Kulture Meltdown: Godzilla Minus One (2023) — "Is your war finally over?"

Hello everyone and welcome to Culture Meltdown, a crossover show between the CultureCast and Movie Meltdown. I am one of your hosts, Chris Stashnew, and I am joined by a giant sea lizard who hosts a podcast. His name is Brian Renfro from Movie Meltdown. That is true. I am a kaiju and yeah, I do enjoy smashing cities.

So, you know, it's one of my favorite activities. And also joining us, because he's a huge fan of Kaiju, I know this for a fact, your friend and mine, the host of The Projection Booth Podcast, Mike White. I also pass a lot of divine wind. The war is over. Radioactive, is it?

The war within. It might be radioactive. Depends on what I ate the day before. You might need to see a doctor at that point, because that is rough. On this episode of Kaiju, Culture Meltdown, a crossover show between my show and Brian's show.

We are glad to welcome Mike to sit and talk about a little film that came out a couple years back, 2023, but it has a sequel coming out here very quickly in the next couple weeks. Talking about 2023's Takashi Yamazaki's directed Godzilla Minus One. Though I've kept calling it Godzilla Minus Zero or Godzilla Minus Something over and over again, because I can't remember which one this is. Uh... This film, like I mentioned, did come out in 2023.

It is written and directed, including VFX, by Takashi Yamazaki. It stars a whole bunch of Japanese actors whose names I don't want to butcher, but nonetheless, I'm sure we'll be talking about their characters. More specifically, Ryunosuke Kamaiki and Minhani Hanabe. Like I said, I didn't want to butcher them, but I did it anyways. And this is a Godzilla film.

It is a Godzilla reboot of sorts. It is not a sequel to Shin Godzilla, which came out several years beforehand. This is an all-new Godzilla film and an all-new kind of Godzilla... timeline or I guess storyline as it were. The Godzilla story verse is very weird and not as linear as everybody would think. It's kind of a reboot.

It's the Kelvin timeline. It really is. Yeah. In a lot of ways. And the film is about our lead hero played by Ryunosuke Kamamiki who plays Koichi Shinsuke Shima who is a kamikaze pilot who ran away from being a kamikaze pilot, only to land on an island with Godzilla, and then he couldn't kill Godzilla either.

So now Godzilla is running rampant and the war is not over until Shikishima kills Godzilla, question mark, or stops Godzilla, question mark, remains to be seen. We'll be talking all about it. We will be spoiling the film if you haven't seen it. It did come out a couple of years ago, only three, so it is still far within our kind of Statute of limitations for spoilers, though I'm sure the three of us are adults and don't care about such things, but I understand if other people do. So, Mike, since you are our guest, I am so very, very curious.

Your thoughts on when you first saw Godzilla Minus One? I saw this in 2023 at the theater. I knew absolutely nothing about it going in. It felt like this movie kind of snuck up on me. And then it helps because I... actively refuse to watch trailers.

I haven't seen the trailers for Godzilla minus zero. And yes, very confusing names for this. I butchered even Godzilla minus one when it was the only one that was out. And then even while I was rewatching it again this afternoon, my wife's like, now, is this the one where Godzilla kind of regenerates in the city? And I was like, well, he regenerates, but not in the city.

I think you're thinking of Shin Godzilla. And she's like, oh, okay. And I was like, that's the goofier looking Godzilla. Oh, okay. I got it.

Fishzilla, as we like to call him. Yeah. And she's like, oh, this is the Kamikaze one. I was like, yes, that's the right one. And yeah, I...

Walked in with no expectations, really didn't know what to think of this movie. I think we actually walked in a few minutes late, which is very unusual for me. I seem to have missed the very beginning when, I mean, like just a few minutes late, when he lands his plane and initially he's talking about the technical difficulties that he has with his plane. I kind of figured that out pretty quickly once I got in there. And then, yeah, the initial...

Godzilla attack. I mean, they know what they're doing when it comes to like, OK, we're going to show you what you're dealing with very early in this film. We're not going to save the monster until, you know, 45, 50 minutes into this. Holy cow. I mean, this was. a lot different than the Brian Cranston Godzilla.

And I hate saying the Brian Cranston Godzilla because he's only in there for like a few minutes. You might as well just say the Julia Pinoche Godzilla that she's in there even less. Godzilla. Yes. Let them fight.

At least he's in the whole monster verse, you know, like he, well, he's not anymore spoilers, but, but yeah, I was really blown away by this. Brian, same question to you. Um, This one, I agree with you. I feel like I didn't hear much about it. And maybe it's just in this country, but I didn't hear much about it beforehand.

But the second it came out and hit theaters, people were immediately talking about it. So I think the first time I started hearing about it was hearing about. How amazing this new Godzilla movie was. So that was, I think, the real introduction was once it was already in theaters. And still. at that point, I don't know.

I just like, I wasn't seeing a ton of new stuff in the theaters. So I think I didn't see it until it in first hit streaming. And that's the first time I watched it. And I was like, wow, they were right. Like every, everything I'd heard about it was a hundred percent true.

It was really well done. The Godzilla looks amazing. The action scenes are amazing. And the thing that was the most surprising was the. Yeah, this has an actual story.

Like the thing that I've complained about so much with mostly the American Godzilla's, but, and I even like some of those for what they are. I don't put set the bar real high on there, but like we spent so much time on these human characters in those. And I'm like, I don't, care about any of these. I don't care if Eleven's in this one. I don't care if you bring that kid in from the Marvel universe.

I don't care. I don't care about any of these humans. It's whatchamajiggy Warren. It's Ed Warren's wife is in a couple of them. Isn't she?

Yeah. It's like, I just, I don't, they spend so much time on these human plot lines, if you want to call them that. And by the end, I'm like, I don't know what they're doing. I don't care what they're doing. Just get to Godzilla.

And then we get to this movie and I'm just like, wow, like if you didn't have Godzilla in this movie, it would still be a great movie. Like if it were just a kamikaze pilot who didn't go through with his mission and is trying to deal with what's left of his village when he gets back home and all the guilt he's carrying with him, that. In and of itself is a great movie. And you add Godzilla on top of that, like it is phenomenal by the time you put all that together. So yeah, that was my take on it.

I feel a little bad for you, Brian, because seeing this in a movie theater is, was such an experience. I mean, the, the one shot that they showed like at the Oscars where it's the tugboat with Godzilla chasing the boat in the water, seeing that on the big screen was a revelation. And so I, I, don't i'm not trying to lord this over you but i just feel bad but i'm glad i'm excited that you will be able to see the sequel in a theater and i hope you do because this like you said the special effects are fantastic and the look of the creature is fantastic so like the first time that you see him at night like we yeah do we ever get like night godzilla scenes like very rarely i think you know but here in the.

Old days it would have just been a dark shape yeah exactly. Anything But yeah, everything looks so good. And like you said, it's not just the Godzilla scenes. Everything looks really well done. Yeah.

It's pretty amazing. I have to say I did, and I don't know if I'm jumping in front of your description, Chris, but I did this time specifically watch the Minus Color when I rewatched it. So I've now seen both versions of it. If that helps. I didn't even know that there was a minus color.

I think we talked about it, Mike, when we did our The Man Who Wasn't There episode, because we were probably chiding the existence of it. Well, I'm assuming it's just this version of the film, but with the color drained. Yeah, that's the thing. Normally, I'm on board for anything black and white because it has been shot in black and white and it was meant to be seen in black and white. Right.

This, I do not think that is the case. I'm sure it is 100%. They shot this in color to be color and then went, oh, you know what we can do? And just digitally took all the color out. Make some more money.

Wow. I have to say watching it that way it still looks amazing like I maybe I'm just because I like black and white movies anyway so like it's it's not a problem for me but like I was still just kind of looking at the the way that the scenes are composed and the lighting and it's it works just as well with or without the color it's still amazing Nice. So I I enjoyed this movie. I didn't see it when it came out. I and admittedly have not really gotten had not gotten into Godzilla films until recently because my girlfriend's son is really into Godzilla and. just as, so I can, you know, not because it's like, so I can have something to talk with the kid about, but it was one of those things where he was just talking about Godzilla all the time.

And Mike, you also talk about Kaiju films and I know your wife is a huge fan and I know that that's like on, you know, on, on a kind of not like repeat, but I know you watch a lot of, you know, big shark, big Kaiju, those kinds of movies. And I never got it per se. And I, I, I don't know why I didn't. Uh, but I feel like in the last six to eight months, I've really kind of begun to understand these kinds of movies more. And I've watched a lot of the like older Godzilla films, the seventies and eighties stuff.

And I've really started to enjoy them. So I, I was really excited to talk about this with y'all. And I think I probably would have been more excited about this movie if I hadn't seen the film that I like more than this one, which is Shin Godzilla. Because I think that this movie is great, but I think this movie is also infinitely more approachable than Shin Godzilla, which is why it's so much more popular here in the United States than Shin Godzilla ever was. I think Shin Godzilla is the perfect Godzilla movie because I think it gets to now Godzilla.

And I think that this film speaks to Not then Godzilla, but it is a period piece with, like you said, Brian, it's a period piece with Godzilla in it. They even talk about, in the research, a lot of people who were filming this didn't even know it was a Godzilla movie. Like, literally. I mean, a lot of the scenes have nothing to do with that. Right.

Literally, a lot of this is just a World War II, a post-World War II Japan film. which for me, that's, you know, and that's what I was going to say, you know, other than the fact that I am such a huge fan of Shin Godzilla and it for me is like, not only now one of like genuinely my favorite movies, but it's also, I think my favorite Godzilla movie even now it's because it speaks to something that Godzilla films kind of had talked about, but it never really like made the focus of the movie, which is like the insane bureaucracy of the Japanese government and, and their inability to deal with anything, which was, I mean, we, We as a nation and world would never have seen that if not for what happened with Fukushima.

And so we understanding that with Fukushima are able to then see that movie in a different light than if it was just a fictionalized version of that. And not to say, you know, the original Godzilla wasn't based on real events or inspired by, you know, kind of the sentiment of the time. But Shin Godzilla is very, I think, darkly comedic because it's just It's a really, I think, mean-spirited movie in a lot of ways because it's taking to task the Japanese government. And I think that this one is as well. It's just doing it in a very different way.

It's doing it, I think, in a specific time, which I think helps in a lot of ways with... I don't... I think it makes Godzilla seem like more of a threat when... It's in the period of post-World War II Japan. Because again, in Shin Godzilla, they have this idea of we don't really know how to stop Godzilla.

