an oven.
And the kids are like, yeah. Why not just show them the
robots the. Kids are like man, this is lame.
I. Thought this was a slight hand
trick. And this motherfucker only has
tiny robots. See, and I was sitting here
because I was, I was like messaging Derek about this movie
while I was watching it. And I was like, all right, so we
can make multiple assumptions from the scenes, such as
technology like this is mundane to children, so it must just be
everywhere. No, actually, but those kids are
just hard to impress. And it's so funny from a Western
perspective, too. You're like, is that what it's
like in Japan? You know, these children are
bored by incredible microbots. Like, yeah, I've got one of
those. This is This is the first of
many moments where I stopped and wondered if maybe anyone
involved with making this movie had ever met a human being,
because there's a lot that happens in this movie that feels
real, like we asked aliens to make a human movie.
Yeah. Yeah, we asked aliens to name
our special units. Yeah, they have G Casper on
their hats and and they revealed that the trick is done by these
tiny machines and after a little conversation he agrees to go
with them to the the counter Godzilla 'cause they're.
Like your ability to make technology very small will be
very helpful to us. Yeah, like so specifically they
want that. What is this guy's deal?
Is he supposed to be a dork or is he supposed?
To be suave because. Yeah, they can't decide.
Yeah. He does.
He does act like he's packing 9 inches.
At the same time, everyone does treat him like the biggest dweeb
in the world, like no one wants him there.
Yeah, at times, but then other times he's like, well, we'll get
to it, yeah. So their plan is to kill
Godzilla and they have like 3 sections, Section 1 seeking
Godzilla, Section 2 studying it, Section 3 simulating an
evacuation of Osaka because they know that's going to happen.
And our doofus boy, his name is Kudo, and he meets with the rest
of the G Grasper team. And then another named
character, Miss Yoshizawa walks in and she taught him physics in
university because he's not only a dork, he's a dork.
That that was like physics and how to how to, you know, make
tiny little robots to do anything you want.
Professor ladies and this is kind of weird, huh?
Yeah, this scene is where the score really starts to stand
out. It's it's almost like John
Williams esque. Sort of.
Sweeps through as they're like exploring this facility.
John Williams, a great call, actually, yeah.
Yeah, so she tells Kudo like, hey, we want you to join us.
You can do things other people can't do.
And he scoffs at first. He's like, what?
Why? So I can get killed like
everyone else that helps you. And then so she's always like,
well, look, right. I mean, I don't blame him, but
she's like, hey, look, we're creating a micro black hole.
OK, In my notes it does say they make it with plasma energy to to
just delete Godzilla. They they just want to make
Godzilla not there anymore. So kudos.
Pretty impressed. I mean, it's the first man made
black hole and they're like, not only is it the first man made
black hole, it's being fired from a satellite in space.
And also we want the device to be two meters wide.
Why? They other than them saying we
have to fire it from space to keep Earth safe, there is
unbelievably little regard for the dangers.
Of creating a black hole. Like, nobody really even brings
up, Yeah, it's really not a concern for Ed.
Down at the fucking ground. I don't know if you've thought
about this. There's really no one even has a
throwaway line like, Are you sure this is safe?
There are just like, Yup, this is the plan and we're doing it.
What if it goes like 50 feet further than you intended it to
like? What if it doesn't stop?
Yeah, so suddenly an alarm blares and Godzilla has appeared
for the first time in three years.
Then there's a three month time skip.
We, we go now to A, to a family who's getting ready to move and
their son, whose name I did not decide to remember, is rushing
some bug samples to his friend. He runs into this little
military roadblock and he's he sneaks around and he realizes
that the school nearby has been taken over by the military.
The head of the The Counter Godzilla Force appears, and
Yoshizawa says that once they kill Godzilla, they're going to
dispose of this black hole technology.
But what they're doing with the school right now is they're
testing the black hole weapon on this school.
Why is this family in this movie?
They they needed a reason for the egg to be moved.
No, they don't. And that's it.
But the egg, they don't. Hatch this I know but someone
thought they did cause. The egg could just have been in
the place it needed to be to begin with.
Yeah, they could have been laid anywhere.
They didn't have to get laid in a in an inconvenient place that
only a child would find. Yeah, and his whole role in this
movie is done at after one more scene, he will continue to
appear. And have literally 0 impact on
anything. Nothing.
Yeah. I think genuinely it was just
that they knew kids would see this movie and there needed to
be a kid on the screen that's. Got to be it.
That's my question. Is there a lot of like a child's
perspective? And throughout the series
there's. Off and on, yeah.
Yeah, off and on, I would say definitely a lot of the like the
80s and 90s didn't do this really.
But then again, they were aimed a little older, I think.
I think this is the thing that started to become common in like
the late 60s into the 70s where they were like, dude, we got to
get kids in there and it's because they were being aimed
like at kids. So he's.
Also like he's also connected to which we're about to get to this
like very loose gender politics theme that the movie has.
Oh yeah, fucking welcome to Japan.
Gender is here, Yeah. Yeah, we're almost there.
I got a whole thing on that, but so that there was also a stint
in the past where Godzilla was basically just, he was just
Godzilla, defender of children, like very specifically.
So I think there's just there's some DNA in here for that.
So the school's gone because there is a black hole now.
This was cool. It was very cool.
It looked. Good.
Yeah, a lot of a lot of the special effects do not look
good, and I thought this one was pretty cool.
Yeah, so the the black hole leaves a, like a special
distortion behind temporarily, and no one questions it.
They're just like, oh, OK, yeah, black holes do that.
So some soldiers catch the boy in the forest.
And having seen the experiment, you know, they have to come talk
to him and be like, don't tell your parents about this.
But during that conversation, the boy is like, hey, why are
you here? You're a woman.
Yeah, yeah. You're a woman, why are you
fighting Godzilla? Yeah.
What's that? What why?
Why would he? Why does he say that?
Because when? Because she ignores it, right?
She's just like, get out of here, little guy.
And then later she does bring it back up, but doesn't confront it
at all. She just goes, well, you should
fight the things you're afraid of, right?
Like why does he say this? We're cancelling this child
today. It's there.
