Latest / CinemaHounds - A Lorehounds Podcast / Godzilla Minus Zero (2026) - Part 1 of 3 - The History and Context of Godzilla

Transcript

Godzilla Minus Zero (2026) - Part 1 of 3 - The History and Context of Godzilla · CinemaHounds - A Lorehounds Podcast

0:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey everybody, future editor David here with just a quick note.
0:04
[SPEAKER_01]: If you had been with us for our Pachinko coverage when we, I think that was the last time that we had neat on the podcast, it ended up spawning three podcasts from one, right?
0:15
[SPEAKER_01]: So we're kind of prone to doing that on the large hounds, anybody?
0:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Who's been around for a minute?
0:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you're kind of used to it.
0:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, we got into the history in the context.
0:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Then we started talking about the 1954 Godzilla movie, and we were pushing two hours, and we weren't really even close to getting done.
0:32
[SPEAKER_01]: So we're going to cut this podcast off at the end of the context and history stuff.
0:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Then Nate and I are going to recalibrate and re-record a 54 and minus one podcast.
0:44
[SPEAKER_01]: So when the minus zero movie comes out in a couple of weeks,
0:51
[SPEAKER_01]: So just a quick note, there's going to be three podcasts instead of two, you know, pretty steady for the lower-ounds.
0:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, let's get into the podcast and start talking about Godzilla.
1:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to the Lower Hounds and our pre-release coverage of Godzilla minus zero.
1:24
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm your host David and with me today is newly minted Lower Hound Community Co host Nate.
1:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Nate, how you doing?
1:32
[SPEAKER_02]: Happy to be here and thrilled to do my part for the team.
1:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Is this what's better getting your bars or becoming a
1:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, well, that's a tough question, mostly because my question, my bars were so long ago.
1:51
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks.
1:53
[SPEAKER_02]: But, you know, I will say they're equivalent.
1:56
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel really commissioned very good as a minted community co-host.
2:02
[SPEAKER_02]: That's awesome.
2:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, okay.
2:04
[SPEAKER_01]: So today we're going to be discussing some historical context of Godzilla, the original 1954 movie with some notes about 56.
2:12
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we're going to be talking about Godzilla minus one, all in preparation of Godzilla minus zero being released in a couple of weeks.
2:22
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm so excited.
2:23
[SPEAKER_01]: I can't I know you are need you provided us a lot of feedback when we were originally covering show guns season one.
2:32
[SPEAKER_01]: We had you on the podcast.
2:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Then I think you joined us for some patinko coverage as well, which is really great.
2:37
[SPEAKER_01]: That was such.
2:38
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm so sad that we don't have a new series for that.
2:42
[SPEAKER_01]: fingers crossed maybe one day.
2:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe one day then you have you had a lot a lot of input around the latest season of House of the Dragon.
2:50
[SPEAKER_01]: You did some great strategy maps or tactical maps for us on the discord that was a lot of fun and you were going to be joining us as a co-host when season two of Showgun season two returns.
3:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Eventually I think next year is what we're looking at.
3:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, sometimes we, I don't think a specific date has been announced, but they have wrapped up filming, so it will be sometime and you and I were chatting about doing something for minus zero and then we cooked up this little brace of podcast, which we're going to kick off today just.
3:26
[SPEAKER_01]: There's probably a number of folks who haven't heard you before, just give a quick little intro.
3:32
[SPEAKER_01]: I alluded to your army background, but why don't you talk about your academic background in your current operations operations?
3:39
[SPEAKER_01]: What do you operate in my my operations as I see?
3:46
[SPEAKER_02]: assigning great as exactly, you know, like David said, I was retired from the army in 2016 after a career as an armor guy in a day, an intel guy in a liaison with the Japanese.
4:03
[SPEAKER_02]: I was stationed for gosh, seven years in Japan, I speak Japanese,
4:10
[SPEAKER_02]: and so on.
4:10
[SPEAKER_02]: So, so that all was fun.
4:13
[SPEAKER_02]: When I retired, I went back to grad school and worked at Princeton, working on a PhD.
4:22
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm still very slowly in the process of running the dissertation, maybe one day I'll finish it.
4:27
[SPEAKER_01]: My wife, it took my wife like 12 years to finish.
4:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm on that kind of track.
4:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
4:34
[SPEAKER_02]: But you know, that's what happens when you're in your 40s and 50s with a family soon to be adult kids.
4:42
[SPEAKER_02]: And yes.
4:43
[SPEAKER_02]: But I guess my goal now at this point is to finish my PhD before my youngest daughter finishes undergrad.
4:50
[SPEAKER_01]: And she's like, that'll see you soon.
4:52
[SPEAKER_01]: So that would be good.
4:54
[SPEAKER_01]: And you put any great teach right now.
4:56
[SPEAKER_02]: You're the Japanese Studies Center.
4:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, well, so I teach primarily at Ryder University, which is, you know, nearby Princeton.
5:05
[SPEAKER_02]: So down the road, if you will.
5:08
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, I handle all the Asian Studies courses for the history department at Ryder.
5:14
[SPEAKER_02]: So this semester, I happen to be teaching modern Japan where I'm talking all about the things that are going on right now.
5:23
[SPEAKER_02]: And we were joking about prepping for this podcast was a great synergy for your classes that you're teaching and the students and everything like that, and so The movies that we talk about today, they will actually be watching One of them in class and the other as a homework assignment for writing an essay.
5:41
[SPEAKER_02]: Perfect.
5:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you ever teach that movie high and low?
5:47
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't, but you could certainly use it.
5:51
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, there's a lot of, I mean, there's so much out there that you can only use right, you know, so much.
6:00
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, high and low is a great movie to kind of get the idea of post war.
6:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, Japan, yeah.
6:07
[SPEAKER_01]: I only watch it recently because of the Spike Lee movie.
