GODZILLA Related News

[PunkNinja]

Boy With Cancer Granted Wish to Be Godzilla

The star of this movie, however, will be no Hollywood action hero, but a five-year-old boy undergoing treatment for Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. His greatest wish? To become the 800-foot-tall lizard he watched on the big screen with his father and grandfather, also huge Godzilla fans.

Maddex, whose family asked that his last name not be used, is now watching the dream he told several months ago to Make-A-Wish “wish granters” come true as his own personal Godzilla movie is filmed around his hometown of Chicago.

On Saturday, Maddex saw the first glimpse of himself as “Madzilla,” the movie’s lead character, in front of a green screen in a Chicago production studio.

Earlier in the day, he shot scenes alongside the likes of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the Chicago Bulls’ mascot, Benny, just two of the many local stars making cameos in the film.

“His parents have been talking about the joy that they’re seeing in their kid again, like, ‘Oh, there’s my boy again. There’s the joy that I remember in my little guy Maddex,’” Stephanie Springs, the CEO of Make-A-Wish Illinois, told ABC News.

Springs was one of a handful of Make-A-Wish staffers who brainstormed what to do with a five-year-old’s request to become Godzilla. When they struck upon the idea to do just that, to make him “Madzilla,” they reached out to creative forces in the Chicago community and found Jonathan Becker, the owner of Becker Films, who is leading the charge and corralling the largely pro-bono effort.

“The effect of a wish can ripple through the community and have a very positive impact in a very broad way,” said Springs. “This has been a several months-long process that we’ve been dreaming and trying to figure this child’s wish out.”

The “Madzilla” film crew also shot at Maddex’s home on Saturday – his parents, two sisters and cousin all have roles in the film – and took over a historic street in Chicago’s famed “Loop.”

“Maddex and his family were out on LaSalle Street with around 100 volunteers and extras who showed up to pretend like they were running away from an 800-foot lizard that was stomping through downtown Chicago,” said Ryan Blackburn, the marketing director for Make-A-Wish Illinois.

When “Madzilla” makes its debut next month, it will include a three-minute extended trailer of the movie as well as a 15 minute-long documentary chronicling Maddex’s Make-A-Wish experience.

“This experience is shaping this five-year-old boy in so many ways and who knows what we’ll see 10, 15, 20 years down the road when we touch base with Maddex,” Springs said. “Right now we know it’s going to help him pull through the rest of his treatments.”

Maddex just received his diagnosis in April 2013 and while Spring described his health now as “stable,” she added he is “not by any means done” with his treatments.

“He is a very happy, upbeat, energetic young boy and he has been very much just happy to be part of the project” said Blackburn, who has been with Maddex through the film’s five days of shooting so far. “The directors and others have said he is a joy to work with.”

- abcnews.go.com


Celebrate Godzilla with $1.5M solid gold statue

To celebrate the 60th anniversary of the classic monster film, one Japanese jeweller has crafted a tribute to Godzilla out of solid 24-karat gold.

When you go to see a film at the cinema, you may fork over a few extra bucks for a commemorative cup with your cola. When you celebrate the 60th anniversary of one of the world's most beloved giant monster movies... well, that raises the stakes surely.

Does it raise them ¥150 million (approx $1.48 million), though? Because that's the asking price for one particular high-end piece of movie memorabilia from Japan. Tokyo jeweller Ginza Tanaka has created a statue celebrating one of the world's most beloved kaiju out of solid, 24-karat gold.

The golden Godzilla comes in at 35 centimetres (13.8 inches) high and weighs 15 kilograms (33 pounds) of solid metal. He's modelled after the version of the monster from the 1989 film "Godzilla vs.Biollante" -- although, according to the official press release, the jeweller has made him a little more muscular.

The statue will be on display at a special Godzilla exhibition in Shibuya Hikarie from 20 July to 10 August, after which it will be on display at the Godzilla expo in Osaka and at various Ginza Tanaka stores across Japan.

- cnet.com

 

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[PunkNinja]

Screenshots for GODZILLA PS3

Around the same time as the release of Gareth Edwards' Godzilla reboot earlier this year, a new game based on the iconic monster was announced by Namco Bandai. Hit the jump to check out the newest bunch of screenshots, including our first look at a playable Kiryu!

We haven't heard from Namco Bandai in a while regarding the in-development Godzilla video game, but it appears that it is still on schedule to be released at the end of year as indicated by a fresh batch of screenshots from the game being uploaded online. The screenshots showcase multiple versions of the titular monster duking it out, as well as the first look at some form of heads-up display, but this may just be for the debug version.

Of particular interest is the reveal that Kiryu, otherwise known as the third iteration of Mechagodzilla, will be a playable character in the game, alongside the previously confirmed 90's and 2014 versions of Godzilla. Included are full model renders of the three playable monsters. The game is still at this time a PS3 exclusive, with no confirmed release date.

-- Scified
-- comicbookmovie.com




Mike Nelson on ‘RiffTrax Live: Godzilla’

Over the years, Godzilla has battled some might foes. But this month, he faces what may be his toughest opposition yet: the men of RiffTrax.

Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett, veterans of the cult-classic TV series “Mystery Science Theater 3000,” will take on Roland Emmerich’s infamous 1998 blockbuster “Godzilla” in movie theaters across the country on Thursday, Aug. 14.

As the Matthew Broderick-starring Americanization of the classic Japanese creation plays out at a cinema in Durham, North Carolina, Nelson, Murphy and Corbett will crack wise, and the event will be broadcast to over 600 theaters nationwide.

This all begs the question: 16 years later, is Emmerich’s “Godzilla” as bad as everyone remembers it being?

“It’s probably not, to be fair,” said Nelson. “There are probably a lot worse movies out there. I think probably expectations were high, and also there was the ‘Jurassic Park’ thing, the coming of age of digital effects, so maybe expectations were really high and it just didn’t live up to them.

“All that said, it’s not a great movie, surely. But, I think it’s probably like that ‘Ishtar’ effect. ‘Ishtar’ really isn’t all that bad. It had a story developed around it, and it doesn’t live up to the hype of how bad it is.”

Hype has plenty to do with the film’s legacy. At the time of its release, it was the subject of a nearly unprecedented publicity campaign that included everything from an all-star soundtrack album and a Taco Bell tie-in.

“People get irritated when something’s really, really jammed in their face,” said Nelson. “And, I don’t know with marketing now if we’re sort immured to it, where we’re marketed everything so we’ve shut it off, but back then the full-on blitz of ‘You will enjoy this’ probably irritated people.”

And then, of course, there’s the simple fact that the film’s computer-generated titular monster isn’t exactly aesthetically pleasing.

“I find it a sort of puzzling creature,” Nelson said. “You can never really wrap your head around what it’s supposed to be. It’s not attractive, nor is it repulsive in the right way. It’s just kind of a mess of a monster.”

However, Nelson said, “Godzilla” represents a refreshing change of pace for him and his RiffTrax cohorts. After all, the last film they took on in theaters was the laughably bad Syfy TV movie “Sharknado.”

“You know, this is a pretty straightforward action movie,” Nelson said of “Godzilla.” “It’s got its own challenges because of the loud, pointless action. Well, I’d call it pointless, (Emmerich) probably wouldn’t call it that. So, it’s got its own challenges.

“And, it’s longer (at 139 minutes). It’s one of those from the sweet spot of when even dumb movies has to be really long which, unfortunately, continues to this very day. That’s a challenge too, but we welcome it after ‘Sharknado.’ ”

The theatrical presentation of “Godzilla” is the result of a Kickstarter campaign that saw nearly 5,000 backers contribute over $265,000. That followed a crowd-funding campaign last year that resulted in a live riff on “Starship Troopers.”

“We’re really grateful for our fans,” said Nelson. “We’re not super-huge, but we have people who like what we do and it’s a really great way to just sort of pre-sell (the event). Like, we got an idea and we actually couldn’t do it without a Kickstarter.

“We’re used to doing either public domain movies or movies that have more of a modest licensing fee, and we’ve just gotten so many requests over the years, ‘Why don’t you do this?’ ‘Why don’t you do that?’ Well, we can’t.

“So the Kickstarter, the first one, we were the first people who have ever done anything like it with a major studio, to say, ‘We want your movie and we don’t just want to exhibit it, we want to talk over it.’ And they were just like, ‘What? What is this?’ and so we had to wave a check in front of their face to get them to even pay attention at all. And, to their credit, Sony has stepped up and they get it and they think it’s kind of fun.’’

The “Godzilla” Kickstarter campaign was so successful, in fact, that it also helped fund an incredibly enticing stretch goal: an Oct. 30 live riff of the 1997 B-movie “Anaconda.”

