Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb
Speaker 2: and this is Joe McCormick.
Speaker 3: And today on Weird House Cinema, we are going to
Speaker 3: be talking about the nineteen sixty four giant monster movie
Speaker 3: Mathra Versus Godzilla, directed by Ishiro Honda.
Speaker 2: This is our third Godzilla movie, following nineteen seventy one's
Speaker 2: Godzilla Versus Hetera and nineteen sixty nine's All Monsters Attack.
Speaker 2: That's films eleven and ten, respectively. This is also our
Speaker 2: third Ishuro Honda film. He directed this All Monsters Attack
Speaker 2: and a nineteen sixty nine film titled Atragon we've talked
Speaker 2: about on the show before that has a flying submarine
Speaker 2: and another Kaiju creature.
Speaker 4: He is.
Speaker 2: He is one of only a handful of directors that
Speaker 2: we have featured on three or more Weird House Cinema selections.
Speaker 3: You know, we are really doing the Godzilla films in
Speaker 3: a strange order, and by that I mean we're working
Speaker 3: first of all, backwards through time, but also we started
Speaker 3: with what are widely seen as some of the weirdest,
Speaker 3: most divergent films in the Showa era Godzilla catalog. So
Speaker 3: the first one we did, like you said, was Godzilla
Speaker 3: versus Hetera. That's from nineteen seventy one. That was indeed
Speaker 3: the eleventh film in the Godzilla canon, and that one
Speaker 3: was a psychedelic ecological doom trip in which Godzilla is
Speaker 3: summoned to defend Japan from a toxic sludge monster that
Speaker 3: powers up by huffing pollution out of factory smokestacks. A
Speaker 3: lot of Godzilla fans regard Hetera as one of the
Speaker 3: worst films in the series. I do not share that opinion.
Speaker 3: I like it a lot more than some of the
Speaker 3: more mainstream monster slams in the middle of the original run.
Speaker 3: I think it's weirdness actually kind of makes it more unique,
Speaker 3: really makes it stand out. But I will agree, yes,
Speaker 3: it is one of the most unusual Godzilla films.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, if
Speaker 2: you're watching a Godzilla movie or any Kaiji movie, it's
Speaker 2: like you're in a good place. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So we did that one, and then the next
Speaker 3: one we covered was based on a listener suggestion, that
Speaker 3: was All Monsters Attack from sixty nine. This was the
Speaker 3: tenth Godzilla film, as you said, And once again, this
Speaker 3: one was a departure from the established format at this
Speaker 3: time because while the main series, starting from pretty early,
Speaker 3: had been especially popular with kids, I think All Monsters
Speaker 3: Attack was the first Godzilla movie that you could really
Speaker 3: say was explicitly just made for children. It was just
Speaker 3: a kid's movie. The main character is a lonely little
Speaker 3: boy whose parents are always busy working, and so he
Speaker 3: sort of has Godzilla in the previously introduced ab Zilla
Speaker 3: creature known as Manila, like Mini Godzilla as imaginary friends.
Speaker 3: All Monsters Attack was also a very budget conscious film,
Speaker 3: making extensive use of archival footage from previous Godzilla movies,
Speaker 3: recycling fights and inserting them in creative ways into this
Speaker 3: framing narrative about the little boy who imagines the adventures
Speaker 3: of Godzilla and Manila. This one was also unusual for
Speaker 3: the series because within this frame narrative, it was understood
Speaker 3: that Godzilla and the other monsters are basically fictional beings,
Speaker 3: so they're not being portrayed as acting within the real
Speaker 3: universe of the movie, but they are being dreamed about
Speaker 3: or imagined about by the main character. So in All
Speaker 3: Monsters Attack, they are creatures of the imagination, and the
Speaker 3: main point of the story was about what they mean
Speaker 3: to the children who love them. There's actually a monologue.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you remember this, Rob there's like
Speaker 3: a monologue at the end of the movie that exploit
Speaker 3: makes the case that the Kaiju are for children what
Speaker 3: the gods are for adults.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that one was very interesting in that in many
Speaker 2: ways you could see it as a lesser Godzilla film
Speaker 2: because it is clearly, you know, aimed at children, and
Speaker 2: it has a has a mini Godzilla and so forth.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it does like chew a little bit on
Speaker 2: the meaning of a of a Kaiju film. So I
Speaker 2: really did appreciate that one as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so those were number eleven and then number ten,
Speaker 3: and now we're doing a big hopscotch down the chronology
Speaker 3: ladder to number four. Mathra Versus Godzilla was the fourth
Speaker 3: film in the Godzilla franchise, and it represents the third
Speaker 3: time that Godzilla would face off against another giant monster
Speaker 3: in battle, the first time a Godzilla movie would include
Speaker 3: a monster that I think you should regard as explicitly
Speaker 3: good or as a protector of humans against a greater threat.
Speaker 3: This is a role god' Zilla would himself usually take
Speaker 3: in later films, but here the protector is not Godzilla
Speaker 3: but rather his antagonist Mathra.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the title is Mathra versus Godzilla, which kind of
Speaker 2: does imply that Mathra has top billing. We'll get into
Speaker 2: that a little bit. But also it is like Mathra
Speaker 2: against Godzilla. Mathra is a force in opposition to Godzilla.
Speaker 2: And yeah, Mathra is absolutely good. Mathra is a protector.
Speaker 2: It's not one of these like though the enemy of
Speaker 2: my enemy monster is my friend monster. No, like Mathra
Speaker 2: is a divine being. The Mathra is the creature of
Speaker 2: the gods.
Speaker 3: But also Mathra is not cute and friendly and cuddly
Speaker 3: the way that say Manila is right, Mathra is a
Speaker 3: somewhat frightening being, but frightening to protect us, to you know,
Speaker 3: frightening on the side of good.
Speaker 2: But she also looks very soft, like you know, she's
Speaker 2: kind of free. So I mean there is a a
Speaker 2: very nice touch the fur vibe with Mathra as well.
Speaker 3: I didn't think about the furriness. You are right there,
Speaker 3: more texturally pleasing than most of the monsters in the
Speaker 3: Godzilla series, which are often quite spiny and scaly. Looking,
Speaker 3: but also mathra Versus Godzilla is the last film of
Speaker 3: the original Toho run to make Godzilla a bad guy.
Speaker 3: You could argue that Godzilla is more or less the villain, or,
Speaker 3: if not a morally culpable villain, at least a threatening
Speaker 3: and destructive force to humans in the first four movies,
Speaker 3: So I think maybe we should run through those really
Speaker 3: quick to figure out how we get to mathra Versus Godzilla.
Speaker 3: So you've got the original Godzilla in nineteen fifty four. This,
Speaker 3: as we've talked about in the past, is a dark, haunting,
Speaker 3: somber tale about a monster created by nuclear weapons testing,
Speaker 3: which rises up out of the sea and attacks Japan.
Speaker 3: The first movie here was inspired in part by some
Speaker 3: events in the real world. You can obviously think about
Speaker 3: the events of World War two and the atomic bombing
Speaker 3: of Japan, but then also there were more recent events
Speaker 3: that I've read were a major influence on the original Godzilla.
Speaker 3: One of these was the so called Lucky Dragon five incident,
Speaker 3: which happened earlier the year Godzilla was released. This was
Speaker 3: when the crew of a Japanese tuna fishing boat called
Speaker 3: the Lucky Dragon five were exposed to high levels of
Speaker 3: radiation as a result of the Castle Bravo hydrogen bomb
Speaker 3: test at Bikini Atole, And you can see the influence
Speaker 3: of the anxiety caused by this event in the way
Speaker 3: the movie articulates anti nuclear and anti militarist themes. A
Speaker 3: lot of Godzilla fans trained on the silly, sometimes themeless
Speaker 3: monster suit wrastle in matches that you would get in
Speaker 3: later movies, I think will be quite shocked by the
Speaker 3: dark and serious time of the first movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the original Godzilla black and white, Godzilla is an
Speaker 2: absolute destroyer and a thing that arises out of humanity's
Speaker 2: atomic age sins. Really.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And now this first movie was directed by Ishiro Honda,
Speaker 3: the same as the director of mathra Versus Godzilla. So
Speaker 3: it's not a question of like totally different creative inputs.
Speaker 3: We have the same main creative force behind these two movies,
Speaker 3: but we can talk about reasons they might be different
Speaker 3: across time. But the first movie was by Honda and
Speaker 3: it was a huge hit for Toho. So in this movie,
Speaker 3: Godzilla is not a protector. I don't know if it
Speaker 3: makes sense to call him a villain, but he certainly
Speaker 3: has I think he's pretty close to a villain in
Speaker 3: the first movie certainly a destructive force of nature or
Speaker 3: a destructive force of nature having been twisted by human
Speaker 3: sins and technology.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's the way to look at it. Like, Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's not like he has of a persona beyond that.
Speaker 2: I mean, he is like some sort of dark anti
Speaker 2: god that has been summoned by human technology and human advancement.
Speaker 3: Not here to help.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, then after that, so that's fifty four. Then after
Speaker 3: that you've got Godzilla raids again in nineteen fifty five.
Speaker 3: This was a fast follow up movie to capitalize on
Speaker 3: the success of the original Godzilla. This one not directed
Speaker 3: by Ishi ro Honda but by Modeyoshi Oda. Mostly gone
Speaker 3: in this one are the anti war, anti nuclear themes.
Speaker 3: I haven't actually seen this movie, but from what I've
Speaker 3: read it, it's described as kind of a fast paced
Speaker 3: adventure where Godzilla ends up fighting another giant monster. I
Speaker 3: believe based on an ankylosaur model. It's like a quadrupedal
Speaker 3: dinosaur covered in spines called anguirras. Worth noting here that
Speaker 3: the Godzilla of this movie was not supposed to be
Speaker 3: the same individual as the original Godzilla, who died at
Speaker 3: the end of the first movie is just another giant
Speaker 3: radioactive reptile.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. At the end of the first movie, Godzilla
Speaker 2: is destroyed, and there's just kind of there's this warning.
Speaker 2: It's like, if we don't change our ways, there could
Speaker 2: be more Godzillas. Yeah, and yeah it came to pass.
