And he's like, well, you have to go because Captain Gordon hit a guy earlier, so now he's in the punishment room.

Hate when they put me in the punishment.

Room BL brackets king.

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 writer and journalist Ashley Schofield.

Ash, welcome to the show.

Hi, thank you for pronouncing my name right first time.

That definitely isn't a thing that went wrong that we had to correct behind the scenes.

No, I know.

I appreciate it.

It's really nice.

That really happens on podcast.

No, thank you for having me here.

I am quite tired from various things, but I, you know, I was excited like you know what I've had a stressful 2 days.

I'm going to talk about an insane movie for an hour, two hours and that's honestly the best way I can spend my Sunday night.

I think there's.

No better time on a Sunday than Lizard Church.

I started drinking the millisecond you said live in church and I regret doing that so.

Much and we've all got some good slap happy energy, which is perfect for this movie.

Ash, I'd like to introduce yourself to our listeners at all.

Sure, I'm a critic journalist and as of recent or technically later next year, author.

Who is I?

I mostly, I mostly write about video games, but I've branched out a bit over time.

But my big thing is that I'm the author of Valhalla design work published by Lawson Culp, which is a physical book, which, you know, I've failed everyone who I ever said like, oh, I'm going to journalism.

I'm not going to write a book that's insane.

That's for fiction.

And then I wrote a book.

But yeah, that's insane.

It's a compendium of like everything to do with Valhalla, cyberpunk bartender action by Scaevan Games.

And I'm very grateful to Lost in Cult for trusting me to write it, which is still wild to me.

And I hope that everyone, you know, into the game likes it and it, you know, is happy with their purchase.

And I, I, you know, that sounded like a spiel that like I've practiced.

But genuinely, I, I feel like it's insane that I am allowed to say that.

And I'm in a position to say that every time I ever say it to someone new or on a podcast or something, like I've read a book.

What the hell?

That's a cool thing.

You should be excited about that.

You read a book.

That's wild.

Like that's fantastic and around like a super cool like I I love Valhalla like what a what a a truly wonderful little cult favorite I stumbled onto not long after release and it's just like it lives rent free in my head.

I love the coffee talk games just because it's like, Hey, we we made more Valhalla esque something.

It's it's, it's a under under explored niche of the gaming world to me.

It's it's Valhalla without the poison.

Yeah, but sometimes the poison's so good.

Yeah, I mean, like, I'm biased.

I wrote a fucking book about it, you know?

I completely did.

Fair enough, Charlotte.

Hey.

How we doing today I'm.

Tired.

Well.

Yeah.

Well, I.

Keep getting five hours of sleep for some reason.

Oh.

My God, me too.

Just shy of the optimal amount.

I don't know, I just keep jolting awake.

I have no idea.

What you just like middle of the night?

Just like left the stove on.

No, I keep thinking I'm being attacked by bugs but I don't know.

I shouldn't laugh, that's horrible.

Do you just have like kamakuras just like in your mind at all times?

That you just, I guess so.

I do.

Final Rise is a very traumatic film to watch for this reason.

Lot of big bugs.

Lot of big bugs.

Yeah, I'm doing OK myself.

Obviously it's been, for me this has been like this is the end of a four day weekend.

So I'm like very refreshed, very chilled out.

We've said enough times this has been an absolute dog shit year and I would like to say I hope 2026 will be better to us, but that's kind of feeling like maybe I shouldn't even say that out loud like that.

I.

Just decided it's going to be better.

So yeah, listen man, I got nothing else.

It fucking has to be, dude.

If 2026 ain't better, I'm going to fucking lose it.

I'm hanging by a fucking thread here.

I need a year to rest after writing a book dude.

I think most of us need a year to rest after the year we've had.

Well, yeah, yeah, authorship aside.

Yeah, with luck, maybe, maybe the the release and reception to the book will be energizing.

God I can't wait to get a bunch of people message me be like I paid £50 for this shit and it's garbage.

This is 40 pages of nothing.

You could just be like, it's all right, the Internet doesn't matter.

Those people aren't real.

No, I'll just be like, yeah, you paid for it already.

Sorry, buddy.

Kidding, kidding, kidding.

Boston call.

I've thought my PR is so bad, I'm sorry.

Babbage.

So let's kind of set the stage a bit for today's movie Godzilla Final Wars, which is one I've been waiting to get to for a long time.

Ash, you've been waiting to get to this one for a long time.

Like a lot of guests for this kind of era of Godzilla.

We locked in guests a long time ago, and then it took a lot longer.

I don't want to think about that.

We were all on Twitter back at the time.

It was still Twitter back at the time.

I'm, I might not have been a woman by the time that you, you know, initially messaged me.

That's how much shit changes.

I believe you had been because I know we've been, I know we've been moots before that point, but I believe that was post.

Oh, OK, that's fair.

I believe that's my reference point pretty much.

That's, that's my like, Oh yeah, time begins in, you know.

This is a new one.

24 basically.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But yeah, we and, and frankly, there's a lot of people who got locked in back in like 2021.

Holy shit.

Yeah, well, 'cause we lined up a lot of guests and we were going to move a lot faster, and then multiple crises put the show on hold for long periods of time.

So fucking oopsie poopsies.

But.

Nothing bad has ever happened to me, Derek.

No, not at all.

Good for you.

That's anybody who has ever met you for longer than 5 minutes knows that some shit made its mark on you at some point in your life.

So kind of understand Godzilla Final Wars where we're at today, we, we kind of have to talk about this, this stretch of movies in the Millennium era, right after the 98 Tristar Godzilla was such a disaster in terms of kind of the reputation of Godzilla as a brand.

The movie was not received well, which is crazy 'cause it was like one of the biggest movies of 1998.

The, the marketing campaign for that made it ever present, maybe setting it up to fail even harder than it would have otherwise.

Soho was like, OK, we when we wanted to put Godzilla on a break for a while, but it's time to drag the old man out of retirement before he's ready.

You know, with Godzilla 2000, we had a a stretch of mostly unconnected movies through the early 2000s, Godzilla versus Megagiris, GMK to cure you, Mechagodzilla movies that were actually connected.

But they've kind of never found their footing, and none of these movies have been crazy successful.

I think GMK did pretty good for itself, but for the most part, these movies have not blown up the box office.

So the the producers at Toho basically decide rather than do the third Kiryu movie.

It was decided almost immediately, we're not going to do this follow up that we teased.

We're just going to go out with a bang that we're going to make one last movie and then put Godzilla away for some long unknown period of time the same way they did with Terror of Mechagodzilla back in 74.

So they end up bringing on director Ryuhe Kitamura.

Kitamura is kind of a rising star in Japanese like Action Cinema.

Most notably, he did a movie called Verses that was fairly popular at the time.

Origami's another one that people might know.

A lot of folks in the West might know him for a horror movie he would later direct called The Midnight Meat Train, which I promise is not a porno.

It's a good movie.

It's actually like a really solid horror movie.

Yeah, that I did not know was directed by like, a, a, a Japanese director.

I would have sworn that was an American movie if you had told me.

Yeah.

But Kita Moore comes in and I think the attitude from very early on starts to get a little slap happy.

They very quickly decide like we're going to do more monsters than destroy all monsters.

We need to start, we need to shoot all over the world.

We need to have all of these very expensive suits.

We are going to go balls to the wall and just do as much Godzilla as many things as we possibly can.

Because kind of whether the movie's successful or not, they know they're not going to make another one after this, not for a significant amount of time.

So Kitamura brings on his frequent writing partner of his, Isao Kiriyama, as well as returning writer Wataru Mimira, who's been working on most of these Millennium era movies.

Special effects supervision by Aichi Asada, who is returning from Tokyo SOS.

We have working on Music 2 frequent collaborators of Kitamura's.

In fact, I didn't find a lot of credits for them outside of working with Ryuhei Kitamura, so it's Nobuhiko Mourino and Daisukayano.

Oh, and motherfucking Keith Emerson.

That's actually how you wrote it down too.

It is exactly how I wrote it down.

I I, I, I don't know if we need like introduction to Emerson Lake and Palmer, but Keith Emerson's kind of a big a big deal in terms of bringing in for composition.

I don't know that I necessarily hear his stylings in in the score for this movie too much, but this is a this is a weird one in general.

So the teams together, the decision is made, the budget's set and going to be blown past.

They're just going to do as much Godzilla as they can.

One thing that I think for me is particularly interesting and Ash, I'm I'm not sure when it comes to your history of Godzilla when this movie was filming and then coming out.

I mean, 2003 was like kind of a golden point for like the Internet connected era really starting to kick off.

So there was a a ridiculous amount of online hype in like Kaiju fandom around Godzilla final wars.

There it was known that it was going to be all these different monsters.

Urban legends.

Sorting through what is true about this movie is crazy because there's so many urban legends that all start just from people trying to make guesses or, or making shit up.

You know, back in 2003 on message boards that has just kind of become word of God, even though it was never actually officially said anywhere.

So like the the hype level for this movie coming out is insane.

Charlotte, I know your what's the word?

I'm looking for your interest in exposure to Godzilla at the time.

Nothing about delicacy here was primarily like you were playing the video games, right?

Especially playing video games with me, Ash, kind of.

When did you come into Godzilla?

Well, I think something relevant to say that I've been kind of like itching to mention since you said my name in this context is I was one year old in 2003, so I didn't.

Oh my God, that's right.

You're really.

You're I.

Forgot you're so much younger than me.

Wow.

It's, you know, it's one of those things where I know because you, you're not you like you, you, you list your age in your body.

Like, I know, but I don't stop and do the math and think about the fact that like, I might have been 12 and online on message boards in places I shouldn't have been, but anybody who I've got a decade on was barely thinking.

Yeah, my my answer, you know, like, oh, what was your exposure to Godzilla in 2003?

I don't know, I might have just like shoved an action figure in my mouth as a toddler or something like that.

Was that was probably, you know, no, my for actual some kind of answer.

I think my first exposure to like Godzilla as a series was, for better or worse, the legendary incarnation in 2014, which.

I have some fond feelings about that one.

I know that's not necessarily popular.

To say I had fond feelings for it at the time, like, I remember liking it as a kid, which I mean, I think is like, you know, the intended audience for it.

But I think after having watched, you know, other stuff that isn't the legendary series, I'm like, this is kind of, you know, but listen, it got me into the series.

I wouldn't have, you know, been exposed otherwise if not for like that shit, having the Bryan Cranston marketing machine behind it.

So I have to be grateful for that.

And then yeah, over time, I I think that the real like Rubicon Crossing for me in terms of actually liking this series and really caring about it was watching Shin Godzilla in, I think I watched it in like 2019, I believe.

And I was like, oh shit, Oh my God, Godzilla films going to be good.

I hate the Japanese government now.

But yeah.

And then I moved on to watching like the original and I didn't, I didn't like, you know, sit down and go through like in order.

But I did try to kind of vary my experiences, I suppose, from that point forward.

But yeah, I think, yeah, my first, like, prop.

And it's still my favorite film in the series, even over the original itself.

Yeah.

My first exposure was Shin.

And I think that like, sorry, my first, you know, not ten years old exposure was was was Shin where I was actually like had some kind of brain activity and was actually watching it and understanding subtext and metaphor.

And yeah, I'm here now and I'm here on, you know, the podcast talking about was the Godzilla film scored by Sum 41.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Really, really the antithesis of Shin Truly, truly.

I honestly like one thing I'm excited for and one thing that I'm glad I can do now that I've like watched this film for the podcast to discuss.

Now I have some vague plan to at some point sit my part.

My unsuspecting wonderful partner who I think has only watched like I think has only watched the legendary film if anything, like she's mentioned it in passing, I think, sit her down and have her watch a double feature of Shin Godzilla and Final Wars and just really just melt her brain for that's how you.

Break somebody.

Yeah, yeah.

Isn't that fun?

Like, isn't that love?

God and Derek, I know you have very fond feelings for Shin Godzilla, as you've said multiple times.

It's so, it's this so interesting, like one of the fun things.

Castle Bravo is the first time, like Charlotte has not seen most of these movies before we've gotten to them.