RIFFTRAX LIVE: GODZILLA

WHEN: 8 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 14

WHERE: At theaters including Hazlet 12 in Hazlet, Burlington 20 in Burlington, Commerce Center 18 in North Brunswick, Garden State 16 in Paramus, Rockaway 16 in Rockaway, Showplace 14 in Secaucus, Movies 16 in Somerdale, Sparta Theatre 3 in Sparta, Seacourt 10 in Toms River, Hamilton 24 in Trenton, Digiplex Rialto Westfield 6 in Westfield, Edgewater 16 in Edgewater and Hamilton Commons 14 in Mays Landing.

ALSO: Encore screening 7:30 p.m.

Tuesday, Aug. 19

ON THE WEB: www.fathomevents.com
-- app.com

 

[PunkNinja]

Godzilla 2014 Sequel Release Date On May 2016 As King Ghidorah, Rodan And Mothra Set To Battle The King Of Monsters In Godzilla 2! Will MechaGodzilla Appear On Part 3?

The Godzilla 2014 sequel release date has been confirmed! Who would face the "King of the Monsters" in the sequel?The Godzilla 2014 sequel release date and part 3 has been confirmed, effectively making the Godzilla films into a trilogy. Who will Godzilla fight next?According to the reports, Legendary Pictures has set the Godzilla 2014 sequel release date on May 2016.


The Godzilla 2014 sequel could very well be a set up to the biggest Kaiju battle in history if the monsters Godzilla is fighting in Godzilla 2 aren't enough as Godzilla could fight King Kong once "Skull Island" is over.

A lot was revealed at the San Diego Comic Con 2014 and new details about the Godzilla 2014 sequel, creatively titled "Godzilla 2" have been revealed as well as the announcement of the King Kong prequel "Skull Island"

NME.com has reported all the new details from the Godzilla 2014 sequel aka Godzilla 2:

Godz were shown a teaser reel titled 'Classified Monarch Footage' which appeared as if put together in the '60s with a voiceover from then President John F Kennedy talking about the threats and dangers to humanity.

After informing us that there was one more secret, a message appears on screen: "There were others."

Across the shadow of pterodactyl appears the legend: "CODENAME: RODAN". Following this, an extreme close-up of a giant moth-like creature: "CODENAME MOTHRA". Finally a silhouette with flashed edit cuts around the figure of a dragon: "CODENAME: GHIDORAH".

The footage closes with the warning, "THREAT ASSESSMENT: CONFLICT INEVITABLE" before ending with, "LET THEM FIGHT".

But that doesn't stop there as Legendary pictures may have teased MechaGodzilla in their tweets.
-- kdramastars.com

 

[PunkNinja]

Check Out Over 150 Visual Effects Breakdowns for 'Godzilla' & More
by Ethan Anderton
August 8, 2014
Source: Larry Wright

We've featured plenty of visual effects breakdown videos for the likes of films such as Iron Man 3 and Thor: The Dark World from Marvel Studios, Weta's work on The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, the extensive work on Pacific Rim, and even less noticeable special effects work on The Wolf of Wall Street. And if you've loved seeing how they make the donuts behind the scenes, then you're going to have much more than a peek behind the curtain. There's a huge playlist on YouTube discovered by Larry Wright of Refocused Media (via The Film Stage) of over 150 visual effects breakdowns enjoy. Watch!

Here's the playlist featuring 190 various visual effects breakdowns (this should keep you busy!):



There's tons of breakdowns for films like Gravity, Star Trek Into Darkness, Godzilla, John Carter, Tron Legacy, The Avengers and tons more. But there's also videos for films that you may not have realized had visual effects like Only God Forgives and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Some of the reels even show off the more invisible visual effects in films like The Lone Ranger, usually regarding set extension and replacing environments. You'll also find some general reels from visual effects companies, and even some work from TV shows. If you've got the time to kill, there's a lot of stuff that will surprise you.
-- firstshowing.net

 

[PunkNinja]

Critics get frank when it comes to Godzilla
by Philip Brasor
Special To The Japan Times

Because Japanese media are incestuous in their inter-corporate dealings, those writers referred to as hyōronka (critics) tend to be less critical about popular culture than their counterparts in North America and Europe. They are more likely to engage in punditry or public relations, because complaining about the quality of a movie, album or novel risks upsetting someone in the same business — publishing, broadcasting, advertising — who could influence your professional life.

Some years ago I wrote movie reviews for a local publication whose editor encouraged us to express our opinions frankly, and on occasion he was punished for it by distributors who uninvited his reviewers to their press screenings. The magazine was in Japanese. When I write in English in Japan, I can say whatever I want because, well, who cares?

This Japanese code applies also when the subject is foreigners appropriating Japanese material. Local critics reacted enthusiastically to Hollywood’s take on Japanese femininity when it adapted the best-seller “Memoirs of a Geisha” for the screen. Though the novel, written in English by an American, was well received, the movie version was generally derided overseas for its canned melodramatics and the awkward earnestness of its Japanese depictions, not to mention its casting of a Chinese actress in the title role because she had more international star cachet than any Japanese actress the filmmakers could think of. Japanese critics simply expressed their delight in the notion that Steven Spielberg, an executive producer, would deign to cover such a subject. They even liked “Pearl Harbor.”

But Godzilla is different. Godzilla belongs to Japan, as both a film series and a character, in a way that demands scrutiny whenever non-Japanese attempt to use the monster for their own ends. In 1998, the first time Hollywood made a feature starring the big lizard, the Japanese press was mostly silent, a reaction that indicated displeasure with the movie, which basically transplanted the monster’s famous disregard for urban infrastructure from Tokyo to New York without providing a story that was compelling. But what mainly bothered them was the transformation of Godzilla into a typical dinosaur. Godzilla may be cold-blooded and scaly and huge, but he’s nobody’s T-Rex.

There has been less polite caution with the new Hollywood incarnation. The Japanese media has covered it in detail and opinions have varied in tone and purport. For the most part the comments have been positive, because the filmmakers have made more of an effort to honor the spirit and visual style of the Japanese series, but by the same token there’s an undercurrent of impatience with how difficult it is for Hollywood, and by extension Americans (though the director is British), to break old habits, especially when it comes to a movie positioned as a summer blockbuster.

Asahi Shimbun attempted to summarize these views in a recent feature that included reviews by four media figures. What’s consistent is the attempt to wrestle with Hollywood’s faithfulness to the original rather than any closely considered criticism of the film’s value as entertainment. No one specifically mentioned the recent digitally restored version of the 1954 “Godzilla” that was shown in theaters several months ago and on NHK. It’s understandable, because the original version, which, as Mark Schilling explained in this newspaper several months ago, was as much a cautionary social drama as it was a sci-fi thriller, has always been available in Japan, while it has only recently come to the attention of American audiences, who previously had access to a bowdlerized dubbed version that contained only sublimated references to nuclear weapons, a vital subtext of the original Japanese production.

The only critic in the Asahi feature was Naofumi Higuchi, who acknowledged that Hollywood complicated the “anti-war, anti-nuclear sensibility” of the original with a mixed message about the usefulness of atomic weapons. On the one hand nuclear technology is what awoke these dormant monsters, but on the other it is initially seen as the only means of destroying them. The scientist played by Ken Watanabe represents the outlook of the old movie when he tells the American military commander that using nukes to kill Godzilla and the insectlike Muto Godzilla is fighting is like using gasoline to put out a fire. “Let them fight,” he says. But rather than the overarching theme of self-sacrifice that made the 1954 version so moving, the new “Godzilla” is characterized by resignation: Humans are nothing to these creatures, so why not just sit back and enjoy the carnage? The best joke in the movie is a TV news bulletin at the end hailing Godzilla for “saving” San Francisco from the Muto, when, in actuality, the battle between the monsters has effectively destroyed the city.

Screenwriter Kazuki Nakajima takes issue with this stance, saying that making the monster into a “good guy” turns it into “the sort of Godzilla aimed at kids in the late Showa Era.” He believes Godzilla should be a fearsome entity, as in the original. Illustrator Yuji Kaida, on the other hand, thoroughly enjoyed the new film, calling it a “real kaijū eiga” (monster movie) that honored the original in that Godzilla was presented as a force beyond human understanding that maintained the Earth’s natural balance. He also complimented the monster’s physique and the way the director conveyed its mass.