Speaker 3: Here they come. Yeah, and then after this there actually
Speaker 3: would not be another Godzilla movie for eight years. But
Speaker 3: Toho did not abandon the Kaiju the giant monster format. Instead,
Speaker 3: they introduced new monsters in their own films, such as
Speaker 3: Rodin in nineteen fifty six. This is a movie about
Speaker 3: a giant flying taranadon basically. This one is also directed
Speaker 3: by Ishiro Honda, and then Mathra in nineteen sixty one,
Speaker 3: again by Honda, about a giant moth worshiped as a
Speaker 3: god by the people of a remote island. And I
Speaker 3: think you could argue that Mathra was the second most
Speaker 3: popular original Toho Kaiju after Godzilla.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that seems to be the case. I was reading
Speaker 2: a bit about this in Godzilla. The show What Era
Speaker 2: Films nineteen fifty four through nineteen seventy five, which is
Speaker 2: the book Slash Blu Ray collection that the Criterion collection
Speaker 2: put out with the textual part written by Steve Rifle,
Speaker 2: who is, as far as I can tell, like the
Speaker 2: main English language authority on Godzilla films. I've heard him
Speaker 2: on Fresh Air with Harry Gross before talking about Godzilla films.
Speaker 3: We were just talking about this off Mike, but we
Speaker 3: both just ordered this Criterion collection disc set and it's
Speaker 3: a magnificent collection. Yeah, the book that comes with it
Speaker 3: is excellent.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is a testimony to just how beautiful physical
Speaker 2: media can be for films. But one of the points
Speaker 2: I'll keep coming back to some of the things that
Speaker 2: Rifle has to say about these about these movies, the
Speaker 2: Rifle points out that during this period, this is like
Speaker 2: a golden age of Japanese cinema. Japanese film studios were
Speaker 2: really cooking. A lot of great serious films were coming out,
Speaker 2: but also in these other buckets of content, there was
Speaker 2: like a lot of innovation. People were trying new things,
Speaker 2: and I think that's part of what we're seeing here
Speaker 2: is like Godzilla was a success, but they were trying.
Speaker 2: They were expanding what Kaiju could be as well. So
Speaker 2: it's like they weren't going to rest on their laurels
Speaker 2: necessarily and just put out Godzilla films, though they will
Speaker 2: eventually kind of return to form with this, Like let's
Speaker 2: come back to Godzilla, and maybe we'll bring in some
Speaker 2: things that we learned and some creatures we created from
Speaker 2: these other pictures.
Speaker 3: That's right, And so here we finally get to that.
Speaker 3: In nineteen sixty three with King Kong versus Godzilla. They
Speaker 3: got the rights yep, Gong, or at least got some
Speaker 3: kind of rights to King Kong. So this was a
Speaker 3: sort of appointment meet slam between as the poster said,
Speaker 3: the two mightiest monsters of all time. From what I've read,
Speaker 3: By the way, I think King Kong was one of
Speaker 3: the inspirations for the original Godzilla, Like there was a
Speaker 3: producer at Toho who had been thinking about King Kong,
Speaker 3: which had just had been made in the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 3: but I think it had just been recently re released internationally.
Speaker 3: And then I think there were also some other creative inspirations,
Speaker 3: maybe the Beast from twenty thousand Fathoms. But anyway, so
Speaker 3: here we've kind we finally get to mash the flavors
Speaker 3: together King Kong Versus Godzilla. It continued the giant monster
Speaker 3: conflict theme I believe it is in this movie that
Speaker 3: we really start to see the first signs of silly
Speaker 3: moves taken from professional wrestling, and the monsters start to
Speaker 3: act a bit less scary and more funny and anthropomorphic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Rifle says that Honda was not a big
Speaker 2: fan of this sort of treatment of Godzilla, and certainly
Speaker 2: some of the stuff we see in some subsequent films
Speaker 2: where Godzilla is essentially dancing and doing pratfalls. Yeah. I
Speaker 2: think he makes a strong point that when Honda is
Speaker 2: on board for a picture, there is to you're going
Speaker 2: to see more of a move towards capturing something serious
Speaker 2: about Godzilla and maybe leaning a little bit more into
Speaker 2: social commentary than some of the other pictures. Are those
Speaker 2: Some of the non Honda pictures, like the Hetero picture,
Speaker 2: are actually quite serious in their own right as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, I mean, I don't take it to be
Speaker 3: that Ishiro Honda was against having a silly fun time.
Speaker 3: I think it's more like that, you know, he made
Speaker 3: the original movie, and he made it with serious themes
Speaker 3: in mind. This was inn like anti nuclear weapons, anti
Speaker 3: war film, and now this same creature is just out here,
Speaker 3: you know, doing touchdown dances and stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like he did. He seemed to be opposed to
Speaker 2: ignoring the legacy of Godzilla and what Godzilla originally meant.
Speaker 2: You can certainly drift and evolve the brand, but you
Speaker 2: don't want to abandon some of the key principles of
Speaker 2: the thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But anyway, so you have King Kong versus Godzilla,
Speaker 3: and then finally you get to the movie we're talking
Speaker 3: about today, Mathra versus Godzilla in nineteen sixty four, where
Speaker 3: contrary to our expectations trained on the later movies, there
Speaker 3: is a protector monster, but it is Mathra, not Godzilla.
Speaker 3: Godzilla is on the loose again, smashing things up after
Speaker 3: being awoken from the dirt, and in the story, the
Speaker 3: people of Japan must It's interesting what they have to
Speaker 3: do to defend themselves. It is essentially to humble themselves
Speaker 3: before nature and before the gods. To they have to
Speaker 3: humble themselves in like go to an island and ask
Speaker 3: the people there to allow them to petition their great
Speaker 3: godlike moth deity to come to their aid, and the
Speaker 3: moth does come to their aid, but not before making
Speaker 3: them feel bad about their greed and arrogance.
Speaker 2: And they should feel bad. Yeah, I will discuss.
Speaker 3: But remember I started talking about these four movies in order,
Speaker 3: because this is the last time in this original run,
Speaker 3: at least, that we really see Godzilla as the antagonist,
Speaker 3: the villain as opposed to the protector. After this movie,
Speaker 3: Godzilla starts his Long Face turn, repeatedly being called upon
Speaker 3: to battle more evil and more destructive monsters, essentially to
Speaker 3: himself do what Mathra does in this movie. I believe
Speaker 3: Godzilla would wouldn't really get to be the villain again
Speaker 3: until some films later in the seventies and eighties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when they essentially a relaunching Godzilla and going back
Speaker 2: to its roots to some extent.
Speaker 3: But anyway, since we've been going backwards through time through
Speaker 3: the series, I wonder, are we eventually going to work
Speaker 3: our way back to the fifty four original.
Speaker 2: Yeah? I think we should. It's interesting to think about
Speaker 2: all this in comparison to the way I think most
Speaker 2: of us have consumed Godzilla media, like, most of us
Speaker 2: have probably not seen them. First of all, most of
Speaker 2: us have not seen all of them, and most of
Speaker 2: us have certainly not seen them in order. I know
Speaker 2: growing up it's like I would catch Godzilla movies on
Speaker 2: television exclusively. I don't know that I had ever rented
Speaker 2: a Godzilla movie growing up. Maybe one of the later
Speaker 2: and one or two of the later you know, films
Speaker 2: from the nineties or something, But for the most part,
Speaker 2: it's just Godzilla movies came on. You might not catch
Speaker 2: all of them, you might just catch parts of them
Speaker 2: even you don't didn't know where in the in the
Speaker 2: order they fell. And then you're just continually making new
Speaker 2: discoveries about what a Godzilla movie can be.
Speaker 3: Wait, do you remember what the first one you saw was?
Speaker 2: Ooh, that's a tough one, because you know, there were
Speaker 2: some There was a there was a there was one
Speaker 2: Godzilla movie in particular I remember seeing on Mystery Sens
Speaker 2: Theater three thousand as a kid. But then there were
Speaker 2: some others that they would just play on various Turner
Speaker 2: broadcast stations. I want to say that it was Godzilla
Speaker 2: versus the Sea Monster. I think that was the one,
Speaker 2: one of the big crab Monster. I think that might
Speaker 2: have been the first one I saw a bia. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: it was also released as Godzilla Versus the Sea Monster.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure this is the earliest one I saw,
Speaker 3: but my earliest memory of seeing one was a TV
Speaker 3: broadcast of the one that's now usually called Godzilla Versus.
Speaker 3: Actually not Godzilla Verses, just called the Invasion of the
Speaker 3: Astro Monster. It's the one where Godzilla fights an alien
Speaker 3: kaiju called Monster Zero. I remember the scene on the
Speaker 3: other planet where like there's like a big I don't know,
Speaker 3: in my memory, it was like a football field on
Speaker 3: the surface of another planet.
Speaker 2: I don't think i've seen that one. Yeah, but yeah,
Speaker 2: obviously I'd love to hear listeners tell us what their
Speaker 2: experience was with the Godzilla franchise. What was the first
Speaker 2: Godzilla film you saw, and then what was your what
Speaker 2: subsequently did you get into, Like where did you go
Speaker 2: from there? Did you move forward in time or backwards
Speaker 2: in time. I'm sure there's some listeners who haven't even
Speaker 2: seen any of the show era Godzilla films. You might
Speaker 2: be more familiar with some of the current big Hollywood
Speaker 2: blockbusters that feature Godzilla.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I don't know if where's the best
Speaker 3: place to talk about this in the episode, so maybe
Speaker 3: I'll just say it here. One thing I was thinking
Speaker 3: about was how it feels like you can really detect
Speaker 3: a zeitgeist shift from the post war fifties to the
Speaker 3: mid sixties in Godzilla nineteen fifty four compared to Mathra
Speaker 3: versus Godzilla in nineteen sixty four, Like I was thinking
Speaker 3: about how in the original Godzilla, the main human hero
Speaker 3: the main human heroes are scientists, and especially one scientist
Speaker 3: who bravely sacrifices his own life to carry out a
Speaker 3: scientific plan to defeat the rampaging monster while also not
Speaker 3: bringing into being a weapon that would you know, potentially
Speaker 3: be abused by all humanity. In Mathra, the main human
Speaker 3: heroes are, by contrast, journalists. There is a scientist to
Speaker 3: there's like a professor who tags along with them, but
Speaker 3: the main tour journalists and their real struggle is resisting
Speaker 3: capitalistic excess and greed, not by performing heroic acts themselves, really,
Speaker 3: but by acting as representatives of humanity or at least
Speaker 3: of the nation of Japan, and humbling themselves before nature
Speaker 3: and traditional religion to ask the embodiment of these forces
Speaker 3: to have mercy on them. And the difference is also
Speaker 3: there so much in the environment, like the kind of haunted, diminished,
Speaker 3: destroyed kind of environment of the original movie is so
Speaker 3: different in math reverses where the environment feels like it's
Speaker 3: just bustling and full of public works and things being
Speaker 3: built in industry and moneymaking.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, the world of mathra Versus Godzilla was a
Speaker 2: world on the move, a world on the grow. Everyone
Speaker 2: is very distracted with the the capitalist exercise here, and
Speaker 2: that's kind of the whole point of it is that
Speaker 2: Godzilla is going to happen again. But if we're just
Speaker 2: too greedy and too bound up in our and chasing
Speaker 2: riches and growing everything, we're not going to be in
Speaker 2: a place where we can resist him again when he attacks.