6:09
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I watched it.
6:11
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, oh my god, how did I not ever know about this?
6:14
[SPEAKER_01]: This thing is amazing.
6:17
[SPEAKER_01]: really really a great piece of work anyway we're not here to talk about curse hour we're here to talk about godzilla really quick some housekeeping let me just run through this really fast so we don't spend too much time on it but as always we aren't independent podcast we do this you know we're not we don't have a big autify company you know it's important as or anybody else like that
6:37
[SPEAKER_01]: So subscriptions really do matter and it means a lot to us to have an engaged community and we love what we do and it really helps when folks are able to subscribe if you are able to that would be great.
6:51
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6:54
[SPEAKER_01]: we have a equitable distribution system too so everybody use participating, you know, usually it's a little bit added to Apple if that's what works for them and but it helps us pay all of our bills and all that kind of stuff.
7:06
[SPEAKER_01]: So thank you to everybody who does support us and if you're interested, check out the links in the show notes.
7:12
[SPEAKER_01]: If you want to get in touch with us, lorehounds at the lorehounds.com is the best all-around email address.
7:20
[SPEAKER_01]: We do have a very lively and active community discord.
7:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Got a lot of great moderators and other folks who support the operations on the discord.
7:30
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it's a really fun place to interact and nerd out with other like-minded individuals.
7:36
[SPEAKER_01]: We have channels and threads and shows and for all the different shows and books and music and stuff that we're covering,
7:41
[SPEAKER_01]: uh it's a pretty uh fun place to hang out uh and uh yeah all the things are there so uh hop on you're welcome to join anybody can do so
7:52
[SPEAKER_01]: and hop in and if you need help just a shout out for a mod and those plenty of community folks and mods would be more than happy to help you.
8:01
[SPEAKER_01]: And we are a network so we do have a number of different shows and things going on.
8:05
[SPEAKER_01]: We've got a lot of coverage happening right now.
8:07
[SPEAKER_01]: We just rolled off of lanterns, Joan and Alicia are covering vision quest and they're going to do some clay face coverage as well.
8:16
[SPEAKER_01]: We're getting ready for rings of power, season three, and for that, Maryland, Arpequilla, who's our favorite token scholar, her and her friend, Dr. Sarah Brown, who teaches at Signa University.
8:28
[SPEAKER_01]: They're doing a
8:30
[SPEAKER_01]: analysis of season two of rings a power they're looking at all the rituals that they see on screen and sort of deconstructing them and looking at what they mean in the legendarium as well as you know to us in our daily lives.
8:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Dungeons and due rags, there are newest podcasts, they are a lot of fun, very spicy takes and they just finished up with
8:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Lanterns coverage as well, Joan and I are going to join them tomorrow night to do a little recap.
8:59
[SPEAKER_01]: They're going to be talking about some vision quest.
9:01
[SPEAKER_01]: I think they're going to be talking about carry.
9:03
[SPEAKER_01]: I know they're going to look at rings of power as well.
9:05
[SPEAKER_01]: When that comes up, they've got some movie coverage planned as well.
9:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Woolshift dust, at least you just finished up with her silo coverage.
9:13
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you're into the silo verse, if you're down deep, definitely go check out the Woolshift dust podcast.
9:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Never mind the music, Nicole and Mark talking about music, psychology, cosmic corner, John's doing a book read along.
9:27
[SPEAKER_01]: There's links in the show notes if you just go to the link tree link.
9:32
[SPEAKER_01]: All of our affiliates are linked there so you can easily find the other podcast that are within the community.
9:39
[SPEAKER_01]: subscribers, you've got a lot going on.
9:42
[SPEAKER_01]: We just, what do we just do?
9:45
[SPEAKER_01]: We just did a what you're watching on, you can see everything, the new Nathan Fielder documentary, which is making a lot of way.
9:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Have you seen it yet, Nate?
9:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Are you going to have not?
9:56
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't.
9:57
[SPEAKER_02]: I look forward to seeing it and listening to the podcasts.
10:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
10:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, we're going to see what kind of coverage we have on that.
10:04
[SPEAKER_01]: But we do have the Watcher Watcher Watcher Watchers, like John basically pitches me to go see it because I haven't seen it yet.
10:10
[SPEAKER_01]: No, you just like talk the Watcher Watcher, one of the Watcher Watchen formats, if I can say that 10 times fast, is if the other person hasn't seen the movie, then they kind of pitch you on it.
10:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, hey, you're my friend, you should go see this movie.
10:23
[SPEAKER_01]: These are the reasons, but it's all spoiler free.
10:25
[SPEAKER_01]: uh, Alicia just released a practical magic to podcast.
10:29
[SPEAKER_01]: They had some fun sort of, but let's say trash talking that movie, but they had some of the things about the sequel to that movie.
10:38
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm carrying on with some what you're watching on great British breakoff and I'm hoping to talk to our friends today and Ian over at the Captains pod about bread week that we had last week.
10:48
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we've got our spooktober lore down.
10:52
[SPEAKER_01]: We made this one available.
10:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Anybody can vote for this.
10:54
[SPEAKER_01]: You can go on the discord by the link there.
10:56
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's linked our Patreon as well.
10:59
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to do a lore down right now.
11:03
[SPEAKER_01]: the Cloverfield movies are winning.
11:06
[SPEAKER_01]: They're beating out the exercise.
11:08
[SPEAKER_01]: And sadly, training to Busan, and that cluster of films, because we're going to do a cluster of films around those, isn't doing so well on it.
11:16
[SPEAKER_01]: I was really shocked because training to Busan is such a good movie.
11:21
[SPEAKER_01]: one of the best zombie movies out there.
11:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, we're almost done.
11:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Aliens, it's the 40th anniversary of the Aliens movie.
11:28
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to play in a live watch.
11:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Do, and I've got a deep dive plan for it.
11:32
[SPEAKER_01]: We're also going to do some juxtaposition of lioness season three and slow horses season six.
11:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Which is a really hilarious combination.
11:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Percy Jackson coverage is coming rings a power season three I mentioned Blade Runner 299 definitely band of brothers 25th anniversary is up.
11:52
[SPEAKER_01]: I think you wanted to jump in on the band of brothers Yeah, yeah, I would love to it and it's crazy to think that it's that that old yeah.
12:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh my gosh I that I'm that old
12:04
[SPEAKER_02]: That's always the thing.
12:06
[SPEAKER_01]: That's always the thing.
12:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, that is all the housekeeping done out of the way.
12:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Sorry to, you know, throw all of that at you, but I just wanted to make sure that, you know, folks know we got stuff going on and the best place is either to listen to this, you know, little, you know, our little speels at the beginning or hop on the discord because we're always talking about and announcing stuff over there.
12:34
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to start off with a sort of spoiler-free overview of the franchise.
12:39
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to talk about some of our big thoughts and personal experiences with Godzilla and just the Godzilla verse.
12:47
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if we could call it that.
12:48
[SPEAKER_01]: But anyway, the franchise that is Godzilla will take a quick commercial break.
12:53
[SPEAKER_01]: And then when we come back from that, we'll talk about the 1954 movie and that'll be full spoilers.
13:00
[SPEAKER_01]: We're just going to get into all the details of that.
13:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Then we'll take another break.
13:03
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we're going to talk about Godzilla minus one.
13:06
[SPEAKER_01]: That'll be a little bit shorter discussion, but again, it'll be full spoilers.
13:09
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we'll do a little bit of a preview on minus zero and get a little hype for the movie, which comes out in a couple of weeks.
13:20
[SPEAKER_01]: So we're going to just talk about Godzilla now and again this is by the free.
13:24
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you just want to get some background in history, Nadia is kind of an expert in Japanese history.
13:30
[SPEAKER_01]: He teaches me subject.
13:31
[SPEAKER_01]: You teach this subject.
13:32
[SPEAKER_01]: So you have a lot of knowledge about it.
13:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
13:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we're going to talk about the history and historical context.
13:38
[SPEAKER_01]: What Godzilla means, the social commentary, the politics of it, all kinds of interesting stuff.
13:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Godzilla, what does the name mean?
13:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, what does it come from?
13:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, how did it get its name?
13:55
[SPEAKER_02]: So, yeah, that's interesting, and I should probably say that, you know, part of this is academic interest for me because, you know, like I've told you off Mike before we're recording, I teach, I use Godzilla in class.
14:12
[SPEAKER_02]: My students watch the 1954 original movie in class, as we study the post-war period in Japan, and that'll be coming up in a couple of weeks.
14:22
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I have them watch either minus one, sorry, or another of Godzilla moving named Shin Godzilla, and then could do a comparative essay between the original and those looking at the differences and the way that things are portrayed, not just the monster itself,
14:50
[SPEAKER_02]: you know what what these depictions tell us right because it's both a metaphor and allegory right there's literally yeah absolutely and so that you know I I say that to set this up because you know I'm sure a lot of people if they just aren't really
15:06
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, into the Godzilla universe or the history of it, probably just think of, you know, dudes and rubber suits rolling around fighting.
15:16
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, there's a lot of that, particularly in the 60s and 70s shows.
15:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Or now CGI, or now CGI, yeah, absolutely.
15:24
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's a bit of a say, but same thing, destruction, monsters fighting,
15:31
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, I just want to kind of set up a head of time that movies that we'll talk about today in detail do our
15:42
[SPEAKER_02]: not only groundbreaking in terms of cinematic technique and we'll get into that a little bit, but also there's deep somatic meaning that really resonates with the history of post-war Japan and also contemporary Japan today.
16:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Anyway, so back to your question.
16:02
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, that's that.
16:03
[SPEAKER_02]: No, I don't know.
16:04
[SPEAKER_02]: This is where we're, we're no.
16:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Degressions are, are, they were geared for a lot of out.
16:09
[SPEAKER_02]: So, um, so actually the name comes from a combination of the English word gorilla, okay, you know, thinking like King Kong, right?
16:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Because actually King Kong was one of the inspirations.
16:25
[SPEAKER_02]: four the Godzilla movies when they came up with the idea they were drawing on the fact that the I think it was 1934 but I'm not entirely sure but the movie from the 30s the original King Kong had been a re-released in 1952 and so that kind of was fresh in people's minds.
16:45
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
16:46
[SPEAKER_02]: And then it's a combination of that with the Japanese word Kujida.
16:51
[SPEAKER_02]: which means whale.
16:53
[SPEAKER_02]: And the idea was to combine gorilla and whale the image of this big huge monster.
17:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Now obviously Godzilla is neither a gorilla nor a whale.
17:04
[SPEAKER_02]: No.
17:06
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was actually reading today that the original idea that they had for Godzilla was not a giant dinosaur like lizard.
17:15
[SPEAKER_02]: It was
17:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Interesting.
17:18
[SPEAKER_01]: So I guess they went through a couple of ideas before they were on something that was a little easier for them to reproduce, but that's where the name comes from.
17:27
[SPEAKER_01]: So, I was trying to get a handle on the filmography, and I kind of got lost.
17:33
[SPEAKER_01]: There is a shit ton of films out there.
17:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
17:37
[SPEAKER_01]: You want to give us a quick orientation because there's different eras.
17:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure.
17:42
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a company that owns the IP that sometimes licenses it out, but controls it kind of guards it quite jealously.
17:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Very, very strictly, yeah.
17:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, so and there's been like a great jokes about the fact that oh, this is not that thing.
17:56
[SPEAKER_01]: We're we're we're doing this thing over here They people make a joke out of how much that IP is protected.