But the last word was had by documentarian Kazuhiro Soda, who decried the “scattershot script” and lack of nerve on the part of the filmmakers to say “anything substantial” about nuclear weapons or nuclear energy. By burdening the Muto with all the movie’s villainy, humankind is let off the hook, which is the same reason the original “Godzilla” had to be re-edited for the U.S. market back in the 1950s. “Humans should be Godzilla’s enemy,” says Soda, since we’re the ones who upset that natural balance in the first place.
-- japantimes.co.jp



'Godzilla' law to stomp Ansonia blight
Michael P. Mayko
Published 6:12 pm, Saturday, August 9, 2014

ANSONIA -- The city's tough blight ordinance is about to get tougher.

The Board of Aldermen is expected to add a criminal penalty to the law during its meeting Monday night. The proposed change is being recommended by Mayor David Cassetti and John P. Marini, the corporation counsel and a former aldermen.

"We're calling this the `Godzilla' of blight laws," said Marini, as he toyed with a plastic version of the monster on his desk in a recent interview. "We want to stomp out blight in our city."

"The addition of a criminal penalty on top of the fines, liens and the city's ability to hire a private, independent contractor to go on the property and clean it up makes this the most powerful blight law in Connecticut," Marini said.

"It sounds like that to me," said Bridgeport City Councilman Richard Paoletto Jr., who co-chairs that city's Ordinance Committee and serves as Bridgeport's deputy director of housing and commercial code enforcement. "I would love to see it. As the co-chair of the Ordinance Committee, I've always looked to see what other cities do for inspiration."

Ansonia's plans caught attention in neighboring Derby, where blight has become a major concern of the city, particularly from Third Ward Alderman Carmen DiCenso.

"Blight is a serious problem here," DiCenso said. "We've got a house on our hilltop where the trees, shrubs and grass are so overgrown, you can barely see the structure anymore. Look at what's going on at (the former) Dworkin Chevrolet near Griffin Hospital. Our blight officer (retired Derby Police Chief Andrew Cota) has sent letters to the property owners and there's no response."

So DiCenso recently passed out copies of Ansonia's ordinance to his fellow alderman. On Tuesday night the blight subcommittee will review it and possibly recommend it to Derby's full board. "The city can't just go onto a blighted property and start cleaning up -- that's trespassing. You start cutting trees down and you could get sued," DiCenso said.

$100-a-day fine

Marini said addressing the blight issue in Ansonia was a key concern of Cassetti when he became mayor. "Blight impacts everything," he said.

He said it creates a health hazard, affects safety, lowers property values and repels investors.

Earlier this year, the aldermen approved a lengthy blight ordinance, which includes two pages of text defining blight.

It goes beyond uncut grass, overgrown shrubs, hanging tree limbs and accumulated garbage to include abandoned furniture, missing walls, damaged roofs, collapsing floors, cracked foundations and broken fences -- even chipped or faded paint.

Ansonia residents are encourage to file complaints with David Blackwell Sr., the city's blight officer.

Once that happens, Blackwell will do a drive-by. If he sees blight, he may photograph it and will advise the property owner to clean up the site within three days.

After three days, Blackwell will return. If the blight is still not addressed, he will send a written notice describing the violation and allowing 10 days for either cleanup or appeal.

If there is an appeal, a hearing date will then be set; but in the meantime a fine of $100 a day will be assessed.

If no appeal is made or if the appeal is lost, Marini said the city can hire an independent contractor from a rotating list to deal with the blight.

The city will then place a lien on the property for the cleanup and the fines.

"We have set aside $80,000 for this," Marini said. "We probably spent about $8,000 in cleanups so far ... The goal is to recover that and much more from the liens and the fines."

The $100 penalty will continue to be assessed for 30 days if the fines and cleanup costs are not repaid. After 30 days, the fine increases to $250 a day and runs indefinitely.

Keep it clean

So far, the city has cited 35 properties and had 15 cleaned up by independent contractors. Four appeals have been taken.

This week, the city will be placing signs on property it cleaned. They read: "Property cleaned by Ansonia Anti-Blight Program. Mayor David Cassetti."

"The signs are critical in informing property owners what happened," Marini said. "We want people to know we are serious about enforcing this ordinance."

So he researched ways the city legally could go on the property, clean it up and seek repayment, he said. That included examining court rulings in other states.

One case that stood out came from Maryland, where a court upheld a city's action in removing blight after determining the property owner was advised what had to be done, informed what would happen if it wasn't and given the opportunity to appeal.

The court rejected the owner's claim his property was damaged during the cleanup by trespassing city agents. "The key was making sure the property owner was given due-process notice," Marini said.

In adding the misdemeanor criminal penalty, Marini said he consulted with Assistant State's Attorney Judith Dicine. He said Section 7-148o of the Connecticut General Statutes gives the city the authority to add a criminal sanction to the ordinance.

"It has to be a willful violation," Marini said, noting that Dicine and Police Chief Kevin Hale will be consulted before a criminal charge is brought.

Additionally, Marini said every Monday, he will meet with Cassetti, Blackwell and Hale to discuss blighted properties and related issues.
-- ctpost.com

 

[PunkNinja]

Pulverize Your House and Home With “Godzilla Stomp”

The promo machine for the upcoming DVD and Blu-ray release of this summer’s Godzilla blockbuster flick is swinging into overdrive, and as part of the push, a new marketing site called Godzilla Stomp has emerged where you can have the satisfaction of seeing the King of the Monsters pulverize any address you care to enter. Enter here -> here.

We’d try the address for the Crunchyroll SF office, but given as how pretty much all of downtown San Francisco already got stomped in the movie itself, it’s safe to say Godzilla already got us covered.
-- Patrick Macias (crunchyroll.com)



Latest ‘Rurouni Kenshin’ Topples ‘Godzilla’ at Japan Box Office

TOKYO – “Rurouni Kenshin: Kyoto Inferno,” the first of a two-part sequel to a 2012 hit about a pacifist swordsman in early-modern-era Japan, enjoyed the biggest opening weekend of any live-action Japanese film this year.

Produced by Warner Entertainment Japan, the film earned $8.1 million in its first three days, including Friday, on 438 screens and 640,000 admissions. It also topped the Aug. 2-3 weekend, while out-pacing the first “Rurouni” movie by 48%.

“Kyoto Inferno” benefited from its bow on Movie Service Day, on the first of every month, which draws fans with discounted tickets. The one day total was $2.25 million on 211,740 admissions.

The second part of the sequel, “Rurouni Kenshin: The Legend Ends,” will open on Sept. 13.

Meanwhile, the new release toppled “Godzilla” from the top place. The Toho-distributed “Godzilla” slipped by a modest 32% in its second week of release on 427 screens, while driving its cumulative score to $15.3 million.

The films in the next three positions — “Maleficent,” “Pokemon the Movie: Diancie and the Cocoon of Destruction” and “When Marnie Was There” also fell one notch. Despite both being in their third week on release, both titles held strongly at the BO: “Pokemon”‘s earnings were down just 16% and “Marnie”‘s down 17% compared with the previous weekend. “Marnie” beat “Pokemon” to the $15 million B.O. milestone, while the latter film racked up more total admissions at 1.38 million.
-- variety.com

 

[PunkNinja]

