Joined: Wed Jan 24, 2007 1:54 am Posts: 5120 Location: Stratford, CT.
My good friend is THE biggest Godzilla (Gojira) fan on the planet, and last night he wanted to go see the new Godzilla movie from Toho Studios in theaters. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godzilla_Minus_One
Being a Japanese production, it stars an all Japanese cast and was in subtitles, but let me tell you... I think any warbird fan would like this movie! This movie felt more like a serious period drama, set in Post war Japan where you see a soldier's struggle to come to terms with the loss and death from war.... and then Godzilla shows up. This movie was an homage to the original black and white 1954 film with the most updated graphics and visual effects to really take the viewer on an experience! If you don't want the movie spoiled for you, I suggest searching it out to watch before reading further!
Warning! Spoilers down below!
The movie starts right out the gate with the main character being a kamikaze pilot, flying an A6M Zero in 1945 during the closing days of WWII. Kōichi Shikishima feigns technical issues with his plane and lands on Odo Island where there is a small maintenance strip. During the night a dinosaur-like creature, Godzilla, appears during the night and attacks the island, killing everybody except Kōichi and the lead mechanic, Sōsaku Tachibana, who blames Kōichi for the deaths of the others.
Near the end of the film Shikishima gets to fly (of all things) an overhauled Kyushu J7W Shinden! I guess somehow it was missed by occupying US forces! He then leads Godzilla away from the mainland, into a trap, and do battle with him with an ultimate final face off! I don't want to give EVERYTHING away but I thought the movie was really well done. Especially the two full scale replica fighters they had to make for the film. Not sure where the replica Zero ended up. (Perhaps they used the Eternal Zero replica from a few years ago?) BUT the J7W is thankfully on display today at the Tachiarai Peace Memorial Museum in Fukuoka. Alongside an original Hamp Zero!
I thought the flying scenes were pretty good! One thing that irked me was in the subtitles they kept referring to the planes as "fighter jets". That and at one point in the movie a character talks about how the Japanese government screwed over the average solider with: "Weak supply lines that caused thousands to starve, lightly armored tanks and, planes with no ejections seats..." I was like... wait a minute... None of them HAD ejection seats! That of course expcet for a few, incluiding the J7W... which is a plot point for sure!
Thought some of you guys who might not have even known about this movie would be interested in seeing it!
_________________ Keep Em' Flying, Christopher Soltis Dedicated to the preservation and education of The Sikorsky Memorial Airport
Joined: Sat Feb 07, 2009 12:05 pm Posts: 908 Location: ELP
Oh yes! That movie is on my "gotta see" list. My oldest daughter is learning Japanese and taking a proficiency test in Denver Saturday. Maybe when she gets home we can go see it.
_________________ Had God intended for man to fly behind inline engines, Pratt & Whitney would have made them.
Joined: Fri Jun 13, 2008 12:33 am Posts: 1444 Location: Blenheim, NZ
They should have used a man in a suit like the good old days, Godzilla doesn't move realistically at all. Surprise surprise: CGI ruins yet another great opportunity for what could have been the perfect Kaiju movie
Seriously though, I'd love to see this on the big screen. I watched a couple of trailers last week and was surprised at how excited I was.
"It's his plane, he spent the money to restore it, he can do with it what he wants. I will never understand what's hard to comprehend about this." - kalamazookid, 20/08/2013 "The more time you spend around warbirds the sooner you learn nothing, is simple." - JohnB, 24/02/22
Joined: Thu Dec 21, 2006 8:32 am Posts: 4311 Location: Battle Creek, MI
I just got back from seeing it. Normally I'm fairly ambivalent about Kaiju flicks, but Holy Hokkaido, Batman! This one was awesome! Unlike the recent Western iterations, in this one the human characters are actually front and center, and have some real dramatic depth. Sure, it gets a bit corny in spots, but hey, it's a Kaiju movie. As for the comments about "fighter jets," I chalk that up to poorly translated subtitles. They do get a bit clunky here and there, but as always, I'm sure a lot of the nuance and colloquialisms don't translate well. Still, I'd much rather watch a movie with subtitles than a clumsy English dub, especially one like this in which the actors' performances in their own language is critical to the drama.
On the aviation side, they absolutely nailed it, in terms of accuracy (as much as a film about a mythical monster could.) Even the burnt out wreck of the Zero after Big G chomps and tosses it looks pretty realistic. The rest of the period atmosphere feels pretty good as well. I admit I know next to nothing about IJN warships, but they look reasonably period-accurate to me. There's a fair bit of nautical miniature work, which looks really good enhanced with CGI water effects. Water and fire don't "scale," so miniature shots with these are usually glaringly obvious, but here I think they found the right balance. Everyone involved took this seriously as a film, and it shows. The characters are all played "straight," and gives the film a grounded real-world believeability sadly missing from recent Western CGI spectacles (looking at you, Michael Bay and Roland Emmerich.) Godzilla has been scaled down a bit, but is meaner and angrier than he's been in decades. You won't find yourself feeling sympathetic for him at all, and will be rooting for the humans to take him down.
See this one on the big screen if at all possible!
Oh, and trying to avoid spoilers here, but if you know much about late war Axis tech, you'll get a knowing smile in one scene, even if you don't actually read German. I knew exactly where that bit of foreshadowing was heading...
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That and at one point in the movie a character talks about how the Japanese government screwed over the average solider with: "Weak supply lines that caused thousands to starve, lightly armored tanks and, planes with no ejections seats..." I was like... wait a minute... None of them HAD ejection seats! That of course expcet for a few, incluiding the J7W... which is a plot point for sure!