I have, but I've mostly just watched them as I've gotten access to them over time with my like, autistic special interest.

Because, you know, not all of these movies were available as I was growing up, right?

So it's kind of been filling in the patchwork.

This has been my first time going through everything like in that release order and putting everything into the historical context of the moment when it was released, which is why like I'm very interested.

Obviously the next movie for us is the 2014 Legendary Godzilla.

I'm very curious to hit that one and, and look at it through the lens of, you know, 50 plus years of, of films one after another leading up to that point.

I have frequently said that my my episode on Shin Godzilla's going to get me cancelled or killed by Godzilla fandom.

I think I so that movie is so dense and so layered and I think it's a fantastic film.

And to my recollection there, there are a lot of elements that I found, which is kind of common once you pick up on them in in Ano's work of kind of like Leighton, not super well like thought out or a dress like casual fascism.

In a lot of his works, he's very like Japanese nationalist and kind of a casual way, not in like a an insidious and intentional way.

It's a thing that that kind of pops up in a lot of his work.

But I'm really interested to hit Shin Godzilla again in the context of everything else that's come, and really try to like dig into it as I'm watching, because it's clearly going to be a movie that's worth doing that too, unfucking like Godzilla Final Wars.

Tell me there isn't political commentary in this.

There isn't.

That's why I sat down to watch it.

I.

Think I think it has all of the political depth of the median American voter.

Which is to say, it's completely fucking inscrutable.

Godzilla Final was really is the Vote Blue no matter who of the Godzilla series.

That's maybe the worst sentence I've ever said.

Sorry.

Godzilla final wars is the the Biden Trump voter of.

Holy shit fucker.

I think, I think there's nothing left to do but to dive into it, Charlotte.

Yeah.

Definitely serving my energy this entire time actually.

Tell us what happens in Godzilla Final Wars.

OK.

You poor thing, you were so mad at me.

You were texting me all through watching this movie.

Just like why?

Derek, my show notes are normally half the length of the the notes for this movie, and I truncated a bunch of my notes.

OK All right, listen, First of all, this movie came out in 2004.

Second of all, oh.

It was 2004, I forgot to update the the doc.

It's OK, looks fine.

Same difference.

Same difference.

Ash was 2.

I mean, yeah, I should have really thought about it more with that extra year on me.

I should have understood the commentary.

I was 13 and that one extra year makes it slightly less problematic that I was of pretending to be an adult on Internet message boards.

So.

Oh.

My God, me too.

All right.

I'm waiting until 14 for that, sorry.

All right, so the movie starts and immediately we're in the South Pole and there's explosions around tanks, right?

And they're using little toy tanks and I like that.

And there's, there's a snowstorm and Godzilla is standing there in the snowstorm and there's a silhouette, right?

And it looks sick as hell and.

He's aura farming from the fucking get go.

Everyone in this movie is.

Everyone is aura farming at every moment, especially the monsters.

And then, you know, they, they, they have mazer guns out and everything.

Those also explode.

And then it just cuts to Godzilla like this pan to Godzilla's face and Godzilla's fucking pissed.

And then the Gotango just burst out of a glacier nearby.

Motherfucking Gotango.

Haven't seen that son of a bitch since Atragon.

Yeah.

Starts firing missiles towards Godzilla, but Godzilla immediately shoots it down with the blast of atomic breath.

And as they go, OK, no, we really got to fire these missiles.

And they're like in the snow, there's an earthquake, and Godzilla starts falling into this ravine.

And they make the decision to fire the missiles into the glacier behind Godzilla to bury Godzilla in the ice, which occurs.

And then everyone celebrates.

And then we zoom out and we see the entire earth.

And then there's this footage of, like, war and monsters.

And it discusses the birth of the EDF.

Because everything that we've watched so far, more or less, except for a few things, has happened in this world.

And the EDF is like a global defense force, and it consists of humans and mutants.

That there's the M organization, which consists of the mutants.

I like that we're 2 minutes in and we have X-Men.

Yeah, we do.

And they're all Neo.

Yeah, they're X-Men, but also.

The major Oh my God, I love the costume.

Sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself with the costume design and this is so fucking this is.

The most 2004 as movie ever.

So much black leather.

The opening credits are the most 2004 a movie opening credits have ever been.

Yeah, half the armor is translucent.

Just for fun.

They put this together on a cosplay budget.

I love it.

Yeah.

So yeah, every monster that has basically ever existed in the movies that we've discussed up to this point is somewhere in here.

The first of course being Godzilla in 1954, who is now buried in the ice.

I do not think we should take the opening credits as necessarily historical to the movie so much as I think we should take it as it kind of like the this is this is Godzilla, like this is the franchise leading up to this point in this movie.

I see that because the credits do kind of end on that very famous shot of Godzilla Junior, like reviving at the end of Godzilla versus Destroyer.

That's fair, yeah.

And a lot of people take that to mean that this must be a direct sequel and that this is Junior.

And that's just not the case.

I think this is, I don't think this movie's thinking a lot.

I think it's just cause also they make reference that this might be the original Godzilla.

Like he didn't die in 1954.

I was under the impression, so the way that I understood this timeline wise was that what's it called?

The only other thing to have happened in like previous to this film, to this story was the 1954 film and everything else was like, you know, these like the first times that these what's it called monsters have shown up and it was just like 1954 happened.

50 years pass.

Fuck it.

Everything happens at once.

Yeah, they don't.

They don't seem to to really.

It's hard to tell if they're familiar with these monsters or not.

They often times act like they're not, but they they they have names for them immediately.

Yeah, that's a good point.

But that's because Kitamora, I'm going to be honest with you, my read on him is that he's not a super sharp guy.

He's definitely a dude being a dude.

Yo, all right.

I mean, we'll talk about that more later.

As like this film is already 2 hours, we don't have time to explain who these monsters are.

You're just going to see the spider and just be like, Oh yeah, you know, fucking scare.

Who cares, man?

Yeah.

The Godzilla final was it's just, who cares, man?

It it's, it's so good.

Yeah, so, you know, it flashes, and I'm complaining to Derek that I'm going to have a seizure.

And then Godzilla Final Wars pops up on the screen.

And now we're in the bleak future of 2004, and we cut to the ocean floor near Normandy, and the Gotengo is in combat with Manda.

The crew is screaming that they have to surface because they can't take much more.

And Captain Douglas Gordon, who I who I messaged Derek, is that Joseph Stalin?

That's that's that's the fifth Mario Brother, the one dressed in all brown.

I like stopping koopas.

Yeah, he's that is so yeah.

Captain Colonel Whatever is titled Gordon played by MMA fighter and professional wrestler Don Fry AKA The Predator.

Don Fry.

I kind of love him in this movie.

He does suck as like a real life person.

Oh, does he?

Oh yeah?

Well, in the same way that any like, big macho dude who got like paid a living getting punched in the head over and over again always turns out to suck when they get older.

But like, I don't, I don't think he can act at all.

But also I think he sells it like every moment.

Like Charlotte, I told you, I think he showed up on set and he just believed all this was real.

Yeah, that's kind of how he acts.

So yeah, not Stalin.

Captain Gordon.

He's called captain here, but later he is referred to as a Colonel.

Actually.

Maybe he got promoted, I don't know.

Whatever.

So he's like no we have to hold course because we have to kill Manda.

So they fire some missiles and continue to ram Manda towards like a volcano and at the at the ocean floor and they get closer and closer to the heat.

Amanda peels away and then he's like all right surface.

So they start to surface the go tango and Manda circles back around and they fire the 0 cannon at Manda.

This will never happen again.

Amanda's frozen and they just drill through it, which was sick and then.

This is all of like 60 seconds of screen time for Manda and that's how it's going to go for a lot of monsters in this movie.

But really good 60 seconds.

Really good showing for Manda.

Love the redesign they do basically just recreate sort of like the the one fight Manda ever had but I was going.

To say this is like Atragon rebirth, right?

Yeah, kind of, yeah.

Like Atragon, but they had the bit with the undersea vent added in.

But other than that, it's just, you know, and like you said, yeah, we have the the Gotango's ice Beam and they use it once.

That could have come in handy a lot of times, guys.

Yeah.

Hey wait a minute, I just thought we froze Godzilla to get rid of him.

Why did you not use the Ice Beam?

They did a pick up beam for Godzilla, you know, it's just just different.

I just I don't know why they.

Wasn't ready yet.

I don't know.

They've had 50 years.

It's still on cooldown.

So EDF headquarters calls and they start reprimanding Gordon and he's like, I don't care, I'll take whatever punishment you want, you know.

So they had home and I will interchangeably call this the M organization and the EDF because the M organization is just part of the EDF and it just depends on what they're referring to in my notes at the time.

SO22 mutant soldiers are sparring and they they're doing flips and shit which is how I refer to most of the fights in this game game.

Game is a very funny Freudian flip that's that's so fat.

This is big like big video game energy in.

This video.

Yeah, so they're doing some Matrix shit, and then one of them, Kozma, like the commander, comes in and one of them, his name's Kozma.

I was told by the commander that the point of sparring, all right is not to become stronger than your opponent, it's to become stronger than you were yesterday, which was so deep.

This has so many messages.

Can I tell us, say there is you might be about, are you about to give like another line from that scene because I don't want to steal it from you if so.

No, go ahead.

I was going to say there was genuinely, I I kind of like it.

It really shocked me because don't be wrong, I went into this film me like, this is going to be balls to the wall.

A bunch of shit happened, which is true.

But like this line in that scene where I can't remember each character's name, I presume the aspiring partner says to Kazma, yeah, why did you hold back?

If that was a real fight, you'd be dead.

Your gentleness would be fatal for you on the battlefield.

And Kazma replies, How can we protect people without gentleness?

And like, that's a really good line.

Like that's what the hell.

It was Ozaki saying that two cosmos.

Thank you.

Sorry.

Yeah, that's really.

Good.

Ozaki is the guy who, let's just say Ozaki is kind of our main character.

One of I mean, it's an ensemble cast.

Ozaki is going to be our main Neo and I don't know what I don't want to like get into like face bone structure, but this man is not shaped like an action protagonist.

Does that make sense?

Yeah.

No, I get you.

Yeah.

Like he looks gentle, he looks soft in the face.

He's.

He's got a Yowie face.

It was, it was implied.

I was wondering who was going to.

I was.

I almost said BL OK Like I was wondering who was going to say.

It he does absolutely have a yowie face.

So so the commander tells Ozaki to come to his quarters later.

And Ozaki, Yeah.

Not beating the allegations.

So they discussed this fossil from an unknown creature that they found in Hokkaido.

And Ozaki's like, well, that this doesn't sound like a job for me.

And he's like, well, you have to go because Captain Gordon hit a guy earlier, so now he's in the punishment room.

I hate when they put me in the punishment.

Room BL brackets King Yeah.

Right.

So they bring in a woman Doctor Otanashi, and she's a biologist that's going to be helping them with this fossil.

And Ozaki and Otanashi have this back and forth a little bit and she's like, don't even look at me unless it's important.

Yeah.

Because you're a pig.

This sequence sets up that this movie is going to not be great about women, but it also knows it's not being great about women.

And I'm not sure like, because Ozaki basically says like, you know, I don't want to help some some mean ugly old hag, you know, who talks too much, yadda, yadda.

And then turns around and it's supermodel girl and he's like, oh, you know, Oh no.

And then she's like, I think she's in the right to be like, you suck shit.

And he's just like, yeah, well, you're too hot to be smart, which is not how that works.

But like, we're just, we're kind of supposed to believe that this is like an equal exchanging of barbs.

And it's like, no, she slaughtered him.

Yeah, yeah.

No, I do.

I do like the, the fact there is just genuinely the scene of like the, the, the interaction of Ozaki being like, God, it's going to be some arrogant old man, you know?

And then like genuinely there is the shot of like him kind of just like staring into space, realizing what is just happening just slowly.

It really is like, oh, she's behind me, isn't she?

He does this multiple times by the way.

I was like.

He does.

Why are you right?

Like every time she's around, he just kind of stares through her.

I don't.

Not used to looking at women?

