Crappy GOJIRA and MYSTERIANS reviews.
Okay, I owe a report on GOJIRA and THE MYSTERIANS. (Mental note: never promise anything again, especially since my attention span is too short now to last through 90 minute movies).
GOJIRA - After hearing about how much better this was than KING OF THE MONSTERS, I was surprised to find myself pretty much bored through the first half or so. The characters (the Yamanes, Serizawa, and Ogata) are fine on paper, but I was disappointed with the actual execution. The atomic bomb references were...well, there.
What happened to Akihiko Hirata's voice? He didn't sound like the AH I heard in RAINBOWMAN and as a pleasant suprise guest star (to me, anyway) in a few ULTRAMAN episodes. His Mysterians voice was "normal".
Of course, once G attacks, the movie kicks into high gear. I finally was able to see the famed "We'll see Father soon" scene, and the few seconds of G's stop motion tail (never picked these out of KOTM). This is serious business, not the camp of the later films.
One note - I got the Sony DVD release of the original G and KOTM, which is very nice, but the damned subtitles on the thing are almost unreadable (yellow text on B&W). Both G and KOTM look good, and the commentaries are very informative, so nab it anyway. Just be warned.
MYSTERIANS/CHIKYUU BOEIGUN - I wanted to watch this since it's the first Japanese "alien invasion" movie - the prototype to so many of my favorite anime and TV tokusatsu. It set the standard for the genre, but not much else.
The Mysterians themselves look nice, but sound and act like robots - no personalities at all. Isn't their space station still floating about Earth at the end? Yep, I feel safe. One character mentions a satellite floating above to alert Earth to invasion, but I'd think that'd be easy to shoot out of the sky. Did I miss something?
The FX in both of these movies are great, of course. I personally prefer tokusatsu FX to modern CGI stuff, so I'm not going to add the "great, if dated" qualifier. Mogera looked like MechaGonzo, as has been noted by Stomp Tokyo and others, but his rampage was fun.
I do recommend both of these movies to tokusatsu and monster movie fans - the action direction and FX are great, and they were the first kaijuu and alien invasion movies. I'm just very hard to please.
Okay, I owe a report on GOJIRA and THE MYSTERIANS. (Mental note: never promise anything again, especially since my attention span is too short now to last through 90 minute movies).
GOJIRA - After hearing about how much better this was than KING OF THE MONSTERS, I was surprised to find myself pretty much bored through the first half or so. The characters (the Yamanes, Serizawa, and Ogata) are fine on paper, but I was disappointed with the actual execution. The atomic bomb references were...well, there.
What happened to Akihiko Hirata's voice? He didn't sound like the AH I heard in RAINBOWMAN and as a pleasant suprise guest star (to me, anyway) in a few ULTRAMAN episodes. His Mysterians voice was "normal".
Of course, once G attacks, the movie kicks into high gear. I finally was able to see the famed "We'll see Father soon" scene, and the few seconds of G's stop motion tail (never picked these out of KOTM). This is serious business, not the camp of the later films.
One note - I got the Sony DVD release of the original G and KOTM, which is very nice, but the damned subtitles on the thing are almost unreadable (yellow text on B&W). Both G and KOTM look good, and the commentaries are very informative, so nab it anyway. Just be warned.
MYSTERIANS/CHIKYUU BOEIGUN - I wanted to watch this since it's the first Japanese "alien invasion" movie - the prototype to so many of my favorite anime and TV tokusatsu. It set the standard for the genre, but not much else.
The Mysterians themselves look nice, but sound and act like robots - no personalities at all. Isn't their space station still floating about Earth at the end? Yep, I feel safe. One character mentions a satellite floating above to alert Earth to invasion, but I'd think that'd be easy to shoot out of the sky. Did I miss something?
The FX in both of these movies are great, of course. I personally prefer tokusatsu FX to modern CGI stuff, so I'm not going to add the "great, if dated" qualifier. Mogera looked like MechaGonzo, as has been noted by Stomp Tokyo and others, but his rampage was fun.
I do recommend both of these movies to tokusatsu and monster movie fans - the action direction and FX are great, and they were the first kaijuu and alien invasion movies. I'm just very hard to please.
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