Halloween, Monsters, and Outsiders

Stuart K. Hayashi

Stuart K. Hayashi's drawing of a werewolf
from May 15, 2016.

Some of my fellow free-marketers have this uptight notion that monster shows, per se, are nihilistic. The proper response to such derision is: "Too bad! I like what I like!" But I will go farther and say something more.

Monsters represent not merely fear, but fear of the weird outcast. People are often under the misapprehension that someone being a bullied outcast is an indication of weakness. But part of what people most fear about a monster is that it is strong -- strong enough to overcome them in a struggle. And such people not only fear the weird outcast; they fear still more fiercely the possibility that they themselves one day might become that weird outcast.

But there are times when corruption comes to pervade mainstream society, and standing up for moral principle will cause one to be regarded as the weird outcast, the monster. In such instances, one should stand up for principle anyway; being rational involves making peace with this fact.

The Creature from the Black Lagoon is the true hero. He was minding his own business and then normal society intruded on his stewardship. By dressing up on Halloween, children take control over what society usually fears; the ritual of children costuming themselves as the much-feared monsters reminds our children that they need not fear the weird outcast, nor should they think that being regarded as the strange outcast will render them weak. If necessary, exercise the courage to be that weird outcast, that lone wolf . . . that monster. 🐺🐲🐉🎃😈👿👾

Amorous Anguirus

Stuart K. Hayashi


Anguirus is the first monster to have fought Godzilla in any movie, and is the second-oldest in Toho's pantheon of predators.  But my drawing shows a different side of him.  Anguirus feels no romantic angst; only affection.

Drawing of Godzilla Coming At You

Stuart K. Hayashi


I drew this from January 13 to January 15, 2017.  You can also see it on Instagram here.

Godzilla is a registered trademark of Toho Co., Ltd.

The drawing on January 14, before it was finished:

Upon completion:

Why, While NOT Being Philosophically More Pro-Technology, the Japanese -- Unlike Westerners -- See Robots As Good Guys By Default

Stuart K. Hayashi

Dark Horse Comics publishing "Astro Boy" in English.

Years ago the futurist José Cordeiro, an associate of Ray Kurzweil, pointed out to me that Japan and the West see robots differently. In Western fiction -- especially fiction published before 1997 -- robots are usually the bad guys by default, whereas the Japanese see robots as good guys by default.

It is true that in both Japan and the West, there are stories where good robots fight evil robots. However, what remains conspicuous is whether they are good or evil by default. In the West's Terminator 2, Arnold Schwarzenegger plays the hero, but this Terminator is a villain by default; he only fights on the human protagonists' side because he was defeated and reprogrammed. That is, what is typical in Western movies made before 1997 is that for the sapient robot to be considered the good guy, he has to be manipulated into siding with the human race.

Despite the Star Wars franchise being very strongly influenced by Japanese motion pictures, the Western trend of robots being villainous applies. Yes, C-3PO and R2-D2 are on the Rebel Alliance's side, but much of the tone implies that becoming more mechanical makes you less soulful and less caring. Anakin Skywalker taking on a more mechanical body corresponds with his corruption; he transitions into the cold, domineering Darth Vader. Obi-Wan says, “He is more machine now than man -- twisted and evil.” To be more machinelike is to be less good. General Grievous started out as an organism, but his making his body more robot-like over the years corresponds with a deliberate degradation of his humanity.

By contrast, in Japan the Mega Man video game franchise (called Rockman in Japan, with the “rock” being short for rock ‘n’ roll) is something of a reversal of Terminator 2. Mega Man, as well, pits good robots against destructive ones. However, in the very first Mega Man game, it is stated that all of Mega Man’s opponents began as benign robots that Dr. Light assembled for the purpose of assisting human beings in construction. They did not become villainous until Dr. Wily captured them and reprogrammed them to do his bidding. That is, in contrast to Terminator 2, wherein robots begin as evil and must be manipulated into doing good, Mega Man has the robots start out as good. They will do no evil until they are manipulated into doing so. The recent Mega Man homage Mighty No. 9 is even more explicit about that.

Not even the Transformers franchise -- where the robots can either be good or bad, and there is no obvious default -- provides a real counterexample to this trend. Many people falsely assume that Transformers started in the West. Actually, Transformers was originally a Japanese toy line, though, in the original Japanese story, all of the robots were piloted by humans. It was Hasbro in the West that changed the story, deciding that the Autobots and Decepticons would be sapient.

For a long time, I thought that maybe Japanese popular culture having a more benign outlook on robots than the West indicated one area where Japanese culture is actually more pro-technology than is Western culture. Later, though, some Objectivists on Facebook pointed out to me that a likelier explanation is that this is an accident of culture and, oddly, has to do with ancient Japanese belief in animism.



Japanese Side With the Robots Because of . . . Mysticism?
Animism is the belief of ancient peoples -- mostly hunter-gatherers -- that all objects possess spirits inside of them. This animism was often translated into an early form of political environmentalism -- the idea was that tribal law should forbid you from drastically reshaping this part of the wilderness, as the wilderness spirits will punish you. Even today, there are indigenous-peoples activists who quite successfully lobby for legislation to obstruct the construction of telescopes or roads or pipelines on particular sites, proclaiming that those sites are sacred and that human development will disturb the wilderness spirits and incur their wrath. The Japanese, though, put an odd spin on this -- they said that, to some extent, you are permitted to reshape the wilderness to create manmade tools, but that benign spirits -- usually helpful to humans -- will inhabit those tools. For instance, if you have an umbrella, the umbrella has a benign spirit of its own. On that interpretation, a robot such as Mega Man will, by default, have a soul, too.

Japan’s regard for robots as benign particularly got a boost when Osamu Tezuka started his manga Astro Boy in 1952. Tezuka conceived of Astro Boy as a modern or futuristic Pinocchio. Astro Boy is a goodhearted little boy but, instead of a wooden puppet being magically animated, he is a lifelike robot, an android. (Android is gender-specific; the prefix andro- means male man. A female robot would be a gynoid.)

Tezuka is the main reason why manga/anime characters have such exaggerated large eyes. Tezuka read lots of Uncle Scrooge comics and noticed all the Disney toons had exaggerated large eyes. As something of an homage, he gave all his human characters similarly exaggerated (neotenous) large eyes. He inspired later generations of manga/anime artists who copied him. Likewise, those same artists copied the idea of robots being good by default. Notably, the creators of Mega Man cite Astro Boy as a major inspiration.

As for why robots are generally depicted as the heavies in Western popular culture, I suspect it has to do with nineteenth-century Romanticist philosophy.



Nineteenth-Century Romanticist Philosophy: Why Western Artists Depict Robots As Bad Guys
Today we have this stereotype of pretentious avant-garde artists who proclaim that their artistry is of pure emotions loftier than anything technological, and who rail against materialistic commerce. Yet that stereotype is relatively recent; it was alien for most of modern history.

Filippo Brunelleschi pioneered in using linear perspective in paintings. In so doing, he revolutionized the arts, and these principles were explicitly scientific. Following his lead, painters throughout the Renaissance understood that art naturally followed from science. To create more lifelike depictions of the human nude, they studied anatomy, even dissected corpses. To produce a more lifelike effect in their paintings, they studied optics and the scientific nature of light and its effect on how objects are seen. And, despite some lip service to Christian anti-materialism, these artists were hardly abashed in how commercial they were in their pursuits. On into the nineteenth century, J. M. W. Turner continued to learn the science of optics to improve his art.

It was Turner’s contemporaries who changed the direction of art in the West, though. We are familiar with the virtues of the Romanticist style of art in the nineteenth century -- the emphasis on larger-than-life themes and the exploration of what it means to be a hero. While Romanticist style is beneficial, most of the Romanticists’ explicit philosophy is not. Back in the days when the nascent political Left was praising industrialization, and promising that industrialization and technology would develop further under their social collectivism, it was the Romanticist philosophic movement denouncing industrialization and technology. Whereas Karl Marx wrote of his collective being good on account of being able to advance industrialism better than private capitalists could, William Blake’s poetry bemoaned “dark Satanic mills.” Whereas members of the Old Left in the vein of Edward Bellamy heralded a collectivist technological utopia in Looking Backward, Mary Shelley gave us Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.