“GODZILLA – 2014″ // THIS CREATURE IS TREATED WITH RESPECT

Believe it or not, although the Japanese made their landmark monster movie “Godzilla” in 1954, Hollywood beat them to the punch with “The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms.” Adapted from a Ray Bradbury short story published in “The Saturday Evening Post” magazine, “Beast” concerned a prodigious prehistoric amphibian awakened from hibernation by atomic bomb blasts. Wasting no time, the scaly leviathan wended its way to New York City where it wrecked havoc on a heretofore unparalleled scale. Even before “The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms,” Hollywood had made a 1925 silent-era movie “The Lost World” where a dinosaur on the loose rampaged through London.
Anyway, about a year after “Beast” came out, the Japanese released “Gojira,” and the Toho Company went on to exploit its radioactive creature for every cent it was worth. Godzilla stomped Tokyo to smithereens, and the film proved so profitable that Hollywood reedited it to accommodate American actors and changed the title from “Gojira” to “Godzilla.” Afterward, Hollywood entrusted the gigantic monster genre to the Japanese. Meantime, Toho has churned out at least 28 Godzilla epics over a 60 year period and coined millions at the box office with their man in a rubber suit. Eventually, rival Japanese studios produced Godzilla knock-offs; the chief example was the titanic turtle “Gamera” that breathed fire.
In 1998, “Independence Day” director Roland Emmerich helmed the first American “Godzilla,” but it took too many liberties with the Toho legend. First, Big G lost his incendiary breath. Second, Big G resembled a Komodo dragon. Emmerich and co-scenarist Dean Devlin rewrote Godzilla’s origins. Comparably, “Godzilla” (1998) sold only half as many tickets during its opening weekend as “Monster” director Gareth Edwards’ ambitious, second American reboot of Big G. Unlike Emmerich’s “Godzilla” that synthesized spectacle and slapstick, Edwards and “Seventh Son” scenarist Max Borenstein have shunned humor in favor of catastrophe.
The new “Godzilla” doesn’t embroil lame-brained amateurs, but grim-faced scientific and military types. Indeed, this “Godzilla” treats the Toho icon with genuine respect and dignity. This time around Godzilla isn’t searching for someplace to lay its eggs. Instead, Big G has embarked on its own crusade to defend mankind and thwart a couple of nuclear-age behemoths that want to lay their eggs in San Francisco. Ironically, Big G wins the battle of the monsters, but he doesn’t garner as much stomp time as he did in Emmerich’s “Godzilla.” You’ll have to wait patiently about an hour for Big G to show up. Nevertheless, Godzilla makes a dramatic entrance, and he dominates the action for the last half-hour. Edwards’ straight-forward version of “Godzilla” eclipses Emmerich’s comic version.
Most of the amusing “Godzilla” movies from the 1960s & 1970s pitted Big G against two enemies, and the new “Godzilla” adopts the scenario of the outnumbered hero. The battle scenes between Godzilla and the MUTOs (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism) are thoroughly invigorating. Unfortunately, the two biggest drawbacks to Edwards’ largely entertaining “Godzilla” are its dreary, one-dimensional humans who clutter up the action and the bland MUTO (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism) monsters that resemble gargantuan mosquitoes that walk on their knuckles like gorillas. A cast of familiar faces cannot compensate for their sketchy characters. Mankind isn’t half as interesting as Godzilla, especially when he tangles with the MUTOs in a world class smack-down brawl. Ironically, Big G appears to get the short shrift. “Godzilla” isn’t so much about the monsters as the spectacular collateral damage that Godzilla and two airborne giants wreck on mankind. The destruction, or perhaps urban renewal, matches the wholesale mayhem of the “Transformers” trilogy and Marvel’s “The Avengers.” Traditionally, filmmakers have employed Godzilla as allegory for the appalling consequences mankind has paid for tampering with our environment. Essentially, Godzilla has always been the cultural embodiment of global warming.
The action unfolds in 1954 when the military detonates atomic devices at the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific in a futile effort to destroy Godzilla. We catch a glimpse of Big-G’s heavily spiked back emerging from the depths as the explosions erupt. Later, a nuclear power plant in Japan collapses, and the radioactive ruins become the equivalent of Area 51. Janjira Plant Supervisor Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston of “Drive”) watches in horror as his wife Sandra (Juliette Binoche of “The English Patient”) dies when the reactor blows up. Afterward, the government quarantines the collapsed plant, but Brody suspects the government is orchestrating a cover-up. Meantime, Joe’s son Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson of “Savages”) grows up, joins the Navy, and specializes in explosive ordnance disposal. He marries Elle (Elizabeth Olsen of “Oldboy”) who is nurse in San Francisco. Naturally, they have a son Sam (Carson Bolde). Fifteen years after the Janjira disaster, Joe hasn’t recanted his crazy theories about a cover-up. The authorities arrest him for trespassing in his old home in the quarantine zone. They escort him to meet two scientists, Serizawa (Ken Watanabe) and Graham (Sally Hawkins), who have established a secret facility within the Janjira ruins. All hell breaks loose a second time, and a colossal, winged reptile materializes.
Clearly, the last thing director Gareth Edwards wanted for us to do is snicker at his “Godzilla” reboot. Not only does he want us to take Godzilla seriously as a monster, but he also wants us to take the movie “Godzilla” seriously. This new “Godzilla” shares little in common with the-man-in-a-rubber-suit “Godzilla” franchise. If you haven’t seen either “Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla” (1994) or “Godzilla vs. Megalon” (1973), you haven’t seen some of the vintage “Godzilla” entries that challenge your suspension of disbelief. Edwards draws on Steven Spielberg’s classic “Jaws” as a template for both the presentation and the pacing of this impressive, beautifully lensed, two hour plus CGI monstrosity. Like the 1998 “Godzilla,” the new “Godzilla” rewrites the creature’s origins. Despite the outlandish sci-fi fantasy elements, the visual effects make everything appear believable. The spectacle of destruction in Japan, Hawaii, Las Vegas and San Francisco is stunning. Altogether, Edward’s “Godzilla” breathes new fire into a old franchise.
-- theplanetweekly.com



‘Godzilla’ PS3 Game Lets Old Version Fight New Version

Earlier this summer the King of the Monsters returned to the silver screen in Legendary Pictures’ Godzilla. The film was mostly well received; to the point Legendary has already greenlit development on a sequel.

However, the early buzz for Godzilla was not enough for Legendary to give the go-ahead on a movie tie-in game, and for that we are thankful. Tie-in games are almost exclusively bad, to the point that the sub-genre has a negative stigma attached.

But while there was not a Godzilla movie game in development, there was a completely different Godzilla game in the works. This game has been developed as a send-up to the classic Godzilla films of the ’80s, which were produced by the Japanese-run Toho Studios, and is targeting a winter release (on PS3 only) in Japan.

Above, readers can see some of the Godzilla game screenshots, which, as expected, feature the King of the Monsters going toe-to-toe with a few of his iconic enemies. It also appears as if Godzilla will have to contend with the Japanese military – a common trope in the Toho films.

Although the game is not billed as a movie tie-in, it does feature Legendary Pictures’ version of the massive creature as a bonus enemy type. As a result, players can live out their alternate universe fantasy by having this generation’s Godzilla do battle with the previous generation. Sorry Roland Emmerich, but your version didn’t make the cut.

For a last-gen game, this Godzilla title seems to have the design of the monster down, from the pointy back fins to the bright blue atomic breath. Unfortunately, the rest of the game’s visuals leave a lot to be desired. We’re not saying that this looks like a PS2 game, but it certainly doesn’t rival the likes of God of War 3 or The Last of Us.

It’s also unclear why the title is exclusive to Sony, but we’d venture to guess that has to do with the Japanese release more than anything else. Both the PlayStation brand and the Godzilla brand are bigger in Japan than they are anywhere else, so it makes sense to unite the two here. However, if this game does expand to North America, we wouldn’t be surprised to see a 360 version tag along.

What do you think of this Godzilla game? Has your interest in the character changed since the feature film?
-- scified.com
-- gamerant.com



COMICS: GODZILLA Returns In A Preview For GODZILLA: CATACLYSM #1

The King of the Monsters is returning to comics! IDW is publishing a new series of Godzilla comic books titled Godzilla: Cataclysm! Before you pick it up, hit the jump to check out a preview for Godzilla: Cataclysm #1.

Years have passed since the monster apocalypse nearly destroyed mankind. Now it is merely a distant, nightmarish memory for Hiroshi, an elder in one of the few remaining tribes of humans. Little does Hiroshi know that the apocalypse is not over, and that his memories of the past may yet save the future!

Godzilla: Catclysm #1 is written by Cullen Bunn with letters by Chris Mowry. The art and cover is designed by Dave Wachter. It will be published by IDW Publishing for $3.99 on August 13, 2014.
-- comicbookresources.com
-- comicbookmovie.com

 

[tridon]

Man, my brother just told me GODZILLA '98 was coming back to theatres this Thursday and I got so excited. I went online to take a peek and it became instantly bummed when I found out it was just that Rifftrax thing. I actually thoroughly enjoy GODZILLA '98, so hearing a couple goons chat over top of it and make jokes about it for nearly three hours would do nothing but annoy me.

 

[bloodsnake007]

LOL! This video cracks me up every time!

How Godzilla Should Have Ended

 

[PunkNinja]

RiffTrax's Kevin Murphy on Making Fun of Godzilla

Roland Emmerich's Godzilla is in for some much-deserved ridicule.

Roland Emmerich's 1998 take on the kaiju classic Godzilla is rightly reviled by both fans of the original and anyone else who hasn't suffered brain trauma. But among one select audience -- fans of RiffTrax, to be specific -- it's been in great demand for years. When RiffTrax Live: Godzilla hits theaters on August 14, that demand, however inexplicable, will be fulfilled at last -- and no one is better suited to make fun of it than the RiffTrax crew. Michael J. Nelson and Bill Corbett join Kevin Murphy -- all Mystery Science Theater 3000 alumni -- for a live lampooning that should be the most fun it's possible to have with Emmerich's bloated monstrosity of a monster movie. Before the fun starts tomorrow night, we caught up with Murphy to talk about the awfulness of the movie, how riffing this one compares to making fun of old-school kaiju, and why it's easier to make fun of really, really stupid films.
See also: RiffTrax's Kevin Murphy on Birdemic and Mystery Science Theater 3000's legacy

Westword: I understand that this version of Godzilla is something people have been asking you to riff for a while.