So there's a lot of women in positions of power in this
movie. In in this series, right, this
series is not afraid of of women characters like it's so and I
mean again, like the the kid bringing it up is not because
the movie thinks the kid is right, like the kid is supposed
to be like it's supposed to be like a dumb chot like thing that
A and maybe that's what it is, is they thought like this is a
wrong thing that a child could say, but like.
Why? But when does he learn the
lesson that it's wrong? Yeah, like what?
Where does this come from? How does it get corrected?
What would that mean for the movie there?
Needed to be him witnessing her heroic sacrifice at the end.
You, you know what I mean there Needed it.
Needed a circle back around. But in because it doesn't.
It's just a kid being sexist. Yeah, it.
It it almost ends up reading more like we know that a bunch
of our audience is going to think this, So what if we had
someone say it so that we could we could just acknowledge that
people are thinking that. But that's an insane thing too.
He is, and he's just a cute little kid.
It's not like he's like a little prick or something, like, you
know what I mean? He's not villainous, Yeah.
He does. He does move a prehistoric
dragonfly egg. But, well, we'll, we'll let
Charlotte get to it. Well, so she does.
She doesn't really respond to this.
She hands him his bugs and leaves.
That evening, the boy sees the shadow of a giant dragonfly
Passover his. Window I'm I'm sorry one more
thing sorry don't tell your parents about the the fact that
what that we blew up the school and left a.
Crater, where are you going? On my paper, but they're.
Going to notice. Yeah, I think they might know.
They might know we're going. To build a new school overnight
and it'll be just as shitty as the old. 1.
Yeah, there's a there's a dragonfly shadow goes over his
window. He goes outside, finds finds
this egg that was laid by this dragonfly before it went back
into the black hole. The the boys finally moved.
Like he's in his new home with his mother and he's like, oh,
the egg is oozing now and then he just puts it in the sewer for
like, no reason. OK, here's my thing about the
egg. Little little kid loves bugs,
finds a weird egg and takes it on.
That all makes sense, but this little boy lives in a world
where Godzilla exists, and I have to imagine that you, just
like you tell your children, don't get into any white vans
with strangers. Offering you candy.
You probably also would tell them, hey, don't pick up any
weird magical eggs, right? Like I feel like everybody knows
in a world where Godzilla exists, don't mess with things
that look like Godzilla. Don't mess with weird shit.
Don't mess with weird monster shit.
It's bad. Could it be is it like 10%
chance of weird monster shit? Don't, just don't.
And then he puts it down the sewer, which lucky for us, I
don't know why it's not the the thing he would do other than it
has to end up in the water because it's a dragonfly egg.
So it's going to hatch into amphibious like first forms.
That's how dragonflies work. So I, I don't, I at least I
assume that's what the point is. They don't explicitly say that,
but that it is how dragonflies. Work, I guess, like he knew he
had to get it, get rid of it, but he didn't want to leave it
like in a dumpster by his house because then it might.
Come back, there's someone in the neighbor's yard.
Make it their problem. I would have just smashed it
with a hammer. I would have got your friends
together and fucking ET that motherfucker up, yeah.
He would have stopped it. You know what?
I'm just, I'm sitting here thinking now like it's been
ridiculous this whole time. Would you and your friends have
killed that egg with with hammers?
You were my friends, but you. Can't.
Yes, I. Don't I don't Yeah, I think we
we probably would have, but no, I'm thinking if he found it in a
pool in the forest, that pool would probably dry up.
And if he knows the life cycle, he'd probably be like, aw, this
egg won't survive here, so maybe it.
It almost. Makes sense.
See here's the thing, it almost would have worked better if he
did it on purpose because he thought the egg was cool and he
wanted to hatch the bug. Like then the whole lesson of
oops I did a bad would at least be something.
Yeah. Oh.
I agree. Well, now Suji Mori's working
out. You know, she's, she's just
pumping iron Kudo tries to start spark up some conversation about
this black hole, and he gives her a special bullet that she
can fire if she ever needs to be rescued.
Because this dude's like Qi don't know.
What is? What is this about?
Why? Because they needed some way to
call people later. That's just.
But that's the only reason I can think of half this stuff
happening. I OK like his job, his job on
this black hole project is to make the tracking work right
like they need they need it to be very precise.
And so part of that is putting this tracker on Godzilla.
So I thought that's what he was giving her is like, hey, I've
finished this tracker. But he says if you ever are in
danger, just fire this and I'll come find you.
And it's like, that's from what? Like danger from what?
Hobos. Very strange, very strange.
After he's like, after he's like, hey, why, why are you
working out your body? We we're going to black hole
Godzilla. There's nothing to worry about.
Why are you, as a woman, worried about working out?
Like, are you as a woman worried about being fit?
But yeah, she does tell him she's like, you know, you should
probably build up your body first.
Like, things are going to happen, some stuff's going to go
down. But he he grabs her dog tag,
like her her commander's dog tag.
And she like, gets mad and she basically lure dumps to him.
And then she test fires the special bullet and like, OK, it
works great. The egg, meanwhile, is now in
the ocean, and it's morphing, and water is starting to leak
out of the ground beneath the city.
Some workers come in. They're like OK A.
Feasible amount of water by. The way it is not like the
offset amount of an egg, I don't know where it's coming from.
Is the flood just something that happens?
The flood is like the flood is is is Me when?
Me when? Me when?
But that's like that has nothing to do with Godzilla or the
Dragonfly's. That's just also Tokyo's
flooding. So the the.
The only thing I can think of is that like the sheer amount of
biomass in the sewers is causing like the water to overflow as
the dragonflies like mass reproduce.
But that's still insane because Tokyo is suddenly so underwater.
Yes, it's like, it's like it's like 80 feet underwater.
They're driving boats. There's not that much water in
the sewers, guys. Well, the workers are coming to
fix it, and there's a giant dragonfly looking down at them
from above. The dragonfly, like, just starts
eating people. Oh.
My God, it sure does take that dude.
There's like head crunch, Yeah, incredible head crunch.
Yeah. Top tier practicals there.
Yeah, like this one dragonfly eats, eats a couple out on the
street and then just starts molting 'cause I guess it has
enough meat now. The the boy sees the dragonfly
swooping around outside and he finally tells someone what's
going on. Like, hey, I had this egg.
And Suji Mori like confronts him finally about everything and is
just like, look, I, I fight Godzilla because my commanding
officer fought Godzilla and you got to face what you're afraid
of. And so like, I guess he accepts
that, but then he he shows her that the dragonfly is a mega
neulon, which is I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly.