Speaker 2: In fact, as we'll discuss, it's like all this greed
Speaker 2: is getting in the way of various preparations that could
Speaker 2: have been made to prevent this sort of thing from occurring.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but the great human sin lying behind the original
Speaker 3: Godzilla is actually a horrible, deadly destructive collective project of humanity,
Speaker 3: whereas the sin in the human sin in mathra Versus
Speaker 3: is individual acts of greed and selfishness.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great point. But the solution again is
Speaker 2: getting out of that and getting into more of a
Speaker 2: collective approach towards problems.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, let's go ahead and listen to just
Speaker 2: a little splash of the trailer here. This is, I
Speaker 2: believe from the original Japanese.
Speaker 4: Trailer, mh.
Speaker 2: Nots in my ivan Tony card in what's it.
Speaker 4: Say? You know that? What's what's a short.
Speaker 2: Crack Joel's pool making out of Joelku?
Speaker 3: Then tonight.
Speaker 4: You all right?
Speaker 2: If you would like to watch Matha versus Godzilla, you
Speaker 2: should be able to get a hold of it. To
Speaker 2: be clear, though, this is Mathra versus Godzilla, not Godzilla
Speaker 2: versus Mathra, because Godzilla versus Matha is the name of
Speaker 2: a later Godzilla film that features both of these kaiju.
Speaker 2: It's it's a mistake that you would be forgiven for making.
Speaker 2: And if you make this mistake, you're still going to
Speaker 2: get to watch a Godzilla movie. So uh, you know,
Speaker 2: it's no big deal. But this is Mathra versus Godzilla.
Speaker 3: Put the year in there, nineteen sixty four. That'll do
Speaker 3: it for you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you can get it in a number of
Speaker 2: places again. The Criterion Collection Godzilla the Showa era Films
Speaker 2: fifty four through seventy five blue ray set is a
Speaker 2: amazing hard back, beautifully illustrated book has no fewer than
Speaker 2: fifteen Godzilla films on Blu Ray in there if you're
Speaker 2: looking to stream. Criterion Channel currently offers this among many
Speaker 2: other Godzilla films, and there may be other places you
Speaker 2: can get it as well.
Speaker 3: I streamed it on the Criterion Channel before my discs
Speaker 3: came in, and it looks great on their transfer as well,
Speaker 3: so the streaming option there is really good. But yeah,
Speaker 3: apart from this Criterion release, I noticed that this movie
Speaker 3: is hard to get on a good Blu Ray. I
Speaker 3: think there's like there's one that's out of print or
Speaker 3: maybe some at least in the US region.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know it's a Japanese Blu Ray that was
Speaker 2: being sold as well. Yeah, I watched it on Blue Ray,
Speaker 2: but I also had the pleasure of seeing it on
Speaker 2: the big screen at Atlanta's Historic Plaza Theater a week
Speaker 2: or so ago as part of the Silver Scream spook
Speaker 2: Show series. It was pretty great. It was a packed crowd,
Speaker 2: like the entire theater was packed out at very enthusiastic bunch.
Speaker 2: There were people in their Godzilla and Mathra jackets that
Speaker 2: people were we were in Mathra merks. There were some
Speaker 2: big Mathra fans there. They had a big Mathra puppet
Speaker 2: that they paraded around before. We watched it. A whole
Speaker 2: lot of fun. I got to see it with my kid.
Speaker 2: And if you're interested in the Silver Screams Spook Show series,
Speaker 2: they're going to be showing nineteen seventy seven Sinbad and
Speaker 2: the Eye of the Tiger in July.
Speaker 3: Oh man, I grew up with the vhs to that one.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, So we might come back to that one
Speaker 2: on Weird House. We'll see.
Speaker 3: From what I recall it, it's a hoot in terms
Speaker 3: of story and acting, and it has some really really
Speaker 3: great stop motion monsters in it, a particularly a minotaur
Speaker 3: robot that's like a bronze or gold minotaur robot called
Speaker 3: the Mino Ton.
Speaker 2: All right, let's roll through the folks involved in this picture.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to hit everybody. There are going to
Speaker 2: be some that we may come back to later to
Speaker 2: credit with the actor was, but I want to hit
Speaker 2: the major points. So starting with the director again, it's
Speaker 2: Ishie Ohanda, who lived nineteen eleven through nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 2: legendary Toho film director who helmed nineteen fifty four of Godzilla,
Speaker 2: the movie that started at All. He directed forty four
Speaker 2: pictures in total eight of those Godzilla films, culminating in
Speaker 2: the nineteen seventy five film Terror of Mecca Godzilla, which,
Speaker 2: according to Steve Rifle, kind of comes back and serves
Speaker 2: as a proper cap to a lot of the silliness,
Speaker 2: you know, coming back and making maybe a little more
Speaker 2: serious and a little darker look at the Godzilla world.
Speaker 2: He also directed Rodin the Mysterians, The Human Vapor Metango,
Speaker 2: Frankenstein Versus Beragon, The War of the Gargantuan Space Amiba,
Speaker 2: and more. He was a friend of director Akira Kurosawa
Speaker 2: and served as director counselor or chief assistant director on
Speaker 2: Kurrosawa's nineteen eighty five epic Ron, and his name continues
Speaker 2: to appear in the credits on Godzilla movies and other
Speaker 2: homages to the Godzilla franchise. According to Steve Rifle, Honda
Speaker 2: started out directing more like sort of like lower budget,
Speaker 2: thoughtful films about youthful characters and sort of you know
Speaker 2: the challenges of growing up. But then you know, ends
Speaker 2: up getting thrown into this world of Godzilla, and this,
Speaker 2: you know, comes to define him as a filmmaker, and
Speaker 2: you know, he kind of stuck to his guns as
Speaker 2: much as possible about the seriousness of the original Godzilla picture,
Speaker 2: and so when his name is attached to it, yeah,
Speaker 2: there does seem to be this this pivot back towards
Speaker 2: the darker roots of the being. All right, so that's
Speaker 2: the director. A writer once more is Shinichi Sakazawa, who
Speaker 2: of nineteen twenty through nineteen ninety two frequent collaborator with
Speaker 2: Honda and describe of many Godzilla movies, beginning with sixty
Speaker 2: two's King cong Versus Godzilla. There Godzilla credits stretch from
Speaker 2: here all the way up to nineteen eighty nine's Godzilla
Speaker 2: versus Bio Lanta. It's just a story credit, but still
Speaker 2: that's kind of like the full saga of their credits
Speaker 2: with the Godzilla franchise.
Speaker 3: Speaking of tone and seriousness, I think another one of
Speaker 3: the things Rifle mentions in that book is that there
Speaker 3: were a number of writers who contributed to this early
Speaker 3: run of Godzilla films, and Sekizawa, i think, is the
Speaker 3: one more often associated with a somewhat lighter tone and
Speaker 3: more openness to comedy, which is there in Mathra to
Speaker 3: be clear, like this one is it's not as silly
Speaker 3: as some of the later movies, but it does have
Speaker 3: a lot of comedy, Like the villains are very clownish
Speaker 3: in it.
Speaker 2: Yes, the human villains, Yeah, yeah, it has some great
Speaker 2: human comedy. The monsters are mostly treated with abjects seriousness,
Speaker 2: but there's some very silly human antics in there as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And also the guy who just is always eating.
Speaker 2: A Yes, we'll get to him in a second. But yeah,
Speaker 2: So we'll start with talking about the humans here and
Speaker 2: the monsters. I want to start with the forces of
Speaker 2: liberty progression and also eggs. We mentioned that the leads
Speaker 2: the main characters here are journalists, and our main hero
Speaker 2: journalist is the character Ichiro Sakai played by Akira Takarata,
Speaker 2: who lived nineteen thirty four through twenty twenty two. Cocky
Speaker 2: but honorable journalist, a little tough to love at first.
Speaker 2: He comes off a little rough around the edges, but
Speaker 2: you grow to realize that he really cares about the
Speaker 2: truth and about doing what's right in the world through
Speaker 2: his journalism.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he from the beginning has integrity. He's not as
Speaker 3: likable in the beginning, just because he's kind of he's
Speaker 3: sort of bossy, and he's like demanding of respect from
Speaker 3: people around him, and I don't know, maybe maybe they're
Speaker 3: not giving him enough respect. I don't know, but yeah,
Speaker 3: you come around to him throughout the movie.
Speaker 2: So Takarata has the top billing here, but he actually
Speaker 2: appeared in different roles in numerous Godzilla films, including fifty
Speaker 2: four's Godzilla Invasion of the Astro Monster in nineteen sixty five,
Speaker 2: Godzilla versus the Sea Monster from sixty six, as well
Speaker 2: as nineteen ninety two's Godzilla versus Mathra and Godzilla Final
Speaker 2: a Wars from two thousand and four. He's also in
Speaker 2: King Kong Escapes from sixty seven. That's one I haven't
Speaker 2: seen yet, but it's always been on my list because
Speaker 2: it features not only King Kong in Kaiju form, but
Speaker 2: also a mecha Kong called Macanni Kong. So he's in that.
Speaker 2: And then Tagarata is also in the nineteen fifty five
Speaker 2: I Believe Yeti horror film Half Humano all right, so
Speaker 2: he's our lead journalist, but then his photographer is the
Speaker 2: character Djunko Nakanishi played by Yuriko Hoshi, who lived nineteen
Speaker 2: forty three through twenty eighteen. She also appears in Gidora,
Speaker 2: the three headed monster from sixty four in a different role,
Speaker 2: as well as in Godzilla versus Mega Gurius in two thousand.
Speaker 2: Her other credits include nineteen sixty eight's Kill and nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety six's Night Trains to the Stars. This was a
Speaker 2: supporting role that earned her a Japanese Academy Award.
Speaker 3: In this movie, she plays a character who is sometimes
Speaker 3: kind of impractical or overly concerned with the artistic side
Speaker 3: of life. For certainly for her boss at the paper here,
Speaker 3: who's like, you're not doing art, just snap the pictures
Speaker 3: and move on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you don't have to focus your camera, just take
Speaker 2: a picture of it.