And so Godzilla has to be this overwhelming force that we, with modern technology, are unable to stop. Here, because it's not modern technology, Godzilla seems like so much more of a threat. I mean, like you mentioned, Mike, we have this tugboat in front of Godzilla shooting at it with like a 16 millimeter gun. Like, what is that going to do to Godzilla? Fucking nothing.

Like, does nothing to Godzilla. And I like that about this movie. Like, that's what's interesting about this movie. But I will say the most successful thing about this movie is it kind of turns this Godzilla story into like a kind of like a. a K drama or like a J drama. It's a, it's a drama, but with Godzilla in it, which is, I think the world right now, those kinds of films based on, you know, the conversations I've had with professor Perlmutter and some of our guests on that show, those kinds of shows from Eastern media right now are very popular.

So I am not surprised that a Attack on Titan manga anime adjacent Godzilla film was very popular in the West because those things are more popular now than they ever have been. I think that's one of the more interesting things about this time period, too, is like it takes that real world scenario into the story itself. So I mean, on a good day, modern era, we can't fight Godzilla because he's so unstoppable monster that he is. This is a Japan that just had all of their weapons taken away from them by someone. And it's I mean, they're left with no defense.

Like literally, as this movie unfolds, it's like they have to ramshackle, you know, ragtag group of people piece this together as private citizens. because the government has not only been kind of shown to be sort of inept at this point, but has just been stripped of all power by the post-war situation. So yeah, when he comes in, there's no, there is no defense. Like he just lays waste to the city and really does. Like he is like the, the, they do start to sort of reference him in this as like a God, as much as he is a monster. And like, literally like with, with, Like it's a Roman god coming down to just lay waste to a city.

And that's how he rolls in and just does not care. He's not there to worry about people. He's just here passing through. And if you're in his way, you're an ant that got stepped on. Yeah.

I mean, we've always had the metaphor. And I don't– it's been a minute since I've watched the original Godzilla, either the one with Raymond Burr or without. They did a screening of it at the Michigan Theater a few times. oh, I don't know, probably six, seven years ago. It was pre-pandemic, and it was wonderful to see. But you get this whole idea, and I'm trying to remember if you actually see a nuclear bomb in there, or if it's just hanging over everything that Godzilla comes from, you know, the same place where nuclear bombs come from, basically.

And here you actually get to see a nuclear bomb. You get to see one being set off at the Bikini Atoll, and it's like, okay, yeah, like, this is very like you know we're talking about math with the minus one minus zero so it's very one plus one when it comes to like okay the bomb we had the the hiroshima bomb the nagasaki bomb you know both of those and then here's godzilla who's on this rampage and then we actually get to see the bomb being set off at the bikini atoll and it's just like oh okay like it really like is much more of a present thing. You know, like how you're saying, Chris, when it comes to Shin Godzilla, where it's like, that is like the best metaphor for how Fukushima was handled.

And then, like you're saying, Brian, it's like, here we are, like, here's the direct thing that was unleashed onto the world, you know, with the power of nuclear stuff. And it's like, they, they do a wonderful job in here too, of not overdoing it and not showing their hand when it comes to how powerful Godzilla is. Like when I'm watching him attack these guys and that amazing, like, when the T-Rex bites the lawyer and throws him kind of thing in Jurassic Park, when he does that to one of the guys, you're just watching this destruction and you're like, oh my God, this is so terrible. And then they hold off until I don't know how many minutes into this when they actually show that he has the power of the nuclear breath as well.

It's like, oh wow, this is even worse than we thought. You thought you might be able to handle this, Maybe like maybe if you put a mine in this guy's mouth and set it off, maybe that'll do some damage. One. No, he immediately heals. And then two.

Oh, shit. He's got fire breath, too. He didn't even need any of that. He wasn't even putting any effort in as. He completely destroyed the city that first time he rolls through.

It didn't even occur to him that you guys were worth the effort to bust out the giant nuclear breath option. I'm just strolling through. Town tearing you guys apart. I don't even need to put any effort into it. They fetishize that so much in this MonsterVerse thing that they're doing with Godzilla and You know, like, oh, well, the this guy's.

Breath is saying that they're doing. I appreciate that, by the way. I mean, I watch all of those movies. I have a little bit of appreciation. Self-serious.

They are. They're very dumb. Yeah. But like they fetishize the nuclear breath so much in the way that he kind of ramps up and the way that the, you know, the color changes in his tail and does all this stuff. He's pink in this next movie, Mike.

It's pink this time. Didn't you know? He's pink because he stole all of Tiamat's power. So that's, you know, he needed all that power in order to go into the Hollow Earth and battle the Monkey King. So get it right, would you?

What the fuck did you do? What? Hey, that fight with the Monkey King is pretty cool. I don't know. It is pretty cool.

And I like the little monkey. I like the little monkey a lot. He's very adorable, even though he's kind of a shit at the first, you know. He comes around. I feel like I'm just not privy to whatever the fuck conversation.

You're not a big fan of drugs, obviously. You know that Fiona Apple picture where she's between Quentin Tarantino and P.T. Anderson? I feel like that where I'm just like, what the fuck are you talking about? Speaking of math, it's Godzilla times Kong, whatever they were doing with that X in that title.

But yeah, that's the one we're talking about. Okay, that's the most recent one, right? Yes, yes. Unfortunately, that poor little girl that's in the movie died in real life. Yeah, we don't get more with her, unfortunately.

No, never again. It's like they dropped protagonists like crazy in those movies. Like, yeah, you mentioned Chris Vera... What's her name? Farmiga.

Yeah, you mentioned Vera Farmiga. And it's like she... isn't there in this latest one 11 isn't there in this later latest one it's like they just kind of drop in and out it's like i don't know if we'll ever see the whichever scars guard it was in these again so. Was brian tyree henry in one of those films as well. He was in multiple of those and he is a conspiracy theorist podcaster so giving us all a really good. Name Have we seen a film with a podcaster in it?

Dr. Perlmutter was talking about how he's never seen a film with an academic that's represented correctly, and I'm like, have you seen a film with a podcaster that's been represented correctly? Because when I can think of it, I can think of asshole conspiracy theorist Woody Harrelson, Brian Tyree Henry, asshole guy who gets turned into a walrus in Tusk. He was asking for that, though. He was.

I mean, he also looked like a walrus, so. Yeah, it's weird to me, those Godzilla films that they're making in the States, how, again, it's that grim, dark nonsense that they did with the Nolan Batman. It's like Chris Nolan's Godzilla in a lot of ways. It really is. And I just, as much as, again, Godzilla minus one for me, it's just, it's not my, I'm not going to say it's not my cup of tea.

I like parts of it, but I do find parts of it to be overly dramatic in a John Woo, like, J-drama, like, fashion. And I would say a lot of that stems from the dialogue. And the dialogue, I don't know if either of you have ever played Metal Gear Solid, but it reminds me of a lot of Hideo Kojima's stuff, where it's, like, this really elevated, super dramatic dialogue. Like, is your war over now? Like... nobody talks like that.

Like it's, it's really goofy in an elevated way, which is why I say it's a, like John Woo, like a better tomorrow. Remember it's like that, like mellow drama. That's like the overwhelming amounts of mellow drama, those chow yon fat films. That's what I thought of with this. I was like, okay, like it's really playing up the drama and making it like, Oh, Oh, here come all the ships together.

All my good country men. Like, Oh yeah. You ain't moving. It's, I don't know what you're talking about. I like it.

But I think we can all agree like it is a little, like it's a little heightened, but not in a bad way. It's just your mileage with that kind of tone is going to vary, I think personally. Every morning I get up and say, my war isn't over yet. And then I go on with my day. Right.

Let them fight. I mean, it's that it's, you know, it's kind of goofy like that. Right. You know, that's, you know, it's a little, it's not super serious, but at least this movie is fun. That's the thing.

Like those Godzilla, that Godzilla 2014 film is not fun. If you compare the first of Godzilla films, this being like the first one, given that we're getting a sequel here in a couple of weeks, this movie is at least fun. This movie at least has Godzilla with a design. That's not whatever the thing is in the new one. Like, somehow not as bad as what people perceive the 1999 one to be but not much better by my approximation.

The monster verse films really vacillate i mean you are all over the map when it comes to the tone like you're saying like the king of the monsters one is the king of the monsters. Yes that's the second one king of the monsters is two All right. The very first one, the Aaron Taylor Johnson one, is very serious. That one is probably my least favorite of all of them. Yeah, me too.

I would say, yeah, as they go along, I seem to like them more. I still, and I know we talked about this years ago, Chris, I still love Skull Island. I think that's probably one of the best. Oh my God, I think Brian and I were talking about that just recently. Weren't we, Brian?

Yeah, because. I mean, every time I think about it, I'm like, they just... There's just no guards up on that movie. They just. How ridiculous and cranked up to 11 can we make this movie about a giant monkey?

And I would say that this film, Godzilla Minus One, is... could be comparable to a skull Island. Just the whole idea of, you know, the war and who can give up the war. I mean, you've got the Sam Jackson character as this, like, I know I'm, I'm not going to be defeated by this. Like I was defeated by the Viet Cong basically. And this becomes like his private war.

I mean, it is very similar when you think about like our main character here, where it's like, he was a coward and couldn't kill himself as a kamikaze. He was a coward. He couldn't shoot a Godzilla, uh, And it's like, finally, he starts to learn when and how to use violence to protect his homeland kind of thing. I would say there's a lot of similarities between these two films, and especially that it's serious, but there can be fun. You have those good moments.

You have John C. Reilly in there talking about hot dogs and things like that, but it's not egregious. It's not like, oh, fuck, here comes the John C. Reilly part. Let me fast forward.

Same thing with this. You have those little moments, but I love all these moments, especially when they're on the boat. I love the camaraderie that they have between these guys and that that just gets stronger and stronger as it happens. And then you get that whole Dunkirk moment towards the end of this when all the tugboats show up and it's like, don't worry, we'll help out. And then it's all the tugboats all pulling at the same time.

I'm like, this is amazing. It is very, the parts of this movie that or the, the kamikaze pilot for me, they kind of, it's like in a little way, like baby's first Jacob's ladder as well, where it's like, this is the guy who feels so bad that he, you know, I couldn't do the thing. So now it's haunting me. And Godzilla is the PTSD. Like, that's the thing about this movie.