You are. It can't fucking be.
But it can't be. Yeah.
Mega Neulon. This bothered me a lot.
They're not that big. This bothered me so much because
it because it came out of a. Portal So I think the idea is it
came from like the past, right? It's a prehistoric thing that
like got like time jumped through a wormhole or something.
But then it has like energy beam powers and like this is
obviously not a creature from Earth.
Yeah, I don't know. So here's the thing.
A mega. So this this gets complicated.
OK, so the Mega Neulons first showed up in the original Rodin
back in 1950, what, 556, something like that.
And what we said then is it's very likely that what they're
actually saying is Mega Neura, right?
Because the Mega Neura is a famous like foot long
prehistoric dragonfly, an apex predator of the time for its
class, very, very famous prehistoric insect.
And of course in Japanese there is no distinction between the
R&L sound. It's a singular sound in their
phonetic alphabet. So it's very likely that
Meganeula is Meganeura. So here we are.
We're bringing back this prehistoric dragonfly monster
that was already oversized in Rodin.
But at least it's maybe the idea was they were irradiated here.
But no, these things straight up come from a wormhole from the
past and are also laser dragonflies.
Yeah, they can suck the energy out of things with their
stingers. Like why?
Why does this need to be? How?
Do these go extinct? Yeah.
Very and and how do we know about them?
Very strange. I don't know why, it could just
be. You'd think it would have been a
bigger deal if we were like, Also there were Godzilla
dragonflies back in the day. Right.
Yeah, I mean, it's got to be like a different dimension or
something. I.
Think if there were 10 foot dragonflies back in the day.
It's the only thing anyone would ever talk about.
We would never have invented sports.
We'd just be talking about the dragonflies.
Real. So back in headquarters, a light
appears on the sensors and Godzilla is fighting with one of
the dragonflies in the ocean. They launched this ship of the
Griffin. They they then leave the Griffin
to go out in a boat and observe the the corpse of the dragonfly.
And the score is going nuts. No, it's popping the fuck off.
Yeah. Godzilla's right below them.
Suji Mori helps the other guy back into the Griffin but she
gets left in the boat near Godzilla and they they drop the
The Search Godzilla system is what it's called after she
shoots her her special bullet and the Godzilla's high.
That way they can track Godzilla.
They then launch because. You don't want to miss with the
black hole gun. Yeah, they launched the black
hole device into space and they take a sample of the dragonfly
corpse back and discuss that it's definitely a mega Nula.
Right. Yeah.
And they're like, it's a violent insect that makes clusters of
eggs. And now they're like, well,
Shibuya is completely flooded. I don't.
I don't know if it's because of the clusters of eggs, but I
guess it's got to be the. Water level here is makes no
sense because like there's there's like establishing shots
where skyscrapers are half underwater and then it cuts to
people running like, OK, where they where are they running?
That's not underwater? And then it cut and then it cuts
to a boat and then it cuts to people walking in the water and
it's like knee deep. Like it's like I cannot get a
grasp of how flooded the city. Was and later we're going to see
a, a, a, a piece of the city that has at least like 200 feet
of water. Yeah, like it's an amount of
water that could never have been in that sewer system.
Even if you clogged that son of a bitch from from tailpipe to
tailpipe with dragonflies, you are not getting that much water
out of those sewers displaced. The only thing that I was able
to to think about at the time was like, it is an island
nation. I don't know.
They just thought it would look real cool to have most of this
be underwater. They played Sonic Adventure and
they were all about it. You know, real.
It is cool. It is a cool way to raise the
stakes. Yeah.
It's and and to tie imagery. Natural disaster, Yeah.
Yeah, and if you want to do the whole, well, dragonfly larva are
aquatic before they, you know, become their adult forms.
Like it's it's again like a good idea, but the sewer's flooded
because there's lots of dragonflies.
Makes no sense. It ain't the way.
Yeah, but like big dragonfly needs big water.
I think it does work. Yeah, So Kudo makes a tiny
search Godzilla system because, I mean, he can make anything
tiny. I don't know.
It has an infrared camera. So they they evacuate the city.
Well, he's, well, he's getting this thing ready.
And one thing of note that happens when they evacuate the
city is that they have an entire boat of Yaru girls.
Just love the shots. Love this shot as a certified as
as a certified fucking Gonguro Disrespector.
This is such a funny shot. Very extinct now, so.
Thank God. Worst form of gyaru fashion?
So they, they find the the AG cluster in Shibuya and then they
managed to find Godzilla and they go, OK, we're going to use
the dimension tide against it, which is.
The dimension a real good there's a real good like Level 3
super attack in a fighting game move y'all so.
Good. I really liked the like
underwater drone shot like going through the city to find that
big cluster of eggs. I loved that imagery of like
that metropolitan OH. Yeah, it was super.
I get the imagery rips. Yeah.
And then, sorry, have we gotten to like the guys shooting at the
building that's covered in all the dragonflies?
I didn't make a particular note of that.
But I do love it because nobody can aim.
But yeah. Here's I think the dragonflies.
Dragonflies like, grouped together like mayflies in a
mating season, right? Just like covering this building
and dudes are unloading automatic weapons at it.
Nothing. You don't hit one.
Yeah. Really.
Nothing. Yeah.
And this is where, like, I really appreciated this idea of
the black hole gun because it is the perfect weapon for Godzilla.
Like, let's just delete him. But would have no effect on a
swarm of bugs. Yeah, right.
Like, it's a weapon designed for one big dude.
And any other monster they had put in this movie, you would
have just been like, well, OK, They'll just.
Vaporize Godzilla and then
they'll black hole this other big guy.
But you can't do that to this giant swarm.
I thought that was really cool. Yeah, yeah, my, my main note
about that is that is that I wrote there are a lot of
dragonflies in Shibuya and they all fan out and fly away.
So I didn't mention that they were being shot at, but.
Unfortunately, the swarm looks horrible.
Yeah. This is such an awkward era for
CGI. It just like some of the stuff
works and some of it like anytime we saw a big swarm or
them all on the building and it's all just like copy pasted
the same bug. Yeah, it's that.
