Godzilla - Final Wars
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Movie Reviews of Godzilla - Final Wars
Movie Review: If you don't like this movie, you're not a real G fan.
Summary: 5 Stars
This is the greatest movie I have ever seen. Ever. And not just greatest Godzilla or daikaiju movie, either. The monsters in it are Godzilla, Anguirus, Mothra, Rodan, Monster X, Keizer(pronounced like Kaiser) Ghidorah, Minya, Gigan, Kumonga, Ebirah, Kamacuras, Hedorah, Zilla, King Caesar, Manda, Baragon, Varan, Megaguirus, Gaira, Titanosaurus, and a squid infected by Yog whose name I can't remember. It's really too bad that Toho blew it in so many ways in the 70's, or so many more people would watch them. If they hadn't taken Godzilla away from his roots as the embodiment of man's careless mistakes and made him a comic-book superhero for kids(don't get me wrong- I love the Showa series) and basically stopped all publicity for their movies whatsoever after Godzilla vs. Megalon, people'd probably not think that all of them were in black-and-white and stopped production in the 70's for crying out loud! In any case, Ryuhei Kitamura definitely knew what he was doing. All the rip-offs from the Matrix, Star Wars, Independance Day, X-Men, and all the countless others were done on purpose. Kitamura was just paying homage to all the other sci-fi hits from over the years. He also does much the same thing with the fact that Godzilla truly is the King of the Monsters, both in and out of the battles; take a close look at the toy that that evil kid threw in the fireplace. This is also why he wins most of his battles within 30 seconds, another commonly criticised part of the movie. Kitamura used this with great effect at many parts(the Godzilla vs. Zilla battle comes to mind). Besides, did you FW-haters expect each battle to be 20 minutes long? Come on. And has anybody noticed that the people who hated this movie also HATED THE SHOWA FILMS? Those people can't accept Godzilla for what he is. Besides, this version of the Big G is mostly a mix of all his past incarnations; at times wonderfully cheesy, others the deadly force of nature from the Heisei series(which was also great), yet people still complain about how this makes Final Wars "so bad". It was done on purpose, like every other thing in the movie that gives G fans the pleasure of rolling their eyes to themselves. Many also complain about bad CG. WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE? Every computer-generated shot(okay,except for that one shot of Monster X's foot transforming) looked amazing; Godzilla's atomic nuclear radioactive heat fire plasma ray beam breath weapon(try saying all that 5 times fast) has looked completely real in every movie since Godzilla 2000: Millenium. Final Wars has better CG than Gamera 3, and all the reviews for that say it has flawless special effects. Manda, Rodan, Zilla, Anguirus's Thunderball attack, and many others look awesome. Manda really looks cool when he's charged with the heat from the lava and he snaps his teeth right in your face, and they actually made Zilla cool; it was nice to see him do something other than eat fish and bolt like a rabbit whenever he sees something bigger than a bread box. His death was still one of the highlights of the movie, though. BOOM! And speaking of which, another commonly criticised thing about Final Wars is its soundtrack. Rather than the traditional classical soundtrack, most of the music is techno-rock. Once again, I don't know why people automatically trash their DVD, log on to Amazon.com, and type a bad review as soon as they hear an electric guitar. In the Godzilla vs. Zilla battle, they played a rock song by Sum41. But nobody has apparently listened to the lyrics. IT FITS THE IDEA THAT ZILLA IS IMPERSONATING THE REAL KING if you actually listened, my gosh. Godzilla's new theme for this movie is one of my all-time favorites ever. In many ways this sets the mood for the movie in ways the(albeit, great) classical music couldn't; consider Rodan's rampage scene. The new Godzilla has the head of the 2000: Millenium one(thankfully, his snout isn't, like, bent like in the two Kiryu movies) and the spines/breath color of the original, Showa, and Heisei ones. Gigan looks wicked-awesome and Ghidorah is finally as he was meant to be; he's finally one of the few monsters in history who has pushed Godzilla to the brink of death, which is more impressive than actually beating him. I wish that they had remade Megalon instead of King Caesar, though. Oh well. The film's aliens are remade versions of the ones from Godzilla vs. Monster Zero, the Xilians. The main villain, X, is without question the coolest and funniest bad guy in any Godzilla flik. He also gives almost every one of the best lines in the movie hands-down, particularly right after Godzilla nukes Zilla. Captain Gordon is also really cool, like when he's just normally walking when the ship he's inside is blowing up while holding his samurai sword on the back of his neck. This was a great way to celebrate Godzilla's 50th birthday and the end of the Millenium series. Who knows? Maybe Peter Jackson will remake the first Godzilla movie then finish it off by remaking King Kong vs. Godzilla, the filmmaking genius. He's definitely done the greatest version of King Kong ever. All he has to do is make Godzilla look like himself, but with CG. That'll give the Final Wars haters and real G fans alike something to worship. If this really is the last Godzilla movie(which I highly doubt), he sure went out with a BANG!
