Well, time to see if I was right · 4:57am Nov 10th, 2018
Tarbtano cracked his fingers and typed into the web browser to contact his source, pulling up a special email route.
"Alright, now that the Halloween special is done, time to have a look and see if they sent me the package given Toho put Planet Eater in theaters by now."
His brow perked when sure enough, his unnamed source had sent the information as promised. Eager to see what material he could mine from the movie for his story writing, Grendelson was quick to crack open the file. After making sure he had the drafts for Heatseeker's proof read and responses to Tem, GodzillaWolf, Crystal, and Moongaze's lovely posts saved, he got right to reading the full plot detail.
"Alright, let's see if it's better than the last two and more straight forward. Wonder how much I accidentally called in my writing."
He read it line by line, word by word, doubling back and checking the released information to ensure it was accurate. After half an hour of reading and rereading, it was finished.....
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You called every goddamn twist in that movie, didn't you?
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4965749
Okay, so a definite "maybe." Keep in mind, I'm completely in the dark until Netflix get their hands on it.
First off, thanks for calling my posts lovely :)
And second, either you called everything or were very disappointed...or very disappointed because you called everything.
Thanks for the compliments for the posts I send. Also, a bit curious as to what happens in Planet Eater and why your response consist of dots.
Just spill the beans. did you call every god damn thing in the movie?
I'm just going to say this may or may not be an April Fool's Joke in disguise
Soooo....
You pretty much predicted what was gonna happen in the new movie....
Hoo boy...
Oh, look! I have a verbal cameo!
4965754
Dive, I hate to vindicate your doubts about the final anime movie, but I'll tell you here and now that Planet Eater is at best a somewhat improved City On The Edge of Battle. Ghost Ghidorah is the new GINO.
4965788
king dammit.
God f
4965790
I know.
Alfred Hitchcock explains the use of these dots and images
That moment when you realize that the intentionally dark Halloween Special still managed to be less of a screwed up downer than the actual plot of the movie it's loosely based on.
Oh well, I'll still watch it.
Aww, my posts are lovely. And this was funny very very funny.
Not fishing for reply's to the comments on the special,(i know you're really busy) but i have to ask if you were surprised but what i described as the the Best Bridge fight.
Looking forward to whatever's next.
Well, on the bright side, at least these abominations have run their course. Now we can kick back and eagerly await Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Godzilla vs. Kong, and the new Godzilla Cinematic Universe that Toho says they've got planned.
Well, at least I will.
...............................Oooooh Boy.
If somebody has a plot synopsis, please PM it to me. I have to know what's got the bossman so angry.
I will say this: with some of the things the directors have said, I get the feeling the problem with the anime trilogy is the directors didn't have the best mindset with this film series. They've said they don't consider themselves Godzilla experts nor did they concern themselves with doing so. Which...really isn't the right mentality to have making an anime trilogy based on Godzilla. It could work for its own thing, but that's an issue for an adaptation.
Urobuchi honestly isn't a bad pick, but from the sound of it, he didn't have the creative control he normally does. He's not listed as having been part of the composition process, only the screenplay, unlike with Gaim and Madoka, so I get the feeling if paired with different directors, he could've done much better.
I think one thing this series really needed was a Madoka or Kouta to contrast Haruo. Haruo is very much a Homura or Micchy/Ryugen type character: one who's let one thing consume him to the point that it's his driving force and who to some degree has given into despair. But there's no Madoka or Kouta to balance and counter that, IE the person who, despite facing and brushing with despair, never gives up on the good side of things and is powerful enough to push on through.
It feels like Mothra and her priestesses could easily have filled that role, but they just...don't.
Joooohn, Please don't tell me I just read Planet Eater in your special...
Cause if I did. Welp. I'm done for the day, and gonna face desk myself out here and laugh crazily. hahaha ahahahaa
Wtf! Are you kidding me! God damnit why! Why do they keep doing this bs! Unless your very physic you already told the story. God why!
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Hi, Ari!
Me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=7&v=duIoRlbJKVQ
What....what are you trying to say man?? I'm getting a lot of mixed messages here dude!