But here's the problem too. Is that like some of the
practical stuff is a bit messy too that we will eventually talk
about so. Yeah, I, I, it's so interesting
because Godzilla, like the, the thing it's most famous for is
it's like practicals. It's miniatures, guys in suits
and it's all considered like hokey and old timey.
But then in this case, a lot of the practical stuff, even from
the 60s, seventies, 80s or whatever.
Actually holds up better than this 2000s era.
Yeah. Well, so what's funny is like, I
am a big believer that a lot of attitudes about the production
design of of older Godzilla movies is basically just steeped
in racism. Like, I'm not afraid to just use
the artwork here because you go back and watch those and
recognize how much work and craft went into that, how well
these these, you know, directors and special effects designers
knew how to light, how to shoot right, how to frame, you know,
everything they were doing. Like it puts a lot of American
sci-fi of the era to shame. And like, then we get to this
movie, right? And Godzilla 2000 is kind of the
same way where the Godzilla suit is great.
A lot of the miniature work is really good.
The compositing, the ways they interact, the awkward CG feels
really out of place. Right.
Yeah. Well, it's because it doesn't
have the lighting and the reflections.
It doesn't have the depth. It all looks so flat.
And that's just like sort of a symptom of the limits of the
technology. Yeah.
In a sad way that it doesn't. The 98 Tristar Godzilla looks so
much better than anything in these in Godzilla 2000 or this
movie. I hate that I just said
something nice about Godzilla 98.
I hate that. Well their plan is that they had
to lower Godzilla on the land and then fire it.
Which makes sense because if they fire it in the ocean that
would be worse you. Just get rid of a bunch of
ocean. Hey guys, we just lowered ocean
levels by 37 feet. Hey, that'll be useful soon.
Yeah, later. We got to save Miami.
So they choose the island of Kikanjima to to do this and Kudo
shows off his really cool cyber deck with like a custom OS and
it reminded me that I really want to make a cyber deck you.
Want to make a custom OS that runs off an anime made girl?
It it's a nurse. Anime nurse girl.
Excuse me. That's right.
Yes, because she has the needle. Yeah, some very classic you
would. Prefer a made girl?
Going on here. Of course I would.
So Yoshi Zara, words are hard. Yoshi Zawa says that the weapon
isn't ready to fire from space, but Chi and Chi and Kudo are
just like they're blown off, like we have to do it.
They fire weapons at Godzilla to try to draw it towards land,
including a photon gun, and Godzilla retaliates with atomic
breath, killing a few people. While they're doing this, T&T is
being used to clear Shibuya of the eggs and this is where there
are a bunch of dragonflies all over the the buildings and they
fire at. Rudnake's making.
Huge. Strides in getting rid of bugs.
So they begin the firing sequence the But when this
happens, the dragonfly swarm that just flew away from those
people is flying like all over Godzilla.
And because there's a bunch of dragonflies everywhere, the
targeting system can't lock onto Godzilla.
That was weird to me because I think there isn't.
Aren't they tracking like the bullet thing?
Yeah, that's right. It's.
Not visual. It's also.
A radio transmitter. It's not a visual.
That's so, yeah, that's so funny.
I thought it was clever, but you're right, that makes no
sense. Yeah, and like it's supposed to
be radio also. And the the last movie we
watched before this was talking about what happens to radios
when they're near things that are radioactive.
Whatever. So I.
Can't. It's almost like I can't.
Believe the drivers. Almost like chaff.
Yeah. Like they show us the point of
view, like from the satellite. It's like, oh, I can't get a
clear shot, but it's almost like CAPTCHA.
Yeah, yeah. It's like the bugs are like
distort a distortion field. It's like chaff.
Yeah. I don't know it it works for me.
Yeah, fair enough. So they they bug Godzilla enough
that Godzilla they start to atomic breath on them.
Yeah, I wrote it that way on purpose.
The bug swarm Godzilla and it does not atomic pulse them.
For some reason he just doesn't think to do that, but instead
just struggles a lot while the the they drain energy from him.
Once Godzilla's killed enough of them, they finally are able to
fire the weapon, but it doesn't kill Godzilla because the shot
missed and. Yeah, does it though, Because
he's buried I. Think he just digs into the
gravel sort of? Or is he just far enough away
that he is covered in dirt? Also, that shouldn't matter,
it's a black hole. It's a black hole, it's not a
bomb. Well, that's right, right That I
mean like their, their explanation's like, oh, we
missed. But you know what?
It should be really hard to miss with a fucking black hole.
I don't think they did miss. Yeah, I don't.
Godzilla just framed perfect. Parried it, Yeah.
Yeah, something, something like that.
Well they they miss with it I guess and it also takes an hour
to cool the gun in space. Sure.
Hey, how does Yeah, how does a black hole create heat?
God I love this fucking movie. Well, anyway, they're convinced
that Godzilla will come to Tokyo to destroy the Plasma project,
because they kept the plasma project actually.
But back in Shibuya, the Dragonfly swarm has gathered
around this huge cocoon, and they're like any energy they've
taken from Godzilla they put into the cocoon.
Suji Mori tries to blame Kudo for things falling apart.
Even though, like, Kudo was like, I told you it wasn't ready
to fire. So, you know, whatever.
Did my job, yeah. Yeah, Kudo's working on the on
the mini SGS. Still, all the electronics in
the area are having issues, and Kudo realizes it's because there
must be something magnetic in the lake.
And as they discuss this, Megagiris, the the biggest
dragonfly, rises from the lake. And and the swarm dies.
Yes, Swarm's gone now, basically.
And thank God, that problem solved itself.
Because. No one else was going to.
Like honestly I think the swarm is more dangerous than the one
big because like this is it. It ruins the black hole thing
because now you'll just shoot that thing with the black hole.
Yeah, yeah. But yeah, they just, they gave
off their energy and they all just died.
So good problem. Solved.
Well Megagiras's wings start moving so quickly it creates a
high pitched whine and then like jets off and destroys a bunch of
buildings with the shockwave. Which that part was pretty cool.
It looks so bad though. It looks.
Here's the thing. So I got a lot to say about the
reveal of Megagiras, right? The sequence of the dragonfly is
all like cult like dive bombing the water and like struggling
down to the cocoon and like giving all of their life force
to it to like empower it and dying and then Mega Gear's being
born. Great.