Kevin Murphy: Yeah, strangely this is an audience favorite [request]. It's one that, when we've asked for suggestions, people say, "Do this, get this Matthew Broderick Godzilla!" My best guess is because it's so far off the kaiju canon for everybody, they seem angry and resentful for the fact that this version of Godzilla was made. I don't have that much of a dog in this fight [laughs], so I don't care either way, but it is fun to make fun of. It's a big, dumb Roland Emmerich film.

Yeah, it's the one I've never seen, because I hate Roland Emmerich. I couldn't believe it was being made, and then when the reviews came out and said it was as bad as I had imagined... I just couldn't do it.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Especially for Godzilla fans, they seem to be particularly vitriolic in their comments about this movie.

So you've now watched it some ungodly number of times to prepare for this show. Does it live up to its ****** reputation?

I've watched it a lot of times. I've spent a lot of time with this film. Does it live up to its reputation? Well, it certainly is right in the Roland Emmerich wheelhouse, I'll say that much for it. You sort of take Independence Day, strip it of aliens and insert giant dinosaurs and a lot of shameless Spielbergian references, and there you have Godzilla.

That's exactly what I was afraid of. On the other hand, that gives you good material to work with, I assume?

Well, yeah, it's fun. Any time you have these big, goofy, overly dramatic monster-disaster films taking sort of a classically B-movie genre and trying to make it bigger than it ought it be, you just have a great opportunity for our type of fun.

Is it easier to make fun of dumb movie than smart movies?

Well, yeah, usually. It's not a poorly made film in any respect, except a lot of people don't like the actual Godzilla monster. But technically it's fine. Its goofiness is just in the fact that it takes itself way too seriously at times, and the comic relief in it is really sort of sad and depressing. Those we can work with.

From left: Bill Corbett, Kevin Murphy and Mike Nelson are RiffTrax.


It does seem to be high time to skewer this film. Not only do you have all those fan requests, but it seems like kaiju are on the rise these days.
Boy, yeah, once again kaiju are rearing their collective, scaly heads, aren't they? I have lots of friends who have been kaiju fans and I just sort of fit in between those. I didn't go see a lot of Godzilla movies as a kid, and when I got grown up I lost interest in them, unlike a lot of grownups. It's been an era of discovery for me again, just like in the MST3K days, when I'd never heard of Gamera and suddenly Gamera came back around. I've been studying Godzilla, and he's a big, dumb monster.

You guys did a fair amount of kaiju films back in the MST3K days -- two Godzilla movies and what, forty Gamera films?

Oh, man, yeah. We did a whole bunch of those guys. They were fun. There was a sort of innocence to the way that the early Japanese ones were made. I think they were as much kids' films as anything else, so they were more cartoony. And for my money, the more cartoony these things are, the better off they end up being. The less cartoony they are, the easier they are to poke fun at.

How did the experience of the 1998 Godzilla compare with the two Godzilla films and innumerable Gamera films you did back in the day?

Well, this one's a hell of a lot longer than any of those, I'll tell you that. [Laughs.] Matthew Broderick seems almost as out of place in this as Jeff Goldblum did in Independence Day. It seems like a lark for him.

You guys have now done a number of these live RiffTrax events, starting in 2009 with Plan 9 from Outer Space. Is it fair to say that's continuing to become a bigger part of your business and art all the time?

It's really special for us to do it, and it's really cool for us to do it, because of that audience interaction. We actually get to ply our craft in front of an audience, which is a lot more stressful, but a lot more gratifying. It really adds a lot of energy to what we do, and the audience becomes part of it and it makes it that much more cool. Seeing what we do in a crowd is always lots of fun. It's great fun to do at home, with some friends, which I always encourage people to do, but to see it in a theater with a whole bunch of people really ramps up the fun energy of the whole thing.

We don't want to wear out our welcome, of course, but we want to do as many as we can without either fatiguing the audience or killing ourselves. We're trying to figure that out. It's fun to do the ones we're doing this year, and we'll just have to see how they do for us. They've done great recently. Sharknado was great all around and I think Godzilla will be right in there. A different movie, but the same sort of goofy experience.

The simulcast live show RiffTrax Live: Godzilla-- transmitted from a theater in Nashville -- will also offer a new video and theme song from Jonathan Coulton. It screens at 7 p.m. Thurday, August 14 at numerous local theaters, including the Pavilions 15, and again at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, August 19. Tickets are $12.50; to purchase yours and to get more info, including a complete list of theaters, visit the RiffTrax or Fathom Events websites.
-- Cory Casciato (blogs.westword.com)



Review: “Godzilla: Cataclysm” #1

WRITTEN BY: Cullen Bunn

ART BY: Dave Wachter

PUBLISHER: IDW Publishing

PRICE: $3.99

RELEASE: August 13, 2014

Reviewed by Jorge Solis

A gripping apocalyptic thriller, “Godzilla: Cataclysm” #1 delivers an epic adventure into the post-nuclear wasteland. There’s nothing more exciting than seeing two monster clobber at each other senseless. It’s an awesome sight to see Godzilla return to his own stomping grounds to unleash Hell itself.

At the end of the world, the people thought the monsters were unbeatable titans. When the smoke cleared and the dust settled, there were no more monsters left; as if they had suddenly disappeared. As the years have passed, only the old remember the fire-breathing creature known as Godzilla. The young ones think the extraordinary behemoth is just a myth, a scary tale to tell at night. What happens when the ancient evil decides to return?

Writer Cullen Bunn presents a bleak future where tall buildings have crumbled and bridges have sunk into the barren ocean. Society is trying to move on from the wreckage but a few still cling to the past. It’s old school vs. new school as both generations refuse to learn anything from the lessons of the past. Though this is a grim scenario, the younger survivors believe they can find hope in the vast wasteland.
I really liked how Bunn doesn’t aim at cheesiness and takes the notion of Godzilla seriously. This is a creature who has just ruined the lives of everyone. His atrocities have been downplayed as the years went by. The fire-breathing creature lives on in the faded memory of an old fool. Bunn plays around with myth and legends through three family members who view their surroundings differently.
Artist Dave Wachter lets loose his imagination and illustrates these epic-sized panels. In wide shots, we see jet planes flying in the air, firing missiles into the air. Surrounded by flames and smoke, Godzilla is caught in the middle of a monster-extravaganza. The monster mash is captured in bright red tones and only changes when Godzilla opens his mouth, spreading fire across.

Wachter puts in a tremendous amount of detail into the character designs of the monsters. Each terrifying creature has their own look and method of attack. There’s a great opportunity here to bring in the fan-favorites movie, while making some new original ones too.

“Godzilla: Cataclysm” #1 delivers tons of action and monsters packed into its first installment. When you see Godzilla show up, you’re definitely going to roar like in his movies.
-- Zac Thompson (bloody-disgusting.com)

 

[PunkNinja]

Godzilla vs. Technology

How the radioactive monster explains all our modern environmental debates.
By David Ropeik

Opposition to nuclear power and industrial chemicals has been a core theme of modern environmentalism, based on the same inspiration that brought Godzilla up from the depths.

It rose up out of the sea, a fearsome, roaring monster unlike anything humans had ever seen: horrible, primeval, unstoppable, towering, breathing radioactive fire, and leaving total destruction in its wake.

No, this was not Gojira, the lumbering prehistoric beast who hit Japanese movie screens in 1954 and has starred in 30 films since, the most recent of which is just out. This monster was the founding inspiration for Godzilla: the fearsome hydrogen bomb explosion known as Castle Bravo, a test detonated earlier that year in the Pacific that gave birth to far more than cinema’s most famous monster. Castle Bravo played a key role in establishing the deep fear of all things nuclear that persists to this day, helped give rise to modern environmentalism, and even planted the seeds of a basic conflict modern society is struggling with: Are the benefits of modern technology outweighed by the threats they pose to nature itself?

We think now that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki horrified the world, but against the other ghastly horrors of World War II, they didn’t really stand out. The frightening pictures of cities devastated by nuclear weapons didn’t look that much different from Tokyo after the Operation Meetinghouse firebombing of March 9–10, 1945, that killed more people than either atomic weapon.