Speaker 3: But she's also really kind of the conscience of the movie,
Speaker 3: Like she gives a speech on the island of Ewa
Speaker 3: that our ticket that is sort of like what motivates
Speaker 3: the people to say, okay, Mathra can come to your aid,
Speaker 3: and she and multiple points along the film, is kind
Speaker 3: of the voice of reason and conscience when other people
Speaker 3: are doing wrong.
Speaker 2: Absolutely yeah, yeah, she's no mere sidekick here.
Speaker 3: But she's also amusingly pushy. Like there's one part where Ichi,
Speaker 3: the other reporter, is like trying to get a question
Speaker 3: with this professor, and the professor is like, I don't
Speaker 3: have time for this, and then she butts in and
Speaker 3: she is like, wait, one question, and then he's like okay,
Speaker 3: what is it? And then she just steps aside and
Speaker 3: it's like okay, yeah, ask.
Speaker 2: Him, all right. So those are our journalists. But we
Speaker 2: do have a scientist in the Mixed Professor Mura, played
Speaker 2: by Hiroshi Kozumi, who lived nineteen twenty six through twenty fifteen.
Speaker 2: He'd also played a scientist character in Mathra, the previous
Speaker 2: film to feature this monster, and return playing the same
Speaker 2: professor character in Godora the Three Headed Monster. His other
Speaker 2: films include Atragon, nineteen sixty three's Matango, Godzilla Versus Mega, Godzilla,
Speaker 2: Godzilla Raids Again, and Akiu from nineteen fifty two.
Speaker 3: Oh the course Alba movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's kind of a when you start looking at
Speaker 2: the actors in Godzilla film, it's pretty typical to see that. Okay,
Speaker 2: they've been in various other Godzilla and Kaiju films from Toho,
Speaker 2: and they also have bit or supporting roles in various
Speaker 2: Kusawa films. Okay, so that's a trend that will continue
Speaker 2: to sit here.
Speaker 3: One thing I didn't realize is that this character also
Speaker 3: appeared in the standalone Mathra film which came earlier.
Speaker 2: Well, the actor did not the character, Yeah, I see, okay,
Speaker 2: but he does. The confusing part is he does return,
Speaker 2: apparently playing the same character in a later Godzilla movie.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, Well, because there's a point where these like
Speaker 3: the fairy twins in this movie show up and start
Speaker 3: talking about Mathra and it's kind of like, oh, Mathra.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you know they've made probably made headlines, right, Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 2: we mentioned the comic relief character. This is Yiro Nakamura,
Speaker 2: played by you Fujuki, who of nineteen thirty one through
Speaker 2: two thousand and five. He's pretty great here again, he
Speaker 2: is a comic relief character. My favorite thing about him
Speaker 2: is that, as you mentioned, he's always eating eggs and
Speaker 2: he has an egg cooker on his desk at work,
Speaker 2: which I love.
Speaker 4: Good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love egg cookers. I think it's it and
Speaker 2: the rice cooker are two of the most fabulous un
Speaker 2: tasker devices that have been developed for the kitchen. But
Speaker 2: the idea of having one on your desk at work
Speaker 2: and making the whole office smell like boiled eggs is
Speaker 2: just in and of itself comedic.
Speaker 3: Huh. So, I'm a big fan of the rice cooker.
Speaker 3: I love my rice cooker. I use it all the time.
Speaker 3: I've never used a dedicated egg cooker. I don't even
Speaker 3: know how does it work? Is it hard boil.
Speaker 2: Or well, you can do hard boiled and to some
Speaker 2: degree of softer boils. They're like different levels that you
Speaker 2: fill the water up to, but then there's still kind
Speaker 2: of you still have to catch them at the right
Speaker 2: moment and then ice them down before they finish cooking.
Speaker 2: So we've had one for ages and I'm still refining
Speaker 2: exactly how to use it. The best way to try
Speaker 2: and get those of those precious runny eggs for you know,
Speaker 2: for you know, to go in ramen and so forth.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I do love a soft boiled egg. But
Speaker 3: this guy eats so many of them in the movie.
Speaker 3: He's always just munching on a soft boiled while they're
Speaker 3: talking about a big like alien egg or monster.
Speaker 2: Egg, right, and sometimes like the solution is right there.
Speaker 2: He's the first one to realize that the solution to
Speaker 2: a problem might be egg based.
Speaker 3: Yes, by the way, just unpaid product endorsement. The Zoji
Speaker 3: Rushi rice cooker. It's like, that's gotta be one of
Speaker 3: my top brand loyalties. I love that thing, makes me
Speaker 3: happy every time I use it.
Speaker 2: Well, maybe one day we'll come back and discuss nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty seven's Branded to Kill. That's another Japanese movie, and
Speaker 2: that one prominently features rice cookers. Oh nice, all right, see,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna skip over the newspaper editor. We may come
Speaker 2: back to him. I will say point out that the
Speaker 2: actor that is generally credited with playing Mathra in one
Speaker 2: form or the other here is Katsumi Tazuka born in
Speaker 2: nineteen twelve. His death date is not comparently known. Played
Speaker 2: various monsters and different Toho films alongside Nakajima, our main
Speaker 2: Godzilla actor. He apparently served as an assistant to Nakajima.
Speaker 2: And then we have the twin fairies, the Shobajen, and
Speaker 2: they are played by the Peanuts. The Peanuts were a
Speaker 2: singing duo, a twin singing duo, Emmy and Yumi Eto.
Speaker 2: Here they are reprising their roles from the earlier Mathra film.
Speaker 2: If even if you haven't seen one of these movies,
Speaker 2: you've probably seen clips or stills. They are two tiny
Speaker 2: identical Japanese women who sing to Mathra. Sing for Mathra.
Speaker 2: It's kind of like a form of worship. Really, that's
Speaker 2: the way I interpret it. The Mathra is a divine being,
Speaker 2: and Mathra must be awoken and appealed to through some
Speaker 2: sort of worshipful song.
Speaker 3: But also they are kind of divine beings, which is interesting.
Speaker 3: They're like the intercessors on behalf of regular humans. Are
Speaker 3: these two tiny humans, all sized humans who like pray
Speaker 3: to Mathra for us?
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're kind of intermediaries between us and the gods,
Speaker 2: between us and Mathra, and maybe in a sense too,
Speaker 2: they are Mathra. There's lots to chew on here. So
Speaker 2: Emmy lived nineteen forty one through twenty twelve and Umi
Speaker 2: lived nineteen forty one through twenty sixteen. Both were born
Speaker 2: in Nagoya, which will be important because that's the main
Speaker 2: city where everything happens in this picture. They have a
Speaker 2: string of credits before nineteen sixty one's Mathra, and apparently
Speaker 2: we're already a sensation in Japan, in America as well
Speaker 2: as parts of Europe I believe, especially like Germany and Austria.
Speaker 2: And their subsequent credits include not only this nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: four film, but also Gudor, the three headed monster Mathra
Speaker 2: shows up, so the twins need to show up. A
Speaker 2: handful of musical comedies followed, and they performed on The
Speaker 2: Ed Sullivan Show in nineteen sixty six. They retired from
Speaker 2: performing in nineteen seventy five, but their music goes seem
Speaker 2: to be have been again quite a hit. It ranged
Speaker 2: from folk songs like Japanese folk songs, to covers of
Speaker 2: various Western hits. They toured quite a bit, and if
Speaker 2: you look them up on discogs, you can find all
Speaker 2: sorts of amusing album covers, both from Japan and also
Speaker 2: various international releases.
Speaker 3: Did we mention that they not only sing songs to Mathra,
Speaker 3: but they also speak all of their lines together in unison. Yes,
Speaker 3: it's a striking effect.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was reading that. That's apparently. That was one
Speaker 2: of the appeals of their act too, is that their
Speaker 2: voices were essentially identical, and so it made for some
Speaker 2: great vocalizations.
Speaker 3: It's by turns funny and creepy in the movie. Yes,
Speaker 3: so it works out well.
Speaker 2: All right, let's get into the forces of corruption and
Speaker 2: destruction here. First of all, we have the character Kuma Yama.
Speaker 2: He's the greedy guy with the mustache played by Yoshifumi Tajima,
Speaker 2: who lived nineteen eighteen through two thousand and nine. Another
Speaker 2: regular Toh performer with credits that include various monster films,
Speaker 2: with also some bit parts in Krosawa movie sprinkled in
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 3: He is a comical villain in this who shows up
Speaker 3: to just beam with greed, like if greed was embodied.
Speaker 3: It's like in the way this guy plays the role
Speaker 3: that he has not a Hitler mustache, but it's in
Speaker 3: the ballpark. It's like a shrunken What I would say
Speaker 3: is it's like if you imagine a handlebar mustache, but
Speaker 3: then you shrink it down so that it only takes
Speaker 3: up about a third of the width of his upper lip.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it feels I'm not sure if this is this
Speaker 2: is something that would have resonated at the time within
Speaker 2: the intended audience, but it feels like a very carny mustache,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: Yes, Yeah, So he's just always behaving crudely and greedily.
Speaker 3: It's like, you know, the director told him in every scene,
Speaker 3: just think about I want to get money. Yeah, that's
Speaker 3: what he's doing now.
Speaker 2: His financial backer is the character Euro Torajada, played by
Speaker 2: Kenji Sahara born nineteen thirty two, and as of this recording,
Speaker 2: I believe still out there. He actually played the dad
Speaker 2: in All Monsters Attack and was also in Atragon. So
Speaker 2: he's a Japanese actor who has the distinction of being
Speaker 2: I think in the most Godzilla films thirteen of them,
Speaker 2: in addition to numerous other Toho pictures. He was in
Speaker 2: the first Godzilla movie Pops Up as a newspaper reporter,
Speaker 2: and then I think a party guy in a boat
Speaker 2: as well, so you know, he's all over the place.
Speaker 2: His last Godzilla film was two thousand and four's Final Wars,
Speaker 2: and it looks like he was last active around twenty eleven. Also,
Speaker 2: I believe he was the star of Mighty Jack, the
Speaker 2: Japanese television series that MST three K fans should know about.
Speaker 3: Now, there were some things about this character I didn't
Speaker 3: fully understand. He is like the secret partner of Kumuyama.
Speaker 3: Was it applied that he's involved in crime or something.
Speaker 3: He's got like a big cabinet full of.
Speaker 5: Money and uh, and he's you know, he's being like
Speaker 5: sort of kept secret, like Kumayama is the public facing
Speaker 5: owner of the egg, and this guy is like his
Speaker 5: his secret backer, but is also scamming Kumayama.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I I didn't get as much a sense of organized
Speaker 2: crime here. I feel like if that had been the case,
Speaker 2: there would have been more obvious tells to that effect.