Wait, wait, wait; I think I got it! After everything is said and done, you feel completely empty because this trilogy was an absolute waste of time that just gets progressively worse with each film and leaves you with this impression:
And apparently my suspensions are confirmed by an interview OmniViewer just covered:
Urobuchi was mandated by Toho to not focus on monster fights (really Toho? Really?) but it was Shizuno, who by his own admission is not a huge Godzilla fan or expert, who made a lot of weird changes and vetoes. Apparently he even asked "does he have to breath fire?"
Apparently Urobuchi planned for the finale of City on the Edge of Battle would've been far more creative and bonkers (which makes a ton of sense given Madoka's character design and powers), with stuff like all the turrets turning into Mechagodzilla heads (which implies to me it was starting budding off Mechagodzillas or something nuts) or the entire city ultimately gattai into a 1,000 meter tall Mechagodzilla to duke it out with Godzilla Earth for example.
Which is extremely sad, as I'd have loved to see MechaGodzilla began metamorphosing into some mechanical eldritch abomination or merging into a 1 km tall MechaGodzilla for a gigantic brawl.
While blame shifting is possible, this explains a lot given how bonkers and interesting Urobuchi normally goes.
I think I get it now. Every blank space in the dotted lines all combine to form one middle finger.
If anything, the anime trilogy can serve as a lesson as to how too much change to the source material can negatively impact the story, regardless of what form it is told in.
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Look, I'm not against getting someone who's not a fan of a certain work to do something for that work, but they have to be willing to do their research. Urobuchi, despite me not being that familiar with his work, did seem like he was in the right mindset when he was coming up with these ideas. A 1 km tall MechaGodzilla fighting Godzilla-Earth would be fantastic for an anime film. But, the director shot that idea down because reasons that will never be clear to me.
I've looked up a few early reviews for Planet Eater and basically all they're saying is that it's better than the last movie, but it's still not great. This trilogy just seems to be the perfect storm of how not to approach making a new version of a beloved series. The director wasn't a fan of the work and wasn't willing to take five minutes to use Google to find things out. They seem to be changing things just for the sake of changing them, rather than making them make sense. And they're blaming the audience for being "purists" for not liking their movie. Look, it sucks when people don't like your work, but blaming them is what amateurs do. Take their criticisms to heart and implement them to fix it next time. And while you're at it, write a character who's has a personality beyond a Godzilla rage boner. F
ck. This. Trilogy.
*phew*
Imma go watch Final Wars and try to forget these movies.
Aw man, but Final Wars though, right? Those stupidly over the top Kaiju battles. The fact that the human characters actually contributed to the action that wasn't just trying in vain to kill Godzilla with tanks. Motherf
cking Kaizer Ghidorah! That fiery Red Spiral Ray at the end! God I love that movie!
4966081
Wow, Dive. You're very nostalgic about Final Wars. I think Final Wars was the second oldest G film I had in my collection after 1998. I'll admit that I did enjoy the kaiju battles & human action, and the Controller was a memorable villain for his absurdity. Though I was never a fan of Kaizer's design, I always did find X to be cool because of how different he felt from every other monster like Gigan in his debut.
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Yeah, sorry. Needed to end on something more positive.
4966111
Oh, no. I wasn't judging you, Dive. It's just one of those moments where people can surprise you.
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If one reads the interview(thank you Google Translate) then it comes off more like Toho basically encouraging them to be totally different from other Godzilla movies as a purposeful attempt to attempt to appeal to different demographics. Shizuno can hardly be blamed for following the demands of the execs whom wanted to diversify and change their image. For what it's worth, Shizuno also apparently seems pretty interested in Godzilla after making the anime movies. The interview quotes him as liking the idea of Jet Jaguar and the idea of the giants fighting along with wanting to look more into the original KG, MG, Xiliens, and so on. In fact, the other people involved in the project told him not to watch any other Godzilla movies explicitly so as to avoid being influenced by them.
"To Mr. Shizuno who had not seen Godzilla movies originally, Mr. Urobuchi and I said "please do not see the Godzilla movies from here on"."
So Urobuchi and Seshita flat out told him not to do any research and I'm betting that sentiment was echoed by the Toho execs because they'd brought him in precisely due to his inexperience. Urobuchi had already started writing the script beforehand, so they wanted to avoid Shizuno going old style. I guess he was meant to be a counterbalance. It's a bit unfair to blame him for that I think.
4966128
That is fair.