No, it's BL.

Yeah, yeah.

She just stumbled on to set.

To be fair, she.

Knows it's not a.

Lot of a lot of twinks do be hating women so it's a known look.

I I will I will slaughter my own kind.

A lot of queer masks are not great about women.

This.

Is this is true?

Yeah.

But this just tracks.

So the fossil is clearly Gigon.

We know it's Gigon.

I've seen a Gigon before that that's.

A Gigon.

I have a statue of this Gigon in my home.

You gave it to me, Derek.

Yeah.

Yeah, so, but, but the fossil was is apparently 12,000 years old.

And they're like, well, it can't be from here because nothing from here is that and 12,000 years old.

So they know it's some kind of extraterrestrial, and they've determined that whatever is inside of mutants that turn them all into Neo is somehow related to Gigen.

And so we put a pin in that for most of the movie.

Actually, we cut to you.

Can put a pin in it forever, it's not going to matter.

I mean, it doesn't really, but you know, we cut to Neato TV and the, I guess newswoman there is interviewing Secretary General Daigo and he's talking about like the root of all the issues in life and other problems.

And he's like, humanity has the, the the answers to this.

We can solve this.

We can do it because he's just, I don't know, he's clearly selling something, but we didn't, we never learn what it is.

And they start talking about his dog.

It's very important.

They start talking about his dog Clint and how much he misses his dog and how his dog still treats in the exact same way even though he's the secretary general.

I love that this this, this like, high-ranking Japanese government official has a dog named Clint.

Yeah.

Which is a name that's not easy to pronounce in Japanese.

That's true.

Thank God there isn't a scene later in this film of two characters saying the word Clint over and over for about 3 minutes.

Thank God.

Yeah, so we cut back to Doctor Otanashi and Ozaki and then a guy whose name I didn't write down, and they're talking about Infant Island.

And as they do this, they're like flipping through pages.

The show bee didn't just show up.

And they're they're on Infant Island now.

And they they bring the doctors to the room and it has like the the sign of Mothra in there.

Oh.

They get green screened into the Mothra cave.

Yeah, and they're like, we have to tell you something important, OK Gigan attacked the Earth 12,000 years ago and Motha tried to stop it.

And it's wicked.

Blood streams down to mutants, which is kind of mean to say when there's a mutant present.

But they they assure them that as long as they're friends to the Earth, Motha will help them.

And then they leave a charm for Ozaki.

It's like a knife thing.

And then we cut to New York.

Oh my God, holy shit.

There's a lot of sequences in this movie that are just like a connective 60 seconds that contain multitudes, and this might be the most of that.

If for some reason your least favorite part of this podcast is me explaining the plot of the movie, that sucks for you.

So we're in New York and a pimp is getting his car towed.

He he's arguing with the cop that he's been there for only 5 minutes in the cop.

The cop?

Also, why is the cop the the cop is the the toe guy?

I don't think that's how that works.

That's not how that works.

Also the cop very clearly dubbed over by words that do not.

Yeah, I I wanted to ask about this because I don't understand why he's dubbed over.

I think the original.

So there are a couple of points in this conversation where it's very clear that they said fuck and they redubbed it with like shut the hell up and you can see the mouth movements are like shut the fuck up, but they redubbed it.

So I think that they I think a lot, a lot of the original dialogue was re recorded in some points to tone it down and it mostly hits the cop, but it does like the the pimp also at one point says shut the fuck up and it you it's clear that he's saying fuck, but it's shut the hell up.

I love the idea of, OK, we're recording this scene in New York City, we have to have a bunch of screamed obscenities at each other.

That's just how it is.

That's the color.

We have to have a pimp.

We have to have like a pink 1950s Cadillac.

Recorded in two.

1003 there will be a hobo.

There is a hobo there.

Sure is my favorite part of the.

Secret a great time dude.

He actually had a great time.

Yeah, he's drunk.

He's laughing at the altercation and then.

He's egging it on.

He's ready to see some violence.

Yeah, and then he screams that a big bird is coming and it's Rodin.

He pantomimes the wings too, like the chicken dance style.

Oh.

He does do that.

Yeah, this.

1 is so good.

And it's Rodin and Rodin just like, swoops in and and fire blasts everybody and there's cartoon noises as they fly away.

Yeah, I think so the.

Explosion effects in this.

Destroyed me isn't great.

The cartoon little The hats fly off.

Yeah, they don't do that again.

They have, they have like fucking mighty #9 type explosions I don't know how else to describe.

Them, yeah.

I remember that game now wish.

I didn't.

So Rodin flies around like subsonic speeds and destroys the city.

And we cut to EDF and they're like, OK, we got to do something.

So they saw T rumbling to New York.

I don't know what that is.

I think that's one of the names of the ships.

They have like a bunch of these ships that just look like big guns.

And they're like, they're they're normal ships that are not gotangos.

So they saw T to New York, and they're like, well, we can't find Mr.

Daigo's plane, by the way, but they just kind of gloss over that.

And then monsters just start attacking everywhere and they're like, there's, there's Angiras in Shanghai.

I mentioned the name of the ships that they're sorting, but I don't actually think that's worth talking about.

South Angiras is in Shanghai, King Caesar's in Okinawa.

Kamakaras is in Paris.

Sydney's under attack by Zilla from the American Godzilla movie.

Who is CGI and not an actual practical effect like every other monster.

Who is CGI at like 25 frames per second or?

Something like.

Isn't the Zilla model in this also scanned from an action figure?

Is that?

Yes, yes, it.

Is, yeah.

So which?

I love that.

I mean, like once you recognize that, you're like, oh, that's why it looks that way.

Yeah, and then Kumonga, the giant spider is in Arizona just destroying random trailers.

So we cut to Vancouver and there's a kid playing with toys.

It's the most petulant child I've ever seen in my life, just playing with toys.

He has toys of every monster and he throws like a turtle into the fire.

I don't know if that's supposed to be cama Wuebas.

Or a Gamera so.

I took that as Gamera.

Yeah, it is.

Here's.

The thing the toy makes Gameras cry.

So it is explicitly supposed to be Gamera.

What?

An unnecessary jab?

What the hell?

They've been Toho has been making a few Gamera jabs in the Millennium movies, and it's very clear after the frankly incredible Gamma trilogy of the late 90s that they are feeling a little threatened in this space for once.

So I also just want to say like, we've had this, like this, this montage of various classic monsters showing back up, most of whom we have not seen since the 60s and 70s.

And like, I think all the redesigns look incredible, right?

Like Angiras is looking good, if like a little weirdly blue and yellow.

But he he, he, he's a rolly boy for the first time like he is in the video games.

We love to see it.

King Caesar's looking good.

Kumakris and Kumonga look fantastic.

What little we see of Kumonga, you know, Rodan, Rodan, we did get to see in the 90s at least.

But like Rodan's looking great and very old school, you know, and Zilla for being like a low quality, like we scanned a toy and made a 3D model out of it.

Like it kind of looks like a like a low Poly model that has way over like detailed textures map to it.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, I get you.

Yeah.

Yeah like like somebody did a texture mod on APS 2 game.

I mean, yeah, it's, it's appropriate time wise to be fair, yeah.

Yeah, for some reason it reminded me of Killer Instinct.

I don't know.

I get that.

Actually, it looks like Ki the way that Ki like rendered scales.

That's actually really fair.

I wanted to say like one thing on this sequence, which was just like a shot that really stuck out to me.

When King C is a first appears, there's a shot that is framed of like him walking in the like far background and in the foreground there is a building with a like she saw statue on it.

So you have like his inspiration in the foreground, like what he's based on and then just him in the back.

And I think that's such a sick shot.

Like, you know, obviously a lot of this this film gets like turned into brain soup, but you know, that actually has still stuck with me.

Like, you know, I just remembered it from you saying King Caesar right now.

So I mean, you know, credit for like occasionally there's like, oh shit, that's an artistic shot in this popcorn insane action movie.

I think, I think there's a ton of very inspired choices in this movie.

Like it's very clear that they wanted to cram as much as possible in here and they they did so and they wanted to make sure that there were these little tiny pieces everywhere that that show the inspiration.

There's a ton of references to older Godzilla movies.

The the the one lady the is she like the Defense Secretary or I'm trying to remember her title but the one older lady government official is actually the same actress who played the one female Axillian in Godzilla versus Monster 0.

There's a ton of actors coming back, not necessarily to play their same character or anything, but a ton of characters from older movies or or actors from older movies showing back up to play one role or another.

So I just, yeah, this is like very lovingly made, even if it's dumb as shit.

Yeah, yeah.

It really is like, yeah, it is the 50th anniversary film with all of the pros and cons that come with that kind of celebration.

Yeah, yeah.

I'll try to point out a couple more of those sorts of things that I noticed when they come up.

So.

OK, so this petulant child and his mouth covered in chocolate.

This, this kid was me.

That was my, that was like fucking me with my first Godzilla exposure.

That's exactly what I was like.

Fucking Augustus gloop looking ass.

Kid So there's a there's a news report about the Angiras attack on TV and he cries for his mom and leaves and that's it for that kid.

A ship enters combat with Angiras it it fires its mazer cannon at it, and meanwhile another one fights for Dan and there's one fighting Kamakaras.

And then the best part of the movie happens and a hunter finds Minila near Mount Fuji.

Oh, this sequence comes out of there's, it's such a tonal shift.

Immediately you're like actions happening, actions happening.

What the fuck mean you in a forest?

Why is he here?

It takes 3 like they cut away from the action and within 3 seconds this confused man in a bear costume is pointing his gun at MENA.

Yeah.

Which fair, I would as well.

Well, he yeah, All right, So Abira is also attacking Tokai.

And so, you know, some of the the mutants line up and they're, they're getting armed and ready to fight.

Abira and Ozaki and Kazuma are paired together and they have handheld mazer cannons, which is kind of cool.

And they do more flips and shit and zip lining.

And then they take down Ebira and.

It's a good fight scene, but it's very much the battle rages, right?

Yeah, yeah.

And then they take down Ebira and Ozaki goes, sorry, I'm a vegetarian.

In English.

In English, which he has not spoken any English so far.

That caught me so completely by surprise.

Yeah, so they're, they're about to to finalize this kill, but then all of a sudden all the monsters around the world just start disappearing because this movie will not let me take a break.

And so this, this but giant UFO appears in Paris and it starts going towards the the EDFHQ.

And a bunch of EDF soldiers are holding guns and Shields on top of the roof pointed towards this massive ship.

And the ship is shaped like a sphere, but it has like some little claws at the bottom.

And Mr.

Daigo gets beamed down from the ship and he's like, oh, yeah, no, these aliens, they're they're oomph.

And they help me escape.

He says that they they come in peace and that everyone's about to witness an historic moment.

So they all get beamed up to the ship.

It's one of the EDF commander guys who keeps coming up and I, I don't know his name, but he will do some cool stuff later.

And then the EDF commander Lady and Daigo and they all get beamed up to the ship and the aliens which are the zillions but in.

But 2004?

Yeah, but 2004 and in the in the subtitles, it's Axian, whatever you want to call them, they introduce themselves.

They're like, we're from Planet X and we're here because Gorath is going to be colliding with the Earth soon and we need to help you because we're so benevolent that way.

And so Mr.

Daiko presents this at Aun conference, and he just announces the end of the UN, the United Nations, and he says this is the beginning of the space nations.

And like, almost everyone is happy about this, but not everyone.

Yeah, I think a few people have seen movies before.

Independence Day was kind of a big deal.

I don't know.

Right, right.

But it is like early 2000s and anything that becomes popular has screaming fans and people deciding that they can creatures.

So people are cheering for planet Axe out in the streets.

They're like, we love Axe, right?

And there's like this this famous guy on the radio, his name's Kenji something.

And he's like, Oh yeah, no, I'm an, I'm a zillion now.

That's, that's just who I am now.

And people are on TV debating if the zillions are even aliens, 'cause there's just one guy that's like, we don't even have proof that they're from outer space.

They're just like, they're just dudes like but.

In general, that actor was pulling a fucking Ollie London.

Oh my God.

I'm sorry.