Not even the outbreak of “A-bomb disease” several years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, leukemia cases among the bomb survivors caused by exposure to high doses of radiation, was enough to instill the global fear that was to come.

But the fearsome, roaring, alien monster of Castle Bravo lit the sky like a false sun, creating a fireball so wide it would have vaporized a third of Manhattan and so tall it stretched four times higher than Mount Everest. The scale of the destruction was massively greater than the atomic bombs dropped nine years earlier on Japan … almost too great, too frightening, to comprehend. Now everyone could feel the fear that Manhattan Project director Robert Oppenheimer felt as he watched the first atomic bomb test in New Mexico in 1945, recalling the words of the god Shiva in the Bhagavad Gita: “Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds.”

A nuclear weapon test on Bikini Atoll during Operation Castle.

As frightening as the explosion of Castle Bravo was its fallout. When the dust settled, radioactivity had contaminated more than 7,000 square miles, nearly the size of New Jersey. One speck in that vast area of contamination was the Japanese fishing boat Fukuryu Maru, or Lucky Dragon. It was operating in what were supposed to be safe waters, but the explosion was three times more powerful than scientists had expected. The crew of the Fukuryu Maru gotback to Japanand, under the glare of international media attention, fell sick from radiation exposure. The Japanese press called it “the second atomic bombing of mankind.”

Now no one on Earth could pretend they were not at risk, either from the vastly more threatening hydrogen weapons themselves, or from radioactive fallout that caused cancer, a disease that the public was just beginning to openly talk about and fear.

What’s more, nature herself was now in jeopardy, threatened with being poisoned, polluted, contaminated by people daring to play God with the very forces of nature. As Spencer Weart reported in his marvelous book The Rise of Nuclear Fear, newspapers called nuclear weapons “a menace to the order of nature” and “a wrongful exploitation of the ‘inner secrets’ of creation.” Pope Pius XII, in Easter messages heard by hundreds of millions around the world, “warned that bomb tests brought ‘pollution’ of the mysterious processes of nature.”

Upon receiving an honor from the Army for creating the atom bomb, Oppenheimer said of the threat of nuclear weapons: “The people of this world must unite or they will perish.” And unite is precisely what people did in the months following Castle Bravo. In 1955, the annual rally against nuclear weapons in Hiroshima was massive, and international news coverage of the rally helped spawn the “Ban the Bomb” movement against both the weapons and atmospheric testing. It was the first truly global protest movement. People were indeed uniting, brought together by fear.

Nagasaki, Japan, before and after the atomic bombing of Aug. 9, 1945.

That movement spawned opposition to atomic power, the new form of electrical generation being developed in the 1950s. Some of the most influential leaders of the movement, including Barry Commoner and Rachel Carson, broadened their attention to other ways that technology seemed to threaten human health or nature itself. The modern environmental movement grew directly out of fear of radiation. In fact, Carson was inspired to write Silent Spring, about the threat of the overuse of pesticides, by the similarities she saw between the threat of both forms of fallout: “[T]he parallel between radiation and chemicals is exact and inescapable.”

Opposition to nuclear power and industrial chemicals has been a core theme of modern environmentalism ever since, based on the same inspiration that brought Godzilla up from the depths: We need to protect nature from human-made technology. Those environmental values now also inspire opposition to genetically modified food, or fracking, or large-scale industrial agriculture—any modern technology that allows humans to manipulate and threaten the natural world, the benign true natural world that existed before humans came along and, with their technology, ended it, as Bill McKibben’s The End of Nature suggests.

Environmentalism is based on what brought Godzilla up from the depths: We need to protect nature from technology.

Of course, humans are a species too, not separate from but a part of the natural world, and like all species our interactions with the natural world have all sorts of impacts. True, the human intelligence that allowed us to master fire has meant that we have done far more harm than other species. But science and technology have also brought fantastic progress and offer great hope, including solutions for the mess technology helped us make in the first place.

Gojira itself raised precisely this conundrum, framing the modern conversation we’re still having. As it ends, Tokyo is in ruins. Humans’ most powerful weapons are useless. The monster has retreated to the depths, but no one is sure if or when it will rise again. The reclusive scientist Dr. Serizawa and our hero, Hideto Ogata, are on a boat heading out to find and destroy him.

Serizawa has finally admitted to Ogata what the film has hinted at: He has a weapon that can kill Godzilla, a technological device, which, dropped into water, sucks all the oxygen out of it. He has kept it a secret until now because “if the oxygen destroyer is used even once, politicians from around the world will see it. Of course, they’ll want to use it as a weapon. Bombs versus bombs, missiles versus missiles, and now a new superweapon to throw upon us all! As a scientist—no, as a human being—I can’t allow that to happen! Am I right?”

Hiroshima aftermath, Aug. 6, 1945.

Ogata replies, “Then what do we do about the horror before us now? Should we just let it happen? If anyone can save us now, Serizawa, you’re the only one!”

Serizawa grabs the device and jumps into the sea, killing Godzilla and sacrificing himself but saving mankind … by using a technological weapon more powerful that the atomic bombs that woke the monster from his prehistoric sleep in the first place.

Geoengineering may be able to help combat climate change. Genetically modified food may help feed a global population soon to approach 10 billion. Safer forms of nuclear energy may power population growth cleanly. Are these technological solutions to some of the damage humans have done to ourselves and the natural world, or are they just versions of Castle Bravo and the Oxygen Destroyer, escalations of a self-destructive technological death spiral? Are those who oppose these technologies just modern Godzillas, rising up like mindless angry monsters willing to cause massive suffering and destruction to defend nature?

These are the questions Castle Bravo and Gojira asked. We are still fighting over the answers.
-- David Ropeik (slate.com)

 

[PunkNinja]

Legendary's 'Godzilla' to Receive Japanese Governmental Award

The studio's reboot has launched a franchise around the iconic monster

Legendary Pictures will receive an award from the Japanese government for its rebooted Godzilla.
The 2nd annual Japan Cool Content Contribution award for producing will be presented to the studio by the Japan External Trade Organization, the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and the Los Angeles Consulate General of Japan. Legendary executive vp production and Godzilla producer Alex Garcia will accept on Legendary's behalf in a ceremony Sept. 13 at the Consulate General's residence.

The J3C awards are part of the Japanese government's "Cool Japan" initiative, established by prime minister Shinzo Abe to increase the globalization of Japan's creative business. They recognize creatives who popularize Japanese media for worldwide audiences.

The Gareth Edwards-directed Godzilla relaunched the Japanese monster franchise, earning $507.7 million worldwide. In Japan, it won its opening weekend with $6.7 million, and it has grossed $20.1 million in the country to date. It stars Bryan Cranston and Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and was produced by Legendary's Thomas Tull.

Its second installment was just given a June 8, 2018, release date. Edwards will direct after he helms a Star Wars spinoff scheduled for Dec. 16, 2016.

Legendary will receive the J3C honor alongside Doug Liman, who will be presented the J3C award in directing. Liman's Edge of Tomorrow was adapted from Hiroshi Sakurazaka's novel All You Need Is Kill and has grossed $363.5 million worldwide.

The J3C award in acting has yet to be announced.

The recipients of last year's awards were were Guillermo Del Toro, Tim Kring, John Lasseter, producer Don Murphy (Transformers), and producer Vicki Shigekuni Wong (Hachi: A Dog's Tale).
-- hollywoodreporter.com

 

[PunkNinja]

Ahead of Godzilla 2: 14 Great Nostalgia Foreign Godzilla Posters

Polish Poster for Godzilla VS The Smog Monster

Here in the states, Hollywood takes us literally when it comes to posters. The Godzilla posters show Godzilla. If the marketing department wants to be mysterious, they show Godzilla's back side shrouded in fog and maybe a slight mist of destruction. If they want to be brazen and bold, Godzilla is shown closeup. Godzilla is Godzilla is Godzilla.

In Europe they are more playful, symbolic with Godzilla-- and if the artist is in a high state of creative angst, head-scratching imponderable.

The Polish posters win for symbolism. The Godzilla VS The Smog Monster poster (above) stands out for its weird symbolic beauty-- making the Smog Monster as much part of Godzilla as the trampled cityscape shadows that are the monster's stomp. The Godzilla VS MechaGodzilla (below) is both grandly psychedelic and archly reactionary in the way Godzilla casually zings hippies with his lightning bolt vision. Imponderables doom the truly innovative monster design that ends in a faux Angry Birds mug (penguin looking in this case) for the Invasion of Astro-Monster sheet. The same for the bewildering calcified and fossilized layers of beastliness with the oddly cartwheeling cockroach (maybe a Franz Kafka "Metamorphosis" reference) that is the Godzilla VS Gigan anti-creation. Playful rainbow geometry makes the original Godzilla and the Son of Godzilla a visual delight. And Alien, which came out roughly the same time as Godzilla VS The Sea Monster, gets a wacky reference in the final Polish poster.