But this still means that this was overall very bad advice on Toho and the others parts that ultimately backfired.
Bringing in fresh blood to try and do something new is one thing, but not wanting them to know anything about the source material at all is just bad advice.
4966131
Think about it from Toho's perspective. Shin Godzilla did AMAZINGLY well as a movie. Regardless of your opinions on it, Shin Godzilla was amazingly well received and did very well at the box office. Shin Godzilla was also a very...bizarre Godzilla movie that wasn't very similar to the others. By contrast, Toho's last Godzilla film before that was Godzilla Final Wars, which bombed at the box office, got horrible critical reviews, and was generally an utter failure. So from Toho's perspective, doing monster battles just means ringing the death knell of the franchise yet again as Godzilla Final Wars did and being unique is the way to go as with Shin Godzilla.
They were essentially trying to recreate the lightning in the bottle of Shin Godzilla but also with the constraint that they couldn't just do another Shin Godzilla.
I'm not saying it was a good thing but just trying to add context amid the blame game.
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Gotta contest this as while your points are very well thought out and very valid on some front, I feel they ignore a few others. Final Wars and Shin are not comparable. The Millennium series had been on a decreasing gains since G2000 with the only spike being GMK. Both critically and attendance wise none of the Millennium films were widely attended aside from G2000 and GMK, both where below the average of the Heisei films. Heisei films I'll note had a similar attendance to Shin Godzilla or very least still noteworthy. Of the top six most attended Godzilla films, only two are solo outings with no battles, those being the 1954 and 2016 films. And neither of them is in the #1 spot.
Honestly a large reason Final Wars flopped financially was burn out. Aside from a brief break between 1996 and 1999, there had been a Godzilla film coming out every one or two years since 1989. By comparison Shin had an optimal launch pad, having a 10 year gap to build interest and a big budget American film that was also well received to prime the stage for it. Fans were chomping at the bit for more content, the Hollywood film revived public interest, and they had a very tight nit production team to do it.
And even then, a more traditional element had to be push in because Anno and company also pushed the "weird factor" a bit too far. For the final half the movie, this was going to be Godzilla in the first draft.
https://www.tohokingdom.com/concept_art/gresurgence/godzilla5th_concept_model1.html
Toho veto'd the idea quickly and insisted more traditional elements be put back in. And while I do blame Toho partly for what occurred in the anime films, the best translations I can get of the interview seem to indicate the monster fights clause was more a heavy suggestion rather than an outright demand, given Urobuchi wanted a full mechagodzilla fight twice and have to be put down both times by Shinzuno. Was Toho hoping lightning would strike twice? Probably. But I think Toho is smart enough to consider conditions behind their hits when trying to replicate them enough to know something as singular as "no monster fights" wasn't the cause of Shin Godzilla being such a massive hit.
4966135
That is a good point, but I think it was a mistake on their part for a big reason: Godzilla 2014 actually had a higher opening gross in Japan than Shin did (6.8 million to 6.1 million) and while Shin did better overall, both were still financial successes and very well received.
Godzilla 2014 did have monster fights, and its biggest criticism was the LACK of monster action.
So in this case, the flaw of Toho's thinking was using Shin as the only template when both recent films were very successful. And narrowing down that success to a very vague and narrow idea of 'it's unique', when logically Shin succeeded for a lot of reasons: it was unique, yes, but it also had really good special effects, hearkened back to the days of Godzilla as a terrifying force of radioactive destruction and atom bomb metaphor, and had biting and relevant for Japan political satire. Toho made a gigantic oversight by focusing solely on it being unique if that's what they did. And if it was Shizuno taking their suggests too far, then that's still a problem on his end. And a problem on the other's ends.
Now yes, there's plenty of blame to go around and choices were understandable, but mistakes were made and Toho and future directors needs to learn from them in the future.
4966146
You said things regarding Final Wars better than I could, Tarb.
And all this honestly makes me wonder how many of the 'different to be different' ideas such as Godzilla being a plant or Ghidorah being a...thing were just randomly thrown in to be different and how much was Urobuchi having a clear intention for those elements he wasn't allowed to act on.