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Sorry.

That actor, the the, the, the guy on the radio show doing his whole like, oh, I'm a I'm a zillion now.

I'm fucking.

It's like, brother, that's not how it works, man.

You can't just declare yourself a different race.

Also wanted to quit.

I think we're talking about the same scene.

The kind of like visual K ass guy on the Yeah, there is a line where the the news reader, like the radio host says, I'll just call you girly boy.

That suits you, doesn't it?

I Oh my God, I took such fucking mental damage from that line.

And The thing is, I have this screen capped.

Wait, I'm going to just send this in like the discord chat real quick.

So you have like a picture reference?

Look at the fucking smile at him being called that.

Oh my God.

That's an egg cracking right there.

Holy shit, I said this all to my friends and she was like, look, if someone calls you that, you'd be on the fucking floor in seconds.

I'm like, Jesus Christ, I, I, I can't get over this.

Fucking like, what is this interaction?

What this is?

This is a.

Cannon event for that.

What the fuck?

Admittedly to aliens you're a femboy.

Like what the fuck?

I can't believe we have finster in fucking.

Sorry, sorry, sorry.

I didn't say that.

I didn't say that.

I didn't say that.

I didn't say that.

Well, everyone agrees that the aliens are probably a positive, but one guy on the TV is like, you know, this might be something worth being concerned about.

You know, that there are aliens and they're acting like this, but OK.

Ozaki points out that it's a little suspicious that the that the zillion showed up right when they figured out that Gigan was the source of the mutant gene.

And I mean, he's not taken entirely seriously, but the news lady from earlier shows up.

She's in this movie a lot.

I do not know her first name, so I just when when they're together I just call them the old tanashi's.

She is the sister of the doctor, right?

Yes.

That feels like it just kind of comes out of nowhere, as if it was a thing that was already explained to us.

Yeah, like the.

The news that was supposed to be some kind of like Shobijin esque element there and it just got like dropped.

It seems like a really specific choice to make them sisters, and it's just like, you know, moved on from immediately.

Yeah, yeah.

So I just tend to call them the Ultanashi's in here, unless it's specifically Doctor Ultanashi doing something, but she does often.

So, yeah, her sister's here now and they review what Mr.

Daigo said, and they're like, something seems kind of off about this.

And they realize he didn't blink the entire time during that that UN speech.

And so they go and they they approach Daigo asking like, Hey, would you do an interview?

And he's like, I'll get back to you later.

And then she asks him about his dog.

And he like pauses for a second, like, I have a dog, which is weird, right?

So.

It's a good thing we had that entire sequence earlier.

Yeah, an assassin shows up in like, a cloak and tries to stab Daigo, but Ozaki stops him.

And the assassin screams that that Daigo is one of them.

He's one of the aliens, and they're going to betray us all.

So Daigo ends up leaving, but not before Doctor Otanashi gets a blood sample off of him since he was bleeding.

And they analyze it and they're like, Nope, yeah, he's not human.

And Ozaki is like, oh, I got to tell somebody about this.

So he starts to go.

He goes to the EDF commander, the older woman, and he starts to say, you know, Daigo's not a human, I think, or compromised.

But he notices that she also isn't blinking.

So he just kind of wings it and is like, oh, yeah, no, Daigo's in danger, and we need to increase security around him, you know?

So she just says, like, yeah, I know.

And then he leaves.

So people are getting replaced is the point.

Going all body snatchers.

Yeah, the zillions are discussing like there's the zillion controller, the older one, and then there's the younger one, the older ones, like.

The gakt looking motherfucker.

The Gakt.

Looking guy.

He's like if if if Gakt was like went through a teleporter with some razor blades.

Holy shit.

He has the most like over exaggerated like Chad face cheekbones and jaw line and eyebrows and everything.

You see it?

I'm always aspirated by it.

I don't know if I should, sorry.

Just to be clear, we do mean the commander, right?

Oh sorry, the controller.

Forgive me.

Yeah.

So I just have something relevant that I need to mention.

I need to get this off my brain because it hit me while I was watching and I lost my shit.

The controllers actor is Kazuki Kitamora, who is you know who's been in a bunch of shit.

A lot of like historical dramas is also Cosmic Kitty in Tekashi Mikke's Like a Dragon at a.

Oh my God, is he really?

I like genuinely, I need you to understand.

I recognize this because there was one shot of him later in the film where the, you know, the sunglasses are off and like, you know, he's, he's pulling, he's pulling a relatively neutral face instead of like the fucking insane grin.

Instead of the Jim Carrey Grinch face, Yeah.

And I genuinely was like, wait, I know those cheekbones.

Wait, wait, that's Kitty.

What the fuck?

So yeah, that that has either made or ruined this film for me to be like, wait, that's Kitty.

These evil, you know, like, Oh my God, my brain is so broken.

That's incredible.

Reminder my tag everywhere is ash, like a dragon.

There's a little, there's a little bit of feeling.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, I'm, I'm a tremendous Like a Dragon fan so.

But I've never seen the the Takashi Mikkei.

Like God, please do.

I'm not going to derail, but God.

I need to I I love a lot of Mikkei's like weird mid 2000s nerd bullshit that he did like the two common writer movies that he did his Phoenix right movie please.

Sorry, that's my bad.

I'm.

Sorry, no, not that you're good.

No, that noise wasn't at you at all.

I was trying to remember something I wrote down in my notes.

I think I just refer to him as mewing later because I think he just used the entire.

He does.

He does.

That is true.

So the the zillions are basically discussing like how they want to approach this because the older 1 is like, no, we can use diplomacy, we don't have to do anything and they'll just do what we say.

But the younger 1 is like, well, we also have all the monsters.

We could just kill them.

So they have a little bit of a back and forth, but the EDF actually discovers that Gorath isn't even real and that all the pictures they took were like at the exact same time in different places.

So they're just, they're fake, so.

It's just the PNG that they put in there.

Yeah, yeah, it's.

The same PNG.

It was so Ozaki at that time mentions to the doctor like, hey, you know, people are getting replaced.

But I do know one person that we can trust that definitely has not been replaced.

And they go and they find Captain Gordon in the punishment room punching A punching bag, which is what you do in the punishment room, I guess.

And he turns around.

He's got like a huge tooth on a necklace now and stuff and he's he's very happy to be there because there's women and he makes that very obvious.

Once again, that wasn't in the script.

Don Fry's just.

Like that.

Yeah.

So now a news show begins and it's got the the the two zillion controllers and well, the younger one's not yet a controller, but you know, and Daigo and Dr.

O Tanashi during this is going to find data on Daigo and she gets caught and she's in like this red matrix outfit and she gets caught the the fake EDF commander and one of the other guys shows up and then surrounds her and some mutants show up along with Gordon and they shoot the axions or the zillions and the zillions fall to the ground.

They like screech off screen and I think that's when Gordon is like, oh, we got a present or something.

So back, back on the news show.

And I know this sounds disjointed.

This is just how it goes.

Right.

That's this movie.

Yeah.

Yeah, so we're back on the news show and they they present the fake Daigo, his dog seemingly, and he's like confused about it.

You know the dog doesn't recognize him and he doesn't know his dog's name.

And the zillion controllers like, hey, maybe you could tell Mister Daigo his dog's name.

And so she does.

She says the dog's name is Clint, but then she reveals that this dog's name is Candy, and it's also not his dog, even though he claimed just now that it was and accepted that it was his dog.

And the younger zillion, you know, busts out laughing at this because it's it's obvious that the jig is kind of up here.

Gordon shows up with one of the zillion corpses and just throws it on the stage.

And he's like, this is what they really are.

And then he shoots fake Daigo and fake Daigo's head splits open to a zillion.

And the older zillion leader stands up, and he's like, hey, yeah, about this, I have an explanation for this.

But then the younger 1 kills him.

And then he's the new controller now.

And he says that humanity is actually just a bunch of domesticated animals.

And Gordon's like, why don't you show me your real face?

And he's like, well, I kind of like this face.

It's good for a domesticated animal.

And then some zillions teleport in, and then mutant soldiers rush in.

They're just saying the entire plot line that they set up with the dog no longer matters because in the end Wario just fucking runs in the room and fucking shoots him Wario.

Like at no point did we have to do the shit with the dog.

No, you, you don't understand.

They put it, you know, it was, it was Chekhov's Clinton.

It had to be relevant.

It was in the film earlier.

It has to be relevant eventually.

Like they follow that screen writing rule, they just forget that that's not at all meaningful.

Like actually, if he had not barged in, threw a dead body on the ground and immediately shot him, like I think that I think that the aliens would have gotten away with it.

Like, they didn't have a plan after.

Oh yeah, I'm forgetful.

Here's the thing, and this is probably why you're right about the director.

I think that he read the definition of dramatic irony.

And he kept.

Trying to do that because they do that a few times.

I think they want the the the audience to try to determine what's going on and then they just explain it within 2 seconds anyway.

Like I don't think he gets it.

Yeah, that's about right.

Yeah, so the controller raises a hand ring, finger down.

He does this a lot.

And all the mutant soldiers are hit with this like Sonic attack, except for Ozaki, who's fine.

And Gordon keeps a hand on his Cortana and he has really great form this entire movie.

Yeah, White Boy is shockingly good with that Cortana.

Yeah, Ozaki does like this matrix jump across the entire room to to punch the the zillion controller.

And the zillion controller leaves along with his men and all the mutant soldiers that had shown up all turn to attack everyone.

Like they turn around to attack Gordon and Ozaki and the Otanashi's and this other commander guy who was the guy from earlier who I didn't write the name down.

He tells them all that they can go and he'll hold them off.

And he does.

This random dude just fights all of these mutant soldiers.

I don't even think he's a mutant.

No, he's just built different.

He's just built different.

So they they're doing this big fight while everybody else escapes.

Gordon and the others escape on this truck.

So now our whole gang's on this truck going away from the news station and Kozma who is under Zelene control now is on a motorcycle and he speeds ahead of the truck and shoots it causing it to crash.

Ozaki is on his motorcycle in the back of the truck because they just happened to find a truck that had a motorcycle in it and he is on it and he he bursts out of the back of the truck and they do like a motorcycle joust and then they do like AFF 7 motorcycle sequence.

I Oh my God, I almost made that joke.

Like while I was watching it, I was like, there is no like this, this has to be deliberate.

Like there's no way that isn't what the fucking inspiration is here.

It's so specific.

I had to look up to see when Evan Children came out after watching this movie and Evan Children had not come out yet.

Oh no, I mean Remake to be honest.

Like that specific scene in Remake.

It's just this straight up.

It's insane.

Twinks on bikes, man.

So they do this whole motorcycle sequence.

I do not take good notes on it because it's just it's a lot of fighting.

'Cause people do flips, right?

People do flips.

Comprehensible.

Ozaki wins because he's the main character and he of course does not kill Kozma.

So the zillion controller awakens Gaigen and then orders all the other monsters to be dropped onto the planet and he tells his troops and the monsters to destroy the previous civilization.

So all of a sudden all the ships that they've deployed, like the ship in in Shanghai is being attacked by these drones and then by Angiris.

The ship that's in New York crashes and explodes.

The the hunter and the boy with with Minnea at Mount Fuji are driving off to safety and our crew heads to the Gotango and they get to the the secret Bay where the Gotango is being held and they're like all communications cut off.

Somehow the zillions have not discovered the Gotango, but it is kind of their last remaining ship and it's the last thing that they have, really.

Ozaki lays Cosmo down in like a sick Bay and Cosmo's like, why didn't you kill me?

Ozaki's like because you're my friend.

Because it's Yowie.

Because it's yeah, I was going to say it's a BL movie.

Gordon says actually the Gotengo isn't their last hope.

Godzilla is.

And Doctor Otunashi is like, oh, right, Godzilla doesn't have in base the mutant gene and can't be controlled by the zillions.

And Gordon is like if if Godzilla acts up, we can just rebury him if needed.

In fact, Gordon was the one that that fired the missile that buried Godzilla to begin with, which is important information that needed to be included in the movie.

So there's a thing and I I have seen reference to this a couple of times.