Speaker 2: But it did feel like they're sort of two sides
Speaker 2: of the core the the capitalist problem has received at
Speaker 2: the time in Japan. You know, it's like one guy
Speaker 2: is the more obvious, greedy, uh you know, cash fisted
Speaker 2: individual and the more you know, overt corruptive force, and
Speaker 2: the other side is like standing back and saying like, oh,
Speaker 2: I'm you know, I'm not the idea man here. I'm
Speaker 2: just the guy with the big locker full of cash,
Speaker 2: you know, like they're.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, he's he need a loan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I agree his his role in everything is
Speaker 2: maybe a little more cryptic to figure out it, you know,
Speaker 2: at least you know from our standpoint as viewers.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Oh, and then we got to come back to
Speaker 2: Haro Nakajima playing Godzilla again. We've mentioned him on the
Speaker 2: show before. He lived nineteen twenty nine through twenty seventeen,
Speaker 2: played Godzilla in twelve consecutive films. He was also in
Speaker 2: Mathra in War of the gargantuas as well as a
Speaker 2: character I saw with seven Samurai and a bit roll
Speaker 2: not as a giant monster, and he's yet generally considered
Speaker 2: an absolute legend when it comes to monster suit performers,
Speaker 2: and I have to say his physicality in the monster
Speaker 2: suit in this movie is especially good. There's kind of
Speaker 2: a wild abandon to the way Godzilla moves as he stumbles, tumbles,
Speaker 2: sprints and lurches through the landscape.
Speaker 3: Godzilla really feels angry and full of rage in some
Speaker 3: of his scenes. Yeah, I'm thinking of the scenes later
Speaker 3: on when he's getting silked up by the grubs and
Speaker 3: he's he just looks furious at what's happening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or like when he destroys Nagoia Castle uh, which
Speaker 2: which which I've seen in real life. I've been to
Speaker 2: Nagoya Uh. But when he destroys it, we'll get to
Speaker 2: it's kind of kind of like trips and falls into
Speaker 2: it and then is mad at It's kind of like
Speaker 2: when you stub your toe on a coffee table and
Speaker 2: you're like, what is this coffee table doing here? You
Speaker 2: dumb coffee table. Yeah, there's a there's a lot to
Speaker 2: unravel there about Godzilla the menace in this picture and
Speaker 2: how I believe others have commented on this. Maybe it
Speaker 2: was Steve Rifle that was writing about this that while
Speaker 2: Godzilla is definitely the threat and the villain and the
Speaker 2: the you know, the monstrous antagonist of this picture, there's
Speaker 2: also a sense that maybe he's like a little less
Speaker 2: of a vehicle of vengeance compared to the original Godzilla,
Speaker 2: you know, like he's maybe more akin to a natural
Speaker 2: force here.
Speaker 3: Yes, that he's He's not nice, but it does feel
Speaker 3: a little bit more like he's doing these things kind
Speaker 3: of accidentally or at least recklessly. Yeah, though he does
Speaker 3: I think get mad at Mathra.
Speaker 2: He does. There is some heat between these two.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then finally getting to the music, we have legendary
Speaker 2: Japanese composer Akira Ifukube, who lived nineteen fourteen through two
Speaker 2: thousand and six. Not only did he give us the
Speaker 2: incredible Godzilla theme music, which is just at its best
Speaker 2: in this picture, but he also created that signature roar.
Speaker 3: Oh I didn't know that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was apparently achieved by rubbing a resin covered
Speaker 2: leather glove across the loosened strings of a double bass.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, it's hard for me to picture how that
Speaker 2: all comes together because I'm so used to hearing Godzilla's roar.
Speaker 2: It just it feels organic. It feels like that's just
Speaker 2: the sound Godzilla makes.
Speaker 3: Yeah. The sound Mathra makes in this movie is great too.
Speaker 3: That high pitched metallic chirp, that's great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's sing yeah, and that again, his music is
Speaker 2: just an inseparable part of the true Godzilla franchise. His
Speaker 2: other films include Atragon Space Amba from seventy nineteen fifty
Speaker 2: six is the Burmese Harp that's a non Kaiju film.
Speaker 2: But his theme music here for Godzilla, especially Godzilla's key theme,
Speaker 2: is just incredible. And if we didn't didn't have this theme,
Speaker 2: we wouldn't have that really awesome Pharaoh manch track, Simon says,
Speaker 2: which heavily samples not only the Godzilla music, but the
Speaker 2: specific Godzilla music from this movie. So if you're a
Speaker 2: hip hop fan, old school hip hop fan, you know
Speaker 2: this track.
Speaker 3: It's conspicuously used.
Speaker 2: YEA, yes, in an amazing way. I think, dare I
Speaker 2: say a loving way?
Speaker 3: But yes, in general, if Akube's music for the Godzilla
Speaker 3: films is wonderful, I'd loved I think we've talked about
Speaker 3: this before, but one thing that really got my blood
Speaker 3: going for shin Godzilla when it was coming out is
Speaker 3: the way that it used the like the old sounding
Speaker 3: theme from the original film, but with the new movie footage.
Speaker 3: You know, that minor key theme bu da dun duh
Speaker 3: duh dun. Oh. Man, it's so good. But also his
Speaker 3: original music for Mathra itself or for Mauth re Versus
Speaker 3: Godzilla is a whole new ballgame, and it's wonderful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Godzilla theme music, I kept thinking about this.
Speaker 2: It has a lumbering feel to it, like it feels
Speaker 2: like the great footsteps of a Titanic monster, but then
Speaker 2: there's also this sense of rising and it just works
Speaker 2: so exceptionally well with the visuals of pretty much anything
Speaker 2: Godzilla is doing on the screen.
Speaker 3: All right, you ready to talk about the plot, Let's
Speaker 3: get into it. So we begin with, as expected, that gorgeous,
Speaker 3: familiar mid century tohoscope logo, which I love. Every time
Speaker 3: I've said this before, every time I see it makes
Speaker 3: me happy. It makes me think of precious gems. You know,
Speaker 3: when it comes on screen, it's like I've been kind
Speaker 3: of scratching through a bunch of gravel and I come
Speaker 3: upon a cache of emerald.
Speaker 2: I have to admit I loved it watching this live.
Speaker 2: There was thunderous applause for the Toho logo alone, so
Speaker 2: I love the enthusiasm of that.
Speaker 3: So during the credit and title sequence, you've got lead,
Speaker 3: heavy doom horns, that great score. We were just talking
Speaker 3: about playing over a dark shot of the open sea
Speaker 3: in a typhoon and rain is hammering down, the waves
Speaker 3: are huge lightning flashes, and the clouds in the sky,
Speaker 3: and as the credits wrap, we cut from the black
Speaker 3: mid ocean to somewhere along the shore where waves are
Speaker 3: crashing against a sea wall, and then we get a
Speaker 3: close up on a sign that says in Japanese, congratulations
Speaker 3: karatea coast reclamation project complete. I think there's supposed to
Speaker 3: be some humor here, contrasted with the weather and the
Speaker 3: fact that the music is still in Death of the
Speaker 3: Universe mode. And we pan over to appear beside the sea.
Speaker 3: There's a bunch of stuff set up for a party.
Speaker 3: There's like a tent pavilion, and streamers and pick tables,
Speaker 3: and we watch all this stuff just get buffeted by
Speaker 3: winds and eventually swept away, and the waves surge over
Speaker 3: the sea wall and tear down a bunch of power lines.
Speaker 3: We see a boat washed ashore and it crashes into everything.
Speaker 3: It's a monster storm. The next day there are blue
Speaker 3: skies overhead as hundreds of people gather at the coast
Speaker 3: we just saw, and the beach is now piled with
Speaker 3: rubble washed ashore by the typhoon, and we get an
Speaker 3: interesting effects shot I think done in miniature of the
Speaker 3: sea wall with a long row of giant yellow pump
Speaker 3: stations in operation. I assume draining water out from behind
Speaker 3: the wall and blasting it back into the ocean of
Speaker 3: these pipes that look like cannons. So a visual metaphor
Speaker 3: for civilization and technology, re establishing dominance over the forces
Speaker 3: of the natural world, with a kind of violence implied
Speaker 3: because the pumps look like gun barrels, as I mentioned earlier.
Speaker 3: Great in contrast to the haunted, diminished Japan of the
Speaker 3: original Godzilla, this movie takes place in the middle of
Speaker 3: what feels like an economic and industrial boom. There's just
Speaker 3: capitalistic exuberance. Everything's under construction, everybody's making money. Businessmen feel
Speaker 3: like gods, and they just they cannot be resisted. And
Speaker 3: here in the crowd at the coast, we meet a
Speaker 3: couple of our major characters. We meet Ichiro Sakai Ichi,
Speaker 3: a reporter for the Micho Times, and when we first
Speaker 3: meet him, he's very impatient, focused strictly business. And also
Speaker 3: Junko Nakanishi, his photographer assistant, again more flighty and kind
Speaker 3: of contemplative. As she's observing the scene, she says she's
Speaker 3: trying to come up with a theme for her photo spread,
Speaker 3: and Ichiro tells her, your theme is typhoon. Come on. Now,
Speaker 3: we see Ichi confronted by a clownish local politician who
Speaker 3: is angry at the fact that he wrote an article
Speaker 3: about the destruction caused by the typhoon. The assemblyman here
Speaker 3: does not like that Ichi has been reporting on the destruction.
Speaker 3: He insists that their coastal reclamation project will be the
Speaker 3: best ever. It's you know, it's gonna happen on time?
Speaker 3: How dare you write about this? And nearby, Junko is
Speaker 3: setting up for a photograph of all the garbage washed
Speaker 3: up on the shore, and she realizes one thing in
Speaker 3: the frame is a weird shimmering blue green object, kind
Speaker 3: of like a giant scale. I wonder what that is.
Speaker 3: But here's one of the scenes where Ichi is telling her, like,
Speaker 3: don't waste time with light meters, just start clicking that shutter.
Speaker 3: This is not high art, But I think Junko just
Speaker 3: feels differently. She has more of an artistic sensibility. She's like,
Speaker 3: we should do.
Speaker 2: This, right, yeah, yeah, And I think I think he
Speaker 2: takes her craft for granted here.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So back at the newsroom, we meet a few
Speaker 3: more characters. We meet Ichi and Junko's boss, the news editor,
Speaker 3: who is, oh, I don't know. I figure like he
Speaker 3: comes off as kind of brusque, but then later maybe
Speaker 3: it reveals a kind of practical wisdom, would you say.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Like he's he's a very busy man, and
Speaker 2: he has no time for silliness. He's got to get
Speaker 2: that paper out, you know, very much a cliche in
Speaker 2: many ways, but ultimately does care about the truth and
Speaker 2: and is really behind journalism's you know, key principles in
Speaker 2: the world.