A lone Czech poster for the original Godzilla creatively captures the creation of a monster in the implied flight of atoms.

The French (Godzilla, Godzilla VS Megalon and Invasion of Astro-Monster) and German (Godzilla) stick to the fear of losing Planes, Trains and Automobile and other industrial age infrastructure.

The Italian poster for Godzilla Raids Again has a crisp Cinecitta Studios design, while the Godzilla VS Smog Monster has a Sword and Sandal epic Herculean familiarity.

Polish poster for Godzilla VS MechaGodzilla

Polish poster for Invasion of Astro-Monster

Polish poster for Godzilla VS Gigan

Polish poster for Godzilla

Polish poster for Son of Godzilla

Polish poster for Godzilla VS The Sea Monster

Czech poster for Godzilla

French poster for Godzilla

French poster for Godzilla VS Megalon

French poster for Invasion of Astro Monster

German poster for Godzilla

Italian poster for Gigantis the Fire Monster (Godzilla Raids Again)

Italian poster for Godzilla vs. Hedorah (Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster

-- Jonathan J Moya (moviepilot.com)

 

[PunkNinja]

Scott Montgomery's Thoughts on GODZILLA 2

Where you a fan of Godzilla (2014)? What do you want to see in a sequel? Warning mild spoilers ahead!

Recently we found out that we can expect a sequel to Gareth Edward's Godzilla (2014) in 2018 and that we can expect to see Rodan, Mothra and King Ghidora in the sequel. Before I get to what I want to see in the sequel I should probably tell you what I thought of the first film. In my opinion Godzilla (2014) had a lot of problems that could have been very easily fixed. I thought the story was very cliched and full of boring characters. The worst flaw of this movie was actually the lack of Godzilla, I could have forgave the film if it had good monster stomping action. In the end I was really disappointed with this film, but I saw a lot of potential in a sequel if they just fixed the flaws the first film had. Even though I wasn't the biggest fan of the newest Godzilla movie this news got me really excited. I am a big Godzilla fan and my favorite Godzilla movie is either the original Gojira (1954) or it's follow up Godzilla Raids Again (1955). I will admit though even if I didn't enjoy Godzilla (2014) I loved every second Godzilla was on screen, I thought they handled him extremely well. So I thought in the fun of speculating I would share what I want to see in the Godzilla sequel.

Less Humans, More Godzilla

I walked into the theater to see Godzilla and out of the 123 minutes of the movie I think he was only in about 20 to 25 minutes. Granted when he was on the screen it was amazing and there was some truly jaw dropping moments, but I want to see more of that! I didn't pay to see Ford Brody and his wife fret over their family I came to see the King of Monsters. In the end they tease Godzilla so much that the actual pay off wasn't even worth the wait. I'm pretty sure even the Mutos got more screen time then Godzilla... In the sequel have the film centered around Godzilla and give the audience what they want!

Better Characters

I understand that the studio wants the film to have human characters so that the audience has someone to relate to, so if you are to give the film human characters at least make them intresting dynamic characters and not just walking cliches! The only character who had any depth in Godzilla (2014) was Joe Brody and that was mostly due to the acting ability of Bryan Cranston. All of the other performances are so wooden and two dimensional that they feel like cardboard cut outs and not characters. In the sequel make the human characters as intresting and compelling as the monsters.

More Classic Toho Monsters

My biggest complaint about Godzilla (2014) was that there were no other Toho monsters in the film besides Godzilla! I wanted to see Jet Jaguar or Megalon or Anguirus or any of the other classic monsters on the big screen with today's special effects! I am not to worried about this though, because it looks like they have already fixed this problem in the sequel.

-- ScottMontgomery (comicbookmovie.com)

 

[PunkNinja]

NECA’s 1985 Godzilla Figure is on a Rampage

Following right behind NECA’s already released 6-inch and 12-inch Godzilla 2014 figures, here comes the King of Monsters once again. This time NECA has created a 1985 Godzilla Figure, who is on a huge rampage in the gallery below!

The figure first made his appearance at San Diego Comic-Con 2014, and based on fan-feedback, NECA has decided to give the figure a newly sculpted head and new paint applications to help bring the King of Monsters alive.

The figure stands over 6-inches tall, with a head-to-tail measurement of over 12-inches long. He features some incredible detail, including a bendable tail and over 30 points of articulation. He’s definitely ready to wreak havoc over your action figure collection. If interested, pre-orders are currently available here. He’s expected to start shipping out to retailers in October 2014.

-- actionfigurefury.com

 

[bloodsnake007]

Hell Yeah!!! THANKS @PunkNinja I'll definitely be getting this one!!! I hope NECA also releases the original Big G (1954)!

 

[PunkNinja]

PS3: More GODZILLA Screenshots Reveal The Return Of Super X

Godzilla can next be seen in this year's Japanese-only Godzilla video game to be released exclusively for PS3! Now we have even more screenshots, including a return at an age-old aircraft enemy of Godzilla! Hit the jump and check it out.

Godzilla has returned to the big screen and after grossing more than $500 million worldwide with plans for a sequel in 2018, the Big G is gearing up to return to video games as well. Stomping later this year, the title simply known as Godzilla will be an exclusive to PlayStation 3 currently only for Japan as well. This 1-player game currently being developed and to be published by Bandai Namco Games, allows the player to become Godzilla again and wreck havoc and destruction on the city - and fight too. So far, only the Heisei-era Godzilla and Legendary's Godzilla are the current playable incarnations of the King of the Monsters available in the game, although recently confirmed is the Milennium series MechaGodzilla, also known as Kiryu. Below are nine more screenshots from Godzilla, as well as a look at a returning aircraft from Godzilla movies.

Super X is confirmed to be in the game! In the films, the Super X is an aerial defense vehicle used by an international organization known as the Earth Defense Force whose goal is to stop the world's monster activity once and for all. The Super X has gone through two different upgrades movie-wise but it appears that this game will represent at least its first and original version and it will instead belong to G-Force, another organzation focused on destroying Godzilla. Although the Super X only appeared in one Godzilla movie, that being The Return of Godzilla (1984), it has made more appearances in previous Godzilla video games beginning with Godzilla: Monster of Monsters (1988) and more recently with Godzilla Generations (1998). This will mark the fifth appearance of the Super X in Godzilla games and if you're playing as the King of the Monsters, you better watch out for this machine. Although we're not sure yet what the Super X can do in this game, in the movies it has been shown to fire missiles, lasers, flares and even fly at speeds that can reach Mach 1. Oh, and it's heat-resistant.


-- Batarmor (comicbookmovie.com)



Fringe review: Godzilla vs. Led Zeppelin

Godzilla vs. Led Zeppelin

3 stars out of 5

Stage 5, King Edward School

No dinosaurs were harmed in this production by Winnipeg’s Fubuki Daiko.

Godzilla vs. Led Zeppelin isn’t so much a play or musical as it is an educational seminar on taiko drums, very loosely inspired by Benny Goodman and Led Zeppelin. You might be able to discern the percussive rhythm to Whole Lotta Love in one of Fubuki Daiko’s compositions, Monsters of Rock, or it might be your ears just playing tricks on you.

The foursome, starring Naomi Guilbert and her impressive biceps, don’t just bang on their drums. They don’t even sit on stools like the timekeepers we’re used to in pop and rock.

Instead, Guilbert and her bandmates stand beside or behind their drums, often in a lunge. They use graceful, circular arm movements to hit their instruments — either in sync with or complementing each other’s beats. Think of it as the drummer’s version of ballet.

As such, their pas de quatre looks effortless, and most of all, fun — even more so than watching it. Perhaps Fubuki Daiko should try to integrate audience members into one of their compositions.

At the very least, the group could get more adventurous with their inspirations — mashing taiko drums with actual Goodman or Led Zep recordings. Otherwise, the title of their Fringe production is a little bit misleading and the show itself feels somewhat one-dimensional.
-- Sandra Sperounes (edmontonjournal.com)

 

[PunkNinja]

Weta Workshop's GODZILLA Concept Art

To celebrate the 20th Anniversary of Weta Workshop, the official site has been re-designed that include an archive of images from their design department for Gareth Edwards' Godzilla. Check out the conceptual illustration and ZBrush Creature Design on the iconic monster after the jump.