18:02
[SPEAKER_02]: It's great so Got those owned by total cinemas, which is one of the big studios in Japan and there have been 38 total films.
18:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Three of which have been produced by Toho, and then five, which has been produced by licences in, you know, primarily the United States.
18:27
[SPEAKER_02]: So, and the movies are grouped kind of by fans and dare I say Godzilla scholars of which
18:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'll give a quick shout out to, we're going to play a couple of clips, but our dear friend Aisha over at the every single sci-fi film ever podcast.
18:49
[SPEAKER_01]: She's got a couple of podcasts on this.
18:52
[SPEAKER_01]: One of them is specifically on Godzilla and we're going to play a couple of clips and the people that she had on to talk with her about that are people who are academic such as yourself who really do study Godzilla and the meaning absolutely Godzilla.
19:06
[SPEAKER_02]: It's it's pretty incredible.
19:07
[SPEAKER_02]: Anyway carry on.
19:09
[SPEAKER_02]: So the first set of films is called the Shoah series, and it went from 1954 with the original.
19:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, through 1975, it's called the Shoah series because it takes place in, or the movies are all made rather in the Japanese Shoah era.
19:31
[SPEAKER_02]: which, you know, Japanese historiography divides at least the modern era into kind of sub-air as based off of the name of the Emperor at the time.
19:43
[SPEAKER_02]: So, the Emperor, you know, during that time from 19.
19:51
[SPEAKER_02]: 1926 to 1989 actually was Emperor Hudahito.
19:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Some people may have been familiar with that, but his official name once he became the Emperor was Showa, that's the name of that's his reign name.
20:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, essentially, so that era is known by that.
20:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Got it.
20:10
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like the Pope takes a, a people name in a way.
20:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Kind of, yes, there's a different persona that comes on once you take possession of the right right so it As a matter of fact, if you were to go to Japan and ask people about he told you they would probably look at you funny Right, not know who you were talking about they would have got it, but if you said Emperor Shoah, then they would go, oh, okay got it.
20:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's interesting because I don't that's not something I don't
20:33
[SPEAKER_01]: know how many Americans really understand that or get that.
20:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
20:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Anyway, good.
20:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Good.
20:37
[SPEAKER_02]: That's good.
20:38
[SPEAKER_02]: So the show air, there's 15 total films.
20:41
[SPEAKER_02]: And in the first four of them, including the original Godzilla, Godzilla is the antagonist.
20:47
[SPEAKER_02]: And in the first film, there are no other Kaiju.
20:51
[SPEAKER_02]: And a Kaiju is one of these giant monsters that appear in these movies.
20:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
20:55
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's spawned its own spin-off world of Kaiju movies as well.
21:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Correct.
21:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Would you join robots fighting monsters and all?
21:04
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, which I think we'll get into.
21:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
21:07
[SPEAKER_02]: But then, you know, Godzilla is the antagonist for the next several movies.
21:13
[SPEAKER_02]: And there are other Kaiju that come about, you know, that appear in those movies.
21:18
[SPEAKER_02]: And they're all kind of allies of humanity who come into help fight against Godzilla,
21:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, but then starting in, uh, you know, around 1964 with, uh, the movie Gidra of the three-headed monster, Godzilla begins to shift, and become the good guy, right, little mixture.
21:41
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, yes, a face turn exactly.
21:44
[SPEAKER_02]: And so there's a couple of reasons for this.
21:48
[SPEAKER_02]: One is just the engine out of story development.
21:52
[SPEAKER_02]: But another is the fact that they, as God's little became more popular, Talhoe decided they wanted to make it a more family-friendly.
22:03
[SPEAKER_02]: uh, property.
22:04
[SPEAKER_02]: They saw some blocks.
22:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Floating around there.
22:07
[SPEAKER_01]: They saw the merch floating around in there.
22:09
[SPEAKER_02]: You can't sell toys if it's super scary.
22:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.
22:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, and so over the course of the, the, the, the, the, the, Godzilla itself becomes kind of like the, the, the face and the, the body morphology changes to become kind of more rounded and friendly and,
22:28
[SPEAKER_02]: I have a whole blog post in pipeline, the semiotics of Godzilla.
22:32
[SPEAKER_02]: We'll talk about that in a minute.
22:34
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, there's a lot of physical depiction stuff that absolutely communicates.
22:39
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, you know, not only is this going on, but kind of like Lake, we said that Pantheon all right, various Kaiju is growing as big rocks introduces a new one.
22:49
[SPEAKER_01]: It's very wrestling.
22:50
[SPEAKER_02]: They have their own spin-off movies.
22:52
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
22:53
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we get everybody from Aguris to King Kong, to Mothra, King Gidra, Rodan, Abidah, Hedudah, Gigan, Mechagadzilla, it's a wrestling cadre.
23:06
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like,
23:07
[SPEAKER_02]: It absolutely is.
23:08
[SPEAKER_02]: It absolutely is.
23:09
[SPEAKER_02]: And of course, you know, the action on screen is very almost comically wrestling with, you know, the, the, the, the, the action and, you know, picking each other up and throwing them and so forth.
23:27
[SPEAKER_02]: And then we get to, there's a break.
23:30
[SPEAKER_02]: There's about a nine-year period of no Godzilla movies produced after a period where there was pretty much one every year and a half or so.
23:40
[SPEAKER_02]: And then in 1984 we have the start of what's known as the Haseira films.
23:46
[SPEAKER_02]: This is a bit of a misnomer just because the Haseira, you know, I already explained about what Japanese aeronaves mean or whatever.
23:53
[SPEAKER_02]: It doesn't actually start until 1989 with the ascension of the Hasei Emperor, but they count the 84 movie as part of the Hasei continuum because these movies there's seven of them in total that goes from 84 to 95 and they're all set in one continuous time one.