Speaker 3: Right. And then there's also this comic relief character the
Speaker 3: reporter who's eating soft boiled eggs. Yeah, such a and
Speaker 3: he's always doing it in a scene where they're talking
Speaker 3: about giant monster eggs. For example, this scene because the
Speaker 3: editor gets a call on the phone and it is
Speaker 3: revealed that the next big news event is a giant
Speaker 3: egg has been spotted off the coast of Japan at
Speaker 3: a place called Niche Beach.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it is a big one.
Speaker 3: It's big. It's like a blimp. There's a big blue, green, blue, green,
Speaker 3: white oblate spheroid floating in the water. And we go
Speaker 3: to the local fishing village, which is portrayed as full
Speaker 3: of somewhat sympathetic but also easily frightened bumpkins who are
Speaker 3: first possessed by terror and then gradually by greed. They
Speaker 3: decide that since fishing has been bad lately, it's been
Speaker 3: a bad catch, they're going to go out and claim
Speaker 3: the egg as the prize of their waters. By right.
Speaker 3: They have a whole discussion about it. They're like, wait,
Speaker 3: whatever comes out of that water, fish or egg, belongs
Speaker 3: to us. So this is an egg, it's in the water,
Speaker 3: it's ours.
Speaker 2: Yeah. There's actually a lot here that you could unravel.
Speaker 2: You could do a whole shin Mathra movie based on
Speaker 2: this conflict.
Speaker 3: Oh, just the court cases about who the egg.
Speaker 2: Belongs to belong to, you know, the parties here or
Speaker 2: some of the parties that are going to be revealed
Speaker 2: here in a bit.
Speaker 3: Let's have a meeting about it and maybe a few depositions. Yeah,
Speaker 3: So the villagers take their boats out and they bring
Speaker 3: the egg ashore, where it is transported to the beach,
Speaker 3: and we see shots of astonished crowds forming this cautious
Speaker 3: circle around it. Afterwards, Ichi and Junko arrive on the
Speaker 3: scene and they meet a new character, the scientist Professor Mura,
Speaker 3: who is taking example, taking samples to better understand the
Speaker 3: giant egg. And this is the scene where at first
Speaker 3: the professor doesn't really have time for them, but Junko
Speaker 3: is pushy enough to get a question on the record.
Speaker 3: And the question that Ichi asks is is this egg dangerous?
Speaker 3: The quote is could it explode or release toxins? And
Speaker 3: the professor is like, well, that's what I'm trying to
Speaker 3: find out. But they don't get a chance to find out.
Speaker 3: They are interrupted in the middle of that research by
Speaker 3: the arrival of the new big head guy in charge
Speaker 3: This is mister Kubayama, a vain, greedy businessman, the proprietor
Speaker 3: of Happy Enterprises. I love the choice the name of
Speaker 3: the business. There, it feels apt. There's something sinister about
Speaker 3: banality of it.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like, you know, don't you want to be happy?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: How can you be opposed to happiness?
Speaker 3: So it turns out Kumayama has bought the egg from
Speaker 3: the local fisherman. It is now rightfully his, and there's
Speaker 3: a funny scene here where he explains how much he
Speaker 3: paid for it, like how he arrived at the price,
Speaker 3: and it was by multiplying the cost of a chicken
Speaker 3: egg by the size difference between a chicken egg and
Speaker 3: the giant egg.
Speaker 2: Well that's just logical. Yeah, yes.
Speaker 3: Now the reporters protest, They're like, wait a minute, should
Speaker 3: this egg maybe not be thought of as private property?
Speaker 3: Isn't this kind of a wonder of nature? Maybe it
Speaker 3: belongs to all of humanity or none of us? And
Speaker 3: Kumayama is like, well, that's why we're gonna let everybody
Speaker 3: come look at it. We're going to watch it incubate
Speaker 3: and hatch, and everybody can come see for a small
Speaker 3: fee of course, so's he's trying to go for the
Speaker 3: King Kong thing, right, He's going to take this wonder
Speaker 3: of nature and he's going to put walls around it
Speaker 3: in sell tickets.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's like a hole. They have a whole map,
Speaker 2: have everything planned out how it's gonna work. Everyone's gonna
Speaker 2: come and see the egg and maybe it'll be some
Speaker 2: some some additional rides. Who knows this is This is
Speaker 2: going to really remake the whole area.
Speaker 3: Also the plot of Gorgo remember.
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, that's right, and I guess kind of the
Speaker 2: plot of King Kong, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's what I was just saying. Yeah, King
Speaker 3: Kong and then sort of Jurassic Park too, though Jurassic
Speaker 3: Park has the cloning element that's so different.
Speaker 2: But yeah, this is a spectacle. People will pay to
Speaker 2: see this.
Speaker 3: But Kubayama taunts the reporters and the scientists for their ideals.
Speaker 3: He offers to pose for a picture for Junko and
Speaker 3: then he just blows cigar smoke in her face when
Speaker 3: she uses the camera. What a jerk?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 3: And then later at the nearby hotel, Kumayama is revealed
Speaker 3: to have this secret business partner. This creepy guy named
Speaker 3: tora Hata who lent him the money for the deal.
Speaker 3: Uh tora Hata has this giant file cabinet full of cash,
Speaker 3: just cash money, and it's I don't know why he
Speaker 3: has that. But the idea is they're going to build
Speaker 3: this amusement park based around the egg, which they are
Speaker 3: now going to be keeping in this steel enclosure, I
Speaker 3: think presumably, so if it hatches whatever hatches, can't get away.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or to some degree, they might be incubating it
Speaker 2: a little bit. Yeah, they're doing that too, the appropriate
Speaker 2: temperature and so forth.
Speaker 3: But the two businessmen are interrupted in their scheming by
Speaker 3: something quite strange. Two tiny women the size of dolls,
Speaker 3: who appear in their hotel room as if by magic,
Speaker 3: and start chanting in unison about how they must return
Speaker 3: the egg and how it doesn't belong to them. These
Speaker 3: are the Fairy Twins again, these are the musical act
Speaker 3: the Peanuts. Is that what they were calling peanuts? Yes?
Speaker 3: How are they dressed here? At the beginning they look
Speaker 3: kind of like cupcakes. They've got like a white fur
Speaker 3: and then a white hat with pink things on top,
Speaker 3: so there's kind of an icing effect. And then they're
Speaker 3: wearing a yello in pink dresses below that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're wearing something to be interpreted as like, yeah,
Speaker 2: traditional garb. They are, you know, in a way, they
Speaker 2: are their voices and representatives of the old world and
Speaker 2: not this new world of hyper activity and progress. It's
Speaker 2: like literally building things around an egg, which in and
Speaker 2: of itself is an interesting scenario. You're building permanent structures
Speaker 2: around this thing that is, by its very nature impermanent
Speaker 2: and is going to lead to like some other different
Speaker 2: form that needs to be free. But they're like, nope,
Speaker 2: let's build it. It's all about right now.
Speaker 3: Yes, an egg is made to be broken out of
Speaker 3: and you build a cage around it.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So obviously the business guys do not heed the message.
Speaker 3: Are they going to be like, oh, okay, we'll give
Speaker 3: you the egg bag now. Instead, they try to capture
Speaker 3: the fairy twins. They're like running around the hotel room
Speaker 3: trying to get them under a coat.
Speaker 2: There's some fun hijinks here. I think it's always important
Speaker 2: to drive home with a good kaiju movie. That. Yeah,
Speaker 2: kaiju movie have great scenes where monsters battle each other,
Speaker 2: but the best Kaiju movies are also very enjoyable when
Speaker 2: the monsters are not on screen, and it takes a
Speaker 2: long time before we get to the monster battles here.
Speaker 2: But for my own money, I was never like missing
Speaker 2: the monster battles when we hadn't gotten there yet, because
Speaker 2: there was just plenty of fun high jinks with you know,
Speaker 2: these miniature these maximize sets for these miniature characters, and
Speaker 2: the comedy with the egg Man, and the social commentary
Speaker 2: that was going on regarding like greed and corruption plenty
Speaker 2: to show on here.
Speaker 3: So after they fail in appealing to the businessmen, the
Speaker 3: fairy Twins appeal instead to our heroes, to junko Ichi
Speaker 3: and the Professor. I think this happens in the woods
Speaker 3: outside the hotel. I forget how they get out there.
Speaker 3: But they let the heroes know that the egg actually
Speaker 3: belongs to the giant godlike being of Ewa Island, a Mathra,
Speaker 3: and it was brought here by the storm. They say
Speaker 3: there's great potential for disaster when the egg hatches, so
Speaker 3: they must help the Twins return the egg to Ewa
Speaker 3: Island where it belongs.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: One of the interesting things about the Twins is when
Speaker 2: they make themselves known. At first, you just hear them
Speaker 2: like a voice of one's own conscious, you know, urging
Speaker 2: you to make the right choices in life instead of
Speaker 2: the greedy path you're following.
Speaker 3: That's right. Yeah, there are a lot of scenes of
Speaker 3: them talking in unison, and the characters are like looking
Speaker 3: around and yeah, where's that coming from? Now? At this point,
Speaker 3: I think maybe I'm going to skip more lightly over
Speaker 3: some of the machinations in the middle of the movie,
Speaker 3: but I'll summarize what happened. So the two evil, greedy
Speaker 3: businessmen keep scheming. We see them counting money and trying
Speaker 3: to scam everybody, including each other, and being possessive over
Speaker 3: the mathra egg Ichi, Junko and the try to expose
Speaker 3: the corruption of happy enterprises, but they don't seem to
Speaker 3: be able to stop them. Suddenly, there is a shift
Speaker 3: in the middle of the movie. Remember that blue green
Speaker 3: scale found in the rubble after the typhoon. Well turns
Speaker 3: out the professor has some news about it. It's radioactive
Speaker 3: and Junko and Ichi touched it. There's a cool scene
Speaker 3: where we see them getting like date, I don't know,
Speaker 3: they're getting decontaminated. They're standing in these purple pink kind
Speaker 3: of chambers, and that's not a good sign because what
Speaker 3: else is radioactive? It's Godzilla baby. So nearby suddenly Godzilla
Speaker 3: starts to rise up out of the earth from out
Speaker 3: of this desolate field of mud. Do you remember what
Speaker 3: the field was? Was it a construction site or something else.