If you boil it down to that character story, it's Godzilla is PTSD, right? In a lot of ways, like Godzilla is that like inner strife and turmoil about being unable to do the thing, whatever the thing is in this case, it's good. kill yourself for your country. And I, I love that. That's a conversation that's being willing to be had out in the open in this film, because it makes it feel like a very different Godzilla film than like, we've already talked about all the other Godzilla films other than I, and again, like I watched parts of the original Godzilla in preparation for this episode. And I, the original Godzilla was a serious movie, but I do think that there's parts of this movie that are, I think are trying to be as serious as the original Godzilla, or at least would say that they're trying to be as serious as the original Godzilla.

Because as much as, again, like I mentioned with shit and Godzilla kind of taking Japan to task, I think this movie takes the country of Japan to task as well. You know, the idea of human life being so disposable that they were willing to ask soldiers to kill themselves and not have ejector seats in their planes. And I love that that factors into the finale of the film. I genuinely love that moment because I'm like, wow, okay, like the movie got me in that moment. And I think the movie also does a good job of like, misdirecting you as an audience member to get you into that moment but also then that i think i don't know i think that moment really works for me and i think it's just very smart like brian said to tie it back into real life events or real life sentiments about the japanese government post-world war ii.

Don't know i thought the ejector seat was a little heavy-handed when uh Bruce is looking at the plans and Lucius says, you know, still haven't fixed that ejectacy yet. Somebody's got to do something about that. Like a fucking Chris Nolan of it all, man. Mr. Wayne, I want to see you in a cafe.

And then he did see him in the cafe. Fuck. We know. So weird. Yeah.

This movie ends with, with the, the kamikaze pilot at the cafe. Wow. Hanging out with cat woman. Yep. It's the way we all wanted it to be.

A little raise of the glass, back to the newspaper. Well, you were kind of touching on what I think is maybe what I didn't expect to find in this movie. And even that first time watching it, I was just like, it just from the get-go, it hit me and it kept on. And maybe it's more of an issue in this country. I don't know.

I know... it's definitely something they're addressing in this movie, but maybe it hits even more ridiculous in America. Because we are very ridiculous. But the fact that this whole thing to me started to become this like examination of manhood in the world that like, because like from the second we meet this guy, he's already like afraid to go through with his mission. Now, granted his mission is pretty grim and uncalled for but the thing that he's meant to do that, that, you know, gives him an honorable death, he's afraid to do. And then he lies about it to the mechanic and then the mechanic calls him on it.

So once again, now he's a liar and he's afraid to do what he needs to do. So it goes through all of that. And then it gets to the point of like, okay, you can go save us from this giant monster who is attacking us. Go over to your plane, start shooting him. And he's afraid to follow through with that.

Like he's just paralyzed by fear and can't do that. And so all of that is enough to weigh on him. But then he gets back home and the neighbor like immediately just lays into him and like not only calls him a coward, but is just like, you're responsible for my kids dying, your parents dying, our entire village being trashed. And like all this comes down to this like inaction that like he just he wasn't, you know, manly enough to take care of this is what it started to feel like. It's sort of like this attack on is he a man because he can't do these things?

And even more so, like, when we. Jump further ahead into the plot and he finally, like, he finds out what's important to him and he goes to save his girlfriend, if he wants to call her that, which he doesn't yet. But he goes to save her and then she sacrifices herself to save him. Like, again, in the most Like comically, could you be less of a man than your girlfriend just saved your life and now you're left behind and she's gone and you once again have to drag yourself back home and be like, well, not only have I done all these other things that make me seem like a coward, but my girlfriend just saved me and she's gone. It just kept hitting that point.

And I was just like, it's obviously– assessing that to some extent but i was like i don't know maybe i was just laying into it a little more for some reason that's just what i kept seeing and it was only by the time you get to the end that like he starts you know figuring out what's important to him and it even sets it up like the only way to make good is to sacrifice himself like he has to full circle come back around in kamikaze to have any sense of being a real man to be like any way to to make good on all the promises that he's broken to people and the people he's let down and gotten killed. And like, that's the only way to fix this, the way it sort of sets up the plot. And then it almost like fixes that because that's a very ridiculous and toxic way to look at your life.

It almost fixes that by the end because it adds in the little ejector seat. And it's like, no, actually, you know, life is what's important here. Like having. hope to move forward in a country that's just been completely dismantled by war. And like, we don't even know how to function as a country anymore, let alone with a monster attacking us. It's like, it has that point at the end.

It's like, well, no, actually surviving and dealing with that is sort of the bigger thing and is more important than you're stupid. Am I a man or not? It's like, are you man enough to carry on with your life after making these huge mistakes? And still, you know, conduct yourself and take care of your family and provide for them. And have a regular life again.

Like, I feel like that's also like a weird takeaway at the end there that's even a better way to look at it than the weird attack on his manhood that I feel like so much of this movie is. I think that I've not seen a child as cute as this little girl in a long time. She is just so freaking adorable. And the child acting is actually really good. And when she starts to cry at one point, oh, it just breaks my fucking heart, man.

She is just so sweet. And this whole thing, too, of like, you make your own family. And I know that that is, you know, like, especially for people like, you know, for me and stuff, it's like, yeah, you make your own family. You don't need... to worry about like who is the right person to have in your life and stuff you can you know adopt somebody without having it like on legal paper kind of thing it's like okay and when she draws the family together and oh man it's just the pathos in this film for me is very effective and i don't mind the the overwrought dialogue and stuff and i agree with you chris it is a little overwrought but I love John Woo films. I love heroic bloodshed.

So I was just like, yeah, OK, I'm cool with this. And yeah, this is dealing with those big issues like we're talking about, like the sacrifice and all this. It's like, OK, you can do the mission, but you really don't need to sacrifice yourself. It's not the person that explodes. It's the plane that explodes.

Well, I think about that. You know, we were talking about Skull Island. I think about that scene in Skull Island with Shea Wiggles. Where he runs at the thing, he's like, and the monster just goes whack, whacks him into the cliff. I mean, this movie is like that scene, you know, but like drawn out to two and a half hours.

And again, like, I don't want anyone to take away that I didn't like this movie. It's more of a... I wasn't expecting that that's what this movie was. I knew nothing about this movie going into it, other than we've already talked about and alluded to a little bit. This movie was insanely popular.

It is insanely popular. I mean, it made a shitload of money. Like, a lot of money. Like, a lot of money. Like, a lot of money.

And when something makes a lot of money, it can be because it's good, or it can be for... I don't know. Any more, I feel like what makes a lot of money in Hollywood or globally, I think it's kind of weird because sometimes it's stuff that's good and sometimes it's just a thing. I think a lot of the time now it's stuff that's really good that gets really popular, especially from Japan or other places. If it's popular here mainstream, I think it's because it's done a good job at resonating with a lot of people.

And I think that This movie, I mean, again, so it's like a budget of less than $ 15 million, which is nuts, by the way. For as good as it looks, yeah. Yeah, and it makes $ 120, you know, rounding up. It makes $ 115 million worldwide. That's insane.

I mean, that's... The fact that it worked here, too, because we're so- Right, I mean, it worked here way better than Shin Godzilla did, which is such a shame, and I get it. Shin Godzilla is not an approachable movie. I'm assuming you both have seen it, but it's not an approachable movie by any stretch of the imagination. It is trying not to be, and I think in a lot of ways, it's almost intentionally trying to be, not boring, but that's part of what the movie's about, is the inaction, you know?

There's a little bit of like for me, I've described Shin Godzilla and a little bit is like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern meets Godzilla because it's like these idiots just are having like an existential crisis while their country is being destroyed by a giant monster. Like at least this is like the opposite of Shin Godzilla. This is with that film is about inaction. This film is about action. in place of government, because, you know, by the end of the movie, the people that stopped this and they make a huge point of this, because again, that's the delineation here in this film, the Japanese government is willing to sacrifice people for the war. The people are unwilling to sacrifice themselves.

They don't feel like it's necessary to stop Godzilla. And they make up the gap in between the government and, And the effort to stop Godzilla, they are the missing piece to stop Godzilla is this like civilian effort that are made up of genuine civilians and also like essentially ex-military. But these people are ex-military civilians. And I I find that to be the interesting part of this movie for me is like, what is this movie saying about that kind of gap in. these kinds of things when it's the government trying to do something and they can't get it done. So the people get it done instead.

Like that is, that is such an interesting story. And the fact that it's a Godzilla movie is so, I don't know that for me is a, is a really interesting success because again, when I think of Godzilla as a storytelling mechanic, which I think, That's not always the case. I mean, I'm not going to pretend that Godzilla versus Destoroyah is a fucking, they're like, what is that about? It's about Godzilla versus a giant crab. That's really what it's about.

But when you talk about something like Hedera, Hedera is a, it's a pollution monster. Like it's a monster that exists because of pollution. I like to call Hedera the stoner monster because it hits off those giant crabs. smoke stacks and has giant red eyes, which always cracks me the fuck up. But when Godzilla is about something, I think that's when Godzilla is really operating at its kind of most interesting because yes, entertainment wise, you can just have Godzilla kicking the shit out of whoever, and that is entertaining. But in terms of Godzilla being like truly interesting and something kind of different from just the kind of kaiju monster of it all, when they have something to say and, Godzilla, I think really shines like genuinely.

And, you know, this film, Shin Godzilla, the original Godzilla, they all feel like they have something to say. And I think for me, that's probably why those American monster verse films don't work. It's because like, again, I don't like if they don't have anything to say, then they need to just be entertaining. And I think I probably haven't watched enough of them past whatever. the last one I saw was, which I think Mike was like three or four years ago. I know we did a crossover episode because I saw in my feed recently that we did one many moons ago, but I know I didn't see the one that you guys were referencing with baby apes fighting each other, whatever in the flying fuck you guys are talking about, which I would be totally into by the way.

It's totally awesome when you get to the upside down world. I don't know why you just want to. Kong has like a metal glove at one point. He's like punching things. Okay, like I'm there for that.

That's because we can make a new action figure now. Duh. And also there's like five stones on it. And at one point Kong snaps his fingers. Oh my God.

It was pretty awesome. I would not be surprised. Marvel's run out of ideas. They're just like, you know what's hot with the kids today? Godzilla.

I mean, Godzilla versus the Marvel universe, I think is a real, that is a real comic book. I know for a fact. I think it is. Yeah. Yeah.