Since the nineteenth century, the basic ethical attitudes of Romanticist philosophy have come to pervade Western art, and that includes motion pictures. This is how we end up with James Cameron, creator of The Terminator, turning out Avatar. For Western artists, sapient robots symbolize industrialization. To them, industrialization is evil. Therefore, following that syllogism, sapient robots must also be evil.

If you think of the Mega Man video games as being representative of Japanese attitudes, and then regard James Cameron’s Avatar as representing the attitudes of Western artists, it may seem that the Japanese are more open-minded about the benefits of robots and artificial intelligence. Strangely, though, that might actually be the result of Japan’s mystical belief in animism -- a mystical belief that, in its present form, is often implemented as environmentalist legislation.



Other Notes
Ironically, by the 1970s, Osamu Tezuka -- as was (and is) common for Japanese artists since the late twentieth century -- had become fervently environmentalist. Like most Japanese artists who craft tales about heroic robots, Tezuka actually agreed, to the end of his days, with nineteenth-century Western Romanticists that industrialization is cruelly encroaching upon the wilderness, dehumanizing humanity and robbing the wilderness of its grandeur. I don’t think Tezuka adequately reconciled, intellectually, how human beings would have to burn energy and alter the landscape to power their benevolent robots, just as people don’t think of all the fossil fuels they burn in order to play the video game Final Fantasy VII, which cast electrical utilities as inherently villainous.

Also noteworthy is that, while Star Wars is strongly influenced by Japanese cinema, that cinema consisted mostly of samurai movies that were released prior to Astro Boy.

Still, in large part thanks to Japanese influence over Western culture, we are increasingly seeing Western motion pictures and comic books depicting robots as sympathetic by default, such as in the cases of the Steven Spielberg picture A.I. and in the computer-animated Big Hero Six. Despite being unrelentingly “chick lit,” Cassandra Clarke’s The Mad Scientist’s Daughter is also interesting. It is the story of a young woman in love with the world’s only remaining sapient robot; she wonders if he truly shares her affection or if he is merely a “philosophic zombie” that mimics human emotions but does not truly experience them.

A Memoir of Being an Extra Appearing in the 2014 American Godzilla Movie

Stuart K. Hayashi


This is adapted from an e-mail I wrote in late 2013.

______

While it was by no means a panacea for problems in my life, a childhood dream came true for me on Wednesday, July 10, and Thursday, July 11, 2013. :'-D

Ever since I was a little boy, I appreciated a particular movie franchise, one starring a character who is similar to a dragon and yet is not explicitly called a dragon; he is more often compared to a dinosaur. We knew that back in 1998, TriStar claimed to come out with a big-budget American adaptation of the character with its own movie, only for us to find that the beastie in the TriStar offering looked and behaved nothing like the dragonesque character at all. Then in 2010 they announced that they would again do another big-budget American adaptation. Upon seeing an interview with the new director, Gareth Edwards, I felt more optimistic. He said everything correct -- that TriStar's 1998 adaptation failed because it wasn't true to the character and, far worse, it disrespected longtime fans. Edwards said that his version would actually look and behave like the character I had grown up loving. [In retrospect, this movie was, in one important respect, the opposite of Godzilla Resurgence. The monster in Godzilla Resurgence looked passably enough like Godzilla but did not behave like Godzilla. By contrast, the monster in the 2014 American Godzilla movie did not really look like Godzilla, but it did behave enough like Godzilla.]


Captain Nobody
The Saturday, June 1, 2013 edition of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported that there was an open casting call for a movie. The movie company didn't want the actual identity of the movie to be widely known; its employees referred to it in public as Nautilus. In Honolulu, the company even worked through a shell corporation called Captain Nemo Productions. Evidently the movie company wanted to fool people into believing that they were doing a remake of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. However, Hawaii's news media were not fooled; the newspaper very explicitly said it was probably Godzilla.

This announcement was made on very short notice -- the day before the casting call went out. Still, I decided that if I refrained from standing in line for the casting call, I would come to regret that decision in my old age. I therefore decided to be a part of it. The casting call was supposed to go on from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., but it ended up being extended later into the afternoon.

The lines were literally around the block, winding around corners of buildings and into at least three different parking lots. Ahead of me in line was a very talkative old man who introduced himself as Mike Crozier, saying he was a State Senator in Hawaii until 1992. I didn't recognize his name; his political career was l-o-n-g before my time.

I got really sunburned. Fortunately I only had to stand in line for four hours in order to fill out two forms for five minutes. I really did get dangerously burned by radiation -- unintentional method acting on my part.

The mural is of a dissected shark, for some reason. o.O

This is less than a third of the line.

In the first week of July, I received a phone call from Katie Doyle Casting informing me that of the 2,000 people who had filled out forms at the open casting call, I was among the 200 selected to be an extra for the movie. That's 1 out of 10. I couldn't believe my luck. :'-)

They shot the scenes in Waikiki at Duke Kahanamoku Beach on Wednesday, July 10, and Thursday, July 11.


Day One

Me on the morning of July 10, 2013, before getting the destination. I hold up the instructions that Katie Doyle's company gave me. In Microsoft Paint I blacked out some sensitive bits of information.

Wednesday, July 10, 2013, 6:00 a.m. -- Getting ready to remove my backpack and get on the bus that would take me to the set. Little did I know what awaited me there.

I was told that in the movie, a monster swims to Honolulu and wreaks devastation. At the time, I was not informed of the identity of any of the monsters in the picture -- I had not heard the name “MUTO.” At Duke Kahanamoku Beach, the crew built a whole set of building rubble, complete with wreckage of a helicopter. #REKT

A screen shot of the finished motion picture, with my captions added.

I was cast as one of the Honolulu residents wounded in the devastation. The props department put bandages on me and the makeup department drew wounds and gashes on my face and arms. They also threw dirt and ash in my beautiful hair.

I remembered how horribly sunburned I was waiting in line for the casting call. This time I came prepared and had sunscreen all over my face, neck, and arms. But I didn't anticipate that the wardrobe department would insist I change out of my clothes -- a T-shirt and jeans -- and into the beige button-down shirt and baggy shorts they wanted me to wear. Hawaiian people don't dress like that, but the movie people wanted everyone there to wear the sort of clothes that mainland Americans inaccurately expect Hawaiians to wear. Anyhow, I had neglected to put sunscreen on my legs, and they became terribly sunburned anyway.


"It Was Meant to Be"
Since the scene is of a disaster area, there are police officers, soldiers, and FEMA employees all over the place. The movie studio cast real-life police officers, National Guardsmen, and soldiers as extras, though they didn't wear their real uniforms. I came across a really talkative, incessantly jokey, stocky policeman there who introduced himself as "Tony." I said to him, "But your uniform says 'K. Thomas' on it." He said, "We're real police officers, but we're not allowed to use our real uniforms for the movie; these are from the wardrobe department."

Tony was an African-American but he spoke with a really thick pidgin Hawaiian dialect. In our first scene, the assistant director told Tony and this other officer, a middle-aged white officer (I don't know his real name, but the fake uniform said "D. Dornan" on it) to escort me, as an injured person, to the FEMA tent.

The movie crew actually put up these little railroad tracks in the middle of the pavement, and then they put this platform onto the railroad tracks. On the platform went this large crane, with the camera at the end of it. That's how the camera moved forward and backward.
When the white officer and Tony were making other small talk, the white officer said, "When did the last Godzilla movie come out?"

I said to him, "Do you mean the most recent Godzilla movie, or do you mean the horrible 1998 version TriStar made?"

The white officer said, "The American one."

I replied, "That was in 1998. But the most recent Godzilla movie from Japan was made in 2004."

Then Tony said, "Ho! You one Godzilla aficionado?"

I smiled and said, "Yes. Ever since I was a little boy, I appreciated Godzilla. When I learned that they were shooting the new movie here, I stood in line for three hours. By luck, I was chosen to be an extra. And now I'm here."

Tony said, "Ho! This is destiny! It was meant to be. Time for your loyalty to Godzilla to be rewarded. I'm going to help make sure that you get into the camera's view when they're filming." He said that teasingly, but as the day went on, he actually did scheme for us to be in the camera's view. We did multiple takes of the same scene. And, before any of the takes were even recorded, we did rehearsed takes, complete with the camera moving into the same position that it would be in during actual filming. Tony kept timing it so that we would be in the correct position as the camera passed by -- where we would be right behind the main actor as the camera focused in on him.