Mega Gear is design not 100% working for me as insectoid, you
know what I mean? It does have a crocodile mouth
for some reason. And the biggest wings you've
ever seen that do not move at all, correct?
They don't move. It it flaps, it never looks like
it's flying. It looks like a mistake.
It looks like it's like a placeholder.
You can see the strings in at least one shot, which is a thing
that has not happened in I, I, I genuinely think maybe one of the
early 60s movies maybe. Like we have not seen a string
in a long time and we can see the strings in this made in 2000
movie. Really depressing.
And then the wings are at different angles, right?
Like whenever it's flying, one of the wings is like out mostly
to the side and moves up and down at like these angles.
And then the other one's just like angled a little higher for
no reason. So it just it's like
asymmetrical wings. It's it's Oh my God, it's the
effects work on mega gears. It's not a great.
Puppet Yeah, I agree. I I mean, obviously a flying
thing is hard, but it it just it.
Never doing this shit great back in the 60s.
Yeah, they were you. Know what's wild to Yeah, like
the original Mothra in the 1950s looks so much better than this,
and it's a shame because there's a lot of it.
Mega Gear is that I should really love as a monster, right?
As a queen of a swarm type scenario, it is kind of an
objectively pretty cool design, even if it doesn't read
Dragonfly. I love some of the gimmicks.
I love the idea of a monster that is just stupid fast and
like hypersonic, you know, and, and and vibrations and stuff.
A lot of cool shit going on. This is a an almost kind of
mundane monster. It just special effects wise is
pulled off so poorly. Right.
Yeah, it kind of looks like a mutilisk.
Oh yeah. Oh yeah, that's a good call.
I think, I think we passed this part already when when Kudo
after they fail and like the the head of the anti Godzilla's is
all pissed off at them and they're all blaming each other
and Kudo tells him machines need fine adjustments by men.
Did you catch that? Yeah, yeah.
So. That's weird, right?
Like it is only him, Like there is no scenario where a woman is
going to be making the adjustments.
Why is he saying this is a man's job?
It's his job. It's his job like this.
Movie is insane. Yeah, I don't know, Everyone's
just like, needlessly sexist out of nowhere.
Very strange. Yeah, well he is injured now and
he he may be the only one left alive after all that.
Godzilla heads towards Tokyo and they evacuate everyone and
Godzilla hates clean energy so he's going straight for this
plasma energy. They they try to lure Godzilla
to a safer location but then Megagiris shows up and it took
me a minute to understand that the weird choppy frames were
supposed to be from Megagiris perspective.
Yeah, yeah. But Even so, I don't fucking
like it. Just do the bug eye thing where
it's like a yeah, like put a put a stupid filter over it.
This weird fucking PowerPoint slideshow is hideous.
It feels so fucking lazy like. I think they're just trying to
convey that Mega Gears is really fast so everything else is slow
to hit but. But The thing is then they
should have shot everything like they should have like crazy,
overcranked the film and then just shot like slow MO, I guess.
I don't know. God, it doesn't.
Fuck, man. Yeah, Godzilla gets sidewinded
and knocked over and they finally start fighting and mega
gears like Revs up. Godzilla charges, they're
finally able to recharge the gun, Godzilla misses and
destroys a building and Megagiris tries to clamp through
Godzilla's neck. And like they say that Megagiris
frequency makes the weapon inoperable so they can't fire
it. OK so Megagiris stabs Godzilla
and starts draining energy like shoving shoving him around.
Godzilla falls underneath part of a building that Megagurus
collapse on top of it after doing like this weird evil face
warp they're like. Yeah it they make it smile by
doing like a stretch effect in Photoshop like.
Yeah, it was really weird. The the the structure of this
fight scene is like very typical.
It's like the the hero is Godzilla, he's getting trounced
and then he comes back in the second-half after learning his
enemies movements and wins the fight.
But in the first half of this, I'm thinking there is no way
Godzilla wins this fight 'cause this thing, first of all, it's
way faster than him, it's floor in him, it's it's stronger than
him. It picks him up and throws him.
It stamps him right in the FUPA. It stabs him in the FUPA and
drains his energy, taking away his biggest weapon, right?
Like. It it does everything better
than Godzilla. And I feel like in the
second-half it just like stops doing all of its cool moves.
Like it would have killed Godzilla if it had just kept
doing what it started doing in the first half of this fight.
But in the second-half, he's just like, I'm going to fly at
him straight on. Like here's my next move.
I'm going to fly straight at Godzilla's face a couple of
times. What?
Could go wrong. So they charged at each other
and they pass each other Godzilla's spine like cuts, one
of mega gurus claws, you know, and.
In in one of those in one of these fucking like like anime
ass like they clash and then they they like sit there for a
moment and then the claw falls off.
Right. Or like the slice on his cheek,
like the first drop of blood. Genuinely sick.
Yeah. It's like Graham, you killed it
today, Sir. Megagiras gets slammed like at
Sonic speed, like through a building.
Kudo shows up to fix the weapon and Godzilla's still throwing
himself at Megagiras. Kudo's operating system
eventually fixes the gun 'cause it's like a thing operating
systems do. And apparently he named the
little nurse girl after Suji Mori 'cause that's a very normal
thing you should do. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Before, before he fixes it.
Kudo, who we have been told has a fractured arm, rips his cast
off. He's been wearing this cast for
an hour, maybe rips off of his plaster cast so that he can type
faster. I fucking love this shit.
He's got to type faster so he can hack better.
Yeah, Mega Garrus ends up shooting a fireball, and the
fight basically continues until Mega Garrus's Stinger gets
caught in Godzilla's mouth and Godzilla just bites it off.
Yeah, then after a couple blasts, it's basically over.
Yeah, mega gear. This is not built to take any
hits whatsoever. Yeah, and then is to say that
the fight is over. Godzilla just continues to
rampage through the city. The Griffin relaunches and heads
to Shibuya. The counter Godzilla leader
leaves because he's hiding something and meanwhile the
satellite starts falling out of the sky.
Like all this stuff just is just happening now.
Why is the satellite falling out of the sky?
Well, because the the wings vibrated too hard down on Earth.
Yeah. Is that, was that the
connection? Yeah.
Yeah, Mega Gear just did a thing and it caused the satellite to
fall. The satellite, That's that's a
thing that could happen. No, just that one.
Just that 10. Just that one.