I cannot find sourcing on it that like like I can confirm that this is true, but it does kind of explain something.

A lot of the the character of of of title Gordon went through a lot of changes, leading all the way up into shooting.

My understanding is they did not get Don Frye until the very last minute.

There were a bunch of different people pitched and courted for this role, including at one point.

Gordon may have originally been intended to be the same character as the the captain from the very first sequence.

Right.

Who's who's captaining the go tango in the first fight against Godzilla, making him a new character in order to stunt cast, you know, an American actor actor put that in scare quotes, please.

Kind of creates this weird thing where like, yeah, he's he's got to have a tie to Godzilla for the script, but like the but it doesn't make sense.

So yeah, the whole thing where where they go back to a guy who looks nothing like him pressing the button to shoot the missiles to to seal Godzilla away.

But sorry, this is really fragmented.

But like, I can't tell if they shot that sequence before casting Don Frye or if that's maybe a holdover from a script that was being edited and chopped around and adjusted, you know, like crazy, even all the way up into filming.

But.

I kind of took it as like that initial younger sequence was filmed and all the certainty they had was like, this is probably going to be an American actor.

Like that was about all they had like firmed.

And as long as it was a white guy, fuck it.

You know, white guys look different in, you know, the duration of their lives.

It's fine.

Don't worry about it.

Yeah, and, you know, and and also Don Fry has a mustache.

A mustache changes anybody.

That could be somebody totally.

I mean, look up Tom Selleck without his mustache.

Horrifying.

But yeah, so that's just that is is one of we will talk a little bit more about this later, but the script for this movie very clearly did not get like a final pass after a bunch of different edits and revisions happened.

And I think that stuff like this is kind of our like way to glue something together.

Sure.

Well, Gordon was there.

He did that.

So the plan is to blast Godzilla free again and then have Godzilla destroy the zillions.

Gordon leaves behind a camera to pass on to the next generation, just in case.

And then they take off and he goes, this is Operation Final War, and then they launch.

And then, as you say, the most Sonic Adventure 2 music ever starts.

Playing yeah, I mean it is some 41 though, so.

I actually, I had a friend.

I was, I was like, you know, messaging while I was watching the film, say like I sent the, what's it called?

I'm getting a bit ahead of myself.

But like I sent the Sydney scene to her and she was like, sorry, why is this music playing?

And I was like, because it's good and and she was like no, but like why is Sonic Adventure Crush 40 playing this Godzilla phone?

And I said no, no, no, no, no.

It's Sum 41 and she was like OK seriously?

Our crush 40 and some 41 different bands.

I said yes, they are genuinely different bands.

I promise you some.

41's a real band I don't like.

Crush 40's also a real band.

Well, that's true.

But like.

Most like only knows of the Sonic Adventure soundtrack.

OK.

I'm not going to say live and learn is not a banger right?

But like some 41 is a band they played on like normal radio stations and Crush 40 is a band we all know from Sonic and only Sonic.

So I would love to meet somebody who knows a non Sonic crush 40 song.

I listen.

I'm a pretty big Sonic fan, take that as you will.

I literally can't think of any Crush 40 songs that weren't composed for a Sonic video game.

It's fine.

You're look, you're you're among you're among like minded.

Of course I'm autistic.

Yeah, I can belt every Sonic vocal track that's ever existed for karaoke.

Sure.

Sorry, I was having flashbacks to my Sonic OC so this.

Hell yeah, Fuck yeah, save space.

The the one commander guy from earlier that was holding everybody off actually survived his fight, which is insane to me.

And he's like looking up as they fly off from the Go Tango and the controller 6 Gigen on the go Tango and they head to the South Pole and there's this comedy duo manning the station down there.

And they receive word that the Go Tango is coming down to wake up Godzilla.

So of note, the song playing on the radio I am it is from the score of one of the show era movies.

I think it's from the original Godzilla versus Mechagodzilla.

I I would have to go back and I have not had time to go back and find which one that's from.

But that is 100% like a a piece of show era Godzilla music.

And also that dude is wearing the exact same shirt as Goromaki is in Son of Godzilla.

Oh wow, that's.

That makes sense.

So Gaigen's moving to intercept them before they get to the South Pole.

And Gaigen does get some hits in like their main engines down there descending over the the area G base and they fire missiles and it looks like they're firing at Gaigen, but Gaigen does dodge them.

But they're actually firing them with the glacier to release Godzilla and Godzilla has no summoning sickness and immediately attacks Gaigen and has like fire in his eyes while he does it.

And he also just destroys the South Pole station.

Yeah, those two dudes do.

Die yeah, so I was going to say right, I love this comedy bit because like you have the introduction to these two and this guy is just making coffee.

He's just he's making a little croissant.

He's having a great time.

He's just like the world is ruined.

There's nothing we can do.

I just want to be left in peace.

Fuck everything.

And like, you know, his Co worker is like, hey, hey, I think I think Godzilla is being reawakened.

The guys like come on, you're kidding me.

Two minutes pass and there is just this like, yeah, like a long wide shot of these two guys getting fucking obliterated for no reason.

They did fucking nothing.

He just wanted to relax.

You know, the world is ruined.

But he has to specifically get like atomic breath directly.

That was brutal.

They.

Didn't deserve that.

This is normal men.

So Godzilla ends up fighting Gigon and Gigon tries using its nude like chains to to wrap up Godzilla, but that just ends up binding Gigon to Godzilla to get its head blown off.

The the zillion controller is a little bit upset by this and Gordon cuts into his feed somehow and says there's two things they don't understand about the Earth Captain Gordon and Godzilla.

Things of equal importance the.

Two genders, yeah.

I mean, I think we've established at this point that Godzilla's Yuri so.

Yeah, absolutely.

That's, that's a Charlotte observation and I let her speak to that.

I'm, I'm just, I just acknowledge.

When we get to the kiss later, OK, Like I need you to understand.

You don't, but I need you to.

It's toxic, Yuri.

Yeah, all right, sorry.

The controller summons another monster down as Godzilla attacks the Go Tango.

Now Godzilla turns on the Go Tango, and so just remember that there's a new monster going towards Earth now.

This will come up later on the test.

So they start to lead Godzilla towards the mothership with the Gotenga.

Weird a solid like like quarter of the movie now is just going to be Godzilla's so pissed he will never stop following the gotengo so let's just lead him to every enemy monster so he can one shot them.

Yeah.

So aren't we like about halfway through the runtime right now?

There's so much movie left.

Yes.

We we are this is this is at around.

One hour ranges or battle rages, Yeah.

Yeah, somehow I still have, like, most of a show's worth of notes, but so they arrive in Sydney, and I know this because that theater is there.

Yeah.

It's the Opera House.

Yeah.

And.

And Zilla gets beamed down and Godzilla just bodies Zilla immediately.

They set the Sum 41 song.

We're all to blame for this fight, and the fight's so short that you get none of the song.

Yeah.

OK, I need to, I need to, I need to give like, you know, an anecdotal bit here.

So yeah, while watching again, like I was live tweeting, I told my friend fun fact, Final Wars includes Godzilla beating the ever loving shit out of the 1998 American incarnation.

She responded, what the fuck is this movie?

I sent her the clip and she said, Ashley, what the fuck did I just watch?

I feel like I should be high for that.

10 minutes pass and we talk about other things like, you know, there are other conversations that happen.

10 minutes pass and she comes back and it's like, sorry, I keep watching the clip.

This is fucking intoxicating.

What the fuck is happening?

And I think that's final was, that's final was.

I should get high and watch just this monster killing marathon.

That that what I've just said is literally my letterbox review for this film.

It's that interaction because I'm like that's final was.

I will say there's a lot of I guess gets into the urban legend stuff.

There's so much of surrounding this movie that the fight is so short and one sided, specifically as a fuck you to the 98 Godzilla.

No, it actually originally this was going to be one of the most even fights in the movie.

This was going to be a way bigger fight.

A lot of these fights were going to be bigger than they were, but this one was supposed to be a lot bigger.

It's just a matter of like they were running out of time and money and every frame, this is like the the the Zorak bit.

Every time I move my finger, it costs Cartoon Network $10,000 or whatever.

Like every time Zilla CGIS was on screen, it cost a lot of money.

So they just kind.

Of very funny, considering how it looks.

Yeah, like, no, no offense to the CGIS.

So I'm sure we're doing a great time, you know, a great, a great deal of the time.

But they were probably paid in like 3 ham sandwiches and given a week to do it all so.

¥10 Fazila.

Please enjoy it.

They get paid worse now, honestly.

Yeah.

So now we go to New Guinea and Kumonga's there, even though Kumonga was in Arizona before.

It's fine.

Kumonga gets so long.

Gay Bowser.

Just yeah, exactly.

That is what happens.

Yeah.

It's like a great incarnation of Kumonga.

The the yellow is.

It's not hairy anymore, but it's like the yellow is very vibrant, which gives it a much more of like vivid appearance.

I kind of like the as as goofy as it is the the yellow like web shots turning into Nets.

Yeah.

But yeah, he sure does get so long.

Gay Bowser.

Yeah, no, I really like the colors in it.

So next thing you go to Japan, Kamakaris is there, and Godzilla kills Kamakaris, which ends up being wrapped up in power lines, and we actually get to see Kamakaris use cloaking and everything during that fight.

Yeah.

Great, like really cool showing from Kamakaris for the 30 seconds it gets to live.

You know, I think, you know, they've taken Kamakaris.

It's a good design, even if I miss the like, bright orange kind of spikier look.

But they've made it this like very intense, very speedy, zippy.

The camouflage has a cool new ability.

It doesn't fucking matter because it's Godzilla and this Godzilla's one shotting everybody.

Yeah, the Hunter remarks that Godzilla has never gotten over his initial anger from 1954, and so he's just permanently pissed off.

Minnie alleges, freaks the fuck out and tries to get into the truck.

That's just what happens.

Ozaki starts talking to Doctor Otanashi, and he hands her the relic that the Showbi Jin gave him.

You know, 'cause this, this is the scene where she's like, why do you keep fighting?

He's like, 'cause we gotta.

So they're near Mount Fuji now and Rodan, King Chisa and Ingiris are all beamed down and they all have this big old wrestling match and it it ends up with with Godzilla using Angiras as like a baseball into Rodin and then gets like soccer back by King Caesar.

And then Godzilla makes like a goalie dive towards Angiras for no reason.

Like they were just like, yeah, we're gonna make a soccer reference.

It doesn't make sense in the context of the fight, but like, that's what we're doing.

Yeah, Godzilla misses that goalie jump, though.

Which actually gets Angiras knocked out.

Yeah, into the mountain.

Yeah, which like, why King C, why did you do that?

Why did you own gold like?

So Caesar charges, slams into the same mountain as Ingiris.

Meanwhile, Minila learns to use its breath weapon, sort of, and then gets big.

OK.

11 Nice thing SO and Giris, King, Caesar and Rodan all get to live instead of getting killed at the end of their fight because they were the good guy monsters from the 60s and 70s.

Yeah, like, oh, that's the deliberate.

Choice.

Yeah, Put that together.

They were originally killed and then the the decision was made.

And I think even the sequence of them getting killed was filmed.

But they were like, these are these are Godzilla's buddies.

These are all monsters that fought with Godzilla.

You know, they're all, we put them all together for this reason, like, let's, let's let them get spared.

So they just end up in a cartoon pile of sore dudes.

I do have to remember the state of New York City and Shanghai and Okinawa, but yeah, yeah, sure, whatever.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, great scheme of things.

So the zillion fleet starts attacking the gotango and the gotango is taking heavy damage and Kosma gets out of the sick Bay and he suits up.

The Gotango makes his way towards the mother ship and they fire the mazer at it, but it fails to penetrate the the barrier around the ship and Cosmo launches in a single fighter to destroy the barrier himself and he does this.

Death Star run into the mother ship and just dies ramming himself into the core.

Why did we do Independence Day and Star Wars at the same time for this?

Like, I get it man, you've seen movies.

Godzilla Final Star Wars.

So everyone's pretty shocked by this but but they keep going and Ozak Ozaki starts piloting them into the mothership just through the wall.