24:10
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
24:11
[SPEAKER_02]: So in 84 there's a reset.
24:14
[SPEAKER_02]: with the movie Return of Godzilla, and then the rest of them go through 1995 and the seven of them are all connected along the same timelines so they're sequels of each other and so forth.
24:28
[SPEAKER_02]: And some of them involve new monsters, some of them involve monsters that we had seen in previous movies, just updated for a, you know, the 1980s and 1990s audience,
24:40
[SPEAKER_02]: And so forth, and the themes change a little bit.
24:43
[SPEAKER_02]: We're less into anti-nuclear kind of themes more into biological testing and genetics.
24:50
[SPEAKER_02]: And stuff like that.
24:52
[SPEAKER_02]: And then in 1999, we have a break with the Haseira films.
25:01
[SPEAKER_02]: There's six films that are...
25:05
[SPEAKER_02]: put out there between 1999 and 2004.
25:07
[SPEAKER_02]: These are known as the Millennium Era films.
25:11
[SPEAKER_02]: And even though this is part of the Hase era chronologically, just in terms of Japanese time, they're given a different name because they're a completely new timeline.
25:21
[SPEAKER_02]: These are actually, it's almost like an anthology series where each movie is a standalone story.
25:29
[SPEAKER_02]: And then in 2016,
25:32
[SPEAKER_02]: We have another error change, the final error change to what we are now, which is the Raya era films.
25:39
[SPEAKER_02]: And the Raya era actually begins in 2019.
25:44
[SPEAKER_02]: But again, we kind of cross over the borders to just to kind of keep things in the right buckets as it were.
25:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, and this starts with the movie Shin Godzilla in 2016 and continues now, you know, the, the, the, there's six movies, uh, well, we'll be six movies next month with the, uh, release of minus zero and then there's at least one more that I know of in development.
26:13
[SPEAKER_02]: That'll be part of this package.
26:15
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
26:15
[SPEAKER_02]: And then, you know, who knows after that.
26:17
[SPEAKER_01]: So how does the legendary film, the film's from legendary film house fit in?
26:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Because those are, there's like four or five of those as well.
26:27
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, so that's a great question.
26:30
[SPEAKER_02]: There's currently five American produced Godzilla movies.
26:34
[SPEAKER_01]: There's wonderland, oh, I'm assuming.
26:36
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, they're licensed.
26:38
[SPEAKER_02]: In, for 1998, Godzilla, the one starring Matthew Bruderick, which was largely considered a flop.
26:44
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
26:45
[SPEAKER_02]: Tristard Pictures bought the license to produce a Godzilla movie.
26:51
[SPEAKER_02]: And put it out there.
26:52
[SPEAKER_02]: They completely redesigned to the monster.
26:55
[SPEAKER_02]: People didn't like it.
26:57
[SPEAKER_02]: And so they and Tristard, try, excuse me.
27:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Tristard chose not to,
27:03
[SPEAKER_02]: Renew the license and cancel anything that they had that was going to be following on.
27:09
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm pretty sure Talho was not thrilled with it either, which may come when we get back to talking about kind of how they control licensing that may have a lot to do with it, right?
27:20
[SPEAKER_02]: But legendary pictures, you know, to kind of took up the mantle, and in 2014, put out their own Godzilla, and then they've had, you know, the Godzilla King of the Monsters.
27:43
[SPEAKER_02]: And of course, they also have on Apple TV, the Monstraverse TV series, and probably other things that I'm not even tracking because there's just so much.
27:54
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, these are licensed from Toho by Legendary.
27:59
[SPEAKER_02]: They are produced within guidelines that Toho gives them about what the Monstra can do, what he's allowed to like, what kind of tweaks they're allowed to make to his parents
28:13
[SPEAKER_02]: But from what I understand, toho mandates that no movie ends with a final death of Godzilla.
28:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, right?
28:23
[SPEAKER_02]: Like even if he quote unquote dies, right, that there's gotta be some sort of seed planted there.
28:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, yes, yes, yes.
28:32
[SPEAKER_02]: Because, you know, they don't want something to end and it'd be like, okay, well now there's no more.
28:38
[SPEAKER_02]: Why are you in the people going to be canonically like, oh, but in this one, it's exactly exactly and there's some other things, but but in terms of like the larger Godzilla universe, the legendary pictures are the monster versus it, as it were, it is really it's own standalone product separate from the toho films.
28:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Got it.
28:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
28:58
[SPEAKER_01]: So they don't.
28:59
[SPEAKER_01]: They're crying a little story.
29:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, they're parallel.
29:04
[SPEAKER_02]: But there's no like like I think most of the movies, not all of them, but most of the movies take the 1954 original kind of as as the origin story.
29:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Mm-hmm.
29:14
[SPEAKER_02]: But then,
29:16
[SPEAKER_02]: branch off kind of like I mean I'm not a marvel person so I couldn't really tell you if it how it compares to the right and see you but there are multiple timelines and multiple stories and so it's best kind of to understand when you go into a Godzilla movie where does it fit right where does it what is this story um you know is it a standalone is it it's own property is it part of one this series or that series and that'll kind of help you kind of
29:44
[SPEAKER_01]: put it a little lower out, yeah, use to that kind of stuff.
29:48
[SPEAKER_01]: And we're getting absolutely token right now.
29:50
[SPEAKER_01]: And how's it to drag in where we're getting branching timelines and branching universes and stuff like that?
29:56
[SPEAKER_01]: So, but I think that's the takeaway there is understand which given title is part of which given umbrella or set of properties.
30:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, yes, which can't that's the hard part keeping like wait which one is this one belong to so and and is the minus one and the minus zero
30:16
[SPEAKER_02]: Part of those are part of the rewa got it.
30:19
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, series though the movies in the rewa series are not part of one continuous timeline rates more of any of product.
30:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's it's just these are the movies made in kind of this.
30:29
[SPEAKER_02]: This time frame got it right.
30:30
[SPEAKER_02]: So minus zero at or minus one and minus zero are, you know, obviously connected to each other.
30:37
[SPEAKER_02]: And actually the one that is from what I understand has just started development is.
30:42
[SPEAKER_02]: a sequel to 2016's Shin Godzilla.
30:45
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, which I am super hyped about because I love that movie.
30:50
[SPEAKER_01]: But we'll get to that.
30:51
[SPEAKER_01]: I wonder if I've even seen that one.
30:53
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like getting lost now and all of these.
30:55
[SPEAKER_01]: So...
31:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, you've got something here in the outline, which is really come to my eye, the Godzilla Mega Muleon.
31:13
[SPEAKER_01]: So is there a real world sort of geographies space where the people are, say, canonically saying, OK, so this would be kind of in our world.
31:29
[SPEAKER_01]: This is where they would come from.
31:31
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, well, so it's not that actually, okay, you know, has nothing to do with the actual story of Godzilla as far as as I know, um, but, you know, as we'll get into Godzilla is a major not only like movie series, but just a cultural phenomenon, um, and so forth, um, and so, um, you know,
31:57
[SPEAKER_02]: everything from video game appearances, television, animated features, you know, you can go on YouTube and find a 1992 Nike commercial where Donald Barclay is playing basketball with Godzilla in downtown Tokyo.
32:11
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, you know, as I was kind of looking through this, I found that there's actually so this mega million
32:18
[SPEAKER_02]: uh, which a mega million was a word that I didn't know.
32:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I don't know the word that I learned.
32:24
[SPEAKER_02]: But what it means is it's a word used to describe an oceanic core complex.
32:30
[SPEAKER_02]: um, which is a geologic feature that forms a long-rich perpendicular to a mid-ocean rich in um, so fills to a main range maybe.
32:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Basically, when we're talking like if yes, if you would say these are underwater mountains, yeah, that's what this is.
32:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, and so the largest one that has been found in the world is 125 kilometers by 55 kilometers across right so about 80 miles by 30 miles if we put it in there.
33:06
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's between, well, I say here it's between Japan and the Philippines, it's actually, if you were to draw a line directly south, do south from Tokyo and a line doing, doing east from Manila where they cross is where this is.
33:24
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so it's in the Pacific Ocean.
33:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Got it.
33:28
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's the largest one of these kinds of
33:36
[SPEAKER_02]: they named it, the people who named this, and I think it was the Japan Coast Guard was involved in the discovery and naming of this.
33:45
[SPEAKER_02]: They got permission from Toho to name it the Godzilla Megamulia.
33:50
[SPEAKER_02]: That's cool.
33:51
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not, it doesn't really have to do with the origin story, you know, from God said, you know, coming out of the ocean and everything.
33:58
[SPEAKER_02]: But it fits.
34:01
[SPEAKER_02]: If we were to say something like that.
34:03
[SPEAKER_02]: So the thing that I find really interesting about it is, so it's got all these, you know, ridge lines and geographic features, you know, under the water.
34:11
[SPEAKER_01]: not just a simple ridge line, it's actually a complex geological area.
34:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, you can actually go, it has its own Wikipedia page.
34:19
[SPEAKER_02]: You can go see it.
34:20
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm looking at it right now.
34:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
34:22
[SPEAKER_02]: And all of the different parts of it are named after different body parts of Godzilla.
34:29
[SPEAKER_02]: So you have the west leg ridge, the north tail rise, the east shoulder ridge, and so on and so on and so forth.
34:35
[SPEAKER_02]: We're not going to go through all of the places.
34:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
34:37
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, you get the idea, right?
34:39
[SPEAKER_02]: So I just thought that was kind of an interesting market.
34:44
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, sometimes things get, you know, popular enough that some Ash astronomer, somebody will name a star that they discover, or something like this.
34:52
[SPEAKER_01]: But here we have, you know, the Godzilla Megabuyon, which sounds super crazy.
34:58
[SPEAKER_02]: It's great.
34:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I wanted to make sure that I threw that in there.
35:01
[SPEAKER_02]: That's a lot of fun.
35:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Now obviously Godzilla is iconic.
35:06
[SPEAKER_01]: In a way, you see a silhouette of Godzilla or profile, you got it.
35:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, and we mentioned already that the Kaiju or giant monster films, you want to give a quick orientation to that a little bit, because we don't want to go too deep, but it's a, we can't, can't talk about,
35:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Godzilla and the historical context of Godzilla without recognizing that Godzilla spawned a whole other multiple sets of worlds.
35:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
35:38
[SPEAKER_02]: And this is part of why it's important, right, to understand.
35:42
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah.
35:43
[SPEAKER_02]: So.
35:47
[SPEAKER_02]: The original creators, and when we get into the 1954 film, we'll talk a little bit more about the creation of Godzilla as a movie.
35:58
[SPEAKER_02]: But the inspiration, as I said, was early American creature films, like King Kong and some of those films from the early 1950s,
36:13
[SPEAKER_02]: And so the Japanese spin that was put on Godzilla was this kind of special filming techniques using somebody in a suit.
36:30
[SPEAKER_02]: and miniatures, so, you know, if you imagine Godzilla stomping through Tokyo, what you're really looking at is a guy in a big rubber suit destroying a miniature model of Tokyo, and this is a
36:55
[SPEAKER_02]: It's part of a kind of Japanese special effects genre called Tokusatsu, which literally translates as special filming, and Kaiju movies are one genre of this kind of Tokusatsu thing.
37:09
[SPEAKER_02]: If you think about other movies from Japan, particularly from the 60s and 70s, superhero movies like Ultraman, or something like that.
