Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Decade of the Lizard: Introduction

Nothing good ever really goes away; this applies to Godzilla. Forty-five years after the original Gojira, the King of All Monsters made his return in a brand new film. Some say that it was made in response to the 1998 film Godzilla by Roland Emmerich, which took liberties with the character. Essentially, we made a film about a giant lizard that breaks the two rules of the character: He breathes fire and He is invincible. The big guy just yells & is killed by missile fire. This, of course, is a re-use of the King Kong ending from 1933. So, essentially, we took the character, stole our own ending and attached a marketable name to it. This did not sit well with Toho. So, five years after the last Heisei Era film, a new film was released. This acted as its own unique entity, tying only into the continuity of Gojira. This became the formula, bringing the monster back and making new stories around him that exist in some sort of pocket dimension. Some characters aside from Godzilla appear in numerous ones (i.e. Mothra), which makes the disconnected nature feel even stranger. Ironically, the one film that inspires a direct sequel- Godzilla against Mechagodzilla- did very well, although the actual sequel underperformed. You cannot wholly blame the lack of explosive success on the films themselves though. Instead, it is from a slow change in the fan base itself looking for different things. As Wikipedia notes, it was outperformed in Japan by Howl's Moving Castle and The Incredibles. Do not worry, Kaiju fans, the series will return sometime in the next four or five years. Until then, you will just have to make do with the twenty-eight other films in the series. Aw, poor babies.

Are you ready for the reviews?

Stay tuned…

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