By this point, after
watching so many Kaiju films, my daughter was in full Mystery Science Theater 3000 mode.
Here are the highlights.
On the Plucky
Photojournalist, “Pretty, but way too annoying.”
On Tough Guy’s voice,
“He sounds scary, like a ghost.”
(Note: she doesn’t know
John Wayne.)
On Tough Guy himself,
“He’s a poop…and a butt, a Big Fat Butt.”
On the limits of
Japanese CGI showing Godzilla swimming, “Why is Godzilla flying in space?”
On the final battle,
*Much cheering and yelling of random words, aka, “JELLYFISH??!?!!”*
Bonus:
I’d like to grant this
film a special George Award for the scene after Tough Guy blows up the building
with his former friend Scruffy Scientist in it.
Scruffy Scientist’s
exclamation when seeing Tough Guy of, “Nice try asshole,” brought gales of
laughter from my normally profanity averse wife and daughter.
On Lazy Nerd’s appearance, “What’s with bad haircut guy?”
On the creation of a
wormhole, “AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!”
On Jun’s lack of judgment,
“He’s keeping the egg?”
Later- “He’s throwing
the egg down the sewer, why doesn’t he just crack and cook it.”
On the egg bubbling and
reproducing itself in the water, “It’s going to make a major amount of
Gremlins isn’t it?”
On the shadowy hatching
of the Giant Bug Nymphs, ““AAAAAH!” and “EEEEEEW!” repeated multiple times.”
On the appearance of a
fully revealed Giant Bug Nymph, “It looks like a puppet…why is it purple?”
On Megaguirus, “It’s
Battra.”
On the Griffon warplane,
“Cool, I want one.”
(That’s my girl.)
On the death of
Megaguirus, “Yay, it’s dead. Breathe on
it again just to make sure.”
On shooting a black hole
out of a satellite, “Um…won’t that suck up the planet?”
On the punching out of
this movie’s “Butt,” “YAAAAY! Don’t call
Godzilla an it!”
On watching these films
in Japanese with subtitles, “This is too hard to follow, we have to pause too
many times, and the dubbing is funnier.”
Thus ending our
“original language” viewing.
On Godzilla’s unique look, “He’s very square…and not very good at sneaking.”
On Spooky Old Hu,
“Freaky!”
On the sub’s report of
the Kaiju sighting, “Fin of a huge creature…wow, that’s descriptive.”
On the groups of jerky
people that lead to the monster’s arising, “There are a lot of Butts in this
movie.”
On Baragon, “He’s cute!”
On Baragon getting the
snot blasted out of him, “Awwwwww…*sniff*”
On the commentating
helicopter getting the snot blasted out of it when it was hit by Baragon, “Bwa
ha ha ha!”
That’s my girl!
On the return of “magic
dust” at the death of the guardians, “Something cool is going to happen with
that dust.”
On King Ghidorah’s
proper entrance after being infused with Magic Dust, “WHOAH, AWESOME!”
(Good call, kid.)
Really, this one struck
a perfect balance; she was either yelling in surprise or laughing out loud
through most of the movie all the way to the end.
Godzilla breathing out
the hole in his arm was funny, Godzilla exploding was cheer worthy, and
Godzilla’s still beating heart was, “Deeeeeeeeee-sgusting!”
She had fun the whole
time, but still was connected to and worried about the characters. See, it’s more than just a bunch of guys in rubber
lizard suits.
And, to prove once more
my wife was actually paying attention to these films, and not subjected to them
completely against her will:
When the Mothra cocoon
showed up she asked, “Why are there boobs in the lake?”
OK, maybe she wasn’t
paying full attention.
On the Big G’s surprise appearance behind the weatherman, *Hysterical laughter*
On the bum passed by the
running crowd, “Hey! That’s the scientist that the Butt tried to blow up in the
one with the jellyfish!”
(Good eye, kid!)
On Godzilla being back
lit by lightning, “Awesome profile.”
On Angry Pilot, “He’s a
Butt.” (Repeated endlessly)
By now, she was laughing
openly at sad people with plants for friends, proposed the plant was Groot, and
began singing and dancing to “I Want You Back.”
When I asked why she was
laughing at the serious scenes, she replied:
“Because it’s funny.”
She was also providing
Godzilla’s personal inner monologue, e.g.:
Godzilla on being
ineffectively blasted by the army (again), “Seriously? It feels like you’re throwing
muffins at me.”