Speaker 2: You get the sense that it's like reclaimed maybe a
Speaker 2: mix of reclaimed c and also the like damaged area
Speaker 2: from the tie because you see, like you know, there's
Speaker 2: like a boat wreck in there and so forth. And
Speaker 2: also that's the idea that like Godzilla has been returned
Speaker 2: to Japan via the storms. But this scene where he
Speaker 2: rises up is pretty amazing. We get that great theme
Speaker 2: song and people are like, oh, oh.
Speaker 3: Goodness, it's happening again, happening again, It's happening again. And
Speaker 3: here he is. He attacks Japan once again, wandering into cities,
Speaker 3: smashing up buildings and infrastructure. So we see him, I think,
Speaker 3: knock over like a TV tower and attacks attack of castle,
Speaker 3: roa castle. Any highlights from this rampage here?
Speaker 2: Oh well, this is there's some great physical movement of
Speaker 2: Godzilla here. I love that he's at times lumbering, other
Speaker 2: times kind of scrambling again that sense of rage you
Speaker 2: referenced when he destroys Nagoya Castle. Well, even when he
Speaker 2: destroys that antenna tower, he kind of it's almost like
Speaker 2: he does so accidentally and it falls on him and
Speaker 2: it makes him even more angry. And then he kind
Speaker 2: of like trips and falls in Indigoya Castle, like he
Speaker 2: didn't really mean to destroy it, but then he's mad
Speaker 2: at it because he fell on it, and then he
Speaker 2: just bashes it the rest of the way. I was
Speaker 2: watching rewatching this particular scene with my wife and she
Speaker 2: was like, well, why is Godzilla so dumb in this movie?
Speaker 2: And I'm like, no, he's not dumb. That god don't
Speaker 2: insult Godzilla's intelligence. But there is the sense it's almost
Speaker 2: like he's been thrown out into He wasn't prepared for this.
Speaker 2: He didn't want to go on a rampage today. He
Speaker 2: was slumbering. Now you've woken him up. He's cranky and
Speaker 2: he's going to destroy stuff. It's not necessarily what he
Speaker 2: wanted to do with this day, but it's.
Speaker 3: Happening exactly right. We're here now. Yeah, So the Japanese
Speaker 3: Self Defense Forces they try to fight Godzilla. But since
Speaker 3: when has that done.
Speaker 2: I should note that in the US version of this picture,
Speaker 2: which is I think what titled Godzilla Versus the Thing,
Speaker 2: they actually, instead of it being just the Japanese Self
Speaker 2: Defense Forces, they actually call in the US military, and
Speaker 2: so the scene instead of having the scene where it's
Speaker 2: the Japanese Self Defense Forces having a meeting about how
Speaker 2: to attack Godzilla, it's a meeting between the Japanese Self
Speaker 2: Defense Forces and the US military, and the US military
Speaker 2: does like a missile strike on Godzilla, which of course
Speaker 2: doesn't work.
Speaker 3: So finally, our heroes come up with an idea. I
Speaker 3: think they're in the newsroom, I believe when they come
Speaker 3: up with this, right, so they're like talking to the
Speaker 3: editor and stuff. The idea is what if they request
Speaker 3: help from Mathra Rob Do you remember how they arrive
Speaker 3: at this idea is.
Speaker 2: I believe the Eggman is the one who look at
Speaker 2: he's like eating an egg back there, and he's like, hey,
Speaker 2: I've got an egg related idea, and I think this
Speaker 2: is our solution, And they're like, well, you know, actually
Speaker 2: that's it. We should roll with that.
Speaker 3: So the reporters and the professor make the journey to
Speaker 3: Ewa Island to speak with the people there for the
Speaker 3: ideas they're going to beg Mathra to help defend them
Speaker 3: from Godzilla. But when they arrive at Ewa Island and
Speaker 3: they discover devastation. The island has been used for nuclear
Speaker 3: weapons tests.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it is ravaged. It does not look good.
Speaker 2: It is You might be forgiven for expecting it to
Speaker 2: be like a tropical paradise that they're traveling to, and
Speaker 2: it probably was, but now it is just devastation.
Speaker 3: Should we mention skeleturtle?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, this was Skeleturtle's deal because at first I
Speaker 2: thought it was just the skeleton of a turtle. But
Speaker 2: it moves a little.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, this is a thing that Godzilla fans have
Speaker 3: talked about for years. Actually that so we see all
Speaker 3: these bones on this desolate beach where the nuclear tests
Speaker 3: have happened. It's supposed to be scoured of all life.
Speaker 3: And we see like the giant rib cage of some
Speaker 3: huge animal don't know what it is, but also a
Speaker 3: turtle and it's bones. It's like a skull and a
Speaker 3: shell and vertebrae. But it's moving around and there's no
Speaker 3: attempt to a this, no explanation. I don't know why
Speaker 3: it's moving around. I don't know if it's moving around
Speaker 3: by accident, if it is supposed to be a skeleton
Speaker 3: that is somehow still alive. The characters don't comment on it,
Speaker 3: even though it's right there in front of them, so
Speaker 3: I don't know. It's one of the most mysterious things
Speaker 3: about this movie. What is meant by the skeleturtle. It's
Speaker 3: a haunting image, actually, I mean it kind of suggests
Speaker 3: a living death.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it really does.
Speaker 3: Yeah that like the nuclear testing has been so evil
Speaker 3: in fact, that it has doomed these these animals to
Speaker 3: a kind of to a kind of hell existence where
Speaker 3: they're like dead but they're still there somehow.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it doesn't seem to be played for comedic effect,
Speaker 2: and it's not elaborated a buon.
Speaker 3: So anyway, so they go to the people of Ewa Island,
Speaker 3: who worship Mathra as their god. The local chief is
Speaker 3: initially not sympathetic to their pleas for help. They're like, wait,
Speaker 3: you're from the outside world that stole Mathra's egg and
Speaker 3: wouldn't give it back and does nuclear testing on our
Speaker 3: island and made skelet turtles here. Why should we help
Speaker 3: you now?
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're like, yeah, that's that's true. We would love
Speaker 2: your unconditional support now in our battle against Godzilla, creature
Speaker 2: that we are also responsible for. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But Junko makes a plea. Basically, she's like, yeah,
Speaker 3: there are bad people out there. They're bad people everywhere,
Speaker 3: bad people in Japan who took the egg. But they're
Speaker 3: innocent people there too, they didn't do anything to hurt you.
Speaker 3: They're worth defending. And then she makes the point, you know,
Speaker 3: even bad people don't deserve to be killed by Godzilla,
Speaker 3: so please help us. And this lands somewhat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it lands with the local people who
Speaker 2: are hearing the message, and also I think lands of
Speaker 2: the audience. I mean it's as potent a message today
Speaker 2: as it ever was.
Speaker 3: So the Fairy Twins appear and they get a whole
Speaker 3: musical number here, like they sing for a long time,
Speaker 3: and the singing they're singing a song to Mathra to
Speaker 3: enlist her. Aid, So I think we're getting Mathra on
Speaker 3: on the team.
Speaker 2: Mathra is gonna happen, But again, Mathra has to be
Speaker 2: appealed to through song and worship, and then once that
Speaker 2: message is received, action can take place.
Speaker 3: Now back on the mainland. We got to check in
Speaker 3: with our two greedy businessmen. They keep double crossing each
Speaker 3: other until one finally kills the other one and tries
Speaker 3: to take all the money for himself. But then I
Speaker 3: think he dies pretty much immediately because Godzilla crushes the
Speaker 3: building he's in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're scrambling over a pile of money and shooting
Speaker 2: at each other while Godzilla is approaching visibly in the distance,
Speaker 2: looming like a great siege tower, moving in on their headquarters.
Speaker 2: And yeah, so they both face a fitting destruction here
Speaker 2: under the heels of Godzilla.
Speaker 3: But eventually, uh oh, Godzilla's rampage sends him in the
Speaker 3: direction of the egg enclosure.
Speaker 2: That's right, And this is where you get a sense that,
Speaker 2: you know, Godzilla's violence towards the infrastructure of Nagoya maybe
Speaker 2: more or less accidental, like he's just he's here, he's
Speaker 2: gonna rambage. He didn't ask to be here. But when
Speaker 2: he sees that egg, I don't know, there's a sense
Speaker 2: that like he knows this is Kaiju business, maybe he
Speaker 2: even knows that what Mathra is or to some extent,
Speaker 2: but he sees this as an enemy. And there's this
Speaker 2: sequence where where Godzilla stares down the enclosure, and this
Speaker 2: is about the same time that Mathra is physically arriving.
Speaker 2: And oh my goodness, the look that Godzilla put pulls
Speaker 2: here just absolute daggers for eyes. Yes, they just gave
Speaker 2: me the chills. As he decides as he starts destroying
Speaker 2: the egg facility, I mean, why would why would you
Speaker 2: mess with Godzilla here? I mean this look. I included
Speaker 2: a still for you here, Joe, it's just, oh my goodness,
Speaker 2: the most intimidating Godzilla stare I've ever seen.
Speaker 3: Like we're seeing mostly the whites on the underside of
Speaker 3: his eyes or his pupils are kind of rolled up,
Speaker 3: and he's got his head hanging down, just like utter
Speaker 3: contempt and destruction. Yeah. So Godzilla starts smashing the Egging
Speaker 3: incubation building by side, whipping it with his tail. We
Speaker 3: see metal crunching, steel beams are falling. But then, oh, intervention,
Speaker 3: here comes Mathra. Though the mom is the mom is here.
Speaker 3: So at this point, somehow Ichy Junko in the gang
Speaker 3: are back. They're on a they like run to a
Speaker 3: hilltop nearby to watch the battle. I think I may
Speaker 3: have skipped over. However, they got back.
Speaker 2: You know, I want to throw in this about the
Speaker 2: battles that take place between especially between Godzilla and adult
Speaker 2: for Mathra here. Yeah, I think one of the reasons
Speaker 2: that I long avoided Godzilla versus Mathra is that I
Speaker 2: didn't in my youth see the potential of the physical battle.
Speaker 2: Like I was more about like the goofy fun of
Speaker 2: one Kaiju battling another of two dudes in rubber suits
Speaker 2: wrastling on a minute on a set with a bunch
Speaker 2: of miniatures.
Speaker 3: Can you suplex them off?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I think that was part of it. I was like,
Speaker 2: I just kind of imagined like the hokiest version of
Speaker 2: this battle where it'd be a puppet a stick versus
Speaker 2: a guy in a costume. But they do such a
Speaker 2: great job. It never feels like that here. Mathra never
Speaker 2: feels like a like a rough puppet. I mean, obviously
Speaker 2: Matha is created in large part through puppetry, but it's
Speaker 2: it's it's done superbly, and I just completely bought into
Speaker 2: the combat between these two entities.