P.S. I'm not really under 13. I AM 13! Hahahahaha!
Movie Review: GODZILLA & A NEW GENERATION OF GIANT MONSTERS
Summary: 5 Stars
Final Wars is a fun film; But, I'd really like to address an important issue here. The fact that most Americans still believe that Godzilla hasn't made
a new movie since the mid seventies. I often meet people who express total surprise that that the series is still in production. And I also meet people who have a total misconception about Godzilla films in general.
When discribing a Godzilla film it is common for (young people in particular) to exagerate the quality of Godzilla's movies. "Its a guy in a fake looking rubber suit with a visible zipper down the back stepping on cheap toys" , I often hear. Its all just a big misconception really, and the criticisms seem to be only pointed at japanese made sci fi films. Are the special effect in, Oh, say "Monster Zero" that far off in quality from Disney's "Moon Pilot" or "You Only Live Twice"? Of course not. are rubber suits such an awful way to create a monster? The ALIEN is a rubber suit. So are the PREDATOR, Chewbacca, Jason etc. (and Ive never seen a zipper on Godzilla.) It is obvious to me that , despite the availability of most of Godzilla's movies on DVD, this is a generation that was brought up without these films. As a child in the 1970s and '80s I saw the movies on TV regularly, and it was common for the kids in the neighborhood to drop everything and run inside if a Japanese monster film was showing on the afterschool 4 o'clock movie.
The image that is in americans minds is the Dean Devlin 1998 abomination (which, despite the huge effects budget resembles a man in a suit more than any Japanese film), and I'm afraid this will probably not change for a very long time.
Why?
Because of the low profile release of every Godzilla film in the US
since GODZILLA vs. MEGALON in 1975. SInce then, all G films were released with no publicity at all (G vs. Gigan/Mechagodzilla), very little publicity (G 1985/2000), Directly to TV (Terror of MechaG) or in most casses since the 1980s directly to home video or DVD. As a result of this, the few who remember GODZILLA 1985 arent awhare that the series even continued after that year at all. Columbia/Tri-Star even
blocked the release of the previous 5 Godzilla films (G vs. King Ghidorah 1991- vs. Destoroyah 95) while promoting their own movie in 1998. It's all so sad. The empoyees at a video store I frequent (ages 16-27) didnt even realize that the DVD's they have been stocking and selling were of new Godzilla films. They simply assumed these were all "old" movies. When I asked two of the kids when they thought Godzilla films were made/released. They said that they really weren't sure and settled on the generic in the "OLD DAYS" answer. (Boy, did I feel old, and I'm only 34) One of them said that he assumed that all the Godzilla films were in BLACK & WHITE!!!!! and believed that they started making them around the same time as KING KONG!!! (I pressed these two knuckleheads further and learned that they had no idea when the Atomic Bomb was invented and all they could tell me about World War II was that it started "because of racism" and that we dropped the A-Bomb to "whipe out the Japanese race". They weren't really sure who was on which side and were surprised when I told them Italy was involved and about the battles in North Africa. Scary. I guess I shouldn't worry so much about monster movies. )
Anyway, people really should see the new ( and "OLD") films in the Godzilla series. Maybe then the misconceptions would stop.
But I doubt it.