So I think 1 contention this this movie has is you have to
assume that the atmosphere isn't real.
That's true. Because otherwise you can't
really fire things through it without.
Like if you're firing a black hole through the atmosphere, you
eat through the atmosphere first of all.
Yeah. But whenever everyone learns
that they that they had an additional plasma energy reactor
that was being kept in the Bureau of Science, which is the
reason Godzilla came back at all and that's why the leader left
because he was high well. He got he got the plans in a
fucking FOIA request. Right, the weapon can fire so
long as they can walk on to it. Suji Mori gets in the Griffin,
flies over to Godzilla and is like wait.
Wait, wait. I'm sorry.
Yeah, go ahead. But what is the contention with
the leader? He so this secret energy base?
So the idea was they weren't supposed to have any more plasma
energy, but he secretly built one because profits.
He built one because profits and he wanted to be like you know,
we'll have the secret in Japan will be a superpower we.
Also want to point out this is ostensibly like a very efficient
green energy source. So like, it is a solution to
like a lot of problems that the Godzilla franchise has heavily
cared about in the past. Yeah, but it sets him up as the
villain for. Doing you're a bad guy for
investing in clean energy because it makes Godzilla mad,
Yeah. And so that has.
A Republican donor. So when they are confronting him
and he's like, well, that's I put this team together to deal
with Godzilla, this wouldn't have been a problem.
But do you remember what he says?
He he calls them a gang of asses.
God, what a great, what a fantastic.
That's the only way I'm referring to NDGC from now on.
Just a gang of asses. Yeah, talking about video game.
Headlines. I love that so much.
Yeah, I'm, I'm keeping that one. So Suji Mori flies the Griffin
over Godzilla and it's like, OK, you can use the Griffin to
target Godzilla. I don't know why they couldn't
do literally anything else, but OK, so they do that.
She. I thought, yeah, I.
Thought the plane could get close enough to the satellite
that the satellite could target it better and then once they
targeted the plane then the plane would fly in.
That's how I took. Maybe.
That's probably the best answer.
Any of us have it? Was it is a stretch for sure.
So they do that. She ejects just in time and
Godzilla's gone. Kudo goes goes back to his
little machines. Suji Mori comes in with
potential evidence that could Godzilla survive.
Because you can't kill Godzilla. It's not like we saw something
earlier in the movie where it appeared they hit Godzilla and
then he popped out from underground, right?
That wouldn't happen a second time.
And also also, they've now fired this thing three times.
The first time it created a little wormy hole to the, I
guess the. Fucking shadow realm, yeah.
The second and third time nothing like it's that's only
when you black hole in elementary school, yeah, is when
you get when you get the wormhole the you know the the.
Elementary school 2 times you fire flies is.
Of course. The the other two times you fire
it, no problem. Right.
Well, they roll credits.
The boy finally gets his bug samples back where they're
supposed to be, and Godzilla didn't die.
The end. And then?
Presumably a child gets killed in the Godzilla attack.
I guess these nameless child. So before the post credits, so
like, kudos back at his, he's doing his little magic tricks
and his microbots, and she comes in and she invites him to come
back because Godzilla's not dead.
And he's like, Nah, I don't think so.
And he's like, oh, OK, I'm just kidding.
She punches him in the arm. He goes ow, my broken arm.
And she goes, oh, I'm so sorry. Freeze frame on her face rolled.
On it. Great.
Great fucking bizarre 70s sitcom.
End of an episode ass editing choice, yeah.
Utterly bizarre ending to this movie.
Oh sorry, freeze frame. They need to play like a happy
saxophone at that exact moment. Yeah.
Oh God, this movie's insane. It's bad.
Like, let's make this abundant. It's a bad movie.
It's pretty bad. This is bad in a super
entertaining way, unlike like Godzilla versus Space,
Godzilla's bad in a way that I just don't want to watch it
right. This is.
Hilarious it is so plot oriented.
And unlike a lot of the 70s Godzilla movies, like those were
funny because they were funny. This is funny because it's bad.
Like they did not set out to make a funny movie.
They tried to make sci-fi peek. They thought they were getting
Urubochi up in this bitch and they fucked it.
And it's so good as a result. The only thing that really drags
it down for me is like the bad CGI stuff is not funny, it's
just bad, you know? It's, it's not like a lot of low
budget sci-fi stuff where you can kind of laugh along with the
bad effects. It just doesn't work.
Well because the shitty mega gears effect is is great.
I love when that stupid thing has a has a fucking string
showing or they like stretch AJ peg sideways to make the mouth
move. Like I love that shit That's bad
and hilarious way. So you know, it's kind of talk
about the monsters really briefly, right, Because, you
know, we've talked about like a lot of the effects work being
very hit or miss. Let's start with Godzilla
himself. So this is just like a report of
the Godzilla 2000 suit, but I think colored slightly
differently. And I I got this is it's still
good. It still hits like a.
I. Love the Godzilla. 2000 So much
person. Yes, it's got the little cat
ears and the the the much more elongated crocodilian face, the
gigantic sharp spikes. This is the silhouette this in
Godzilla 2000 that we are using for Castle Bravo's logo.
It's just iconic to me, but like.
I love I love how much definition is in a silhouette.
Sometimes they make Godzilla just look like a big turd, you
know, just like a big boiled lump.
But I love how much how angular he is in this.
Yeah, yeah, Godzilla has a tendency to look like a very
wide Cellulite laden boy. And this is a very slick design
that works for this very aggressive era of Godzilla.
But like Godzilla doesn't do anything necessarily like super,
like the fact that it's just Godzilla 2000 again also means
that there's less to say. Meanwhile, then there's the the
giant dragonflies, the Meganulas.
And what a mixed bag, right? I kind of like the puppet like
peace thing that they use in a couple of scenes where it's like
hiding on a wall over somebody or something.
But so much of it's CG and like you said, it's not good.
It's not composited well, it's not lit, it's lit too flat.
You see copy paste model animations all over the place.
Like it's ambitious and I don't know what else I wouldn't have
told them to do for this concept because what are they going to
do? Make dozens of like prop
dragonflies? I don't think so.
Like. I I just think further away less
detail like represent them as this horde rather than like
individual creatures. You know 'cause when anytime you
can see detail, you can see how bad the detail is.