As Omniviewer said, Urobuchi playing things this formula and safe is out of character for him, and if he got shot down on these ideas for Mechagodzilla that really would've done something with the idea of MechaGodzilla City and the nanometal that couldn't have been done if MechaGodzilla was just a robot, I wonder if he might also have been shot down on ideas about the huge kaiju cast introduced in the opening, Godzilla's plant nature, Ghidorah's nature Eldritch Abomination nature, or heck, even Mothra and her tribe of worshipers.
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Legendary had a higher opening but its budget was also vastly larger than Shin Godzilla's, multiple times as great. I would think that the idea is "we can't compete with the super big budget special effects battles, so why not take a different route?"
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Oh yeah, Final Wars failing wasn't just monster fights, it was down to many, many different issues. That being said, at the time Toho did think it was going to be a Hail Mary pass and invested a lot into it with Don Frye and so on. There were expectations of a theatrical release in the US even, so I heard. The Millennium series was in decline, but GxMG was still reaping quite a lot and it wasn't really until Final Wars that you saw such failure that was quite out of the pale for the Millennium series.
You're right that with Shin Godzilla, they tried to inject more traditionalist elements in and that Anno basically had to fight for a lot of his changes. I think that after they saw how well Shin did despite them, there might have been a feeling that "wow, this crazy outsider had the right idea". With regards to the conditions they placed on the anime films, it's weird because while Urobuchi mentions those things, there's also mention that he had already started a script before Shizuno came on board and that he told Shizuno to please avoid looking at previous Godzilla movies to avoid being influenced. I think Urobuchi's kilometer tall combiner Mechagodzilla was more of a joke about what he'd do purely for the sake of spectacle rather than what was realistically going to happen, Shizuno or not. The Mechagodzilla heads showing up from buildings I don't think is really a monster fighting issue so much as just an aesthetics one with regards to wanting the turrets to be more serious looking. There's also mention of "strategic objectives" that were achieved via questioning the orthodoxy such as "why Godzilla has to breathe fire?", which heavily implies that Toho set down those objectives(not the fire breathing thing specifically but just a general desire to see the trends get bucked). Perhaps not all of them were set in stone, but there was absolutely a heavy push to make their objective diversification of demographics.
I'm sure Toho is smart enough to know it wasn't just monster fights that was the issue at hand, but if there was ever a place to experiment with what formula works and what doesn't, it'd be animated films which costed less and can recoup their money's worth pretty easily. In that sense, the anime movies come off as spreading a very, very wide but thin net in an attempt to basically see just how much interest they can get. A bit of a test run, it could be said with attempting to apply a pseudo-version of Shin Godzilla.
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Plz say it ain't so! I was hoping he'd be strange and eldritch, but don't tell me they shit on Ghidorah's character too.
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Well to be fair, there are some aspects that are strange & eldritch about Ghidorah, but it ultimately doesn't amount to much because he's more of a pussy than even GMK.
Yeah, I think I'm just gonna consider the Halloween special to be the real ending to the Anizilla storyline. >_>
*sees Tarb's Napoleon meme*
i.giphy.com/media/T3Vx6sVAXzuG4/giphy.gif
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Probably because Ghidorah's role in the third movie was treated with as much importance as yours in the second movie. Though I suppose the Spaghetti Monster should be given credit for being more active in a half hour biting Godzilla than you have been writing reviews in your 20,000 year hiatus.
On a lighter note, how do y'all pronounce Ghidorah's name? I've seen a lot of people pronounce it Gee-dorah but I've always pronounced it with a short 'i' sound.
4966128
I get where you're coming from, and in hindsight I may have been a bit harsh. I'm going off second hand information, so I may not have had the whole story. That being said, my feelings towards these films as pieces of entertainment haven't changed. Monster Planet was passable at best. City on The Edge of Battle was unbelievably mishandled and, worst of all, boring. And from what I've heard about Planet Eater, it's not much better. And in regards to Final Wars, I don't think it's a good movie, but it's so damn fun to watch that I always go back to it whenever I can. I have mixed feelings about Shin, but I can see why it was so successful. In the end, it's different strokes for different folks. I'll enjoy my stupid over the top films any time.
wait.....are the dots in MORSE CODE?
Well, at least we're gonna see a better Ghidorah soon.
4967012
No, just me not knowing quite how to respond to what I just read.
4966962
I tend to pronounce it "Gi-door-rah", but the other pronunciation is used and was more common in the Showa era.