For the record, there have been 13 Godzilla films released from 1985 to 2004. Thats 28 total. 29 if you count the Tri-Star piece of cr@p. (and
about a hundred spinnoff monster movies and cartoons)
James Bond still has only 20. 22 if you count Never Say Never Again (Just a remake of Thunderball) and the comedy Casino Royale.
Jason Voorhees still has only 11.
Halloween/Michael Myers has just 8.
King Kong has 7 (and two animated movies)
Jaws has only 4.
Psycho has 5 (and 1 TV movie)
Freddy Krueger has 8 (and a TV show)
Amityville Horror has 7 (and 2 TV movies)
Exorcist has 5
The Howling has 7
Hellraiser has 8
Puppetmaster has 8
The Omen has 3 (and 1 TV movie)
Robocop has 3 (and 5 TV movies and a series. Oh yeah Cartoons also)
Terminator still has just 3.
Texas Chainsaw has 5.
Dirty Harry has 5
Mad Max has 3
Universal's Frankenstein had 8
Hammer's Frankenstein has 6
Universal's Dracula has 7
Hammer's Dracula has 9 (and 2 spinnoffs)
Universal's Wolfman has 5
Invisible Man has 4 (and 3 spinnoffs)
Universal's Mummy has 8 (and 1 spinnoff)
Hammer's Mummy has 4
Creature from the Black Lagoon had 3
and for the record, BRUCE LEE only made 4 1/2. And I mean the real Bruce Lee, Not Bruce Li, Bruce Le, Bruce Lo, Dragon Lee, Bluce Ree or whoever. Just Bruce lee himself.
Movie Review: Godzilla-Final Wars...
Summary: 5 Stars
Directed by Ryuhei Kitamura, famous for such movies as Versus & Azuma, Godzilla-Final Wars is a movie that celebrates Godzilla's long history(50 years) and proves why Godzilla is 'King of Monsters'. The story begins with many giant monsters being created as a result of Nuclear Tests. During this time, a group called The Earth Defense Force was created to do battle with these monsters, one of which was Godzilla. In the 60s, the Earth Defense Force used a Machine called the Gotengo to battle against Godzilla in Antartica. Ultimately winning by burying him under the ice. Move forward to a day in 2004, when all at once, the many monsters the Earth Defense Force once battled began attacking major cities all over the world. As the Force begins to battle them, the monsters begin to disappear in a flash of light & UFOs rush away from the scene. At the Force's Headquarters in Tokyo, the UFOs mothership appears and a group of aliens known as the Xilians introduce themselves to the world. They proceed to tell them that a planet is headed for Earth but, only with their help, will it be saved. Only you find out later that their intentions weren't like that at all. When the Xilians began attacking the Earth with the giant monsters it had previously saved the Earth from, the Earth Defense Force realizes the only way they can save the day is by releasing Godzilla from his icy tomb. Save the day, Godzilla does, as he goes onto fight the likes of Gigan-Zilla(our american Godzilla, which wasn't Godzilla at all)-Kumonga-Kamacuras- Anguirus-Rodan-King Caesar-Hedorah-Ebirah-MonsterX- & finally Kaiser King Ghidorah. Mothra tries to aid Godzilla, as he does in many Godzilla movies, by fighting a new improved Gigan. While Mothra is hurt by Gigan, Mothra still manages to beat Gigan. Without giving away too much about the rest of the movie, let me just say that this movie has to be the most intense and serious Godzilla movie I've seen in years. Departing from the normal Godzilla movie fare, Final Wars is nothing but wall-to-wall action scenes. After seeing it in original Japanese language with English subtitles, I'll probably never watch another Godzilla movie with English voiceovers(which is a good thing, anyway, as most of the English voiceovers make it seem too campy). Sadly, Godzilla-Final Wars marks Godzilla's last appearance on these shores(or Japan's for that matter) for-at least- five to ten years to reignite interest in the franchise. What a way to go out, though. This has to be my most favorite Godzilla movie of all-time next to Godzilla-King of Monsters. It's a movie that gives me hope that Toho will take Godzilla in a new and exciting direction(with new monsters & storylines) when they do decide to bring the franchise back. Who knows, maybe Godzilla will last another 50 years. You never know. Even though there have been great movies as well as crappy movies in the franchise, Godzilla has lasted this long. There's something to be said for that.