The assistant directors weren't completely consistent about continuity. At first they stressed that when they edited the different takes together, they wanted accurate continuity. Therefore, after we shot the first sequence, we had to remember where we stood when the director said "cut." Then, we they began filming the second sequence, we had to start in the exact place where we were when the first sequence finished filming. At least, that's what the assistant directors claimed they wanted. But eventually one assistant pointed to a place 70 feet from us and said, "There is too much empty space over there; not enough is going on. Therefore we want you guys to be in the background in those scenes, too." The assistants therefore moved us. When you watch the finished movie and spot me, you find out I’m all over the place, as if I have teleported every which way around the movie’s lead human actor, Aaron Taylor-Johnson. That’s because the assistants expected that no one would notice that the people in the background immediately appear and disappear from one place to another in microseconds.

The two cops and I are east of Aaron Taylor-Johnson.

Tony and I got behind Aaron Taylor-Johnson as he talks to the soldier (we are still east of him). How did we get there so fast?

Tony and I are west of Aaron Taylor-Johnson all of a sudden! This is at the 1:00:05 mark of the motion picture on the DVD.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson
Back on June 1, I read the Honolulu Star-Advertiser's list of the people cast to star in the movie. Of the names, I recognized only Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston (to me, he will always be Dr. Tim Whatley from Seinfeld as well as the voices of monsters from the first 1993 season of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers). Also cast was the younger sister of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen . Of all the stars there, though, only one appeared at our shooting -- some young British actor named Aaron Johnson. I did not recognize his name.

One of the extras pointed out, "That's the main actor. He was that guy in that movie." I didn't recognize that actor. Then the extra said, "He was the star of that movie . . .Kick-Ass."

Then it hit me. Oh, my God(zilla). Kick-Ass was the only movie and I ever went to see with someone whom I care about, but who has scared me through make various morbid gestures (suicidal, self-harming, and body dysmorphic) in a very public fashion. It was her kind of movie -- really bloody, unpleasant, and cynical. We watched Aaron Johnson on the big screen. And, at this moment, Aaron Johnson was, in the flesh, just a few feet from me. Not even when I'm in this movie can I escape from something that brings up memories of that person I care and worry about.

It was a really hot day, and the movie people had Aaron Johnson wear a really hot leather jacket. As soon as the camera stopped rolling, Aaron Johnson would remove the jacket. Underneath that he was also wearing a hot, bulky sweatshirt. What's the deal? In his scene, he was carrying a little Japanese boy in a red T-shirt. He takes the boy to a FEMA tent and says, "This boy been separated from his parents." Then a Japanese couple, playing the boy's parents, walk by. The mother screams in relief, "Akio!" and the boy jumps into her arms.

It was important that the other extras and I didn't begin moving when the assistant director Alex Rayner (who, at the time, I mistook for the main director Gareth Edwards) said "Action." First he said, "Action!" Then main director Gareth Edwards (whom I thought was assistant director Alex Rayner) yelled, "Sound!" The sound crew yelled, "Rolling!" in near-unison. Then the assistant director would say, "Background." Background refers to us extras in the background. That's when we extras would begin moving and doing what the assistants told us to do. When the shooting stopped, the director did say "Cut." Then he would say "Reset," which means we had to return to the spot we were last in before the last time the assistant director said "Background."

At the end of the first day of shooting, we were all done, but a woman from Katie Doyle’s company (I don’t know if it was Katie Doyle herself) said, "Nobody is leaving yet. I don't know what the reasoning is, but I have clear instructions that none of you can be paid unless you leave after sundown." This guy sarcastically shouted out, "Yayyyyyyyyyy!!" and then he sarcastically applauded. That was infectious, because then about forty extras sarcastically applauded with him.

In the evening, we left the set and the bus took me back to the location where the extras first gathered together.
Here, you can see the movie makeup. In the morning, I only looked beat-up. By the evening I FELT that way.

Day Two
On the second day of shooting, they did the continuation of that scene. Three waves of soldiers walk in formation. Aaron Johnson goes up to the man in front of the first wave and says something like, "I'm in the Navy. I need to get back to the mainland." The soldier in front says something to the effect of, "You're in luck, because that's where we're going. We're all monster-hunters now."

On the first take, Tony maneuvered me right behind Aaron Johnson as he was talking. You know the sound guy who holds that big pole with a microphone at the end, and the microphone has this weird fluffy covering on it? The back end of the pole almost hit me in the face. Then I would have had real bruises there to match the fake ones.

I said to Tony, "Why do they put that fluffy thing on the microphone?" Tony replied, "That's because when the wind hits the microphone directly, the impact makes that staticky feedback noise. When they put that fuzzy thing over it, the fuzzy thing absorbs the impact of the wind and the noise isn't made." Later he went directly to the sound guy to ask him about it, and the sound guy confirmed that that was correct.

Then many crew members began telling me that I had them worried because my eyes were so bloodshot. People have often told me my eyes are red and watery. Hence I initially didn't think it was a big deal. But then the crew actually brought in their on-call medic -- not one of the many extras playing medics -- to look at my eyes. That got me worried. I took out my contact lenses but my eyes didn't get less red.


Stand-In Boy Meets the Big G
The Japanese boy -- Jake -- had two stand-ins, both also in the same red T-shirts. I thought they were triplets, but they weren't related. Tony was talking to the parents of one of the stand-ins, and he pointed to me and said, "My boy Stuart right here is a Godzilla expert. I'm helping him get into as many shots for the movie as possible." The mother looked at me and said, "Our son still hasn't seen Godzilla yet."

I facetiously pantomimed a look of horror and exclaimed, "Unacceptable!"

The mother said, "Which Godzilla movies do you recommend we show our son? I don't mean that horrible American one from 1998."

I said, "In Godzilla: Final Wars, they have the real Godzilla fight that fake American Godzilla, and the real Godzilla defeats him really easily. And a character says of the fake Fraudzilla from TriStar, 'I knew that tuna-eating monster was weak!' "

The mother said, "What was that movie?" She took out her iPhone and said, "Tell me the title of that movie." I told her Godzilla: Final Wars. That movie is very far from the best entry in the series, but I figured it was the one that little boys are most apt to like. The parents also took a photo of me with the boy with their iPhone.


"I Consider All of You Here My Family!"
It turns out that Aaron Johnson had been filming the movie for 80 days; this was his 81st day. The director Gareth Edwards (who looked so young in person that I mistook him for the assistant director) got a microphone and said, "Everyone, this is a special day. For many of us, this is the end of filming." He said, "This is Victor's final day of shooting." Then he handed a microphone to Victor, who was dressed as military personnel, and said, "What was your favorite part of filming?" Victor said, "My favorite part was shooting up Godzilla!" Everyone laughed.

Then Gareth Edwards chuckled and said, "What are you talking about? The movie is called Nautilus."

Then Gareth said, "This is also Aaron Johnson's last day of filming," and he gave the microphone to Aaron Johnson. Speaking into the microphone, Aaron Johnson addressed all of us extras and said in that rather cloying way that actors talk, "This has been a great journey for me, and I consider all of you here my family."

Then Gareth went up to the little boy (the main one) and announced, "This is also Jake's last day of filming." He said to the boy, "What was your favorite part of making the movie?"

The boy said in a very breathy voice, "My favorite part was . . . was . . . " Then he said nothing. Everyone laughed about his cuteness.

Gareth said, "Okay, 'Cut.' 'Reset.' What was your favorite part?" Then again the boy said, "My favorite part was . . . was . . . " Nothing.

Gareth said, "That part with the train was good, wasn't it?" The boy said, "Yes!" and everyone laughed about his cuteness again.

All in all, it was quite an adventure.

And I don't want to do anything like it again any time soon. ^_^

The movie company's instructions forbade any picture-taking on the set or of the set. But I still wanted the moments captured. That's why you see these photos of me getting onto and off the bus.

My return from the second day of shooting. I was tired yet invigorated. My makeup wound was bloodier on the second day.