I don't think it's called, I think it's called like Godzilla destroys the Marvel universe or something like that. But I don't know. Godzilla is such an interesting character because now we are in a time where the people that are making Godzilla films grew up on Godzilla films. And that wasn't always the case. Like it wasn't always the case that the people were making Godzilla films and grew up on them or were influenced by the original Godzilla films.

And I'll tell you again, in doing the research, that's the thing I was so impressed with Takashi Yamazaki, writer, director, and worked on the VFX for the film was the VFX director and didn't want to make this film until he could do the film properly with the proper effects. And I feel like for me, the success of this film has bared out that his idea and intention for this film, like, it bears out on screen. All of his ideas are right there on screen. And it's like, so again, as for as much as I do like Shin Godzilla, I think sitting here and talking with you guys about minus one, it's, I can understand why it was so popular because it is a really well done Godzilla movie, but it's a really good movie period.

Like I think it's a really great anti-war film in the, in the vein of the way the original Godzilla was. This is probably the closest since the original Godzilla. Everything in the middle seemed like it did continually get more and more professional wrestling. It was just with guys in suits. And we've had a few here and there that have tried to make a comment, but none of them came off near as just completely setting this up to be a reflection of Godzilla. nuclear power, if nothing else.

But then this one more than any, because this one is just post-war. So we just see the destruction of the city that had nothing to do with Godzilla. Like when he gets back, that's the war. That's not Godzilla. So I think it gives you a really nice little snapshot of like what this country was going through at that time.

And it is interesting, like you were talking about with the, the, the national pride type of thing. It is weird that like, that's usually something I would expect from an American movie, you know, that like, oh, you can't keep an American down and they all band together and get this done. Whereas this is an entirely different scenario than that. And, and this is a guy that's coming from, you know, his, his country has dealt with things completely different than what's going on in America. But you still get that same core of like these are good people.

And a lot of it is like also them commenting on, okay, our country did some things we're not proud of. Like to us, not just to the world, but like to our own people, it did stuff that we don't agree with. But then in spite of that, you know, when we see that they can't handle it, we as citizens are going to band together and get the job done because we're still good people regardless of what our country did. And I think that that's, again, that's the kind of craziness that American movies throw together. So it's interesting seeing it from another perspective and seeing a different country kind of still have that same like truth to what they're trying to fight for.

You mentioned the special effects and I, you know, I mentioned those earlier, just how much I love the special effects in this. I love the little touches that they're doing. Like the, uh, the, that first attack on the island is, At one point, Godzilla roars, and you see all the spit between the top and the bottom jaw, and those lines of spit that he has. It looks fantastic. And then, like I said, the showcase moment for me is the one that I think they showed the clip at the Oscars.

And it was almost like a little fuck you to Marvel, where it's just like, hey, these are really cheap special effects. They look really good and they're much more effective than what you guys are spending millions of dollars underpaying your people and you end up with those horrible Thor love and thunder effects that you had that people would always point to as like, this is the worst special effect I've seen lately. When he's traveling through the water, I mean, water used to be impossible to animate and now it just looks so good. And the way that he's just coming after them in the water and, you know, just that huge fight that they have. And I love when he's just about to maybe do the big nuclear breath kind of thing and then gets slammed on the side by one of the warships.

And he just takes that warship out so easily. It's like just nothing for him. I love how, and again, this is something that I kind of like selfishly want now. I would love to have a Godzilla film where it's just set on a boat the entire movie. I know that that's not a possibility, but watching the very clearly Jaws-inspired sequence in this film, which, I mean, I don't know if that's what you guys thought of when you have a bunch of Japanese men or men just on a rinkety boat trying to fight a giant monster.

I was like, well, this is just Jaws all of a sudden. Oh, yeah. Then you have that shot. I don't know. I was like, give me that movie now, because that could be its own thing in its own right.

Again, I mean, obviously... part of me is like, why the fuck didn't Godzilla just go? Thematically, I know why Godzilla didn't do that. But, you know, it's, I don't know, I just, when I saw that, I was like, you said, Mike, it's just like, it's so interesting that we have Godzilla out in the ocean just destroying things and being, I don't know, the effects, you know, we always talk about this, like, well, effects, you know, CGI doesn't look good anymore. Except when it's something interesting to look at, it does. And this movie makes an interesting design choice with Godzilla, which I would say is Showa era Godzilla inspired, but with like a more modern kind of take on it.

And I think it really works. Like it pays a lot of kind of homage, but not lip service to the original Godzilla design while updating it to make him you know, to, to borrow a parlance from fucking dark night, I think it makes Godzilla's head turn like, you know, in the Batman movies, how Batman had that stupid cowl and then it separated it. So you could turn his neck. Godzilla just looks a little bit more streamlined to be able to walk around and not just look like a guy in a suit. Cause I mean, obviously that's what a lot of this was based on originally is the design is It's a guy in a suit walking around this, this could be a guy in a suit, but it's, I mean, again, it's CGI.

So I think it's just the, the design for Godzilla, I think is really smart and well done as well. And again, for the, for the cost of the budget of this film, like my God, so economical. And so just well done, like a lot of practical effects, a lot of practical sets clearly, but a lot of, a lot of Godzilla, but not, I mean, I, I think that's maybe kind of, and again, I wouldn't say it's a knock at this movie, but it is one of those things where It's not one of those kinds of Godzilla movies from the 70s or 80s where it's a ton of Godzilla just doing Godzilla stuff. This is a more character-driven film, but the characters are interesting, so it's fine. That 2014 Godzilla film, there's not a whole lot of Godzilla in that movie either.

It's kind of towards the end of the movie, but the characters in that film are so goddamn uninteresting and kind of... Like just flat and very one dimensional that the film feels like a slog. Thankfully, this film doesn't feel like a slog. But I will say, like with all these other kaiju films, I am here to see Godzilla. This is also one of the few movies that he doesn't fight another monster.

So like the drama is all dealing with Godzilla. the human end of it really. Like there is no drama for Godzilla because he has nothing is a, is a fight for him really. Like he does whatever he wants all the way up until the end. And he didn't know that last hit was coming. So, I mean, there is no struggle for Godzilla in this movie.

Like he just kind of strolls through and does what he needs to do. But yeah, all the drama comes from the humans. It's not a, again, it's not a wrestling match with guys in suits. which don't get me wrong. I love guys in suits fighting each other, but right. It's just, this looks amazing.

I mean, I grew up on Ultraman, you know, it was, it was a different wrestling match every single week, you know, that or Johnny Sacco and his giant robot and stuff. So it's like, yeah, I love those kinds of things. But when there's actually a reason for this, it's like, Oh, that's so nice. And that, yeah, it's, it's like, I just recently saw colossal, the one with, um, Oh, Jason Sudeikis and Hathaway. And it's like, yeah, there are some giant monsters or a giant monster and a giant robot in that movie.

But it's so That is, again, your metaphor for this relationship and all this kind of stuff. And I'm just like, okay, yeah, that really worked. That was a really horribly depressing movie. Is it worth watching? I haven't seen it.

I would recommend it, especially if you like Jason Sudeikis. And it is such a different... Sudeikis than what I'm used to right now with the Ted Lasso. Like this Jason Sudeikis, you were just like, this guy's a fucking asshole. So he's like, he is in horrible bosses.

Yeah. Yeah. His character in horrible bosses is like, I don't know if you remember that movie, but he just like beats the shit out of Charlie day physically throughout like most of that movie. I mostly remembered, um, the, the comb over from Colin Farrell and then, uh, Jennifer Aniston looking really, actually really good in that movie okay yeah fair yeah but yeah no sudeikis is he is just the worst and so yeah it's like this is nice to have these metaphors of these monsters and have the good story that goes along with it and rather than yeah seeing guys in suits i mean i love i love you know gamma versus gear on like i love the i've got jet jaguar right here so it's like hell you should Yeah, it's like, I love these characters.

But where's your Tin Baragon that you bought off Amazon Prime for $ 10 on Prime Day like I did? Oh, I don't know where that is. That's my favorite one. Baragon is my favorite because he looks like a dog with those ears. I wish I could...

Oh, I love Baragon. I wish I could find... I've got one of the creatures from Ultraman. He was like a regular looking dude from basically the neck down. But then he had this crazy head and he had these two crab claws for hands.

He was great. It seems so impractical that he was like using these crab claws. I mean, since we're all bragging about our toys, I'm also looking over here. I've got one of the probably what, like 16 inch, 12 inch, somewhere in there. One of those big plastic Godzillas.

But it's even better. It's the one I saw for years because it's the knockoff version. So the face doesn't quite look like Godzilla. It's just a big giant reptile looking monster. And somehow that made it better when I saw it recently.

I was like, oh, no, I need that. Like, that's the one I saw as a kid and I never got. So now, of course, I have to fill that hole in my soul by buying toys that I didn't get when I was a child. Absolutely yeah one of these days what was that those shogun warriors do you remember those. Oh i have two of the three sitting upstairs.

Right now didn't they come out with a godzilla that was kind of part of that set. He was yeah it was made by the same company talking about the weird looking godzilla the shogun godzilla But he has a little thing you can flip on the back of his neck and fire a little fire. It's almost like a party horn shoots out. And the best part is he fires his arm off like Godzilla always did in every movie. Remember how his arm was fired off?

Yeah. Because he was not a robot, but somehow just like the Shogun Warriors, he could fire his arm off. I was like, Japan, you crazy. I still... and like there was the one of those monster verse movies where they made a Mechagodzilla. And I'm just like, how in the, how did you just cobble together a Mechagodzilla?

Like that seems like it would be a major deal. Almost kills Godzilla in that movie. That's where like Mechagodzilla is like cracking Godzilla's jaws open. He's like, I'm about to kill me a Godzilla. It's like, well, all I know is my tax dollars paid for that Mechagodzilla.

I know, I know. But, and, And sadly, it also paid for that King Ghidorah brain to go inside of it. That's right. Because that's what it was. That was the third Godzilla movie.

That's where it is. It's like powered by the magic of King Ghidorah. King Ghidorah. Right. Well, isn't that the thing?

King Ghidorah is like Godzilla's big baddie. That's his Lex Luthor. Yeah, that's his Moriarty. Godzilla's Moriarty. Yes, he's the Napoleon of crime in Kaiju form.

Yes. There you go. God damn, that should be on a fucking shirt, man. See, the thing for me, honestly, and this is the, when I watch Godzilla minus one, all I can think to myself is the missed opportunity of Manila, not baby Godzilla, Manila, the one that shoots the smoke rings. That's the one that I love.

