Godzilla (2012) (Page 1 of 5)

Then again, even many of the Japanese Godzilla movies suck so it's hard to get the balance right. It'll really depend on the director.
(Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla was the only one of the last batch I bothered buying)

I'd start with the classics, the original Godzilla (uncut subtitled version) and Mothra vs Godzilla (which should be watched as social satire). The new DVDs from Classic Media have great commentaries on them as well. Good but more campy would be Invasion of Astro-Monster. After that they start going down hill. For good non Godzilla monster films, Frankenstein Conquers the World and War of the Gargantuas are well worth watching. I especially love the subtle love story in Frankenstein- there was no way the studio could show a relationship between star Nick Adams and his female Japanese assistant, so instead you kind of notice after awhile that all the scenes between them are in either his apartment or hers dressed in robes....

For your dip into modern monster movies, you HAVE to watch the 1990's Gamera films. Incredible, and fun, they put the 90's Godzilla films to shame.

I made this thread 3 fucking years ago. FINALLY, the trailer is out.

http://www.mediafire.com/watch/80t812mp … Vishnu.mp4

It looks glorious.

I'm totally down with this. Whilst I'm not a huge Godzilla fan, I do have a quite soft spot for the old movies (Mothra vs Godzilla is my favourite).

I'm still in line for Ghostbusters 3.

Man this looks cool. I guess they played this originally at Comic-Con 2012, so it's more of a "tone poem" than a proper trailer.

Nope, 2012. They played a full trailer at Comic-Con this year.

I'm in total agreement with Squiggly_P with everything except the part about making a good Godzilla film for the modern age. I think it's doable and I'm so glad this movie is playing it like a horror/disaster film instead of whatever the fuck the 98 film was shooting for.

I remain skeptical that you can make a serious approach to a movie like this work (though I'm glad they're trying). At the end of the day, so much of the concept and appeal, at least from the fanboys, IS the destruction porn, and yet that is kind of exactly the stuff that drags the material down and makes it not work.

I know there's no way they'd do this for an actual Godzilla movie, but I would so much rather watch a version of this where it's just following the scientists and first-responders trying to figure out what to do with the situation, and Godzilla is only really ever glimpsed as a towering thing in the background and on monitors. It'd be similar to Cloverfield,  but from the POV of the scientists and without the shaky found-footage approach.

Unfortunately, there's a large segment of the fanbase that just wants monsters fighting, and would complain like crazy if this was the studio's approach to it, but I think fundamentally it's the most interesting way to handle the material, and I hope Gareth Edwards and WB have the guts to try something like this.

Yes, but the difference is the human plots in the movies you mention are almost uniformly terrible.
I'm not saying there should be no monster action, but it's way more narratively engaging when it's about the impact of the destruction on people, versus just empty eye-candy from a god's eye POV.

It's why the opening sequence in War of the Worlds works so well, and it's the best thing about Cloverfield. You can't tell me that something like the end sequence of Children of Men, but done through a city getting destroyed by Godzilla, wouldn't be vastly more intense and thrilling than yet another typical giant monster fight.

I would say that the original Godzilla is along those lines, which if I recall correctly is the kind of approach they're taking this time round.

Teaser trailers like this excite me because yes, the title character looks awesome and the production seems headed in the right direction.

They terrify me because I realize that for approx. 120 minutes, lots of other characters will have to speak and do things in order to tell a story. It's that last part where they usually lose it.