At the start of the shoot, I only looked beat up. By the end of it, I felt that way, too. The dragon-like creature has beaten up many worthy opponents in his time -- Mothra, Rodan, and King Kong. And now me. ^_^


Epilogue
When I watched the movie in the theater, I didn’t see myself, but John Paul Cassidy (who has an excellent contribution in August Ragone's excellent biography of Godzilla/Ultraman special effects director Eiju Tsuburaya) assured me that he saw me. I got the DVD for my birthday and, sure enough, I spotted myself.

September 24, 2014.

I have appeared in my favorite movie franchise -- in a motion picture that grossed half a billion dollars worldwide. One of my two great childhood dreams was finally accomplished. ^_^ Now I can move on to trying to accomplish the second childhood dream, which is a much easier feat: becoming a millionaire. ;-)


____

UPDATE from Saturday, January 21, 2016:  This is also a separate post here.

I drew this from January 13 to January 15, 2017.  You can also see it on Instagram here.

Godzilla is a registered trademark of Toho Co., Ltd.

The drawing on January 14, before it was finished:

Upon completion:

My Thoughts on 'Godzilla Resurgence'/'Shin Gojira' (SPOILERIFIC post!)

Stuart K. Hayashi


This is full of SPOILERS

There was no poster next to which I could pose. My cousin therefore took this photo of me before we entered the theater.

On Monday, October 17, 2016, I finally saw Godzilla Resurgence, better known in Japan as Shin Godzilla (that title deliberately has multiple meanings; it can mean ‘New Godzilla’ as in the newest Godzilla movie, or it could also mean Godzilla Reborn or Renewed).

On almost any occasion on which I see this logo at the start of a movie, I know I am in for a good time. ^_^ <3 td="">

The Anticipation
This is the fourth time in my whole life I saw a Godzilla movie in a theater (the 1998 travesty by TriStar does not count at all). The first one I saw on the silver screen was King Kong vs. Godzilla. When I was a little boy, my parents took me to that at an art house near the University of Hawaii; I think it was Varsity Theater, which has since closed.

The second one I ever saw at the theater -- and the first Toho Godzilla movie I ever saw in a theater when it was considered a new release in the United States -- was in 2000, when 1999’s Godzilla Millennium was released. It was actually a very uncompetitive weekend at the box office, with the number-one movie in the USA being The Original Kings of Comedy; Godzilla Millennium did not make the top-ten list at all.

The third one was the 2014 American production. You may recall that a very handsome Oahuan appears in that movie, as you can see here.

From the 1:00:05 mark of the 2014 American Godzilla movie.

As was the case with the 2014 American movie, I wanted to go in as “cold” as possible so that I could be surprised; I didn’t want to be contaminated by spoilers from fan sites. (Of course, actually being an extra in the 2014 movie did give me ideas about what would happen in it.)

As was the case with the 2014 film, I found that my favorite Godzilla fan pages on Facebook were bombarding me with spoilers and therefore I had to click “unfollow” for them.

However, I saw no harm in continuing to “follow” the Godzilla toy collectors’ Facebook groups. How naive! An American comic book artist wrote a quick Facebook status update mentioning how impressed he was by the strangeness of the new Godzilla. He announced that this Godzilla had a second head. Oh, no (and that wasn’t even a pleasant surprise)! I immediately had to unfollow him. Then a man from a Godzilla toy collectors’ Facebook group showed off his action figure of the new Godzilla from the new movie and announced that this action figure had a special feature: consistent with the new movie, the end of the tail opened up and--

OHHH, NO! Maybe the second head is at the end of the tail? And maybe the second head looks like the chestburster from Alien? I quickly unfollowed the Godzilla toy collectors Facebook groups as well. Not even those were safe!

Nor were the Twitter accounts of my fellow G-fans. The very day before I got to see the movie, they were showing off fan art of the new Godzilla’s original “tadpole” form with the shark-like gill slits. Thus, that was not a surprise for me either. -_-

At last I have seen the movie. Just as Japan rebuilds after a Godzilla attack, I can rebuild my Facebook account by re-following the English-speaking comic book artists and the Godzilla-related fan pages and Facebook groups that were insisting on spoiling me.



Does It Look and Behave Like Godzilla? Well, We’re 1/4 the Way There...
When the 1998 TriStar travesty came out, I had three major complaints about it. (1) It did not even look like Godzilla. (2) It did not behave like Godzilla. (3) The movie was corny in a way that exhibited how the film’s makers believed themselves to be above the material. People accuse Toho movies of being corny but they are always played straight; the Toho creators don’t sneer at the movie in the movie. The really corny running joke about people mispronouncing the Greek surname of Matthew Broderick’s character was wholly unnecessary.

Two of those major complaints do not apply to Godzilla Resurgence. First, if the filmmakers consider themselves above the material, it is not apparent from the movie itself. The movie is played completely straight. Secondly, the monster in the film does look like Godzilla . . . well, enough like Godzilla (more about that later). One of the old complaints does apply, though: the monster doesn’t actually behave like Godzilla. That is, the monster’s behavior contradicts a lot of what was memorable and distinctive about Godzilla in the previous movies, particularly the ones from the 1990s (called the second phase of Godzilla movies or the Heisei phase, since these came out when Japan’s imperial dynasty began its Heisei period).

All G-fans have commented on this new incarnation of Godzilla having a design radically different from all previous designs. There are a few changes I like and many I don’t (I will get to those points below). Despite all the radical changes, the monster still looks recognizably like Godzilla, more so than the 2014 American version and definitely much more than TriStar’s 1998 Fraudzilla. What I mean by that is that this new version passes “the silhouette test.” If you see just the silhouette of the new monster, it matches Godzilla’s. The head is the correct shape and size in proportion to the rest of the body. The neck is the correct length. Consistent with the previous incarnations of Godzilla, this one bends its neck and tilts its head slightly downward at an angle similar to the manner in which a horse does. The distinctive “maple-leaf-shaped” dorsal spikes are all right and even the proper size. And, of course, this one has the huge thighs that Godzilla had in the first three movies and throughout the 1990s.

However, the monster’s behavior is actually not consistent with what I think has been established as Godzilla’s personality over the past sixty years (and yes, he does have a personality). What has characterized Godzilla’s personality for the past sixty years is his consistency: he always behaves the same, and therefore you know where you stand with him. I suppose that many people would consider this a weakness in terms of making Godzilla a fearsome movie monster. Throughout the 1990s, the humans tasked with fighting Godzilla (such as the psychic Miki Saegusa) consider Godzilla generally predictable in his behavior; usually it’s the appearance of Godzilla’s opponent that catches the humans off-guard and requires them to alter their plans. I suppose that is exactly what Shinji Higuchi and Hideaki Anno wanted to discard -- the idea is that for a monster to be scary, it has to be remain unpredictable to the audience; the monster has to surprise both the protagonists and the audience. However, the problem with this is that if you change this aspect of Godzilla, he is no longer recognizably Godzilla -- at least not recognizable to anyone who watched Godzilla movies in the 1990s or in the first decade of the twenty-first century.

Here is what I mean by that. From 1954 to 2001, there was not a single movie in which Godzilla ever retreated from a battle. That was an established behavioral trait -- Godzilla does not retreat ever; he only advances. By contrast, in the 1998 TriStar travesty, retreat was all that the monster did. As soon as the U.S. military’s aircraft advanced on the 1998 creature, it ran away and hid. All the fans in the theater booed that, because -- even if they couldn’t put it into words -- they recognized on some subconscious level that Godzilla does not retreat.

The monster in Godzilla Resurgence does not retreat, but it has an indefinite power to metamorphose -- its body can change shape in any manner to suit the monster, and it is said that the form in which the monster appears at movie’s end is not even its final (adult) form. The monster has no final form. At one point in the movie, the scientists predict that this monster could even one day sprout wings(!!!) and fly from one continent to another(!!!). At that point the loud, talkative woman next to me in the theater, exclaimed, “Wait; what?!!” The ability to metamorphose has worked for many of Godzilla’s foes; many of them have a larval form and then an adult form: Hedorah (the smog monster), Mothra, Battra, Biollante, Destoroyah, Orga, and Megaguirus. It works for them. But I think that doesn’t actually “work” for Godzilla. The creature in this film seems to have less in common with Godzilla than with John Carpenter's version of The Thing.