On Mechagodzilla only
having a two hour battery life, “Wow.”
On Mechagodzilla needing
to be carried into battle, *Facepalm*
On the Kiryu Squad
headquarters claiming, “We won”:
“No, you didn’t…he’ll be
back in the next movie.”
This was a two-fer. Since the Millennium Kiryu films are short
and directly connected we watched them both in one night. As big of a Godzilla fan as I am, I would
advise against doing that. Shakespeare
said “Can one desire too much of a good thing?” and let’s face it, these films
aren’t Shakespeare.
On the plane shooting the UFO, “Don’t shoot Mothra!”
(Yup, she guessed. She
was getting good at these.)
On the plane
subsequently getting blown up, “He got Mothraed.”
On the Shobijin moving
the toy plane with their minds, “They have Telekinesis now??? Oh yeah, they’re
new.”
On the Mothra symbol
rune stone left behind by the Shobijin, “They gave him a Mothra eraser.”
On Army Babe’s
connection with Kiryu, “She’s the Miki of robots…Honestly this story is ridiculous.”
On the inability to
rebuild the Absolute Zero gun, “Why don’t they buy a giant diamond on eBay?”
On Mechagodzilla launching
everything, “Holy shlockabees!”
On the desks arranged
into the Mothra symbol, “They’re still intact? What about all that wind from
Mothra’s wings?”
On the big Kaiju battle,
“Bad Godzilla, Don’t eat Mothra! *Big
G’s breath explodes Mothra’s scales * “What did he just do?!?! Oh NO! Holy Fried Mothra! Wah, she died…again.”
On Kiryu’s arm drill
boring into the Big G’s tummy, “It’s like MOGUERA…eeeewwwwwwww.”
On the larvae webbing
the King of Monsters, “He’s a Godzummy.”
On Nephew Chujo
wondering if he heard the fairies, “Duh, what would it be, an apple?”
(Sometimes she even
confuses me.)
There was much laughing,
at Godzilla catching things that blew up on him, at the many times Nephew Chujo
fell down and at all mentions of the word, “duty.”
Me too on that last one,
we’re a mature bunch.
Speaking of which: Jerky Pilot’s reaction to Nephew Chujo
saying, “Kiryu saved me,” is another Honorary George Award to a Godzilla
film. As his angry,
“Bulls***, I saved your ass.”
“Bulls***, I saved your ass.”
Was rated by my
anti-swear biased daughter as:
“Wrong but funny.”
On Godzilla’s Fiftieth
Anniversary look, “He looks more Showa, but is still ugly.”
On the Angry Mutant,
“He’s a poop.”
(Note: I believe this is
worse than the Butt’s in the other movies in this film series, as whenever she
thought he would be around she went on “Poop Watch.”
When he was finally
dispatched she yelled, “They flushed the poop!”)
On Model Biologist’s
specialization, “Eeew, why is she a Urine Biologist?”
Me, “That’s a U.N. Biologist.”
Her, “Ah.”
On the Kaiju Mummy,
“That looks like Gigan.”
(Good eye kid.)
On the aliens making
familiar weird hand gestured, “Hey! It’s the pointy shoe people!”
(Again, good eye, kid.)
On the Mutant’s defeat
of Ebirah, “They can eat shrimp forever now.”
On the obviously three
headed Monster X, “What is that thing?”
(Not always a good eye,
kid.)
On Gigan’s head falling
off, “Nice.”
On all the Matrix inspired fight scenes (since
she’s never seen it), “Nice.”
On Gigan 2.0, “What?!”
On Mothra’s flaming dive
bomb, “Ha Ha! Mothra survi… oh.”
On Godzilla’s hammer
throw and incineration of Kaiser Ghidorah, and Minilla’s final radioactive
breath blast, “HOLY!”
Basically, my daughter
cheered near constantly at the various Kaiju excitement in this rousing tribute
to the Showa series she liked the best of all the films. She also expressed sympathy for the Big G any
time he was in trouble, even though he randomly killed people and took out most
of Tokyo. I’d say that was also generated based on Showa memories more than
anything else.
In fact, she rated Final Wars as not only the best
Millennium film, but her overall favorite of Sixty Years of Godzilla. I don’t think that would be possible if she
only saw this one.
It functions better as a
Grand Finale than a standalone.
She did, however,
express that the movie would have been infinitely better if they replaced some
of X’s insane rants with Shobijin songs.
Because, Fairies, duh
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