NR, 78 min.
Director: Motoyoshi Oda
Writers: Shigeaki Hidaka,
Takeo Murata, Shigeru Kayama (novel “Gojira”)
Starring: Hiroshi Koizumi,
Setsuko Wakayama, Minoru Chiaki, Takashi Shimura, Masao Shimizu, Seijirô Onda,
Sonosuke Sawamura
“Godzilla” has surprisingly
become the 2014 movie I can’t wait to see. The first teaser didn’t really
convince me that another American attempt at Godzilla would be worth it. The
last one was rather disappointing. Gareth Edwards—who masterfully crafted the
low budget “Monsters”—at the helm and the fact that the script attracted stars
with fairly good taste, like Bryan Cranston, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and
Elizabeth Olsen, suggest that it may not be a wasted effort. Plus, the most
recent trailers do a good job selling the classic summer blockbuster feel of
the new movie.
I’ve been watching Godzilla
movies since I was very young. I might’ve seen all of them on the Saturday
afternoon creature feature at one time or another, although I hardly remember
them now. I used to go over to a friend’s house to watch them. We had the large
action figures. I only had Godzilla, with the fist that shot off and a pretty
lame vinyl flame that stuck out of his mouth, but my friend had Rodan and
Ghidorah. I was jealous.
“Godzilla Raids Again” was
the first sequel to the original 1954 “Gojira”. It introduced the notion of
Godzilla fighting other monsters to the series. It’s also a little odd in terms
of story structure. I sense the filmmakers really had no idea how to go about
making a sequel of any kind.
It begins with the discovery
of Godzilla and another monster fighting each other on an island. The two
beasts move their fight to Osaka and proceed to destroy the city. Godzilla wins
the battle and takes off. Then the movie goes into some character stories as
the people we’ve been introduced to kind of go off and have a life almost
unrelated to what has happened in Osaka. There’s a reason they’ve moved on, but
it all seems very strange.
Note: The original U.S. release of this film was titled "Gigantis: The Fire Monster".
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