One of the appeals of many ancient pagan gods is that they are supposed to be reliable. Many of them, such as Quetzalcoatl, are easily angered if you do not appease them. However, they are still reliable. That is, if some rituals are performed correctly, the ancient pagan god will do exactly as promised. There are some pagan gods that are reputed to be unpredictable, such as Loki in the Norse legends, but all of the unpredictable pagan gods are tricksters. Daikaiju, especially Godzilla, are supposed to be pagan gods for the modern age, and therefore it makes sense that their appeal is that they are reliable: when the proper conditions are in place, you know what to expect from them. You know that Mothra is going to protect the indigenous peoples of Infant Island and only reacts violently if the natives or Mothra’s eggs are threatened. Throughout the 1990s, you would know that Godzilla feeds on nuclear radiation and that he is attracted to nuclear power plants. When the human characters devised all sorts of plans in the 1990s to counteract Godzilla, it was based on Godzilla being reliable in that respect (what remained uncertain was the extent to which Godzilla would be able to endure the attacks resulting from those plans, as his strength is immeasurable). If there is an unpredictable trickster in the pantheon of Godzilla’s allies and enemies, it would probably be Gigan.

The shape-changing in Godzilla Resurgence undermines the established personality trait of Godzilla being reliable.



Gore-zilla?
Also, I didn’t like how the film’s makers went out of their way to make new monster seem “gross.”

First, the monster appears in a tadpole form and is bleeding everywhere. He has naked gills like a shark’s on the sides of his neck, and they appear to be bleeding. He has bulging fish eyes that cannot blink because they have no lids. And he already has big legs with those memorably thick thighs, but no arms. Then the monster metamorphoses (the protagonists say evolve but a more biologically proper term is metamorphose) into the form that looks more like Godzilla in terms of “the silhouette test.” That’s when the little arms sprout out from beneath the skin and the audience is supposed to think, “Ew, gross.”

And, of course, he has that skull-face. When I was little, I would see paintings of sunken pirate ships. The painting of the sunken ship usually included the image of a pirate’s skeleton, with algae growing on the front of the skull. That is what the new monster’s face looks like: it looks like a deformed, festering human skull with algae growing on it. It particularly looks like a pirate’s skull because the teeth are not concealed by any lips or gums; some teeth are rooted not in the gums but are sprouting from the skin itself, further emphasizing the deformity and grossness. When I first saw the publicity images, I thought, “Well, that’s surprising but I think I can grow accustomed to that.”

But then, when this monster fires his atomic breath, his face actually splits into three pieces and opens up like a flower bud with three petals opening up. This happens because his lower jaw splits into two pieces (connected only by an icky thin membrane) and the whole mouth grows wider. His face opens up like the Graboid’s from Tremors and the sandworm’s from Dune. I understand what the film’s makers were going for: his mouth widens the same way a snake’s does when it unhinges its jaw and then swallows an object, such as an egg, that is wider than the diameter of the snake’s whole body. Snakes looks gross when they do that, and the monster looks comparably gross with his mouth open that wide. When this monster was firing his atomic ray, I think that was the first time I ever thought Godzilla looked ugly. (Prior to this, the closest I came to thinking that was when I saw the costume for Godzilla in Son of Godzilla, where the eyes were elevated to the top of his head like a mudskipper's eyes.)

And, of course, the “adult” version of this monster has those beady little fish eyes, with most of the eye cavities being sunken in like those of an emaciated person in a concentration camp. This is in great contrast to how Godzilla’s eyes have appeared for the past fifty years. It is well-remembered how he had huge, neotenous, “puppy dog eyes” in the 1970s, but his eyes were large, wise, and neotenous even in the 1990s.

The gore factor is enhanced in the final shot of the movie. The movie ends with a close-up of the end of Godzilla’s tail. Apparently, there are creatures that look like deformed human skeletons(!!!) sprouting out of it. When I saw that, I thought, “What the hell are those?!!! This is even sillier than the end of Godzilla’s tail looking like the chestburster from Alien!” Incidentally, mere hours after I saw the movie, I noticed on Facebook that there was one Godzilla-related Facebook group I neglected to unfollow. In my news feed, I saw that for that group, someone posted a screen shot of the image of the deformed humanoids sprouting from Godzilla’s tail, saying, “What is that?!” Had my cousin and I waited just one more day to see the movie, that part would have been spoiled for me, too.



As With Dinosaurs and European Dragons, Godzilla Is Appreciated for Being Pretty (Yes, Really): How to Confirm This
Many American non-fans will have a difficult time understanding what I am about to say, but one major reason for Godzilla’s popularity is that he is pretty. If you doubt this, you can simply ask little boys why they like dinosaurs and European dragons so much. Usually they will tell you that they like dinosaurs and European dragons because they are strong and fearsome (little boys don’t feel strong or powerful, and therefore they admire creatures that are strong and powerful) and they like how such creature look (this is code for: such creatures are pretty, comparable to how many people think lions and tigers are pretty). If you are skeptical of the idea that people recognize dinosaurs and European dragons are pretty, you can check out the astonishing popularity of paintings of dinosaurs and European dragons on Pinterest among people of all sexes. And Godzilla’s appearance has always combined that of a dinosaur and a European dragon (paradoxically, all the incarnations of Godzilla look and behave more like a European dragon than an Asian one).

The recognition that Godzilla is pretty became more and more overt throughout the 1980s and 1990s. The term to be associated with Godzilla’s reputation wasn’t “pretty,” though, as much as it was majestic. The protagonists never hated Godzilla or found him repulsive, and the films’ makers expected the audience to have the same reaction. The psychology behind this was that, throughout the 1990s, the human protagonists recognized Godzilla as a danger that they had to fight -- possibly even destroy -- but that there was no point in hating him or finding him disgusting. He’s not evil; he just is; he's going to do what he's going to do, and that can be done is for people either get out of his way and combat him. Along with that was the recognition of Godzilla as beautiful. This became particularly explicit in the Toho-approved English-language young adult novels that Random House published in the late 1990s; the author, Marc Cerasini, had one of the protagonists say to Godzilla (despite his inability to understand her) that she recognized him as graceful and beautiful. The protagonists’ respect for Godzilla comes from their noticing that Godzilla is graceful in the way that a shark is graceful; he is dangerous and beautiful in the same manner that a waterfall or a lightning storm is dangerous and beautiful. The closest to an English-language equivalent of how they think of him is that he is majestic. The protagonists of Godzilla Resurgence don’t hate or disrespect this new monster either. They respect its power and its ability to surprise them, but they are not awed by its majesty or grace the way that the protagonists were of Godzilla in the ‘90s films.

In previous movies, Godzilla did have some opponents that were intended to be interpreted, by the audience, as unpredictable (and therefore scary) and gross, most notably Megaguirus (an insect) and Hedorah (a sludge creature that feeds on pollution). In being unpredictable, gross, and able to change its shape to suit its latest needs, the monster in the new movie is actually more like Hedorah than Godzilla. It’s as if Hedorah finally ate Godzilla (the same way the Blob eats people) and then assumed Godzilla’s shape. That would not be without precedent, as the monster Orga in 2001’s Godzilla Millennium (again, the first Toho Godzilla movie I ever saw in the theater as a new release) absorbed Godzilla’s DNA and tried to swallow Godzilla whole as it increasingly took on Godzilla’s appearance. There is also the monster Biollante, which has the DNA of both a rose and Godzilla. It might have made more sense if the characters in Godzilla Resurgence said that the new monster was Biollante having resurfaced and taken on a new form more closely resembling Godzilla’s. But, again, in terms of being gross, unpredictable, and shape-changing, this movie’s monster is most like Hedorah, both in terms of how it behaves and in how the audience is supposed to react to it. (Hedorah’s movie, Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster, is surprisingly gory and probably remains the goriest entry in the series.)

Basically, this new monster seems to be inspired by the “body horror” genre of movies. “Body horror” films are movies that revolve around the fear of losing control over one’s own body. A person’s body mutates in a gruesome fashion, and audience members find this scary because it reminds them of real-life painful and fatal diseases -- fatal diseases involve losing control of one’s body and, through natural selection, we have evolved to be disgusted by the physical symptoms of such diseases (because we find such symptoms disgusting, our “selfish genes” “program” us to try to avoid catching these diseases). Alien and John Carpenter’s The Thing remake are examples of “body horror,” but, throughout the 1990s, the most heavy-handed “body horror” movies were always made by David Cronenberg, most famous for the Jeff Goldblum-featuring remake of The Fly. And the make-up effects for these “body horror” movies were almost always done by a man called Screaming Mad George (who is from Japan, by the way). If you want to apply “body horror” to an opponent of Godzilla’s to make it more menacing, it works for an opponent of Godzilla’s like Hedorah or Megaguirus, but it doesn’t really work for Godzilla (I know that there are G-fans who have an immediate rebuttal to this point; I will get to that below).