That's right. The one in the movie where it's not actually Godzilla and it's just a child hallucinating that Godzilla is friends with him or he's friends with baby Godzilla. Yeah. Good Lord. Is this Megalon?

Because I had Megalon. I still have Megalon on VHS over there. I watched that one way too many times. That's the bug, right? No, that's the stuff that Adam Driver comes up with in Megalopolis.

Megalon. I think Megalon's the bug, right? Megaguirus is also a bug, but it's like a giant dragonfly. I've watched that one so many times. Godzilla's like cadre of...

Sinister Six-style villains is just insanity. It's all these, like, mutated animals. And that's the thing, like, you know, again, I guess... I don't want to talk about spoilers for the next movie. Cause I don't think it's a spoiler.

I don't know. But like you guys mentioned Godzilla doesn't have anything to fight in this movie. And so I do think it falls into that weird camp of, could they do a Godzilla movie where Godzilla fights something else? And it's still have the serious tone of a Godzilla minus one, because it does seem, and that's kind of like, we've like Brian, you know, mentioned. And I think Mike, you would agree.

Like, there is that kind of weird delineation with Godzilla things where it's like Godzilla films or he fights other things. or Godzilla films where he fights people. And it would seem that the Godzilla films where he fights people directly are these ones where it's like, Godzilla is standing in for X, Y, or Z. And the other ones are just like, yo, I just want to see Godzilla blow some shit up. Both are awesome, by the way. Both are great.

Yeah. It's just, I think it's just now we can kind of like delineate them, but could they do a serious one where they also have Godzilla beaten King Ghidorah's ass for two hours or, you know, you know, 15, 20 minutes of two hours? Because you can't put two hours of that on screen. They don't have that kind of budget. I don't know.

I mean, it's definitely... I feel like... I haven't looked into the new one that much. So I feel like you would almost have to, like, isn't that how all sequels work? The, the body count gets bigger.

So like you gotta, you gotta up the ante each time. So wouldn't we have to bring in another monster for him to fight this time or at least a giant robot or something just to not have it be a repeat of this movie. I'm so curious if this is Godzilla minus one that we're talking about and then there's Godzilla minus zero, is that just going to be a remake of the original Godzilla? Maybe. I mean, there are parts of this movie that feel like a remake of the original Godzilla.

Oh, yeah. Like the train. The train is totally. It's like a riff, right? Like it's like, yeah.

Well, this is knowingly doing it. Running away, you know, and like looking over their shoulders. And at least nobody stops in the street and points up at the sky and goes, oh, Godzilla. You know, those kind of things. Jurassic Park 2.

I see what you're talking about. Oh, God. Jurassic Park 2. Mike's favorite. The classic of all kaiju movies.

Jurassic Park 2. Can I mention, though, that, like, yes, Mike, I know you don't like Lost World because of the kaiju film of it all, but Steven Spielberg technically never made a kaiju movie. So if we judge it based on that, is it still terrible? Yes. Okay, fine.

On that note, I don't know if you saw, but it's Spielberg who told our director here that he went and saw this movie three times. So obviously Spielberg liked this one. Movies are back, folks, in 2023. Godzilla minus one. Steven Spielberg's going out to the theater.

That's right. That's the thing about this movie is like it was successful and popular enough. I mean, I can remember, as I'm sure you could, Mike, with like our we have a lot of like mutual friends on Facebook. Like I do a lot of people that saw this movie like several times. Oh, yeah.

And like, they were like, this movie is fucking amazing. I was like, I remember at the time just being like, yeah, I'm sure. Like I just was not, you know, not, not in my wheelhouse at all of the things I was interested in. So I, I agree. This movie is very good.

Like, and I can see why, especially compared to the Godzilla films of yesteryear, this movie is really successful compared to the Godzilla films that we are getting in this kind of like parallel monster verse American films. I think this film is imminently more interesting and successful, but I think if we talk about again, like what are those films trying to do? If they are just, you know, two kids sitting there smashing their action figures together. Okay. I mean, like we've said, like there's nothing wrong with that.

I don't think skull Island, you know, skull Island is I think headier in a lot of ways. And some of those other monster verse movies are, But I don't think Skull Island is kind of hitting the notes that this movie hits because, again, I don't think that– I don't think that most of the American audience who are going to see a Godzilla film want their Godzilla film to be like this. Even though this film was successful in the United States, those MonsterVerse movies still made more money. Right. Because they're like, again, big, dumb action movies with Godzilla and King Kong running around beating shit.

And again, King Kong is the American kaiju. He's the OG American Kaiju. So you have the Kaiju teaming up with the American Kaiju. There you go. Makes sense.

I feel like he's the part that kind of sells those last two movies. And I think that's why they became successful. Like as much as they have their problems, but I've said many times on my show, like I give Adam Wingard so much credit because he really, like you can see this guy who had like no budget on so many of his movies that, finally like some studio comes up and goes hey you want to make a godzillian he's. Like hell yeah i do so like they just. Dump a truckload of money at her like here go play with your action figures and he's like oh okay i will like so as flawed as they are i was like i i appreciate how much fun he has putting those together but i think bringing it he he's sort of the era that brought in the kong from skull island more or less but like he brings that kong character in And Kong is just so identifiable.

And I think that's something that's different from your standard Godzilla movie or even a lot of kaiju is like it's still especially Godzilla. He's still like a reptile So like there's still not that much to him. He's not conveying much whereas the ape as close as they get to human like he still has so much emotion that comes through even the Goofy CG version of him that we get in those two movies like he's he's the one you're siding with even as much as you love to see Godzilla show up and kick everybody's ass which he does and like you're still like, you're drawn towards Kong because you, you get emotion from him. You feel like he's like rationalizing things and working things out. And like, he is a character where it's hard for Godzilla to be a character, even in like the fun seventies ones where he's the hero of the movie now.

And he's saving the earth by fighting other monsters or whatever, whatever. The excuse is most of the time. But like, It's still kind of hard to get anything out of Godzilla versus the introduction of Kong adds a different level that has always been in the Kong movies. That he is something that you sympathize with and he becomes kind of more than just an animal that looks cute. He has something to him that carries the plot most of the time.

Yeah, that is always a strange thing of how godzilla moves from villain to hero to sometimes there sometimes not there sometimes major to the story sometimes a backdrop it's it's you know he's kind of an interesting metaphor that they could just use in so many different ways but Yeah, for me as a kid, I was just like, wait, isn't he supposed to be bad? But he seems like a good guy. Sometimes. He's teaching his kid how to do fireballs and stuff. That's kind of nice.

And his kid's so happy. He's a good dad. Yeah, exactly. Right. And then at the same time, is Godzilla a boy or a girl?

Because he had a kid. It's a female. According to Matthew Broderick, Godzilla's a female. All right. Giant pregnancy test.

But later, the only one they. They officially tell you as a girl is Mothra because she's having babies. And, you know, so they officially come on board. It's like, no, Mothra is definitely a girl. The rest of them, I don't know.

We just assume they're all boys because that's what we always do. Well, you know, you mentioned, Brian, the idea of like, well, we have King Kong and King Kong is such a. emotive character. And it is, I think it is very interesting because yeah, King Kong, I think there's something about that character that Godzilla, it is weird. Like I do think about Godzilla being, if, if there, so in Godzilla versus Destoroyah, if Destoroyah was not there, would Godzilla just be attacking the people is the question or in any of those other movies, right? Because if, if, if there's not a threat to Godzilla is the threat to Godzilla than people.

And yeah, I wonder that because Kong is never really a threat to people. Kong is too small to be a threat to people, at least in the original Kong movie. I mean, in the original Kong movie, Kong is tiny. And these new Kongs, I'm assuming Kong, does Kong get bigger at some point? Because Kong in Skull Island is like tiny.

So I'm assuming they like, do they embiggen him? Do they use the embiggen ray or feed him big bananas or something? I don't know if there's any excuse for it. But yeah, somehow he's about the same size as Godzilla by the time we get to these two new movies. What the fuck did that happen?

Godzilla's fucking huge compared to King Kong. Space magic? I mean, especially when you look at that first, the Elizabeth Olsen one. Like, he's like two times as tall as the Comerica building in San Francisco. And it's like, what?

How can he be this tall? And then, yeah, no, Kong is there. They're pretty even. I mean, you see that amazing shot in the trailer of Godzilla X Kong where they're running in slow motion next to each other like fucking Hobbs and Shaw. Yeah.

The buddy movie we've been waiting for oh yeah but that's i mean isn't that what godzilla has now like godzilla and kong at least the american version isn't that what it should have always been is just like a kind of big goofy like buddy action movie with godzilla and kong like isn't. Which is why i like those last two movies that's what it sounds like they're just so good yeah yeah So it's like, why take it seriously? Like the people that should be taking it seriously are frankly the Japanese. Like they have more to say about it than we ever could. Like, Oh, what is the country that blew up the country going to say?

Like, fucking come on. We like blowing things up. Which is why we like our big dumb movies. Exactly. We like our shit blown up.

We have no problem with our cities being destroyed by Godzilla apparently. Fuck Hawaii. Honolulu, who gives a shit? Isn't that where they fight? Or is it San Francisco I think is where they're fighting at the end of that first one.

Yeah, they have a couple fights in there. I know that Godzilla makes a stop on the way in Hawaii because that's where there's a whole bunch of like Oh, this little kid got on the wrong train at the wrong time kind of thing. And yeah, it's so much horseshit. We should go back and watch those movies. Plus they wanted a free trip to Hawaii.

Yeah, exactly. That's the Michael Payne of it all. Yeah, or Adam Sandler. I'm just going to invite all my friends to make this movie with me in Cancun. In Hawaii, yeah.

Yeah. That's where Godzilla stops, uh-huh. Yeah, sure. Why not? It's a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific, but he just happened to hit it.

He was very much into history, and he was like, well, I want to take the same route that the Zeros took before Pearl Harbor, and that's what he did. Then he got there, he went to the USS Arizona, he saw the museum, took a couple pictures and everything. If Godzilla isn't destroying a city, he's at home watching the History Channel. If it was me, the way I would make the American Godzilla movie would be Godzilla was the reason Pearl Harbor happened, which may very well be what the Monarch TV show does anyways. I don't know.

That might be Godzilla minus zero. Who knows? Right. That's true. We don't know yet.