Conceptual Illustration by Godzilla creature designer Christian Pearce:

ZBrush Creature Design:

In Summer 2014, the world’s most revered monster is reborn as Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures unleash the epic action adventure “Godzilla.” From visionary new director Gareth Edwards (“Monsters”) comes a powerful story of human courage and reconciliation in the face of titanic forces of nature, when the awe-inspiring Godzilla rises to restore balance as humanity stands defenseless.

Gareth Edwards directs “Godzilla,” which stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson (“Kick-Ass”), Oscar® nominee Ken Watanabe (“The Last Samurai,” “Inception”), Elizabeth Olsen (“Martha Marcy May Marlene”), Oscar® winner Juliette Binoche (“The English Patient,” “Cosmopolis”), and Sally Hawkins (“Blue Jasmine”), with Oscar® nominee David Strathairn (“Good Night, and Good Luck.,” “The Bourne Legacy”) and Bryan Cranston (“Argo,” TV’s “Breaking Bad”).

The Blu-ray 3D, Blu-ray and DVD is available on October 27 and Digital Download on October 13.
-- Weta Workshop
-- comicbookmovie.com



Godzilla fights around the world in these rare vintage European posters

Ever since he attacked his first village in Japan in 1954, Godzilla has been broadening his horizons. Seeking out mightier foes and playing to bigger audiences, the giant monster has done what other beasts could only dream of – garnered a following as huge as himself, with fans still spreading across decades and continents around the globe. An impressive feat for a beast.

One continent certainly went above and beyond when welcoming the giant to their corner of the world, as these vintage posters show. From Poland to France, we take a look at some of the most amazing Godzilla artwork from Europe. We’ve never seen Godzilla look so different!


▼ Germany, 1954

▼ Czechoslovakia, 1956

▼ Poland, 1957

▼ Italy, 1957

▼ France, 1965

▼ Poland, 1965

▼ Poland 1967

▼ Poland, 1971

▼ Italy, 1971

▼ France, 1976

▼ France, 1977

▼ Poland, 1977

▼ Poland, 1978

Which poster did you like best? Let us know in the comments section below!

-- Kotaku Japan, io9.com
-- rocketnews24.com



OFFBEAT with PHIL POTEMPA: 'Godzilla' gets special silly fun screening in Portage

Last week, headlines roared that Godzilla is returning for a sequel after this summer's success with the towering lizard crowned as a smashing hit at the box office.

According to Warner Bros., "Godzilla 2," with Gareth Edwards once again directing, will stomp into theaters June 8, 2018, after the summer 2014 blockbuster captured $507.7 million at the global box office.

This news makes Godzilla a force even more frightening and intimidating.

Only one weapon can knock Godzilla and his fiery tongue down to size. And that weapon is the sharp tongues shared by Kevin Murphy and his team of wiseguys from cable's "Mystery Science Theater 3000" fame.

"When we were selecting just the right film to have fun with, 'Godzilla' seemed like a natural," said Murphy, who originally hails from the Chicago area and is now one of the stars of Rifftrax, the funny franchise that brings cutting commentary narration to movies both big and small.

Thanks to a successful Kickstarter campaign that raised money to license "a big Hollywood title," the RiffTrax crew, which is Murphy and pals Michael J. Nelson and and Bill Corbett, can be heard beating up on the King of Lizards (as depicted here in the 1998 film remake) tonight during a national broadcast of "Godzilla." It includes a 7:30 showing Tuesday at Portage 16 IMAX, 6550 American Way, U.S. 6, in Portage. Tickets are $12. FYI: (219) 764-7469 or FathomEvents.com

Presented by Fathom Events, RiffTrax and IGN, "RiffTrax Live: Godzilla," this film version is one of the most frequently requested titles in RiffTrax history, Murphy said. He said the 1998 flick "Godzilla" was reimagined from the popular Japanese film of the same name, but with bigger, better visual effects, as directed by Roland Emmerich with screenplay by Dean Devlin and Emmerich and starring Matthew Broderick and Hank Azaria.

After "Mystery Science Theater" series creator Joel Hodgson left as the show's host in 1993, the series was rebranded as "Mystery Science Theater 3000," with head writer Nelson doing hosting duties joined by Murphy voicing robot pal Tom Servo and Corbett, who in later seasons voiced Crow T. Robot.

The premise of the TV series, which began in 1988 on cable's Comedy Central and then switched over to The Sci Fi Network in 1995, was to pay homage to how entertaining really bad, B-movies really can be, using puppets and a human host for humorous running commentary and snipes while the film is playing.
-- Phil Potempa (nwitimes.com)

 

[PunkNinja]

Hollywood’s Godzilla Is In Bandai Namco’s Godzilla Video Game

The most recent iteration of Godzilla from the 2014 blockbuster movie is playable in the Godzilla video game for PlayStation 3.

Famitsu reports players will be able to unlock the Hollywood Godzilla by playing through the game. However, if you pre-order Godzilla for PS3 you’ll get a code to unlock this character from the very beginning. King Ghidorah and Mothra (larva form) are in the game as enemies.

Godzilla is slated for release on December 18 for PS3.
-- Spencer (siliconera.com)

 

[PunkNinja]

"Godzilla" PS3 Game Gets Release Date, Playable Hollywood Godzilla

Action game makes its debut on PlayStation 3 in Japan on December 18
A Godzilla game was announced for PlayStation 3 back in June, and now it has a release date. The kaiju battle action game makes its debut in Japan on December 18, and you'll even be able to play as the most recent Hollywood incarnation of the King of the Monsters.

Players will need to meet certain conditions to unlock the Hollywood version of Godzilla, though pre-orders come with a code to unlock him right from the beginning. Enemy kaiju include Mothra and King Ghidorah, but they haven't been confirmed as playable yet.
-- Joseph Luster (crunchyroll.com)



DESTROY ALL MONSTERS! ("Godzilla 2" Sequel Idea) PART 3

Hello again, everyone. For the final part of my sequel idea, I'll get into the big bad of the film, KING GHIDORAH, and reveal my casting ideas for the new characters: Haruko Mori & Miki Saegusa.

First off, let's get into my favorite part of this reinvention, my spin on an element of the Ghidorah mythology that was first introduced in "Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah" (1991), the Dorats:

These cute little buggers were the three critters who, after replacing the dinosaur that would become Godzilla and being exposed to heavy amounts of radiation, would merge and become the horrifying King Ghidorah:

Since I really like the Dorats, I thought they should make a reappearance in the Legendary series. But not as their formerly cute selves. In the unmade 1994 American Godzilla movie, the antagonist monster, the Gryphon, sent out small, horrendous-looking creatures called "Probe Bats". Because I felt it a waste not to use such an awesome idea, I thought the Probe Bats would make the perfect update of the Dorats:

The Dorats/Probe Bats are sent out from the meteorite to gather organic material that serves as energy to reconstitute Ghidorah's true form (the Dorats themselves being a mutation of bats exposed to the meteorite).

And as for Ghidorah's true form, I thought about this for awhile, and instead of the usual two-winged, two-legged form we all know, I thought a better use of a rarer form, the four-legged behemoth, Kaiser Ghidorah (from "Godzilla: Final Wars" (2004) ), would be appropriate:

That redesign of Kaiser Ghidorah perfectly illustrates how I think Godzilla's arch nemesis should be reinvented. Since Godzilla is the biggest we've ever seen him in the Legendary series, Ghidorah should respond in kind and be colossal, something the Kaiser design does well in concept, but has yet in execution. If there's one thing I would tweak about the above design, it would be the heads:

BlackMatter234 on deviantart

This design, by the same artist who did the Rodan art in PART 1, gives Ghidorah the "Smaug-like" facial features I would want him to have. (for a better view, right-click and open in a new tab)


And now, to close out this party, my casting decisions for the two new characters:

Haruko Mori

I saw Louis Ozawa Changchien in "Predators" (2010), and afterwards thought that I'd like to see him in a Godzilla film someday. I think he has the talent to play Mori, who I imagine is haunted by the death of his friend Owen Matthews by the beak of Rodan. He would also have a determination to at first get back at Rodan, but then would realize he was crucial in the final fight against Ghidorah.

Miki Saegusa

I'll admit I haven't seen Mika Hijii in anything yet, but she appears to have the vulnerability that Miki Saegusa displayed in the Heisei series. She is the observer of the group, and her psychic sensitivity to the brutal natures of Rodan & Anguirus troubles her greatly. But, the nobleness of both Godzilla & Mothra puts her mind at ease.


So, there you have it ladies and gents. Please tell me below what you think, and if you haven't seen Parts 1 & 2, be sure to check them out in the fanfic section.
-- Optimist18 (comicbookmovie.com)