Well, and you'll get these shots of them swarming around
Godzilla, like you said, where it's a little bit more zoomed
out and like, you can almost squint your eyes and it's fine.
But then you'll cut to, like, a close up where there's just
three, like, hanging out like mosquitoes on him, and the
energy is completely lost. Right, Right.
Yeah. Whereas that first scene where
they they crunch those two people in that house where you
bear, you really don't glimpse on that much.
It's just like these intense, close, disgusting shots of like
bodies being ripped apart that rules.
That works so well, but you don't really get to see them
yet. Yeah, but of course, they're
really just there to fill time until Megagiris herself shows
up. And I mean, like I said, I'm,
I'm such mixed opinions because like, I do kind of like Mega
Gear's design. It's just the Batra color
scheme, which works very well. It's, it's, it's honestly very
Batra esque in terms of like we took a bug and made it very
covered in ridges and spikes. We made it.
We made a bug that's so sick and twisted.
Just a look into my evil wine. It's.
Like a normal bug to me. I liked those moments where it
leaned into horror, like I mentioned with the alley, and
then at the beginning of the the last fight where this thing's
zooming around, Godzilla can't find him.
There's a really fun like Godzilla POV shot, like a
Godzilla Vision where it's, it goes totally silent and he's
just looking in a circle around the empty sky and then all of a
sudden this thing is in his face super close up and it's such a
creepy looking thing. I think when they when they did
do those sort of like horror moments, it worked really well.
Yeah, I and and what's funny is that they can't figure out how
to keep their tone right, because you have that, but then
you have like anime ass moments in the fight.
You have Megagiras like flying up above that suspended pyramid
and doing like a fucking WWE like like showing off to the
crowd. Like, Anil, I'm about to have
smacked us down on this jabroni like before doing it like, well,
Godzilla just sits there like, Oh no, he's going to do it
right. And Godzilla does like a off the
top rope move too, right? Like does the full body slam
It's. It like it can't figure out what
it wants to be and I wish it had pick a tone and stuck with it
more of the movie was batshit insane on purpose.
The way that the most of the fight is.
Like I almost would have leaned into that more right?
Alternatively, if they had just stuck with the more horror tone,
I think this would white Godzilla 2000 be messy but
interesting in what it was trying to do and it it just
can't pick a lane. Yeah, yeah.
So I did tell you all up front there is a shot like I do as
much research as I can into what happened with these movies.
What what is the context that they are put in?
What caused certain decisions to be made?
There is so little about this movie out there, I think as a
lot of that has to do maybe with a lack of interest in this movie
in general in the West and well, in Japan too, right?
I mean, it, it, it comes in between Godzilla 2000, which is
a a very notable movie, right? In terms of like everything that
it stands for as this attempt to like claw back Godzilla's
relevance after the 98 Tristar movie, but then the next movie
to come along. Spoiler alert, GMK is one of the
most highly regarded and memorable Godzilla movies in the
franchise. And then you have this weird one
in between where it's just like we made another Godzilla 2000,
but it wasn't as good. And I think it took forever to
come to the West too. So I I struggled to find out
what all happened that made this movie this way.
I can't figure out why, if it was like, a budgetary problem
that caused so much, the effects work to be so rough because
Suzuki's done better than this, right?
I mean, obviously the CGI was rough, but like, Megagiris did
not have to be so badly puppeted, you know?
Yeah. Yeah.
I don't know. I will.
I will tell you this, these folks don't come back for the
next movie to my knowledge. Just I, I think every single
seat we talked about in the beginning of this episode is
swapped out for the next movie. So I don't know, I try not to
look ahead for if these people are going to return in the
future, but I'll tell you they ain't back for the next 1 so.
So this movie really doesn't matter.
Yeah, pretty much. Like in every conceivable way.
I mean, I think it doesn't even get to be a sequel to Godzilla
2000, right? Which would have made it maybe
more relevant. Instead it's like so completely
its own thing with very little to speak for that's super
original other than just the fact that it's insane and it's
primary lasting impact really is it for better or worse like this
defined the Millennium era as one of stand alone movies.
You know, Godzilla 2000 was a reboot and instead of following
that up with a sequel and making sequel after sequel after sequel
for a while, they went, well, this one will be a reboot too.
And then the next movie's going to be a reboot and the one after
that's going to be a reboot. Like all through the 2000s, they
just, and kind of even today, the Japanese Godzilla has never
really gone back to a serialized story format.
And this is kind of where that serialization finally fully
breaks at Toho. So, you know, good or bad, we'll
find out. But that's maybe its primary
impact on the franchise at this point.
Cause Megagiras hasn't come back.
You know, it did. Give us a motherfucker name.
The dimension tide Dimension Final Fantasy final boss
soundtrack attack. Yeah, yeah.
Great score, great weapon. Yeah.
Black hole gun. Black.
Hole, gun sick. Stupid, but sick.
I'm going to toss this first to Charlotte because Charlotte, you
are usually the best at managing to snatch some form of meaning
from the ass crack of emptiness that is some of these movies.
Charlotte, do you think this movie had any interesting
thematic elements it was trying to get at?
What are the politics of this movie?
Do you think Margaret Thatcher was giving off girlboss energy?
When? You'll note from the fact that I
didn't immediately start talking that I don't have as good of an
answer for this one as I normally would.
It's, it's, it's trying to say something about sexism.
I, I don't think it actually finishes its sentence about
that. And it I think it's also trying
to do something with like, you know, facing your demons, that
sort of thing. It, it doesn't seem like it has
a lot to say. Like it just it's a big
dragonfly. Eric, I want to toss if, if
there's anything, I've got something, but it's not an
intentional thing, but it it's of note, but I'm curious if
you've got anything to throw at, throw at the wall and see if it
sticks. Yeah, I mean, I always start
with our protagonist and what what their arc is.
And here it's about, I guess, redemption.
Her someone that was very important to her was killed by
Godzilla and so she needs to kill Godzilla and she sort of
does that at the end, but then she doesn't because Godzilla
can't die. So yeah, I just, it's not so
much that it the themes don't land.
It's it's almost like it doesn't really even try to have any.
Yeah, I think, I think I agree with you all that like, I don't
think it's actually trying for much.
What I think it accidentally ends up on, weirdly enough, is
like climate doomerism. And bear with me here, it's
really interesting that the movie starts by treating
Godzilla as as openly and compassionately as as it
possibly can. That humanity standpoint is a
Godzilla is a natural disaster, right?
