S P O N S O R E D B Y

S P O N S O R E D B Y

2020 DISCUSSION | 2020 LISTS

I've never been able to appreciate Kaiju/Godzilla films much but they've grown on me over time. It was fun to see the encyclopedic who's who of Kaiju and scifi alien remote control subplot was nicely cheesy even if it took a bit too much away from the monsters wrestling with skyscrapers we came to see. Destroy All Monsters does a decent job of selling the 'global catastrophe' of an alien/Kaiju invasion and some of the announcers give it a news like feel. A three headed space dragon that shoots lightening out of it's mouth is a hilarious extreme of 'jump the shark' but when King Ghidorah shows up it saves the film. The plot has a strange structure where emphasis is placed on alien invasion as a conflict when there are Kaiju everywhere serving as bookends for the bizarre outer space alien stuff. Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S. was decent too - much less filler. Shin Godzilla was a strange blend of preachy and epic with the battle against Godzilla getting really weird and tactical one you get past the long winded government satire.

Edit: Watching Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla now and it's a lot less cheesy - enjoying it. I think that might be the biggest problem I'd had with Kaiji films, so many are stuck in their time with dated scifi effects and I have to be in a certain mood to really appreciate those without nostalgia for them. The Kaiju theme has been a nice change of pace from the darker murder horror films I'd been watching.

This was my first time seeing this one. I enjoyed it to a certain extent, but I was checking how much time was left quite often. Maybe it was because I watched it on Tubi. Those damn commercials man.

I grew up with this film and even had an 8MM version that I wore out. It's a great monster mash with some ambitious camera work. 8/10

This very much feels like Saturday TV matinee for kids from the 70s/80s. It's not nostalgic for me since I didn't watch this kind of thing, but I can see where kids would love it.

This is a pretty cheesy Godzilla - not "Godzilla doing a dance" cheesy but still pretty cheesy! The roster of monsters included is impressive, and I'm a fan of the miniature work in this one, especially when four monsters converge on Tokyo. I enjoy Mothra crashing out of the subway (though I would love to have seen her outside of the larval phase).

While the space force vs. alien stuff takes up too much of the runtime, it's more compelling than any of the alien stuff in the Gamera series or the gangster plots that plague earlier Godzilla films. The humans in Godzilla flicks are usually pretty boring, and the only one in this movie that makes any kind of impression is Yukiko Kobayashi as a female scientist who gets taken over by the aliens and does a good creepy routine.

Growing up my dad would do his Rodan impersonation which was a loud screech accompanied by a funny face. "Do Rodan!" we would say. Great model work and a veritable Who's Who of kaiju so I enjoyed it as a fun monster movie.

I've been working my way through the Godzilla set. I watched Son of Godzilla right before this one, which had me worried because that felt like a real low point. Of course, it also had me conflicted. While I couldn't imagine anything more painful this month than Minilla, it was also hard for me to imagine anything in October giving me more satisfaction than seeing Minilla get hit in the face.

This was definitely a big step up for me as compared to Son. Yes, the human subplot got in the way, but it was still a breezy good time, despite the fact that Minilla wasn't struck in the face nearly enough.

For the Godzilla veterans out there, does Minilla ever get better or does he always leave you with a lingering feeling of wanting to throw things at him?
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I don’t think he shows up much more often.