Thursday, November 27, 2014

Godzilla Through a Kid’s Eyes – Millennium



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.”
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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