I'm excited to go see it in theaters. I'm excited to go see the new one in theaters because, like you said, Mike, I think that these films are best seen in a big screen format because seeing a giant-ass Godzilla running around on my iPhone is not the way the director intended me to watch it, clearly. Which I can concede in some capacities is the case. That's not always the case. But in a film setting of this variety, it's like, yeah, it's probably best seen in Dolby Atmos or some very loud... kind of boisterous setting.

But, you know, I will say I understand why this movie has gotten a sequel. I understand why it was so popular. And I'm glad that Japan now has a parallel answer to the American Godzilla kind of MonsterVerse stuff, because I think for a long time, there are version of Godzilla being the only one, almost a decade, by the way, nine years before this movie came out. I'm glad that this movie has come out and then another one is coming out that I think are doing something very distinctly, like you said, Brian, distinctly and uniquely Japanese with the character that is a distinctly and uniquely Japanese character. Yeah.

It is also interesting. And the director says it's not a direct response, but isn't it a weird coincidence that the same time that this came out, the other big movie from this country is Oppenheimer. So we're both kind of dealing with these issues in different ways. Yep. Yeah.

And I know which one I would rather watch. I repeat. So no, you know, I'm not a, The one with Iron Man in it. I know. I love that.

When do we get those crossing over? When does Iron Man fly in and fight Godzilla? It's got to be one business deal away. Come on now. I mean, again, it's in a comic book.

It's already in a form that exists. It's just not in the film form yet. Yeah. Which is pretty amazing that even the licensing, because who is it? Is it Toei that owns Godzilla?

They are notorious for going after people for copyrights and stuff. So it's amazing when they don't do a good job of it, obviously. They've got the entire country of America to contend with when it comes to all these bootleg t-shirts and stuff that people have. But in movies, they will go after people and they're like, no, no, we protect this. Like, this is our property.

This is our meal, meal ticket, basically. Which I mean, again, like that's, you know, Godzilla, I think is a very important cultural export of Japan, which is, I mean, you know, again, that's a good thing. I think that it's, it's important that there is kind of in the world of cinema or you know, again, movies, like it's important to have something like this, you know, where you can kind of rally around it as a country. And I, I don't know if there is a person in Japan that doesn't like Godzilla. Like I would kind of be surprised.

Right. I also like that. They're just first and foremost, a company because they also, for as much as this is their baby, um, Like, they've built their entire industry around Godzilla, essentially. But they have no problem just, hey, you want to license him out and make your own dumb, bad movie? Okay, fine.

We'll let you do it. And then a few years later, we'll let you do it again. Like, they'll just keep doing it. Multiple times. If you'll give us money, you can use it.

Oh, yeah. But we're still going to get our cut, and we still keep him as our main guy, and we're going to do what we want with him. But also, you can do a dumb one if you want. We don't care. Just give us money.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think I said Toei. Isn't it Toho that owns this one? It's Toho, yeah. And then Toei does Gamera, right?

Like, that was their answer to Godzilla? Yeah, I think that's right, yeah. Yeah, he's officially a different company, which is why we're waiting for that crossover. Yeah, I don't know if we'll ever get that one. Like a big budget.

Isn't Shin Gamera a thing? I know that there's, like, Shin Kamen Rider. Well, there was Shin Ultraman, too. I don't know if there was a Shin Gamera. I know for sure there were, well...

Back in the early 2000s, I think, there was a whole reboot of Gamera with three movies that were actually all pretty good. And also, you felt the human cost when it came to the destruction that was going on in these cities. Shin Gamera was an animated film, not a released film. You know what's funny? You've mentioned Gamera before.

Gamera is. That's my license plate, dude, is Gamera. Is it really? Yeah, Andrea's is Mothra, mine is Gamera. That's amazing.

See, I'm a Rodan man myself. But I always get, Gamer A, are you a big gamer? I'm like, no. Gamer A! Of course.

Gamer B, dude. So you're Canadian and a gamer. Gamer A. Gamer A. Good lord.

I love that Andrea's is Mothra. It was Godzilla, G-D-Z-I-L-L-A, but then she was like, no, I'm more of a Mothra person, so went back to that. You think Manila is taken in the state of Nebraska? Manila? Yeah.

My favorite Godzilla character is Manila. That stupid little bug-eyed, freaky Godzilla is my favorite, and I don't know why. That was the first Godzilla movie I ever saw. I had all those VHSs when I was a kid. I don't know if you guys remember those, but they released them in the 90s. on VHS, and they just had all of them in a box set.

And I remember, for whatever reason, the one that I watched the most was that little... It's not Baby Godzilla, because Baby Godzilla is something else. But that's what I call Baby Godzilla. Baby Godzilla and Manila are two different things. Oh, but they look... like isn't that what he teaches to like.

Manila yeah yeah or manila minya is also what he's called but baby godzilla shows up in ah fuck which one is it yeah godzilla is the one that shows up and i think is it godzilla versus space godzilla where he's like uh space godzilla's like beating the shit out of baby godzilla and then godzilla shows up Uh, and like stop. That's your ass. Minya is in destroy all monsters. The one where it's like the little kid is like running around and he's like, Godzilla, sing our song together. It's like, Oh wow.

I always thought that that was a, Baby Godzilla. And I would call that thing Godzuki. So I'm totally messed up. That is Godzilla's baby. It's his son.

It's his son. Manila? Manila is Godzilla's son. Yeah. Okay.

So it's basically Baby Godzilla. Yeah. Like Baby Yoda's baby is not actually Yoda's son, but... that we know. Of true true yeah dave filoni's got it up his sleeve. I'm waiting for season five maybe.

God fucking hell man it's so funny mike and you know to speak to the godzilla films and the budget of this film the amount of money they spent on that mandalorian movie this year Oh God. Yeah. Like 50 times. This movie wasn't like, it was like what? Like $ 150 million or something.

Like it was like an absurd amount of money. And it's like, and that movie made like no money compared to this film. It just goes to show you don't, you can have an effects driven, interesting, well done film that comes out with a property involved that doesn't bomb with an audience. And that's not, impossible in this day and age and i know disney would like to believe so because they're throwing every single thing at doomsday that they can but like you don't have to do that you can just make a film compelling and i think i want to say like didn't they re-release this film as well like didn't this film had like a second run at some point it ran that's. When they did the minus color okay was that what it was in theaters when they did minus color yeah okay Because that's what I was going to say when you were talking about the friends that you knew that were like in the circle and were like really into it.

The thing that I was going to say is like this brought people out. That don't go to the movies normally. And like because I have a friend that he's been on the show for years and like he barely ever goes out to the movies, but was old school. Like Godzilla fan. And he just heard about this.

And like, I couldn't tell you the last new movie he'd been to before this, but he and like got his kid who also loves this stuff. And they went to the theater and saw it in the theater because it had the all of. This word of mouth going on around it. So I think this was kind of that like setting into motion the movies are back phase we're in now of like an appointment, you know, go to the theater kind of a film coming back out. We didn't have that for the longest time there.

So this was one of those first ones that people were like, oh, this is getting such a big buildup that I need to go see it. I don't just want to take everybody else's word for it. I want to go see it. And then especially when they did the minus color, it was another excuse to go out and see it in the theater because it was a different version that you weren't going to see any other way. So I think this was sort of that type of thing where it really made it a focus to go back to the theater and see a movie.

For a while there. We hadn't had anything that did that for a long time. You're telling me Tenet wasn't a reason to go to the theaters? Or Mission Impossible 7? Yeah.

I mean, one of these times when Tom actually kills himself doing one of these stunts, then. It's going to be a big thing. So, like, we got to keep going to see his new movies to see if this is the one he ends up accidentally offing himself. I mean, for as much as I like Digger, I don't know if Tom Cruise didn't just do that already. Yeah, I think that was career suicide.

I think that was Digger, everybody. He might have, like, suffocated under the latex. You know, this one was equally as death defying. Yeah, boy, it's you know, it is I'm I'm I'm really glad that we have gotten a couple good Godzilla films from Japan finally, because like, again, you know, it's not it's not that those films in the 2000s weren't good, but they just weren't. You know, it's funny.

I know people like to drag the Godzilla film, the American one, the Matthew Broderick one. It's a classic. It's not really that bad. It's pretty bad. It's not any dumb.

You know what? I defend that movie. I don't care. Go watch 2014 Godzilla and tell me how bad it is. At least the one with Hank Azaria is entertaining, okay?

At least it's fucking stupid and entertaining, not like self-serious. It's funny because I always feel like having watched those mid-2000s Toho Godzilla films, they, you know, there's this, this is like feeling of like, well, that, that American Godzilla film was so bad. And we all, it was like, what a terrible disgrace to Godzilla. Those mid two thousands Godzilla films aren't much better. Like it's, they're really not much better.

Like Godzilla, 2000 Godzilla final wars where they're like, we have to kill the Godzilla from the American films. We're going to beat the shit out of them and throw it into a Sydney opera house and blow them up. I think is what happens to them. Uh, It's not like those films were much better. So there was really a drought of good Godzilla films from Japan on top of not just American Godzilla films not being particularly well-received, but there weren't a lot of great Japanese films.

Godzilla films. I mean, Shin Godzilla was the first one. And then there was nothing for a while. They didn't like, we've already alluded to, they didn't, they haven't done it. I don't think, I don't think there needs to be a sequel to Shin Godzilla a like personally, but be like, they never did anything else with it.

Like beyond those Shin Kamen Rider and Shin Ultraman movies. Um, so yeah, They never made a point to say like, well, there's going to be another Godzilla thing. So I'm glad that there is now another Godzilla thing that has a sequel and it's seemingly like a step in the right direction. And maybe it'll allow them to like allow someone to make another Godzilla movie that's weirder than this one. like more like shin godzilla because shin godzilla is a fucking weird movie like this is a very traditional godzilla movie compared to that one like that is a very atypical godzilla movie i'm surprised it was as successful as it is because that's the thing about this movie that i do think like really works in its favor is like it is a very traditional Godzilla movie.

Like it talks about some important headier themes, but at the end of the day, it is a very recognizable, traditional, expectational in a lot of ways, Godzilla movie. Like you guys both alluded to, like there's a train scene, like, We get to see like Godzilla on Odo Island, which kind of is like a thing that happens more often than not. Like we get a lot of the Godzilla kind of tropes and trappings in this movie that Shin Godzilla just like doesn't have any interest in doing, which I understand at the point of that movie is different. But I'm glad that like you guys both kind of corrected me like this is really a just reboot of Godzilla. Like.