Speaker 3: Absolutely agree this is one of the best monster battles
Speaker 3: in the series.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it doesn't. I think I've seen other folks
Speaker 2: maybe it was Michael Weldon pointing out that like this
Speaker 2: one doesn't get rastly and therefore doesn't have as much silliness.
Speaker 2: It's it's you know, it's it's out there. It has
Speaker 2: a lot of like crazy Kaiju weaponry, for sure, but
Speaker 2: it's a lot of fun.
Speaker 3: So I think I said this earlier, but one thing
Speaker 3: I really love here is the sharp metallic ping of
Speaker 3: Mathra's call. It's like a I don't know, it sounds
Speaker 3: like a like a dagger piercing the air somehow. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And so we hear that, and Godzilla is still busy
Speaker 3: like smashing up the buildings trying to get to the egg,
Speaker 3: but begins furiously flapping her wings and that generates this
Speaker 3: humongous gale which pushes Godzilla to and fro and it
Speaker 3: also though knocks over the rest of the building. And
Speaker 3: now the egg is exposed and Godzilla attacks and ooh,
Speaker 3: the attack on the egg is actually kind of scary.
Speaker 3: He's like striking and clawing at it, blasting it with
Speaker 3: the radioactive breath, and was just thinking like, oh, no,
Speaker 3: poor egg.
Speaker 2: Yeah again, Godzilla is betrayed. Is very very much the
Speaker 2: aggressive beast here, so there's a real frenzy to his
Speaker 2: movements that I really liked.
Speaker 3: But Mathra intervenes. She grabs Godzilla by the tail and
Speaker 3: drags him away from the egg. I know, we said
Speaker 3: it's not too rasseliny, but.
Speaker 2: This seems kind of like a little rastling.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is like when a wrestler like drags another
Speaker 3: wrestler out of the ring by his leg. Observing from
Speaker 3: afar by the way, the professor asks what's that yellow powder?
Speaker 3: And the Fairy Twins are there and they're like, it
Speaker 3: is Mathra's final weapon, and they explain that it's a
Speaker 3: kind of poisonous pollen. So she's like coating Godzilla in
Speaker 3: this like yellow pollen powder.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like an aerial bombardment of the stuff.
Speaker 3: So they fight some more, and at one point Godzilla
Speaker 3: gets the upper hand. He blasts a Mathra with his breath,
Speaker 3: and Mathra starts to look more and more ragged as
Speaker 3: she's beaten up in this battle. Oh, I didn't mention this,
Speaker 3: but we were told earlier by the twins on the
Speaker 3: island that Mathra is she's sort of like near the
Speaker 3: end of her life cycle, that she's dying, And so
Speaker 3: she flies away from battle back to the beach toward
Speaker 3: the egg, and the Fairy Twins remind us that Mathra
Speaker 3: is near the end of her life, so she glides
Speaker 3: down to lot to land beside her egg, and then
Speaker 3: she dies and Godzilla does here kind of do a wicked,
Speaker 3: gloating victory dance of swords, but not a silly dance.
Speaker 3: Right right now here, the military resumes fighting Godzilla. Is
Speaker 3: this going to do much? Of course not. They shoot
Speaker 3: some rockets and bombs, we see planes flying around, and
Speaker 3: there is one part here that I will also say
Speaker 3: that this is better than the average military bombardment of
Speaker 3: Godzilla scene because there are some effects that are actually
Speaker 3: kind of visceral. Like there's one part where Godzilla's head
Speaker 3: catches on fire and oh yeah, looks awesome, but Godzilla
Speaker 3: just kind of shakes it off. He also gets into
Speaker 3: a tussle with some high voltage power lines. They also
Speaker 3: try a big net dropped from a formation of helicopter.
Speaker 2: They drop like three nets on him, and it looks
Speaker 2: like it might work, but of.
Speaker 3: Course Godzilla he hates this, and he proceeds to breathe
Speaker 3: on and melt a bunch of tanks. Meanwhile, down at
Speaker 3: the beach, the Fairy Twins are doing a musical number.
Speaker 3: They have gone down to Mathra's egg and they are
Speaker 3: singing a song to it, I believe, imploring it to hatch.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and to bring Mathra back into the world again.
Speaker 2: Mathra is apparently a divine entity of continual death and rebirth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And this is intercut with shots of the people
Speaker 3: on Ewa Island also doing a dance for the egg.
Speaker 3: And then suddenly at the climax of the song, lightning
Speaker 3: flashes and the egg hatches, and you know what, it's
Speaker 3: not just one baby Mathra, but two. It's twins, just
Speaker 3: like the fairy twins.
Speaker 2: Yeah, two larval Mathras emerge, and so now they have
Speaker 2: the numbers advantage over a Godzilla. I'm not sure if
Speaker 2: Godzilla realizes this, but like this is really the point
Speaker 2: at which he's cooked.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But so to emphasize, it's not like two little
Speaker 3: moths with wings. It's grubs. It's like two caterpillars larval mathras.
Speaker 3: And there are hilarious shots of these two like giant
Speaker 3: red brown grubs humping through the ocean towards the after.
Speaker 2: Like it's like, yeah, it's kind of like the their
Speaker 2: sea serpents or something. You know, or but also kind
Speaker 2: of like water buffaloes.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're going through the water because we learned there's
Speaker 3: this whole subplot about like there are some school children
Speaker 3: on Ewa Island and they're still there, and then Godzilla
Speaker 3: starts going towards Ewa Island and they're like, oh no,
Speaker 3: the school children and they're in danger, and almost as
Speaker 3: if to protect them, the grubs like chase after Godzilla
Speaker 3: through the water and they go to the island. The
Speaker 3: three human protagonists go there as well, and they sort
Speaker 3: of get busy rescuing the school children while Godzilla fights
Speaker 3: these two little moth grubs. And this fight is funny
Speaker 3: and I think it is meant to be, Like one
Speaker 3: bites Godzilla on the tail and he starts whipping it
Speaker 3: all around to get it off. But in this battle
Speaker 3: between Zilla and two grubs, who's gonna win? And how
Speaker 3: well I love the final way they defeat him. The
Speaker 3: moth larvae start blasting Godzilla with their silk. They shoot
Speaker 3: like spider silk, but they're, of course, you know, these
Speaker 3: little grubs, and they essentially cocoon him alive. They're spinning
Speaker 3: more and more silk, throwing it over him. He's furious.
Speaker 3: He's breathing radioactive breath. He's whipping all around. But he
Speaker 3: eventually gets wrapped up and incapacitated and just breathing all
Speaker 3: over in random directions, furious, and he finally falls to
Speaker 3: the ground, rolls down over the edge of a cliff
Speaker 3: and into the ocean, sinking out of sight. It's a
Speaker 3: glorious way to defeat Godzilla.
Speaker 2: I think it's clear that Godzilla is not killed, you know,
Speaker 2: It's like he is just defeated for now. He will
Speaker 2: probably be back, and hopefully humanity can get it together,
Speaker 2: maybe avoid some of their greed and self interest in
Speaker 2: order to better prepare for his eventual return.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we see the grubs swimming away. We can
Speaker 3: hear the fairy twins yelling goodbye in unison. I guess
Speaker 3: they're going with them. I don't think we see them.
Speaker 3: And then the humans watch the baby Mathras leaving and
Speaker 3: one of them says, shouldn't we thank them? But then
Speaker 3: Iachi says the only way to thank them is to
Speaker 3: build a better world, and the Professor says, that's right,
Speaker 3: a world based on mutual trust. There's a little direct there.
Speaker 3: It's not super subtle, But you know, I appreciate the sentiment. Right,
Speaker 3: that is, you have plainly stated the moral of the film.
Speaker 2: Well, you know I like it, Yeah, firmly stated. It
Speaker 2: serves for us to be reminded because we'll inevitably forget
Speaker 2: and build a world that is highly susceptible to Godzilla's attack.
Speaker 3: Yes, it will happen again in Godora the Three Headed Monster.
Speaker 3: I forget what the precipitating event is in that one,
Speaker 3: but you know they're gonna do. Something's gonna happen, all right,
Speaker 3: Any other business about Mathra versus Godzilla before we wrap
Speaker 3: it up?
Speaker 2: Oh, just to say that I think it's absolutely solid.
Speaker 2: It has a great message. Again, the monster battles are amazing,
Speaker 2: but everything else is also richly entertaining and at times
Speaker 2: intentionally hilarious. Looks great, sounds great. Would I would be
Speaker 2: inclined to say, again, I can't pretend to be a
Speaker 2: Godzilla completest. I haven't seen I haven't even seen all
Speaker 2: of the show era films. I certainly haven't seen all
Speaker 2: of the Godzilla films period, and I haven't seen the
Speaker 2: recent ones, which I'm to understand also feature Mathra. But
Speaker 2: I would say if you've never seen a Godzilla film before,
Speaker 2: and you're open to watching films from previous decades, Mathera
Speaker 2: versus Godzilla is a pretty good place to start. I mean,
Speaker 2: if you're not gonna start with the original one. In
Speaker 2: the original Godzilla film, this is this is really good.
Speaker 2: You get, you get heal Godzilla, you get beautiful Mathra get,
Speaker 2: you get amusing performances and a nice message. What more
Speaker 2: can you ask for?
Speaker 3: I would say this is the most Godzilla film of
Speaker 3: all the Godzilla films I've seen it. It has all
Speaker 3: of the core elements in their most perfect form.
Speaker 2: Right right. And you might enter into this film being
Speaker 2: a Mathra skeptic like I think I used to be,
Speaker 2: but you will be won over by Mathra and you
Speaker 2: will realize that she is indeed the Queen of monsters.
Speaker 2: All hail, All right, We're gonna gohe and close out
Speaker 2: this episode of Weird House Cinema, but we'd love to
Speaker 2: hear from all of you. We know you have thoughts
Speaker 2: on this Godzilla film and many other Godzilla films will
Speaker 2: remind you that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily
Speaker 2: a science and culture podcast with core episode on Tuesdays
Speaker 2: and Thursdays, but on Fridays we set aside most serious
Speaker 2: concerns to just talk about a weird film here on
Speaker 2: Weirdhouse Cinema. If you would like to see a list
Speaker 2: of all the movies we've covered over the years, go
Speaker 2: to letterbox dot com. Our username there is weird House
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Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at Stuff to Blow
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