When it comes to direct influences on this “Gross Godzilla,” I blame co-director Shinji Higuchi’s work on the live-action motion picture adaptation of Attack on Titan, which came out soon before this movie. Attack on Titan relies very heavily (too heavily, for my taste) on “body horror.” The titular titans are giants that eat human beings, and these titans pretty much look like human corpses. In 2015 Shinji Higuchi came out with a movie about giant human corpses and then, appropriately enough, the next year he came out with a movie about a giant everyone called Godzilla but had a face that resembled that of a festering human corpse. All of the “titans” look different, and there is a famous skull-faced one called “Smiling Titan.” The monster from Godzilla Resurgence has the same face as “Smiling Titan”: the same beady little eyes buried in the same sunken-in and cavernous eye sockets and the same skeletal smile with no gums and too many teeth.

I think the emphasis on making Godzilla gory and repulsive changes the identity of the monster to the point where I can’t think of it as Godzilla anymore.



But, Since the Very First Movie, Wasn’t Godzilla’s Skin Intended to Look Gross?
Many G-fans have a rebuttal to what I have said above. They can say that, actually, since the very first movie, the films’ makers did intend for Godzilla to look gross. They can say that the distinctive texture of Godzilla’s skin was, from the outset, intended to be gory.

Ever since I was little, I wondered why Godzilla had the texture he did. Instead of having a scaly hide like his opponent King Ghidorah, Godzilla has a lot of long grooves running throughout his skin. His texture resembles that of tree bark. In the past few years I learned the explanation for this. When the makers of the first movie were deciding on how Godzilla should look, they experimented with different textures. One potential design had Godzilla with the large scales and scutes of a crocodile. However, they ultimately went with the tree-bark texture, and the reasoning behind this was gory. The artists noticed that when Japanese victims were scarred by radiation burns, the lesions the burns left behind on the skin of these people that came in the form of long grooves. Although this was never stated explicitly in any of the movies, the artists gave Godzilla that tree-bark texture to remind the Japanese audience -- which vividly remembered the atomic bombings -- of the scars left on the victims. The implication is that Godzilla has been disfigured by nuclear bomb tests and has been left in constant pain; no wonder he is lashing back on humanity. That’s gross!

That idea is indeed disturbing but, overall, I think the artists never succeeded, in the long term, in making Godzilla look gross with the tree-bark texture. Since the first movie didn’t show what Godzilla looked like before being scarred by atomic bomb blasts, it was never obvious that he was disfigured. I suppose that the very strange maple-leaf shapes of his dorsal spikes also could be taken as an indication that Godzilla is deformed -- his dorsal spikes wouldn’t be so weird-looking if not for humans disfiguring him.

My response: if the first movie showed what Godzilla looked like prior to being exposed to nuclear radiation, then it would have been more apparent that the grooves on his skin indicated that human actions had disfigured him. It was therefore easy for me and the rest of the audience to assume that the tree-bark texture was the default; that Godzilla had that texture even prior to being affected by human technology. Also, the tree-bark texture would have come across as gory and pity-inducing if the movie makers conveyed that Godzilla was in pain the whole time. Throughout the 1960s and ‘70s when he had the tree-bark texture, it was never apparent that Godzilla was in chronic pain. He seemed happy being that way.

The 1991 movie Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah actually does show what Godzilla looked like before being mutated by atomic bombs -- he was a fifty-foot tall Godzillasaurus with a scaly hide and his dorsal spikes were tiny in comparison to the rest of his body. Then, after being hit by the atomic bomb, the Godzillasaurus grows much larger, develops the weird tree-bark texture, and grows the big maple-leaf-shaped dorsal spikes. He also changes color: from brown to that charcoal gray hue (Godzilla is seldom green in the movies). But since it seems he is not in pain in his present form, it doesn’t come across as gross. (This is not shape-changing comparable to the monster in Shin Godzilla, since the audience understands that the form Godzilla takes in Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah is the “permanent” form he will always have in the future.) The reason that Godzilla Resurgence conveys that Godzilla might be in chronic pain is that he keeps bleeding all over the place.

Therefore, I think my point still applies: even if Godzilla having the tree-bark texture was part of an effort to make him look gross and ugly, that didn’t really succeed. If any filmmaker wanted Godzilla to be ugly, the makers of Godzilla Resurgence were the first to succeed at that. Yes, part of what makes Godzilla Godzilla -- and widely beloved throughout the world -- is that fans recognize him as pretty, even if they are reluctant to use that word to describe him. Again, if you doubt that much of the fascination with dinosaurs, European dragons, and Godzilla has to do with them being pretty, then simply observe the large number of females on Pinterest who keep re-pinning images of dinosaurs, European dragons, and Godzilla.

For the reasons provided, I don’t recognize the monster in this movie as Godzilla. I think of it as a new monster that took the basic shape of Godzilla but is clearly not Godzilla, as it doesn’t behave as he does.



Other Observations of the Design of the Creature in This Movie
Here are some other observations I have about the monster in this movie that are not necessarily complaints.

I thought it was interesting how the film’s makers chose the sound effect for when this monster emits its atomic ray. For most of Godzilla’s history -- say, from around 1962 in King Kong vs. Godzilla to 1991 with Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah -- the films’ makers used the same sound effect for when Godzilla fires his atomic ray. It sounds sort of like the kindling of flames, but not exactly. It sounds like rocks rolling down an incline, or a rotor turning through water, or a large gust of wind blowing in a swirl during a storm. Then, for the movie directly following 1991’s Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah -- 1992’s Godzilla vs. Mothra -- the movie makers changed the sound effect. In 1992, every time Godzilla fired his atomic ray at Mothra and Battra, the ray made a high-pitched, whirring noise, as if he is shooting a laser beam instead of flames. It sounds like an aircraft in flight or a long laser blast from a spacecraft in Star Wars. (You can hear that sound effect here; I cued it to that spot.) In the years immediately following -- 1993, 1994, and 1995, the films’ makers quickly abandoned use of the high-pitched whirring as the sound effect accompanying Godzilla’s blasts. (In the 2001 with Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack and 2004’s Godzilla: Final Wars, Godzilla’s atomic ray does make a similar whirring, laser-beam-like noise, except that it isn’t as high-pitched.) What I found interesting about Godzilla Resurgence is that it seems to have restored usage of that high-pitched whirring sound effect for when this new monster fires its atomic ray.

I have to admit to being worried about the prospect that the design of the monster in this movie will become the “official” design of Godzilla to be used for every subsequent Godzilla movie for the next 15 years or so. For instance, I hope that if I’m watching a newly released Godzilla movie twenty years from today -- okay, well, I guess I should be grateful that any Godzilla movie would still get released -- it won’t be the case that when Godzilla fires his atomic ray, his face splits into three pieces and his maw widens grotesquely like in this movie. Prior to this movie, Godzilla has been graceful when firing his atomic ray. It will be easier for me to appreciate the novelty of this movie if “Godzilla [sic]” looking and behaving this way is a one-time deal for this movie alone.

Even if it weren’t for the ugly mouth expansion, the scenes of this monster firing its atomic ray would not have been the prettiest scenes of something being called “Godzilla” firing the atomic ray. Nor does that honor go to the 2014 American Godzilla, despite that one being the most expensive rendering of that special effect. That honor goes to Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack, despite this being one of the most overrated entries, and also Final Wars, despite that one being weaker than most entries overall. In both of these movies, there is the neat effect where, as Godzilla readies his beam, strange blue orbs of light orbit around his head. He inhales those orbs right before emitting his blast.