The zillion controller teleports a bunch of other zillions into the gotengo and orders them to attack.

And during this sequence the showbigin do their thing and Mothra gets called for help and Hidora gets beamed down and Ebira also gets beamed down and immediately stabs Hidora with one of one of its claws.

And I don't know why they did Hedora that way.

Yeah, you could blink and miss Hedora being in this movie, but he just gets thrown out of the ocean by Godzilla and then Abira thrown at him and then naked.

Yeah, the political commentary of this film is actually just that one.

Anti pollutions.

That's it.

Yeah, yeah.

Fuck Hedora man, he.

Didn't even get to chuff any fat fucking cotton off some smoke stacks.

That sucks.

So they're dead.

And the Gotengo crew arrives in the controller's room.

And the controller's very funny in this movie because they like show up and, you know, he, he's in the middle of having a meltdown.

So he notices them walking in.

He's, you know, wait a minute.

And the zillion controller explains that his people need to harvest the mitochondria from the humans to live because this is also Parasite Eve.

And everyone watches as the monster that the controller summoned to me ages ago, but to everyone watching probably like 20 minutes ago touches down there's.

A great sequence where Godzilla like ends up like at the landing point, looks up into the sky and sees it off in the cosmic distance, plants his feet and his tail into the ground like a tripod and beams the thing from fucking orbit.

It doesn't stop it, It does still directly fucking collide with him in a meteor, but still sick.

And and there's a crater, but Godzilla's fine.

Yeah, it's because he's Godzilla.

What?

What's going to fucking happen?

Yeah, this Godzilla has cheats turned on, Yeah.

So this new monster touches down and it's it looks kind of similar to Godzilla, but it's made out of heads and is is also like metal or bone or something and it has a split tail.

Our first original monster, our only like original ish monster of the movie Monster X.

Can you call it an original?

Oh, no, I'm going to.

I'm going to spoil the movie.

Sorry.

I'm.

Well, I mean, you know, I was waiting.

So again, Charlotte had not seen and yeah, I was like, I was so concerned cause Charlotte's usually really good at picking this stuff up.

But like I was rewatching and going oh they are very blatant about what this is about to actually be.

Look, by the time this was happening, I was fried because I had written.

So much.

5 digit number of.

Characters.

You said you were literally fried, and I was like, yeah, that's not the right way to watch.

It's so funny 'cause you even, I mean, fucking spoiler alert, this is Ghidorah, right?

Like.

Sorry everyone.

It's it's not really a secret, but it is a great little bit.

But like Charlotte even text me like why the fuck is Ghidorah not been in this movie?

And I was just like.

Where is my little stronko?

I was just like.

So Monster X does get Godzilla to kneel, which you know the zillion controller is very chopped about, but.

Mothra straight up a fucking toku enemy.

Like, yeah, yeah, Mothra rushes out and another Gaigen gets launched out to meet her.

And this Gaigen has two chainsaws per hand, fucking plants them into the ground and then like, uses them to propel itself up to Mothra.

There's a fucking like, shoryuken through Mothra's wing.

So this is like.

The same gaigen.

He has a metal bracket stapling his head back on basically.

Can I just I wasn't sure if it was the same one.

This is one of my favorite designs in the entire series.

It's so sick.

I don't care.

It's so fucking cool.

I am six years old and it's the coolest thing ever.

I don't care.

If if you if you abandoned the part of you that is that cringes.

This is.

One of the greatest fucking things that's ever been put.

Together, This, this is this is Gigan Advent Children, and I don't even fucking care.

It's.

Quad chainsaw Gigan is so sick.

I have that entire sequence in caps and I don't actually have anything else in all caps in this entire movie.

So.

So yeah, Mothra crashes to the ground.

Also, yeah, Mothra's here.

Mothra's here.

That's how quick Mothra shows up.

Mothra is the exact same prop from Tokyo SOS.

They were like, we are not making a new Mothra for what we're about to do to this thing.

So they all talk and they discuss how M base allows telepathic control and the mutants are made from the zillions ancestors and the controller.

The controller says that Ozaki and himself are Kaisers.

They're half zillion.

Make that make sense.

Godzilla is is holding out pretty poorly against Monster X outside and Gigan comes around the back and Ozaki gets put under the controller's control starts trying to kill everybody.

The fight continues outside.

Monster X is like holding Godzilla and Gigen like it has Godzilla in a hold so that Gigen can come up and kind of cleave through him, but it ends up that Gigen ends up hitting Monster X on accident instead.

Yeah, Godzilla like turns around and and, you know, gets monster X in the path of the chainsaw and.

Yeah, Moffer rushes back in to break it up and the relic glows and Doctor Ozanachi's like, I know what to do with this and just stabs Ozaki with it, which ends Ozaki's trance.

And while this is going on, Monster X outside kind of powers down for a second.

Gaigen and Mothra continue to fight.

Gaigen tries to blast Mothra of a Mothra uses its scales to reflect the attack.

And then it's saws come back around 'cause like it launches 2 saws and then the laser right?

And it this seems like a good idea but the laser gets reflected by the scales, the saws boomerang and gigan like turns to the camera and does like Sonic beat the stage animation and then gets his head cut off.

Yeah, the the fucking boomeranging buzz saw blades just like slice his own head off and it's just like fucking this.

Gigen sucks.

I love him.

He's so badass.

He is the biggest fucking jobber and he kills himself so good.

Back on the ship, the Zillions start firing at the humans and Ozaki uses his blatant Neo powers to stop the lasers.

Just like Neo stops the bullets, Ozaki and the controller start fighting each other.

One V1 and outside Monster X and Godzilla are still fighting.

This is the scene where they show not quite yet actually.

Monster X and Godzilla resume fighting and one of the one of Godzilla's attacks, an atomic breath hits the side of the mother ship and the humans are like all right, this is a good chance to escape then.

And it's not looking great for them, but Gordon does manage to grab like a couple of laser pistols and kill some of the Zillions before having his sword taken away and then used against him.

But then he gets it back and he starts slashing Zillions.

The real Daigo walks in with laser pistols now and the Zillions are basically on the back foot like it's just a bunch of humans and like 2 of them left.

Ozaki tells Gordon to get the others out of there while he fights the controller.

So you know, everybody but Ozaki leaves and below, Godzilla's punching monster X in the face and then no longer Below Gordon tells the others to get off the ship and he's going to stay behind to fight the other zillions that were remaining.

And they try to escape but they're cut off by an entire squad.

So Gordon's standing there with his sword on his shoulder and turns around and and the Zillions walk up and he stabs a pillar with his sword so they can fight hand to hand.

Don't know why they didn't just shoot him at that point but.

Whatever, don't fry.

He has to be.

He has to live through.

So Ozaki is and we're we're just cutting back to Ozaki now, like this is how the cuts are working.

Ozaki is on the ground bleeding during his fight.

And then we're back to Gordon who overpowers A zillion like throws him down and he's he's about to punch the the female zillion and she's like, you wouldn't hurt a woman, would you?

And he's like, you're right, I wouldn't.

And he like chops her instead and knocks her out.

He also like walks.

He walks over her unconscious body and goes sorry sweetheart.

I'm like Oh my goodness, this feels like.

Once again, like many of the men in this movie are explicitly terrible about women and I and I like I feel like the movie is self aware about that.

I don't think that the movie sucks about women.

Maybe I'm not the right person to fucking make that call.

But like the whole bit of him, like doing the getting ready to punch her and she's like, you wouldn't hit a woman.

And instead he does like the open hand.

You know, it's very like, all right, man.

Like, I have to believe that you're trying to tell us that this dude's a shithead.

It's a deliberate bit, yeah.

You like, I, I think he, despite him being like maybe the deuteragonist, you're kind of supposed to hate him.

I think I hope you're supposed to hate him because I don't know how you're supposed to not hate him to be honest.

Yeah.

This guy blows, Yeah.

Yeah.

Just like he does in real life.

Kitamaro is a genius.

He predicted this.

The controller, like, force throws Ozaki away, and it looks like Ozaki's lost, but then Ozaki glows and he heals and suddenly he's a lot stronger now.

And Ozaki has the controller on the ground just punching him.

And there's their monitor behind them where Godzilla's wailing on Monster X the same way.

And at this point, this is when Derek was trying to, like, hype me up about what Monster X was.

And he was like, oh, you've only got a few seconds.

I forgot a how long it takes to get there and B that you were on time dilation.

Yeah.

And so it, it was within 5 minutes, but it took me about 20 minutes to get there.

So this fighting is happening and the controller and Ozaki like, fly towards each other and they like punch each other.

And Ozaki wins the punch.

The controller lays on the ground.

He's laughing.

You know, I'm going to take you with me.

And the, the ship starts to self destruct, but the explosions clear the way for the for the rest of the humans that are trying to escape.

And they all start leaving Ozaki's like rushing through the the ship with his super speed back into the Gotango and they're going to reverse the Gotango out of the ship.

And they do that and then the mother ship explodes.

Monster X and Godzilla are outside fighting and they do a beam clash and they both get blasted backwards.

And then Monster X like it it it's heads turn into actual heads.

And then he becomes Ghidorah and it's my Scrunko and he's here.

And Ghidorah like, blasts Godzilla backwards and then and then lifts him up with lightning and tosses him around.

And then this is when I messaged Derek about the kiss.

Because Godzilla's like clamping down on or Ghidorah's clamping down on Godzilla's body, like on Godzilla's throat and and hip and arm and starts draining the life out of Godzilla.

And you can see like the energy.

And you think you should talk maybe to a therapist about what your concept of kissing is?

I think you're cooking, Charlotte.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I just.

Want to say I think you're so right.

I am right.

So many people agree with me about this.

Actually, Derek, we're going.

To get we're going to get comments agreeing with you is the thing.

And you're also right, is the thing.

But that's OK.

Ozaki climbs into the pilot chair of the Go Tango and like, generates an energy field.

Fucking tacit our StarCraft with his power and then fires the energy as a beam into Godzilla and it heals Godzilla and Godzilla's like glowing and starts fighting back.

Ghidorah like backs off just a little bit, tries to use some lightning like point blank, but it just doesn't matter.

And Godzilla retaliates immediately and blows off one of its heads.

And then the third head shoots the second head off.

Colloquially, we call that the Cletus head.

Yeah, we've been calling.

We've been, we've been running with the gag of of Ghidorah's left head being the Cletus head for a long time.

I'm really glad that that eventually becomes canonized, but this is just more evidence of Cletus head.

Yeah, so Godzilla like flips Ghidorah around and then stomps on his last head, kicks it away and then eventually after some more slamming hits, it hits Ghidorah with one final red atomic breath and the explosion like fills the atmosphere and Godzilla roars, having killed Ghidorah.

And then Godzilla turns around and just starts heading back towards the Gautengo again.

Because.

Yeah, because I'm not finished with you, motherfucker.

Godzilla ends up making the Gautengo crash and and the crew rushes out and they stand in front of Godzilla like there's about to be a fight.

And then this entire time when Minila was in this movie at all, I was messaging Derek and I was like, there better not be a moment where where Minila saves the day.

All right, I will groan if that happens.

Minila saves the day.

Minila appears and like rushes in front of Godzilla and the Hunter's like, I'm going to shoot Godzilla.

And then the kid gets in his way and then you like, it's like a little bigger and then Godzilla's like, you know what, 1954 was a long time ago.

I'm going to go and.

Yeah dawg, I have been kind of bugging today.

You right, you right.

How much funnier would it have been if Godzilla fucking like 1 shotted MENA after a beat?

That's what would have actually happened if it was the original movie I was.

Going to say, I've seen those 60s movies.

Godzilla hates this kid.

Yeah, Godzilla kicks this kid's ass all the time.

So Godzilla leaves and and Minila's behind and it's like oh I can use a breath weapon too for some reason.

And then follows Godzilla out into the ocean.

The Otunashi's come out and and greet Gordon and Ozaki and you know Doctor Ozanachi is like oh the the war is finally over and then Ozaki's doing his weird thing again and is like actually the war, a new war has begun and just like starts weirdly staring at Doctor Ozan.