That we have to learn to manage around and live with.
And it is first nuclear energy, which is one of our best paths
out of climate change at this point, like one of the best
green energy sources we have, despite cultural fears around it
that that is continues to make Godzilla like a problem, right.
OK, well, this series has always had a contentious relationship
with radio or with radiation. I mean, dating back to the fact
that this comes from bombs, right?
But then plasma energy, they're like, OK, we found a new green
energy. Plasma energy.
It's better. Even this is great is no
drawbacks to this other than it makes Godzilla kill us more.
So we've got to give up on green energy.
The the one guy is of is framed as a villain for continuing to
develop into green energy because it's what's best for
humanity because he's going to keep drawing Godzilla even
though he also tried to set up anti Godzilla like
countermeasures so that they could continue to develop into
green energy. Like this movie kind of
accidentally makes the people trying to solve our biggest
problems the bad guys for trying.
It does. Yeah, it it.
You're absolutely right. It has a commentary about
alternate energy, and that commentary is it's just as
dangerous, which is bizarre, like there's no other way to
read it. And I, I, I don't, I don't think
that they thought this through that much, but like, that's what
you accidentally wrote. So that's, it's very
interesting. We have our first like truly
conservative Godzilla movie. It's very fucking wild.
I know right? Which which makes the fact that
it's so stupid and insane so funny.
It would be so much worse if this was like a, a, a real a
movie with like really dark conservative themes that was
also really well made and extremely popular and and maybe
had the involvement of like Hideyakiano.
I am going to get killed by someone for our Shin Godzilla
episode. I wish.
I wish it would have ended with a resolution for.
Energy. Because the whole point of
getting rid of Godzilla was so you could go back to clean
energy. And they just go, well, we got
rid of them, maybe time to keep looking.
Yeah. What about what about green
energy? What about the everything?
Right. Like what are we going to build
next? Like what are we going to go
back to? Is it back to nuclear like what
it like? You altered history like because
it was so important that our green energy rush was like the
center of technological development and then you gave up
on it as soon as the barrier was gone.
This movie was also made in like entire year, so which not
horribly uncommon with these Godzilla movies, but I do think
a lot of them at least start. I'll, I'll give you this, a lot
of these movies start pre production much earlier, right?
Like through the 90s, especially.
What we were seeing a lot of, even though these movies were
coming out every year, is they were dusting off a script that
it had four or five passes on it already and was put on a shelf
and going what if we work off of this and do like one more pass
at it? So a lot of times some of the
heaviest work of pre production in terms of writing is already
done before they start like working on a move.
So like that plus the fact that, you know, yeah, you could pump
pump these out in a shorter time frame.
But this is the same team just got done miraculously turning
around Godzilla 2000 in under a year, and then immediately get
to work on Godzilla versus Megagiris.
Like, you know, they didn't have fucking time.
Yeah, so I'm gonna give them that too.
I do think you calling it like conservative because of that
accidental energy message and the pair that with the sexism,
it makes it very funny. I don't like that.
Yeah, take it back. We don't condone this movie.
Guys, I think I fucking love this movie.
Oh. God, So I guess like as what
about this movie? What is the thing that you're
you're going to if somebody brings this movie up and it's
like Godzilla versus Mega Gears? Oh, that's the one with blank.
Like what's the blank for you? What's the defining thing about
this movie? Oh, it's the.
It's the. It's.
Got to be the black more than the dragonflies.
It's the black hole gun. Yeah, yeah, Satellite that
shooting. A black hole satellite for some
reason. This is Godzilla versus Black
Hole baby. Yeah, yeah, that's such a fun
idea because like, we don't know what a black hole does, and they
don't either. And they don't.
They know a lot it. Makes things go away, they.
Don't know what a black hole is in a very different way than I
don't know what a black hole is. And I I love that they figured
out how to use it and are not concerned at all about what.
He does. Fuck it, we'll just see what
happens. It's like it will make Godzilla
go away. We'll deal with whatever
problems we've. Created.
We're going to bring in the gorillas to fight the snakes.
Oh, any other final thoughts y'all?
I want that G graspers hat really really bad.
Probably not in any merch store. Yeah, that's all I got.
Yeah. Fun.
Bloody. Yeah, couldn't.
If they could contain a black hole, can't they use that for
power? It has infinite pole I.
Think you're right. I think that's how it should
have it. It should have been Black Hole
guys. It makes as much sense as
anything else in this fucking movie.
Because like it didn't work the first time.
So they like, so they were like, we'll recalibrate, we'll find
Godzilla, we'll do it again. It didn't work the second time.
So why wouldn't you just say, well, we'll recalibrate it and
we'll find him and we'll do it again.
But we never see the black hole gun again.
So they could have very easily been like.
Crash. The weapon we needed.
Yeah, I guess it. Yeah.
I don't know. We'll, we'll rebuild it and
we'll use this as our energy and we'll create energy in orbit.
And Godzilla won't bother us because he can't get to the
satellite. You know, there could have been
something to be like, oh, we'll use this technology as you.
Know how sick it would have been if Godzilla beamed that
satellite out of orbit and Godzilla, like they fired at him
and missed and he like looked up and just fucking shot the panel
off that thing and that's what sent it careening to Earth?
Guys, hire me to write these movies.
Yeah, fuck, I wish that's what would have knocked it out.
I didn't understand what knocked it.
Out Honestly, I still think the mega gears thing is a like this
movie does it just it just was crashing suddenly.
I and I didn't care enough to rewind to find out why I could
have I just didn't want to. Oh God.
Yeah, so pretty much yeah. G Graspers and gang of asses.
Those are my main table. This is the movie with the gang
of asses. Well, folks, that is a wrap on
this episode. Thank you all so much for
joining us on our journey so far.
Eric, where can people find you and do you have anything to
plug? I'm not the gamer thegamer.com,
that's my site and I'm very proud of it.
So please check out articles there.
And if you want to get in touch with me, I'm on Twitter and Blue
Sky at Epic Switzer all. Right.
And you can follow me on Blue Sky at Derek Van Dyke dot B sky
dot Social. And you can follow me on Blue
Sky at at blood dot doll dot church.
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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 Kirier Lamont for our art assets and to David
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