37:21
[SPEAKER_02]: You know these giant hero movies are killed.
37:24
[SPEAKER_02]: I hero movies, right?
37:25
[SPEAKER_02]: Where the protagonist, even though they're a humanoid gross giant size to fight off other monsters and everything all of these kind of originate from this as well.
37:35
[SPEAKER_02]: It is matter of fact the special effects director for Godzilla and most of the early Godzilla movies
37:42
[SPEAKER_02]: actually created Ultraman and it came out of a studio that he created himself.
37:48
[SPEAKER_02]: Got it.
37:48
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, and those of course then go on to if you're a fan of any of the, you know, comment writer or even, you know, American adaptations of things like power rangers, all of these derived from this kind of original genre of Tokusatsu.
38:10
[SPEAKER_02]: that Godzilla is one of the first movies to really put on the map, right?
38:15
[SPEAKER_02]: So, um, you mean, I remember as a kid, you know, watching old reruns of Ultraman on on weekends and, uh, being fascinated by it, uh, and then, you know, of course for listeners younger than ancient,
38:32
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, they may be more familiar with things like power Rangers or something, but all of these, you can trace back to the things that were first tried out in the original Godzilla movies.
38:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
38:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And I would argue, even not regarding this, necessarily, the suits, but could you argue
39:00
[SPEAKER_02]: I think you need to argue it because Steve Spielberg specifically cited, you know, I've got quotes from him where he sites Godzilla's an inspiration for both not only Jurassic Park, I mean, that's kind of, you know, there's some obviousness there, but also for jaws.
39:19
[SPEAKER_02]: The idea of, you know, this giant threat to a coastal community that can't be reasoned with, that doesn't have anymore, and you have no way to stop it kind of thing, you know, so yeah, absolutely so much like many of the Japanese and American movies that are.
39:40
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, going on in the 50s and 60s, we have borrowing back and forth, right?
39:44
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, could've saw a borrowed from American movies and then made his own, which then got borrowed in, you know, the 7 Samurai becomes magnificent.
39:52
[SPEAKER_02]: 7 his movies with me from Atochio as the lone Samurai wandering become the Clint Eastwood, drifter movies, and and also in Star Wars.
40:03
[SPEAKER_02]: But you know, just that little stuff.
40:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, Star Wars from that, though, we talked about that enough around here.
40:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, yeah, well, we have that while oddly enough because they just haven't, uh, that I don't want to even get started about the Star Wars franchise.
40:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure.
40:15
[SPEAKER_01]: We love it so much.
40:16
[SPEAKER_01]: It's such a frustrating thing.
40:17
[SPEAKER_02]: The point is, if you're, if you love that kind of thing, and I know many of our lower-hounds, right?
40:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
40:23
[SPEAKER_02]: Godzilla is part of this exchange because it's not only borrowing initially, but it's then influencing, and then influencing other properties, both American and Japanese, that then go on and have influence.
40:35
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, you could argue that we wouldn't have Pokemon.
40:39
[SPEAKER_02]: which is literally pocket monsters if we didn't have the Kaiju genre at the interest in monsters and Japanese entertainment, right?
40:50
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, you could take it everywhere, if you want.
40:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Isn't it interesting then?
40:57
[SPEAKER_01]: So now that we sort of got that groundwork laid as we start to drive backwards into the origin of Godzilla,
41:07
[SPEAKER_01]: and what Godzilla literally comes from.
41:12
[SPEAKER_01]: in terms of a post-war and earlier you go to a, right?
41:18
[SPEAKER_01]: So here we have this wild landscape of content and material and stories that are all inspired from this one, actually kind of, well, two singular events, or at least this one idea of splitting the atom and what we do with it then in World War II.
41:41
[SPEAKER_02]: indeed.
41:42
[SPEAKER_02]: So let's get into that stuff.
41:45
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
41:46
[SPEAKER_02]: So, um, well, yeah, let's, let's do that, but let's do it kind of with a slight step back, not really focused on the movie, but just kind of the themes.
41:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, exactly.
41:57
[SPEAKER_02]: In general.
41:59
[SPEAKER_02]: So in the early movies, Godzilla is the singular monstrous threat, right?
42:05
[SPEAKER_02]: And even once we get into the early films, kind of like I said before in the Toho line, where other monsters come in and are asked to help humanity to fight Godzilla.
42:15
[SPEAKER_02]: Godzilla is the big bad.
42:18
[SPEAKER_02]: And as we'll see when we get into our discussion about the 54 movie,
42:25
[SPEAKER_02]: He's a metaphor for war.
42:27
[SPEAKER_02]: He's a metaphor for nuclear power, the hubris of man and science messing with nature.
42:35
[SPEAKER_02]: And especially the atomic bomb, which, of course,
42:41
[SPEAKER_02]: to that point, and still now, Japan is the only country to have ever been on the receiving end of a nuclear attack.
42:51
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, we're not going to go into World War II history and the decisions to drop it.
42:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Like that's another conversation.
43:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Another conversation for another time.
43:02
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
43:03
[SPEAKER_02]: But the fact of the matter is, they had nuclear weapons used on them, and it left lasting memories, both emotional and physical and physical on bodies and physical on the land and physical on the environment.
43:20
[SPEAKER_02]: And all of this is wrapped up into the story of Godzilla.
43:27
[SPEAKER_02]: as a manifestation in many ways of not only the destruction of the atom bombs, but also, especially in, you know, well, I'll get into it, but the other thing is he's not just the atomic bomb, you know, his origin is is atomic, but he's, but
43:47
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, Tokyo was not bombed with a nuclear weapon, but it was bombed as I just pulled my students in lecture today, March 9th and 10th of 1945 was the single most devastating air raid of the war and it was conventional incendiary bombs being dropped on Tokyo and just
44:13
[SPEAKER_02]: And so everybody who lived in a city in Japan, and Japan is obviously a very urbanized country, even in 1945, experienced some form of devastation, destruction, bombing.