Can you can you really have a war after the final war?

Isn't that kind of don't you have to stop there?

There's there's actually a light in the movie, isn't there?

Where like Gordon says something like like, they're going to.

Operation Final War.

Yeah, like it's literally said like what?

I think the the the implication here is that it's a war against Godzilla specifically.

I don't know, but Godzilla turns around.

The next war will be rebuilding.

That's that's what I thought he was going.

To say, ready for somebody to say some dumb shit like that.

Yeah, so Godzilla turns.

Is it possible this was supposed to be like a sequel set up like?

No, they were very clear.

Because they were pretty sure this was like done right.

Like they.

They.

Straight up like as part of the marketing and they've done this once before in fairness, but they like tore down the big pool, which is the the big interior sound stage where they do all of the water sequences.

Oh yeah, Oh my God.

So they like made a big deal out of like, Nope, see, we're tearing down the pool.

We're really done, you know, for the foreseeable future.

So.

Yeah, I forgot about that shit.

Yeah.

So Godzilla turns towards the screen and roars, and then it's the credits.

Cinema.

Then we're set free.

Two hours have passed.

You are somehow still conscious.

Yeah.

3 for me.

Oh God, yeah.

So let's.

Talk a little bit about about Final Wars.

So Final Wars was a tremendous fucking failure.

Really.

Yes.

This was the most expensive Godzilla movie by a wide mile.

I believe even adjusting for inflation, this was like tremendously expensive for like Japanese film budgets blown up by the fact that like a they wanted to do on location international shooting, which they didn't have to do in the grand scheme of things.

I don't know that it added much, but they got to take vacations as a result of it.

And then just the sheer number of new monster effects that they had to make up.

I mean, they were scrambling to get all of these suits and puppets together.

And I think they look pretty good.

But they are also objectively far less complex.

Like Godzilla has none of the like facial mechanisms of the previous Godzilla suits.

Like you can't do the like eye and brow and lip movements or anything that were very common before.

You know, it's just a sacrifice they had to make for like time and budget.

If so, I think it ended up costing like from what I read, about $20 million in in U.S.

dollars at the time.

If you account for the fact that usually you expect to spend about the film's budget over again In marketing, the movie made around $16,000,000 in the box office.

It was the lowest draw to the theater since Terror of Mechagodzilla.

It it made then roughly 1/3 of what it would have needed to make to break even.

So good.

Well, you know, movie wasn't good like I was talking.

About.

The Internet and like irony poisoning have have really cutest to love this movie but like objectively is not great.

But also I just think people were tired right?

We have had Godzilla movies coming out non-stop at this point for like 15-16 years pretty much.

That's true.

And the last stretch, I mean, ever since versus Destroyer, right, the 98 Godzilla was a disaster.

And like, GMK was pretty good.

But the rest of the series has been mostly like, yeah, that's like, OK, right.

None of them have been real winners.

So yeah, like, you know, it also probably is not helped.

I don't know if this is reflected in the budget or not, but production on this movie was so troubled.

So much was planned and cut at the last minute, which does not help all of the urban legends bullshit that people spread about this movie, right?

We know from from concept art that there were at some point plans on the giant Condor and the giant octopus appearing and they didn't make it in the movie.

We know that at one point Mechagodzilla was considered to be a part of the movie on the human side.

But they were like we have done 2 Mechagodzilla movies in a row and if we bring him back, we're not be able to afford to do a new Mechagodzilla design.

So it's just going to be cure you again.

You know, same thing with Moth or like we're having to cut corners to get this done.

So like, let's let's.

Not, I mean, yeah, if you just, if you just keep bringing back Kitty like over and over, you just have to like a Dragon series and we don't want to do that.

Yeah, like a mechanical dragon.

I'm in.

I'm in you actually.

Keep it like that.

The whole podcast, I'm not going to lie.

Well played though.

But but yeah, we know, like from a lot of what's going on with with the like, M bass.

The whole Gigon brings M bass to Earth and then it ends up in people.

But then one guy is randomly half alien, but one of the aliens is half human.

But then how do the other monsters have M bass?

Why?

Like, it's not.

It's clearly like a lot of stuff was drafted into this movie that did not get finalized.

It did not get the Polish pass.

Everything to do with Gordon's character is messy.

And I think the process of, you know, swapping monsters in and out, shooting scenes and redoing scenes.

Like Hedora originally had a longer fight sequence, part of which was filmed, but not all of we talked about how originally the the ending to the Engiris, Rodin and King Caesar fight was different.

You know, that Zilla originally was planned to have a longer fight.

Like they I get the feeling that this movie was kind of hacked together towards the end and Kitamura has not had a huge career in the grand scheme of things.

Like if you look him up, if you look up his filmography, like he continued to direct some.

But this is I mean, like this and Midnight meet train are kind of like the most notable things he does for like the rest of his career.

And I just think Kitamura might have been in over his head.

And I also do not think he really understood what he was getting into.

There are there are like he he famously went on to say things like like he loved the 70s movies because, yeah, they're big, dumb monster movies.

But like they also had something to say unlike those 60s movies where they were just stupid.

Which is crazy to me because most of the 60s movies are tremendously more thoughtful than the 70s set.

Like Honda directed a shit load of the 60s movies and it shows He hates the 80s but then loves the 90s but then also said that the 90s did the same thing over and over again.

I just don't think he came at this from a very deep perspective, right?

Which be fair, Godzilla.

But what has this entire podcast been if not us starting off over analyzing the shit out of Ishero Honda's politics and then going from there?

So so because of that failure?

Well, I mean, it was already planned to go on break, but I'm sure the financial failure didn't help.

The franchise did go on ice for over a decade.

You know, we in, in a lot of ways, kind of this is the last Godzilla movie of its kind.

Because if you look at everything Godzilla that has come since then, we've had the legendary movies, which have sort of started to pick up that torch in some ways.

But they're very American about it, right?

And the 2 Japanese films that have come since Shin Godzilla and -1 could not be more antithetical to like the image of Godzilla in pop culture as we've come to know him as like dude in rubber suit who fights other dude in rubber suit.

They so clearly lean back to the original film and, and try to follow that legacy.

So.

But I mean, it's not all bad like this is.

This is the first time a ton of these monsters have appeared since the 60s or 70s.

Their redesigns are broadly very well liked.

Their brief appearances are probably really well liked.

Gaigen's redesign in particular is extremely popular with the fan base.

We did all just say that he fucking rips.

Especially quad chainsaw Gaigen.

I like the idea that somebody was like, we should put chainsaws on the end of his arms and somebody fucking taking a huge bong RIP went wait, wait, 2 chainsaws on each arm and then that dude got a raise.

So, you know, as it's happening more and more frequently, but is especially funny with this one.

Usually we try to talk about like, where were there like political or thematic elements to dive into?

Who?

Boy, is that not fucking happening here?

It's very funny because I, I think that the point he was trying to make was about, you know, Zaki's lying about needing gentleness to protect people, right?

But The thing is that if the zillion controller, the original one, had gotten to do his plan, we still would have ended up enslaved.

Yeah.

So I don't like I, I don't whatever he was trying to say.

He kind of pissed all over it.

So I don't know.

Yeah, well, and then like it it, it all feels very lip service.

Y right.

Because in the end, this is they're just trying to cram like, hey, what if we have the bad guys from Godzilla versus Monster 0, right.

With a little bit of of Mysterion's flair warning us about Gorath, the Gotengo is there.

Here's a bunch of like, this is literally just how much of the Showa era can we cram into a single movie?

It's, you know, it's very loving, genuinely and you can tell, but like for me, like if I, yeah, if I, if I turn off my like, you know, 12 year old blinkers for a second here.

It reminds me obviously in the future but of Alien Romulus if anyone understands what I'm saying.

Interesting.

I do I.

Think I get what you're.

Getting now.

You know, the things you used to like.

We're going to put it in here.

I'm not going to think much further as to why it's in here, but you're going to recognize it.

You know, what's funny is all those elements are the things that drag alien Romulus down, and everything else that's not that is really good.

Get away from her, you bitch is the worst thing that happens in alien Romulus.

The rest of it's a pretty OK, like, you know, everything that is bad is like the member berries.

You know, it's it's it's awful.

And I think summer final wars is that like summer final wars is God, wasn't the show era so cool?

And it's like, yes, but also you have to make a movie.

Yeah, you have to make a movie and you have to do so like from a lot of fans perspectives, fandoms kind of split on this movie, right?

There's there's a lot of fans who really love Final Wars as being the big dumb.

Like this is just an embrace of classic Godzilla.

But there's a lot of folks, and this is kind of closer to where I think I lean where it's like, OK, you put all these monsters in the movie.

You put Manda in the movie, Manda's in the movie for 60 seconds and it does almost nothing, right.

It has a very, very brief fight with the Gotengo.

You're almost doing just like a beat for beat of of Manda fighting the Gotengo and gets to do nothing else.

Hedorah shows up for 30 seconds to get thrown at a building and then blown up.

And it's like you're including all of these monsters and all of these bits, but then doing nothing with them other than briefly showing us an action figure that we can buy, kind of, right?

Right.

So like, I remember they put out this gorgeous concept art for every monster in the movie, and I remember saving the jpegs of all of them on my on my computer.

So cool.

And you get about as much out of looking at that concept art as you get out of most of these fights, right?

Like that's how little most of them appear.

So like, I think member berries is a really, really good way to put it.

Ash like it is in many ways.

They crammed so much in that they could do service to none of it.

Yeah, at some point you have very diminishing returns and I think we are so far beyond that point where the final was like there's, there's nothing of value and like substance left really.

Even the stuff that I like back in the day, I loved like, Oh yeah, Godzilla got to fight the fake American Godzilla and whoop its ass.

And like a, a grown up me is sitting here being like, I would actually really like to see more of that right now that I'm not reflexively fanboyishly like I hate the American 1998 Godzilla.

It's like, I don't know man.

It might be kind of neat to see how you try to differentiate that and an actual Japanese take on that creature.

So I I can I can I drop something clear towards the end of the pod?

Give us some spice.

I think the 98 film is fun and OK.

I do too.

It's all right, you know, it's it's all right.

It's not good.

I'm going to be wrong, but like it's OK.

It's not sacrilegious.

It's not evil.

Who fucking cares, dude?

I'm.

I'm going to blow your mind because we, we, we did our episode on the 98 Godzilla, right?

And a lot of it for me was this coming back to it as as a cooled off adult who was not being a fanboy and being like, yeah, this is like a fine American disaster movie.

The 98 Godzilla is King Kong.

Yeah.

Yeah, OK.

I can take that.

Yeah, I can.

It's.

Basically, it's basically an altered King Kong.

And it's because everybody who worked on that movie, most of them had basically never watched any Godzilla.

So they didn't know what intentionally they were like, we don't want to make this Japanese thing, we want to make an American thing.

Love casual xenophobia, but they were like, we're going to make our thing.

And their frame of reference for giant monster movie is King Kong.

So they made King Kong with a big T Rex.

And I think if you look at it through that lens, it's like, OK, no, I, I can enjoy this movie for what it is.

It is that's actually, I've not really thought about this before, but the what you've just said about like the casual xenophobia, Godzilla 98 is kind of Roland Emmerich, like sitting down and being like, OK, I've been given the IP, I'm going to make a real movie out of this idea.

Like it really does feel like that's the kind of approach that 98 is.

And yeah, I didn't really consider that before, but fuck yeah, it really is pretty shit.

It is pretty xenophobic.

That's pretty good.

It's like, you know, you, you know, obviously the Japanese studios Toho Khan make a real serious disaster movie.

You know, the what would the Japanese know about disaster, You know, so God, yeah, that's awful.

Sorry, tangent.

No, no, like it's funny because like again, I, I, I think that's some of the, this is my favorite part about art, right?

And like movies are art, whether they're dumb or not Godzilla final wars is art.

It may not be deep art or good art, but it's art.

And I think that part of growth is like learning to engage with art, like in its many layers.

And the 98 Godzilla's like a relatively good time.