One “new power” from Godzilla Resurgence that I did appreciate was the new monster firing laser beams out of the spikes on his back. I thought that was interesting because it seems to be a logical extension of the “new power” that Godzilla started to use in 1989. In 1989’s Godzilla vs. Biollante, Godzilla got tangled in Biollante’s tentacle-like vines. To get out of this, Godzilla first powered up his atomic ray and caused his dorsal spikes to glow blue. However, instead of firing anything from his mouth, he emitted a large and quick flash of light in every direction from his upper torso. The blast burst open Biollante’s tentacles and released the Big G from her grasp. This was called the “nuclear pulse” and Godzilla employed it again in the very next entry, Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah. When King Ghidorah was strangling the Big G with its serpentine middle neck, Godzilla employed the nuclear pulse again, stunning King Ghidorah enough that the monster loosened its grip on Godzilla. King Ghidorah then fell on its back in a daze. Then the Big G employed it yet again in the next movie, Godzilla vs. Mothra. As the titular lepidopteran flew too close to the Big G, the Big let out the nuclear pulse and knocked Mothra backward (this was first battle in which Godzilla employed the nuclear pulse and still got humiliated in the end). Even back then, I thought it would be neat for Godzilla to shoot his glowing atomic blasts out of the dorsal spikes. At last I got to see that -- I only had to wait over twenty years for that to happen. ^_^



Notes on the Movie
I found this movie interesting in that it featured the most realistic depiction of the Japanese government and its military out of any of the movies following the first one. In almost every Godzilla movie, the government and military are glamorized and the level of their technological sophistication is exaggerated to comic-book proportions. The Japanese Self-Defense Force in Godzilla movies is pretty much S.H.I.E.L.D. (By the way, when Marvel Comics published an authorized Godzilla comic series in the 1970s, SHIELD was the agency officially tasked with monitoring and battling Godzilla.)

When the series was first rebooted in Godzilla 1985, the intention was to make the series more “realistic” and darker in tone. Even in this entry, though, the level of Japan’s technological sophistication was exaggerated, as the movie pit Godzilla against a giant UFO-shaped aircraft called the Super X. And despite the 1990s movies supposedly intending to be more realistic than the ones from the ‘60s and ‘70s, the ‘90s movies quickly got equally far-fetched, with the Japanese military pitting a psychic girl(!!!) and a time machine(!!!) against Godzilla, soon followed by giant robots such as Mecha-Godzilla and MOGUERA.

Godzilla Resurgence is different in that I think every form of technology used in this movie, is a form of technology that is at the disposal of the Japanese Self-Defense Force in real life. For the climax, the protagonists do invent some new chemical compound to exploit Godzilla’s cell structure. Something like that does not exist in real life but, even here, that is much more plausible than the high-tech weapons used against Godzilla in previous entries, such as the genetically engineered Anti-Nuclear Energy Bacteria (my favorite, which should have been revisited in subsequent 1990s entries) and even the first movie’s Oxygen Destroyer.

There was a downside to that new emphasis on realism, though. My cousin Mark told me he found the movie boring, and I can understand why. He said it was too dialogue-heavy. Most of the movie is talking. Most of the movie pretty much consists of this: the government team tasked with battling Godzilla comes up with some plan. Someone from the team goes to the Prime Minister to authorize the plan. Then a few minutes later, the team discovers some complication that might thwart the plan. The team members therefore brainstorm on how they can make some minor adjustment to the plan. Then they have to go back to the Prime Minister to approve that minor adjustment. This back-and-forth must have happened around seventeen times. That routine got old very quickly. o.O

One very well-deserved complaint about the previous entry, Godzilla: Final Wars, was that the whole movie was humans fighting. Normally, audiences complain that the human scenes are boring because the humans are just talking and then they watch Godzilla on some big screen. Final Wars tried to remedy that by having the human characters do a lot of martial-arts fighting. What really irked me about this, though, was that, except for the climactic battle, all of the monster fights were super-short, whereas the human-versus-humanoid battles went on forever. Worse, they were highly imitative of The Matrix. If I wanted to watch The Matrix, I would have watched The Matrix. If the movie says Godzilla on it, I expect a Godzilla movie. But anyway, that movie had hardly any monster battles and consisted almost entirely of humans fighting. As James "Angry Video Game Nerd" Rolfe put it, "It's all fighting." I think someone on Facebook properly called it a “cacophony.”

Well, Godzilla Resurgence went to the other extreme by having just people talking throughout the whole movie.

One common complaint about this movie that frequently slipped through my “information embargo” was that this movie was surprisingly nationalistic. When I heard that, I was worried that the protagonists would sound like the Japanese equivalents of Donald Trump and Jean-Marie Le Pen. Fortunately, this wasn’t as heavy-handed as I feared it would be. The movie did take a very condescending tone toward the United States government, but I don’t think that is the same as being condescending toward American people in general. The previous entry, Godzilla: Final Wars, was condescending in its depiction of American civilians. As for how the U.S. government was depicted, I thought this movie was no more condescending than Godzilla 1985 and Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah. In the case of Godzilla 1985, the original version came off as relentless wagging of the finger against President Reagan for being hawkish against the Soviet Union. (Roger Corman’s U.S. release of Godzilla 1985 made many silly changes to bowdlerize the depiction of Cold War tensions and to emphasize the unmatched villainy of the Soviet side.)

The Kayoco (is that really the spelling?) Anne Patterson character was supposed to be part white, part Japanese, but she came off as completely Japanese to me. (By the way, Steven Seagal’s daughter, who does have a Japanese mother, was very good in Gamera, The Guardian of the Universe.)

One interesting twist was how the United Nations was also depicted as villainous. That is a sharp departure from how the U.N. was portrayed in all previous movies, especially the ones from the 1990s. In the 1990s movies, all the world’s nations properly recognized Godzilla as a mortal threat to all countries, and therefore Japan was not alone in facing him. All the governments of the world banded together to fight Godzilla, establishing the UNGCC -- the United Nations Godzilla Countermeasures Center. In these films, the U.N. was not merely glamorized but depicted in a fawning light. The U.N. could do no wrong. Prior to Godzilla Resurgence, the closest the Toho movies came to depicting the U.N. as corrupt was in the prior entry, Final Wars. In that one, the aliens of Planet X abduct the U.N. Secretary General and replace him with a look-alike agent of theirs. In that respect, the movie depicted the U.N. as being corrupted, but it was corrupted only because warlike extraterrestrials had infiltrated it. By contrast, Godzilla Resurgence conveys that the U.N. does not have to be infiltrated by supervillains; it suggests that corruption is just the default for the humans running the U.N. That is much more realistic, and very new for the Godzilla series.

Even though this was a minor point, I also liked how Big Pharma was credited with saving the day in this movie. I think this was only the second time I had seen a movie where Big Pharma was the good guys and not the villains (the first case was the movie Extraordinary Measures starring Brendan Fraser and Harrison Ford). ^_^

I appreciated Akira Ifukube’s classic score from the first movie being used in this one. I thought that a nod to Ifukube’s classic music was sorely missing from the 2014 American movie. It would have been a nice touch if the 2014 American movie at least had a short bar -- if jazzed up -- of the classic Ifukube score in it somewhere. I don’t know if this was just a quirk of Funimation’s U.S. release or if it was this way in the original Japanese version, but there was something very odd about how the music was handled in Godzilla Resurgence. All of the sound effects -- such as Godzilla roaring and the collision of one skyscraper on another -- were loud and in glorious high-fi stereo. Yet, for some reason, all of the music seemed to be monaural. Was that only in the theater I was in? 😕

There was a new musical piece written for this movie; that’s the one that played during the trailer. It’s choir music. One Western comic-book artist whom I had to unfollow for spoiling (he’s the one that announced that the monster had a second head) said he really liked the new music. It doesn’t do it for me. It sounds like cliched "spooky choir singing" that played in 1970s movies about the Devil, such as The Exorcist and The Omen. I guess it’s because those 1970s demonology movies were about the end of the world, and the monster represents an apocalyptic threat. Although Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack was terribly overrated (lots of G-fans call it the best movie, but I consider it one of the least watchable), it had a much better score. There is a part in the Giant Monsters All-Out Attack theme that uses “eerie choir music,” but that is used sparingly; that theme still overall sounds big and adventurous and Godzilla-esque, whereas the Godzilla Resurgence music is indistinguishable from music from 1970s Devil-themed movies.