And, you know, in a lot of ways, like they could introduce Mothra and King Ghidorah and Rodan and all these other characters that you have seen before. I would expect that from here on out, they're going to just keep making more Godzilla minus whatevers. And those characters will show up in those movies and there'll be some degrees of successful and who knows. But I'm glad that we get a new contemporary version of Godzilla. But that's still... rooted in the past and it has some runway because again, you know, this film is set post-World War II.

With this Godzilla, seemingly indestructible, who's to say they couldn't make a 90s Godzilla movie with this version of Godzilla? Again, I mean, you know, Mike, we did a show ranking on Bond together. This is how you reboot James Bond. Right. Well, yeah, you kept saying, go to the past, make a 60s Bond.

Well, here's, we're going back to, you know, 1940 whatever godzilla so yeah how. Much runway they have now like exactly we don't even have to jump to the 90s you could do like every decade or so check back in in the next movie and like now we've got a new monster and like you can do a different period piece depending on what year it is each time you redo these things. Or like you know uh like a Victor Toomes where Godzilla works on a cycle and in 10 years he comes back out of the ocean. He disappeared shortly after this and we didn't see him for so many years. We don't know what's going on.

Now he's back and now how does the 60s handle it? How does the 70s handle it? That's a great idea, Brian. And then we catch up with Kong in Vietnam. It's time to cross over the universes again.

Boy, wouldn't that be wild. A Japanese film with King Kong. Good Lord in heaven. I mean, hey, I've seen King Kong versus Godzilla. That's probably the last one I watched before this past week.

I bought the Blu-ray of that one and man, that is a movie. It's a movie for sure. Because as we know, electricity makes mammals stronger and bigger and. Does it murder them or anything? It makes them stronger.

The hell are you talking about? That's in that movie. The original, the one that there was some sort of weird loophole in the Toho plan there, and they did a King Kong versus Godzilla back. In the day. Is that the one where he's sticking the tree down Godzilla's throat?

Yeah, it's that one. It is a piece of work, and I enjoyed the hell out of it this time when I watched it, but it is a silly movie. Yeah, well, our friends Rankin and Bass, they had that whole Godzilla cartoon show that they were doing as well. And I want to say some of the guys that worked on that, King Kong versus Godzilla, also worked with Rankin and Bass on, what was that? The Bermuda one that we talked about.

Oh yeah, that was like the giant turtle. Yeah. Right. Well, didn't we also didn't rank and do that fucking gorilla one, the great white ape or the big white ape or whatever? Like, you got to do your own knockoffs.

I mean, you know, once you once they're out there, you got to start making knockoffs to compete with them. Well, and that's the funny thing. Like, they really did. Like, in a lot of ways, those Rankin films are. the closest that i think i had gotten since up until like just you know with this episode like talking about kaiju films because that was you know when we did those on rank and like it was yeah it was the white ape and then the bermuda one and then there was one other one like the last dinosaur or something like a last dinosaur is that what it was yeah it's like it was. That was one of the best movies i've ever seen that keenan.

Win in that movie is that who was in that Oh. I know for sure it was the guy that played Heck Ramsey, Richard Boone. That's who it was. Right, right. Who also had done voices for some of the cartoons.

So. Yeah. And those are, you know, the kind of American answer to those Japanese kaiju films. I'm just I'm so glad that I've kind of come around as well on these kaiju movies. It's taken me a while, but I've definitely I definitely enjoy them now.

And I there are certain things that I resonate with more than others. And like I said, I don't know what it is about Shin Godzilla, but that that was the one that kind of got me full on back into this. But I do like a lot of those and 80s Godzilla films. And they're, I mean, they're fun. They're goofy.

I don't think that, you know, for the most part, it reminds me a lot of what ends up happening with Freddy Krueger, where it's like, oh, you know, he starts out as like a very serious character. And then by the third movie, he's just like jokey, you know, fucking. Like, I'm your boyfriend now. The third one is a welcome to prime time yeah that's. Right yeah where he ended everything with bitch and then they did that on rick and morty it was pretty funny that's.

Right bitch exactly and like that's you know godzilla is a lot of the same way like that's the that's kind of when i think of godzilla it's like by the time the 70s and 80s roll around with godzilla he's just kind of I don't know. He's cutesy and he's there to sell toys. And, you know, I mean, obviously the toy culture with Godzilla in Japan is a huge part of it. So not to work. I was buying them.

I bought my fair share of Godzilla toys in the last six months. So I get it. Like, and there's plenty of things to buy. So they know how to market and they know how to merchandise and they know how to get The brand out there. It's very smart.

It used to be so tough to find those things. It was like eBay. Once eBay started, that became kind of a gateway for Japanese toys and stuff. And then now you can actually order them kind of legitimately. You can get them at Target.

They have a Target branded Godzilla toy that is white and red. A Godzilla toy that is white and red. It says only at Target. I'm not kidding. It's insane.

Wow. Yeah, for a long time there, you couldn't get, like, they would release the VHS tapes, but all of the other merchandise was all imported and it cost a fortune. Oh, fuck yeah. It's like post-2000s before we started getting a decent amount of toys. That Ultraman toy that I can't seem to see, that was from one of these, like, at the time, rare specialty stores where it was like, come on in and buy all these Japanese toys.

And trust me, they were never. Yes, they were never not busy either. And they were... There was one in Ann Arbor, there was one in Royal Oak, and it was just like, this is kind of wild that a store can just be supported by selling toys to basically two adults. And that was in that sweet spot before the internet really took over all online shopping.

And it was like, oh, I can still go to a store and look at this stuff. And it was just wonderful. I mean, to browse all that stuff and be able to hold it in your hands and be like, oh, I've always wanted a figure like this. There's still a lot out there that are only being made in Japan. I will still see ones that are imports now that I'm like, oh, we don't have anything like this.

This guy paid a lot to ship. This over here because I'm not seeing this in regular stores. No. But I mean, you know, what's crazy is I can go down the street from my girlfriend's apartment to Hobby Town. And they have like a case at the back of their shop with several hundred dollar or more Godzilla models.

And I'm just like, you know what? Like you guys just said, like I, you know, even though I'm a little younger than both of y'all, I do also remember a time where these were just not. it wasn't a thing. Like you couldn't just go and get these things at fucking target or Walmart. Like you can go to target Walmart and buy specialty toys. Now they have NECA figures and all kinds of like all kinds of specialty figures at the back of target and Walmart.

Yeah. And target put in a whole new section that is just that it's separate from the regular toy department here. Like adult toys and adult board games and, like blind boxes and shit. They've essentially admitted that. Yeah.

Like adults want to buy toys. Cool. They have expendable. This is what's really paying for us is this kind of nerd stuff. Yeah.

But it's crazy. Cause yeah, it's like, it's this kind of like nerd culture has really gone mainstream in a way that for me, and I've never really, we've never talked about this. It's very validating. I feel like where I'm just like, you know what? Like this shit's been popular this whole time.

And just cause nobody else got it. That's kind of on them. Like, I'm so glad that like video games and stuff like Godzilla have become very mainstream in our culture in the United States. I want to say, was it less than a, you know, not to shit on the Dodgers. for falling out of the playoffs and not being in the world series and spending a billion dollars on their team, but they had a Godzilla night at their stadium a couple of weeks ago and Godzilla came out in a Dodgers uniform and was, and they had a Godzilla bobblehead that they gave away. And then after the game, they got, did a Godzilla drone show over the stadium.

Okay. Like if that is not about as mainstream of a thing as, as I can think of, I don't know what it is. And it's all in support of the new Godzilla movie coming out in a couple of weeks. Like it's, I mean, it's insane. Does love baseball.

And the Dodgers are a team that is very much supported by a overwhelmingly Japanese fan base because of Shohei Otani. And I think, you know, when you look at cross promotion, like what a smart cross promotion to have the biggest branded Japanese thing, most people know. you know, having a, with the most, you know, popular Japanese baseball player. It's like, that's how big of a deal Godzilla is. And you know, it's, I don't know. I'm, I'm very glad to be living in a world where good Godzilla movies exist that aren't made by American filmmakers.

Maybe they'll make one. I don't know. I just don't know if that's a thing. Like, I don't know if an American filmmaker could really make a serious Godzilla movie. I just don't, I don't know what an American filmmaker would have to say about Godzilla, I guess.

I mean, the closest you can come, I think, is Cloverfield. I was going to say, it's like the 9-11 movie. Right, exactly. I still absolutely love that film. I love that one.

I pretty much like the second one. But the first one, oh my gosh. Even though it's got T.G. Miller in it, it's still really, really good. It is weird that that is kind of it, right?

I mean, Cloverfield came out. it was immensely successful, like financially immensely successful. And then they didn't, they didn't do anything. What we ended up getting was like a glut of found footage films in the wake of Cloverfield. That's what I brought. Right.

I mean, what again, like fortunately, unfortunately, I mean, we got, you know, paranormal activity exists and so many other kinds of like interesting franchises. And maybe your mileage will vary with those as well about whether or not those fucking, you want those to exist. But yeah, it is weird that we haven't gotten anything else other than Cloverfield and Cloverfield was like thinly veiled reference to nine 11. Like I get, it wasn't, you know, I would say the thing that really was the nine 11 thing, in my opinion, it wasn't a Kaiju movie. It was that Steven Spielberg war, the world's movie that felt very like, the beginning of that movie was very nine 11 coded with Tom Cruise running around in the streets covered in the ash and everything like that was very nine 11 code.

Oh yes. But Cloverfield for sure is like the closest we've ever gotten to like expressing national grief and trauma around an event like nine 11 through the magic of cinema. Like, When it's just weird, the one time they tried to continue the story, kind of, they didn't do anything like that. It just becomes an amazing thriller, but it has nothing, I mean, other than the last few minutes of the movie. And even then, it's a totally different style of filmmaking.

So I love that second movie, but it's not at all part of the series, really. I mean, not in the way that the first movie was. I go on the record that the last 10 minutes of that second movie almost ruined that second movie for me. That's just fucking. It just confused people because I remember I did an episode on it and the other people that were discussing it with me hadn't seen Cloverfield.

So they like didn't understand the reference when they went and saw the name of the movie. Like I had no idea. They were just watching this thriller in a bunker and like– which it's amazing it being that. But then they got to the end. They were like, what the hell was all that?

I was like, oh, that's Clover. Did you guys– oh. So, yeah, I think most audiences didn't know what to do with that movie because it's it's only minorly connected, really. And it's a totally different. Type of movie.