That makes a lot of sense for the context that it was made in, but also some of the attitudes that went into making it.

Like I said, a lot of casual xenophobia, even if the movie itself is not xenophobic in in the output, right.

Yeah, I think it's culturally very interesting.

Coming off of the 90s run of Godzilla was actually extremely good and often times had some real, this is going to sound silly to some folks, but like serious emotional depth to it, you know, and like, but a lot of that depth has been what's been missing all through the 2000s because this is just been one big extended reaction to the Tristar Godzilla where Toho was just like, we've just got to get some Godzilla movies out.

We got to put out 1A year no matter what.

Whatever we put out is what we put out.

Yeah.

So and and thankfully they made the decision.

I'm, I'm going to applaud them, the difficult decision to say, you know what, we're going to, we're going to end it on this one for a good long while.

So whatever we get out of, it's what we get out of it.

Have fun with it.

You want to do a shit load of coke and make 14 different monster suits?

Go ahead buddy.

And then they did.

They did a lot of coke.

I'm presuming I don't have like sourcing on that, but you can't convince me otherwise.

So I.

Mean, yeah.

So I guess the the biggest question then would be like, as you think back on Godzilla Final Wars, what's going to be the parts that stick with you?

I have to actually think about this and maybe that says something.

I mean, chainsaw Gigon, right?

Like that's.

Chainsaw Gigon.

Yeah, but that's.

Just in my brain somewhere, like at all times.

I don't think that really leaves.

I think honestly, like on on watching this again, because I think the first time I the first time that I watched Final wars was a couple years ago.

I think maybe the thing I'm taking from this viewing of it is like the Sydney Opera House scene and some 41 and the tail swipe and the atomic breath and what, you know, everything, right.

And the fact that like, yeah, as, as you said, you know, you can take that as like, Oh yeah, fuck this American bullshit, Zilla, take the God out of Godzilla, whatever, you know, blah, blah, blah.

Things that have been said a million times.

But I think it is super interesting to consider that like from what you said and I'm, you know, I'm taking you as telling the truth here and having like, you know, a source of this.

But like, no, that scene was meant to be longer and was supposed to be an actual fight.

And like, you know, kind of the joke of that scene now is how quickly it's over.

And so to know that that wasn't actually the intention and was a result of editing being a disaster and the scripting being a disaster is really interesting to me because as you said, of like, you know, art that maybe doesn't have like, I don't know, grandstanding meaning to it.

Like final was still has really interesting things to consider that like a consequence of scripting and editing has resulted in what is maybe this film's biggest legacy to a lot of people not being fully intentional and kind of being misinterpreted as a consequence of like lack of time, money, and, you know, structure.

That's really interesting to me.

That's that's discussing, you know, that's, that's considering like, you know, the creation and complications that go into it.

And yeah, I guess that's what I'm taking from it, like re examining biases on that scene and what it actually means for the film and the series and media consumption, I guess.

Yeah, I think for me, kind of somewhat similar lines, like maybe like parallel in a lot of ways.

Godzilla as a franchise is famous for all the movies that weren't made right There is there is an island of unmade Godzilla movies of of scripts that made it most of the way to filming and then were thrown out and and started over as something completely different before they they actually shot it.

There are tons of this monster almost appeared.

This thing almost went differently, and Final Wars has so much of that going on.

And frequently there's not really good documentation there.

Like there's very rarely really solid in the way we see for a lot of modern like Hollywood films, documentation for the production process and where things went like took sharp left turns that they weren't expecting to.

There is a certain amount of having to piece things together in the aftermath, but the process of doing that for all these movies and especially so for Final Wars has been a really good way for me to engage with the art as like a living thing.

You know, every part of this franchise would have been completely different if some movie from 20 years prior to this one had gone differently, right?

Right.

So it's kind of just a testament to the mess of film creation changing sometimes on the fly and making adjustments as needed and making scripting and editing choices as needed just to get something together.

I'm used to people talking about like, it's a miracle that any video game ever gets made, right?

When you know how video games are made, this, you know, it's all coming from like a lot of gaming circles.

But like, the same is true for film.

It's kind of a miracle that any movie makes it across the finish line in a lot of ways.

And I think looking at Final Wars through that lens, it's kind of like just really fascinating to me, I guess to to see the cracks, but see that it still made it across the finish line.

Yeah, well, this is my first viewing of this movie.

And.

I think that we are all that petulant child, yeah.

Chocolate smeared on our faces.

I can agree with that Augustus clue smashing action figures.

Yeah, this movie is just smashing action figures together, you know, and that's fine.

But.

But it's a little petulant, but that's fine.

But.

You.

Can't tell me that you didn't.

Have way a way better time watching this movie, talking about this movie than we did for like Godzilla 2000.

Yeah.

I mean, for sure.

Like that's the point.

Like it's, it's, yeah.

The Godzilla 2000 may has been a better movie, but this, this was a mess.

Yeah, and the mess sometimes is what makes the art interesting.

I'm, I'm going to sound like, you know, Hasbro, but like, action figures are pretty fun.

You know, it's pretty easy to make action figures fun.

You know, do you want to go any further than that?

Optional, but they're at least fun.

Yeah, there's a reason we all do it.

There's a reason we all be smacking he man together, right?

Because we can make him kith.

I mean, not, not every piece of art needs to be needs to have like a a big huge point that's super important to be made or something like.

That I mean, yeah, like, like you mentioned, Derek, you mentioned being in like game circles, you know, games journalism, You know, I I, you know, write about video games and a lot of things that I write about there is an interesting and inevitable kind of, you know, balance that a lot of people kind of, I think overstate the importance of of like, OK, is this meaningful or is it fun?

And there is this odd idea that something has an intention to be just one, you know, like, I don't know, Shadow of the Colossus is meaningful and it also happens to be fun.

The Last of Us Part 2 is meaningful and doesn't have to be fun because it's meaningful.

What's the example of a fun video game?

There aren't many.

I don't know, you know, something that is like kind of arcady, like Ridge Racer.

It's not meant to be like meaningful.

It's Ridge Racer, you know, And I think like people get caught kind of caught up in that kind of discourse of like, well, my, my video game means something like a fucking, you know, playground argument.

It's like, who fucking cares?

Like, you know, you can find meaning in anything.

I OK, a good example of this that I I think is really like, you know, and you know, forgive me for Tooting my own horn here, but I think it's interesting.

Sonic, right?

Give me one second.

I'm going somewhere.

Give me one fucking second if.

You have those two.

Syllables.

And you were like, what is she talking about?

Sonic Generations is not a very meaningful game.

It's just it's it's ironically it's it's like Final Wars.

It's just playing the hits.

Like, you know, you guys know this.

Yeah.

Fucking yeah.

Here's.

Chemical.

Chemical plant again.

Yeah, Shadow Generations is slightly more meaningful.

There's like a little bit of a point to be made.

There's like a story, like, you know, there's like a narrative, like Shadow has an arc, for example.

But for me, Sonic Generations itself is very meaningful because, and I, I wrote about this in a piece of winter last year for me personally, because of my own life experiences, you know, I, I play like Sonic generations every winter as kind of like a, like a Christmas tradition for myself.

I did this year just with Shadow as well.

And for various reasons, mainly that my parents had a Mega Drive when I was very small, I associate Green Hill Zone and just Sonic One in general with my dad.

And you know, him like, you know, playing the game and like, you know, watching me play the game.

And then, you know, this specific thing of, like, later on in life, I was playing act one of Green Hill Zone in Sonic Generations when I was like, a teenager.

My dad comes in my room and he's like, oh, that's like, that looks like Sonic one, like on the Mega Drive.

And I'm like, yeah, man, sure does.

That's the bad.

Yeah.

And now, you know, I'm transgender and, you know, how was my dad taking that?

We'll see.

And so, you know, playing Green Hill Zone and I guess Sonic and Child Generations now has an interesting like bittersweetness to it because of that association, that insane tangent.

All to say, I don't think anyone involved in Sonic the Hedgehog 1991 or Sonic Generations 2011 could have ever fucking perceived that kind of shit happening in my experience of these games.

But you take what you take out of media and it doesn't often, it doesn't fucking matter what the what the creators or designers intended.

And I hate the idea that something is not intended to be meaningful when it just happens.

Things just happen to be meaningful whether they're intended to be or not.

And I think, you know, I'm sure there's someone out there who has a really cherished and strange bittersweet childhood memory with their parents, with Godzilla Final Wars.

Did Kitamura think that was going to?

I mean, probably Kitamura did.

But like, you know, most of the time creators can't see that shit coming.

And it's cool.

It doesn't fucking matter what was intended.

And I sorry I'm rambling, I just feel very strong.

No, but it's like it's super this is this is I I so wholeheartedly agree.

I'm just giving you the space because you're fucking rolling.

But like but like for real?

If you want to believe that this is art and not content, oh, you don't.

Even get me stuck then I'll.

Start screwing.

Same podium, right?

Same podium.

But if you want to believe in art, right, and art can be good or bad, clean or messy, meaningful or schlocky, you know, the creation of the art is only a part of it.

And you as the person experiencing the art are kind of the back half of the art in a lot of ways.

And what you take from something and the context of what that thing is in in your moment in life is a part of the art.

And there's no wrong way to have experienced it.

Like I joke about like I don't see how you have right wing Godzilla fans given like Israel Honda's very clear politics, but at the same time like it is just true that what you take from a piece of art is yours.

Yeah, absolutely.

Thank you for condensing 5 minutes of my yelling into a wonderful single phrase.

I I genuinely appreciate that.

You got to lay the.

That's what I.

Was trying to say.

You got to you got to lay the runway for me to land the plane.

See.

So do we have anything else to add about this movie?

Sonic the Hedgehog will make you transgender.

I mean, there's like a solid 40% chance of that.

Yeah, that's true.

That's just known.

So folks.

I Yeah.

That is a wrap on this episode.

Thank you all so much for joining us on our journey so far.

Ash, where can people find you and do you have anything to plug?

Yeah, I I can be found on Blue Sky at Ash Like a Dragon and my Muttcrack portfolio for my journalism and writing is also under Ash Like a Dragon.

My big thing to plug, other than the fact that I'm still managing to, you know, do freelance pieces and write and like blog recently, which has been nice, is Valhalla Design Works published by Lost and Cult, which I wrote and I spent almost all of this year writing.

And it will be out sometime in

quarter 2:00-ish of 2020.

You know, I can't tell you exactly when it'll be out because I don't know, but it's currently listed for being about quarter 22026.

And it's, you know, if you're into Valhalla or if you're into massive books on indie games or my writing, you can pick it up.

You know, I don't get royalties, but I'd appreciate it.

And it's AI hope.

I hope that people think it's as good of a book as I have managed to convince myself it is, and my editors have told me that it is over the past year.

You know, the nice thing is Valhalla fans, given the weight for Nirvana, are at this point accustomed to fuzzy release dates.

So it's OK if you can't give an exact release date.

There are things.

There are things I cannot say.

There are things I know that no one in the world knows, that I cannot say.

That game will happen eventually.

It will happen eventually, genuinely, but yeah.

That's it's like we said, it's a miracle.

Anything, any piece of art ever actually makes it out the door.

Oh yeah, actually, while I'm here, I'll also plug Escape on Games next project, a .45 Parabella Bloodhound.

If you're waiting for that part, Bloodhound's coming out sooner, and it's also made by Kitty, the designer and artist of Valhalla.

And, you know, Kitty's not going to listen to this podcast, but fuck it, you know well.

Given given the makeup is parasite.

Eve related someone Charlotte mentioned Parasite Eve earlier.

It's inspired, so fuck it, there's a little segue there.

Yeah, that that I remember seeing the trailer.

That looks absolutely sick.

And again, given the makeup of our audience being heavily queer and trans, it's within their interests.

Don't ask me how that jives, but it just does.

It's fact.

You're right, Scare Bun Games is for, you know, the queer people for real.

Yeah, 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 double dot garden ash just did I need to go delete some posts I.

Did I?

I agreed with you on the Kaiser Ghidorah kiss.

Like come on, we're on the same page.

I'm never judging a single thing you post.

You're so right.

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