It would be misleading to call this movie humorless, as people watching next to me did pick up on the humor. I would say that the humor was much more subdued in this movie than in prior entries, though. Humorous elements in prior Godzilla movies have usually been broad and heavy handed, such as with Gengo the cartoonist protagonist in Godzilla vs. Gigan. In Godzilla Resurgence, the humor usually involved formalities in Japanese custom; because the situation warrants it, the characters frequently behave in ways that Japanese would normally consider “socially improper.” Since I don’t have direct experience with “high-context” Japanese culture, I didn’t pick up on this as much as did the more-cosmopolitan, more-traveled people sitting near me (the only theater on Oahu playing this movie was in the more upper-class, more “cultured” part of Honolulu; lots of the people sitting around me were art house/film-festival-attending types).

Overall, I thought the human characters in this movie were quite bland. The sass of the “Anne Patterson” character was supposed to supply some comic relief but, no, the sass was bland. “The human characters were bland” is a common criticism of Godzilla movies even by fans, but I think that doesn’t always apply. The mad scientist Dr. Serizawa from the first movie was a very memorable character, as was the aforementioned cartoonist protagonist Gengo from Godzilla vs. Gigan.

I did catch some in-jokes. When the monster reaches the final “form” that he takes for this movie, a biologist shouts that the monster has taken his “fourth form.” I think I was the only person in the audience who understood this joke. Everyone around me was confused because the monster is only shown taking two forms in the movie; they were perplexed as to how this scientist knew that this was the monster’s “fourth form.” This refers to this movie being the third reboot of the series. The first reboot was Godzilla 1985, which acknowledges only the events of the first movie and ignores all the movies from 1955 to 1975 as if they never happened. From 1984 to 1995, the Godzilla movies cared more about continuity; finally the characters easily remembered the events of the previous movies (even though, due to their using a time machine in 1991’s Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah to change the past, they actually should not have remembered the events of Godzilla 1985 and Godzilla vs. Biollante). The 1990s/Heisei Godzilla can thus be considered “Godzilla’s second form.” Then the series was rebooted again in 1999 with Godzilla Millennium, and what was particularly odd about this series was that every new entry from 1999 to 2004 was a new story where the characters only remembered the events of the first movie. That was the third form. Since Godzilla Resurgence is the third reboot, it means the monster in this was supposed to be “Godzilla’s fourth form.”

Another in-joke was that the scientific expert on the monster for this movie was named Goro Maki. That was the name of the journalist protagonist in Godzilla 1985. I thought it would have been more interesting if this movie was a sequel to Godzilla 1985 and that was the same character. It’s obviously not the same character, though, since Godzilla Resurgence ignores the events of all previous movies, even the first one (this is the first Toho Godzilla movie ever to ignore the first entry) and this is allegedly the first time that humans learn about something they call “Godzilla.”

Speaking of humor, there were many scenes where the people around me laughed. That is not new for a Godzilla movie, but what was new was the tone of their laughter. Normally when people around me laugh at a Godzilla movie, it’s because they are being derogatory and feel superior, as if watching the movie is so undignified and beneath them. The laughter from this theater audience was different because it sounded sympathetic. Besides the parts where the audience laughed at the intended points, they also laughed at the scenes emphasizing how extreeeeeeeeeeeme the monster’s power is. At the parts exhibiting the military’s ineffectiveness against the monster, people in the seats near me laughed because they sounded impressed.

There were three points in the movie where the theater audience did seem to be laughing at the filmmakers’ expense. When the monster first appears on land, crawling on the ground, the loud and obnoxious woman next to me laughed because of how awkwardly the monster moved and because of its bulging fish eyes. The audience also laughed at the climax when the trains full of explosives crashed into the monster’s huge thighs. Finally, lots of people laughed at the sight of the cranes injecting the chemical into the monster’s open mouth. I couldn’t blame those people for laughing at that part because it really did look like the monster was at the dentist’s office and the cranes were dental instruments.

When we walked out of the movie, my cousin pointed out another weakness -- the movie provides no reason for the monster to be in the city in the first place. The scientist characters state that the monster is immortal and can survive anywhere there is oxygen or water; he doesn’t have to eat. Why, then, does he have to be in the city? I told my cousin that Godzilla 1985 had a much better explanation for why Godzilla attacks the city: Godzilla feeds on nuclear radiation. He is therefore attracted to nuclear power plants in Japan; he gets to the reactor, absorbs the energy through his skin, and stores the energy in his dorsal spikes. Godzilla Resurgence changes the explanation for how the monster’s dorsal spikes function. It is said in this movie that Godzilla has the biological equivalent of a nuclear reactor inside of him, and that the dorsal spikes serve as vents whereby he expels heat and cools off his body. I’m sure many G-fans will say that Godzilla Resurgence was better than Godzilla 1985 but I contend that in almost all the important respects, the reverse is true.

I have to admit that Godzilla Resurgence left me a bit empty and unsatisfied because Shinji Higuchi and Hideaki Anno didn’t actually bother to end the movie. What happens is that, by the explicit admission of the protagonists, the protagonists have only succeeded in immobilizing Godzilla for a few days. They expect that within days, he will awake and they will have to try some other tactic on him. Moreover, the order by the U.S. President and the United Nations to nuke Tokyo has only been halted temporarily. Then the protagonists look at the frozen Godzilla. Then the final shot is that very bizarre shot of the end of Godzilla’s tail with the deformed humanoid skeletons coming out of it. Then it cuts to the credits. When I saw the humanoid skeletons, I thought, “What the hell?!” Then, as soon the credits started rolling, I thought, “What the hell . . . again!” That isn’t even “ending on a cliffhanger”; it’s just not an ending at all!

I think that what Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi were going for here was that they wanted to convey that there is no end to the battle against Godzilla, just as there is no true end to adversity. There will always be problems and they have no nice-and-neat resolution. On aesthetic grounds, though, that doesn’t really work; it comes off as an artist deciding to abandon working on his piece prematurely.



A Good Movie, But Nowhere Close to the Best of the Series
Is this a good movie? Yes, but let’s be real here -- there are no non-good Godzillamovies. I have found something enjoyable in every entry in the series (the 1998 TriStar travesty is not a real Godzilla movie and does not count), and that includes entries that are hated even by die-hard fans, such as Godzilla vs. Megalon (the first one I ever saw), Godzilla’s Revenge, and Final Wars. The final battle in Godzilla’s Revenge was actually very well-done and the music that played during the battles -- composed by Kunio Miyauchi of Ultraman fame -- was catchy and exciting. The most poorly made Godzilla movie is still more enjoyable than even the best vampire movie that does not star Bela Lugosi or Christopher Lee.

I asked my cousin what he thought of the fancy special effects. He was not impressed. He said, “In this day and age, they could and should have done better.” I laughed and told him it was unfortunate he was so non-plused, because these were the most expensive, sophisticated, and realistic special effects ever done in a Toho Godzilla movie.

Godzilla Resurgence and the 2014 American Godzilla movie were the two most expensive and technologically sophisticated Godzilla movies, but they were far from the best. They were not the most fun and not the most exciting, despite that extremely handsome Oahu resident who briefly appeared in the 2014 American movie. The Godzilla movies with the most exciting climaxes remain Godzilla vs. Biollante and Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah.

Despite its aforementioned flaws, even Final Wars had a more thrilling conclusion than Godzilla Resurgence. Almost all of the monster battles in Final Wars were too short, but it the climactic battle against Keizer Ghidorah remains impressive (and both monsters were beautiful every time they fired beams from their mouths 😊).


And Godzilla doesn’t have to face another monster at the end for the movie to be exciting. Godzilla 1985 remains more exciting than Godzilla Resurgence. Godzilla 1985 also continues to have a much more dramatic and emotionally touching conclusion than Godzilla Resurgence -- both with and without a monologue from Raymond Burr. Of course, one advantage of Godzilla 1985 over Godzilla Resurgence is that Godzilla 1985 actually has an ending.

When Godzilla Resurgence comes out on DVD, it will definitely go into my collection, but it won’t be re-watched nearly as often as Godzilla 1985 and Godzilla vs. Biollante.

Still the Best 1989

Related blog posts of mine:

* "Godzilla Is Not a Large Animal But a Pagan Deity"

* "Godzilla Movies for Beginners: Which Movies to Start With, and Other Notes"

* "Favorite Godzilla Monsters Other Than Godzilla, Pt. 1 of ?: King Ghidorah"