So it's just it's a weird card to play out of that hand. Well, and I never understood why we didn't get another like American kaiju film, because I feel like of all like again, like I don't know if you how you process 9-11 with a kaiju film. But Cloverfield, I think, got the closest in terms of like processing 9-11 in a non nine 11 movie specific way. Um, yeah, I don't know. It's, it's, it's, it's good though, that I think that we finally, like I said, have a, a Godzilla film series that is going to continue that kind of mantle forward.

I hope it doesn't become jokey and kind of like lighthearted and kind of goofy, but at the same time, you know, if they add Minya into the movies, I'm not going to complain. I mean, the original one was super serious and then slowly, Became very silly. So, I mean, it could happen. Again, it's technically the same studio. I mean, I'm sure many a regime change has happened, but it's certainly not something they would completely never.

Do because they've done it many, many times. I mean, the majority of them are pretty silly. So, it's only a handful that have even attempted to be serious. Hmm. I will say I'm super glad to see the for real old school music back in this.

Oh, yeah. Because that theme, I had to at. Least throw that in. I was like, that theme is up there with most of the other stuff that is John Williams. Like all your other.

Classic cinema themes, most of them are John Williams. And then you shift gears to this and I'm like, oh, this is just as epic. Like when that thing kicks in. And not even just the signature, you know, the part that we all know when he's smashing things up, but even like. The slower buildup part of it.

Like just they stuck like three different versions of different scores from different eras together in this movie. And like it just comes together and it works so well in all these different aspects of it. It's just it's a great. soundtrack to put to this movie or pretty much anything really. Oh yeah yeah those that is just so iconic it's yeah it's wonderful to hear that and once it gets in my head it just doesn't leave for a few days. Yeah and i don't want it to it's so good yeah And I do want to smash things.

So it's trouble. Yes. Yes. And I do think paying homage to those original films is smart without like overdoing it, you know, again, like living within the space that's been created for Godzilla, but not, I mean, you know, doing that kind of nostalgia is such a, it's such a fine line to toe where you don't want to do, you know, the South park member berries where you're trying to get everybody to, oh, remember this? Remember when this happened before?

And I'm so glad that, again, this movie really avoids it. It's not trafficking in the nostalgia that people, like we've already said, people have a lot of nostalgia for Godzilla. There's a lot of Godzilla movies. I mean, a lot. And so there's a lot of points that people could come at Godzilla from and trying to kind of satisfy everyone is a very hard task.

But I feel like this film really does it. I mean, I think If you like the sillier version of Godzilla, it has its moments. If you like the serious Godzilla, it has its moments. And I think we've all kind of talked about it really threads a very fine needle, which is making a Godzilla film that's contemporary, that doesn't feel overly modern, but still has sensibilities of the original films and leaves a lot of space for interpretation moving forward of new ideas and things that again, Godzilla can be used for, or Godzilla can just be a silly fun thing that doesn't have to be super serious. I don't know.

It's just, it's, it's really exciting that this is what Godzilla is now, because I think it just leaves a lot of room for just a lot of interesting Godzilla stuff to come out of it. And especially if it's resonating with people and it's successful and more eyes are getting on it, like that just means, you know, more opportunities to see more Godzilla stuff moving forward. And for a long time, there was not a lot of Godzilla stuff. I mean, for fucking 15 years, pretty much, it was just kind of quiet. So from like the mid 2000s up until Shin Godzilla, really, and Shin Godzilla and the Godzilla Monsterverse stuff, that was kind of the first time in like, in a while.

So it's, no, this is, I'm glad we got to talk about this movie. I really, I really, I've really enjoyed doing doing this episode with you guys so it's it's a good movie a really good movie. Well it tackles a lot of other stuff along the way as much as it is so good at like representing giant monster showing up and tearing things up because those scenes are so good but like i was also just like there's so much of it that's just that post-war like what the hell are we doing you know it's like so i it's interesting watching that as a period piece, but I'm like, we're also immersed in that every day now. So it's not like it only happened in world war two. Like we're looking at modern warfare every day of our lives now.

And I'm like, it's, it's the same stupid questions, you know, it's like, what the hell are we doing? And like, everybody you're like you just see footage of cities that are decimated just as much as in this movie on the news and it's like what what are we doing like none of that none of it makes any sense in this movie of just like it's just why the hell did we do this in this war why the hell is godzilla just trashing everything here and then you you turn on the news and it's the same thing like what modern warfare itself is so detached and like now you you do kind of just have to walk through like they're they're just sort of carrying on with their lives in this little village. And it's like, that's, that's what we have to do now.

Like you, you turn on the news and like, we've watched a city get destroyed and we're just like, Oh, what are we having for lunch today? You know, it's just like, it, it, it also kind of gives you a way to sort of look at it, you know, all of these different things it's warfare and it's, survivors guilt and like all these other, like, I mean, we barely scratched the surface on all the different layers of just guilt and trauma. And like PTSD that these guys are. Going through in this, that like is also kind of represented in a pretty well handled way in a pretty balanced way. When you look at like, what she's going through in this movie and what our main guy is going through.

And then the kid being raised in the middle of this and the neighbor who lost her entire family. Like it's, it's surprising that all of that stuff is balanced as well as it is in a movie that also just has Godzilla show up and just tear the hell out of. The city a couple of times. So the fact that it does all of that stuff so well, I think is pretty impressive. Yeah.

Well, and you also mentioned this idea of like, you know, we've said it before, like, I don't go to these movies to see the human aspect of it. I, in this film, didn't mind it. Like, I did not mind the human story because it is kind of, it's compelling in a way that a lot of these aren't, you know, we talked about that 2014 movie, like, I don't remember what Aaron Taylor Johnson is doing in that movie. I think he's talking about Elizabeth Olsen, maybe. Yeah, that's his whole ways on Detra.

Yeah. Is that his wife in the movie or his sister? It's his wife in that movie. It's his wife, yeah. But next time they're together, they're brother and sister.

What? Is that the same year as Age of Ultron? Like pretty close. Yeah. Yeah.

It's a year or two later, I think. Yeah. I don't remember what their like reason for doing anything or what it is like, but I do like that in this film, it's like, nope, there is a like concerted effort to stop Godzilla. And the people that are involved in stopping Godzilla are these like World War II survivors. And so it has this kind of, reasoning baked into it and these character like kind of motivations that are so interesting and different than just well Godzilla's tearing up the city so we gotta stop him like I like that there's a little bit more nuance to it here which feels again like the filmmaker has something to say and I am really again just surprised by how well that like you said Brian is balanced in a film that you know, again, there is a subsection of people who go to these movies to just see Godzilla.

And I don't think that those people are disappointed leaving this film that they had to have human characters throughout. I mean, you know, to speak to the jaws of it all, jaws wouldn't work nearly as well if Quint and Hooper and Brody weren't played by really great actors who are bringing a really kind of understanding of the character to the screen and a lot of kind of charisma and like the nature of their relationships are really kind of well thought out. That wouldn't be so compelling if it wasn't so well done. I would say the same thing here. Like it's really well done and well acted and well written.

And so it is compelling, but it could have fallen flat. I'm glad it didn't. But I think that's the criticism for a lot of those, like you said, Brian, those monster verse movies. Like I don't care if Millie Bobby Brown is in this movie. It doesn't have any bearing on anything.

So. Yeah. I mean, you don't care about any of those characters, but like this whole– and not just our main– like there's so many interesting characters. That scientist guy became my favorite. Like every time he showed up, I was like, oh, let's hear what this guy has to say.

Yeah, I love that guy. But even like the mechanic, when he comes back, I'm just like he's so like noble and like he's so– like he's the only one that can figure out how this weird plane, which was an actual plane by the way, that is– that weird reverse propeller thing was like one that they were working on at that time. And there was like two that existed at the end of the war there. And so, yeah, it, it, it's interesting how much of the kind of real world war two stuff comes into play and you get these characters like the, the, that mechanic guy that's, that's, he just brings so much humanity to what's going on and what he survived to get to that point in the story. And then how they all just come together to kind of make the finale work.

It's, It's just really well put together just as a screenplay, if nothing else. Do you guys have anything else? No, I think I'm good. I think we've hit most of the big stuff, which there is a lot of big stuff in this movie, not just the monster, but just the themes as well. Yeah, no, I agree.

And I'm really excited to kind of see what what the next I've seen some reviews of the new movie and I don't think it's surprising that people are saying it's not as good as this one, but I think it's one of those like, well, this movie is really good. So that's kind of like, duh. Uh, but I'm, I'm excited to go and actually be able to like see it in theaters and, and enjoy it on a big screen. So, you know, we'll, we'll have an episode for that next month. So, you know, we'll, we'll be doing that.

But, uh, until, uh, until then, Mike, where can people find you and the things that you work on? Well, you can find everything that I do over at the brand new weirdingwaymedia.com website. So go on over there and check out all the shows that are available on weirdingwaymedia.com. How about you, Chris? Same, weirdingwaymedia.com.

Mike has spent a lot of time putting together a really fantastic website that now houses all of the podcasts. It's away from the Spreaker website. Spreaker's website is not a great way to navigate anything. And so Mike decided to put in the good work and make a great website. So now we have a proper website where you can take a look at every show that's on the network and listen to them there and enjoy them there.

And you should do that, including Brian's show, Movie Meltdown. Brian, anywhere that they can find that show other than Weirding Way Media? I don't think so, right? I mean, that's the most important thing. I'm glad to hear that too.

You guys were just telling me about it as we got here. This is a brand new thing because I'm still kind of learning some of the details of it. And as I came in, I mean, I was okay with the basics of the speaker setup, but it is interesting that you've found a better way to present it and a better way for people to navigate, not just one show that they like but you have so many shows to choose from that this kind of gives them a window to check out the other stuff on the website and see what else is out there so yeah i'd say that the best place to go and check out all the different shows. On there 24 folks 24 shows count them if you want to or just go check them out over at weirdingwaymedia.com so do that and then like rate and review this show and all the shows over at itunes and spotify in that order, it helps us out the most in that specific order.

So Mike, thank you so much for joining us. It was fun to get to finally get to talk about Godzilla. So yeah, no, I was really looking forward to this and I was kind of teasing Andrea all week. I was like, Oh, I'm going to do an episode on Godzilla minus one. We're going to watch it again.

And she's like, When? Like, quit turning on other things. I want to see it again. I don't want to watch Wag the Dog, Mike. I want to watch Godzilla Minus One.

God damn it. Now you're just teasing her. Yeah, that's right. And yeah, as always, we'll catch you on the next episode.