If you're a diehard fan or someone who hasn't seen a Godzilla movie since the 70s when he was hugely popular here, you've got to see this movie. It will renew your interest in the series. Trust me.
Movie Review: A new type of Godzilla film
Summary: 5 Stars
There is too much to be said about this movie and I don't want to write an ultra-long review, so I'll do my best to give a rough description of what to expect from this movie, and the reader can decide for himself if he thinks this movie is worth seeing.
This Godzilla film is very different from all the other Godzilla films. This is the only Godzilla film directed by Ryuhei Kitamura. Unlike previous Godzilla films, the "human" scenes also feature heavy-duty fighting/action sequences, sort of like the Matrix Trilogy, or some Hong Kong Martial Arts flicks. The film's original music and overall style are consistent with that feel as well.
In terms of the length of the monster fighting footage contained in this movie, it is above average for a Godzilla movie, but not tremendously so. There are many monsters (about 16) but most die quickly. In the end, this movie ends up being "Godzilla vs King Ghidorah, Part 7" so it's not a complete Battle Royale monsterfest. But it's still a respectable monsterfest, and lots of fun for fans of Godzilla. The fight choreography and style is fairly unique as well. The monsters move faster than in most other Godzilla movies. Some even do karate. They don't move as fast or cheesily as some of the Godzilla movies of the 70's (those were a lot of fun, I was a fan of that style myself) but it is close. There are also some interesting scenes preceding the final fight between Godzilla and Ghidorah that totally rip off from Dragon Ball Z which I thought were really cool.
This movie sort of works as a tribute to the old Godzilla movies of the 60's I think, so there are some really campy things in it like cheesily-dressed aliens and mutants. But it's funny, and done on purpose. The aliens look sort of cool and cheesy at the same time, and the same goes for their spazzy leader. If you don't mind a bit of silliness in your shows you'll probably like this movie. But the style isn't for everyone, and some viewers will be turned off by the idiocy and straight-forwardness of the plot. Godzilla Final Wars is almost like a parody of the earlier Godzilla movies, it is so silly at times.
A friend of mine commented that Godzilla Final Wars feels like it was intended for little kids. I don't totally agree with that, but I'll agree that being able to enjoy a fairly mindless silly show is a requirement to enjoying this show. However, if you do like this type of show, this movie is amazing and will be a lot of fun.
There's also a trailer for Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children on this DVD. That was an unexpected bonus, too.
Movie Review: Great Movie!
Summary: 5 Stars
I have to say that Godzilla: Final Wars is the best movie out of the Millennium series, at least in my opinion. I loved how they used the Xillians from Godzilla vs. Monster Zero and knocked up their coolness factor up a lot. There was so much action in this movie that the parts that didn't have any kaiju in it could have been used for a separate movie and still would have been just as cool. They have many action scenes between the humans that keep this movie very entertaining. Mainly when the main hero is fighting his friend who was brainwashed and they are fighting while riding motorcycles. That action sequence is fantastic. A lot of the story is.
X, the main Villain of the film, is probably the coolest villain I have seen on a Godzilla film. He just has this evil sneer about his face that makes him seem diabolical yet cool at the same time. I didn't watch the movie in sub-title, but in dub so I don't know if it would be the same, but the dubbed voice of X really fit with the character, I especially enjoyed his laugh. Frye, the American in this film, did a great job in it as well. It was nice to see an American once again in a Godzilla film that is actually supposed to be in it and not just added for the American version.
The music of the film also was some of the best I have heard. Everything about the music in this film fit the scenes they were put into.
The monsters fights themselves were pretty good, but short. The only problem I had with the fights that Godzilla had was that they were too short, some fights only lasting maybe thirty seconds. But who's to argue, this movie featured 15 different monsters, even the American Godzilla labeled as just Zilla on the DVD box. Even Minya returned in this film. He pretty much acts the way he usually does, but he isn't much in the film so the Minya haters shouldn't be too upset about his presence in this movie.
It's overall a great movie to end the Millennium series. From the awesomely cool opening credits that pay homage to all of the previous movies throughout the years to the end credits, it's all fantastic and I really do enjoy the film.