44:32
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, we talked about this when we talked about Pachinko, too, right?
44:35
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, this is just a common experience that all Japanese have had.
44:40
[SPEAKER_02]: So when they go to the theater and they sit there,
44:44
[SPEAKER_02]: The destruction that Godzilla causes, it's not hard for them to put two and two together and associate Godzilla with war and its devastating effects.
44:57
[SPEAKER_01]: This is where God's Hill is interesting, too, because it operates both as a metaphor and an allegory, like the monster itself has this birth and radiation and this birth and war, but then there's this whole allegorical story
45:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Especially with the minus one thing which I think is interesting because there's a changing message there, but but about resilience, how how society is resilience and how we overcome these challenges and face threats together, so it operates as both, but then when I was watching the 54 movie the other day.
45:35
[SPEAKER_01]: There was a really, I got some really complex messaging as well, because here is Godzilla coming and destroying Tokyo, but is there some retribution or revenge feelings in there?
45:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Because...
45:54
[SPEAKER_01]: what Japan unleashed upon the Pacific, what it unleashed upon China, upon Korea, upon the Philippines, and all of those areas.
46:04
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's a lot of stuff coming back at Japan.
46:09
[SPEAKER_01]: So is this Godzilla coming back at them in some ways?
46:13
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think that's a really interesting idea that you, I mean, okay, so fiction is,
46:20
[SPEAKER_02]: useful for me as a historian and for us, you know, at large, because it can be interpreted many ways and you can, it helps illuminate.
46:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, absolutely.
46:31
[SPEAKER_01]: It helps animate these, these, sometimes, dry or we have to set up so many contexts to understand this one thing that we sort of lose it in a narrative can really breathe out.
46:41
[SPEAKER_02]: I would not say that that was an intentional
46:47
[SPEAKER_01]: No.
46:47
[SPEAKER_02]: But certainly I think looking from outside Japan, you could, you can interpret it that way.
46:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Because they're being victimized by Godzilla.
46:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
46:57
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
46:57
[SPEAKER_02]: So interestingly enough, there is a, a, a Japanese wrangling interpretation of Godzilla, that considers Godzilla
47:14
[SPEAKER_02]: for minus one and minus zero, references this that Godzilla is a tatari-gummy, which is a vengeful spirit, vengeful ghost, or vengeful god.
47:31
[SPEAKER_02]: that comes and wreaks havoc in revenge for some sort of thin or a front or something.
47:42
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, for the right wing, they're interpreting that as these are the Godzilla's
47:50
[SPEAKER_02]: of Japanese soldiers who feel that they have not been honored and, you know, so on and so forth.
48:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Don't get me wrong.
48:00
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not saying that that is what's reporting the fact that's the standard interpretation or that, you know, that is that is certainly not what.
48:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, and again, we have stories and then it
48:15
[SPEAKER_01]: interesting.
48:15
[SPEAKER_01]: That is not what Takashi Yamazaki is saying either as far as I know, right?
48:19
[SPEAKER_02]: The director.
48:21
[SPEAKER_01]: And we bring meaning to text, we bring meaning to stories and we interpret from our vantage points.
48:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, so that idea of punishment or haven't we, you know, God like retribution, retribution,
48:37
[SPEAKER_02]: even that, you can look at from multiple directions kind of depending on your viewpoint and political leaning and so on and so forth, right?
48:46
[SPEAKER_01]: So, and that's where I was really fascinated with Godzilla because Godzilla is both a victim and a perpetrator.
48:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
48:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Godzilla was just living a peaceful life under the ocean not doing nothing and they've got bombed and now is pissed off and so going out and wreaking by it.
49:04
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's human violence against nature in a way.
49:08
[SPEAKER_01]: But then, allegorically, we could say, oh, or metaphorically, I don't know, somebody can correct me on this, but you know, again, like I mentioned before, Japanese war crimes versus American bombing and some people would consider that, you know, the nuclear bombing, even though the conventional bombing is just as bad, but those are kind of, are they war crimes, yeah, and in that, in order to stop the Japanese war machine.
49:33
[SPEAKER_01]: the Americans had to invent and unleash this even greater horror.
49:39
[SPEAKER_01]: And so this Godzilla, as both victim and perpetrator, depending on what role you want to see him in as being a figure of justice or a figure of retribution, it's a really
49:54
[SPEAKER_01]: nuance, space, and you can find a lot of richness in there without being in any right or wrong answer to it.
50:03
[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely.
50:04
[SPEAKER_02]: And also, because especially in, you know, when he's introduced in the first movie, he is a threat, but there's also, and we'll get into it, this whole dialogue about whether it's right to kill him.
50:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, or the scientists, yeah, yeah, you know, one time, you're going to study it.
50:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and so, and so there is this ambiguity which allows as the series progresses, for Godzilla 2.
50:30
[SPEAKER_02]: be I mean, you know, you can almost say he's got a Jamie Lannister turn at times being coming the good guy and then going back to being the bad guy and then being a good guy again and then back to the back, you know, depending on what the story line or whatever it is.
50:44
[SPEAKER_01]: So well, and weirdly, Godzilla becomes a national symbol.
50:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
50:49
[SPEAKER_01]: And is a symbol of pride and excitement.
50:53
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, forget about the later, you know, son of Godzilla and all of that, you know, Godzilla turning into a father or all these things.
50:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Just the fact that Godzilla now has become this national iconic symbol of pride and of strain, you know, whatever, I mean, you want it.
51:08
[SPEAKER_01]: I was thinking about the sea of their cultural power.
51:11
[SPEAKER_01]: of cultural power.
51:12
[SPEAKER_01]: I was thinking of this the other day.
51:13
[SPEAKER_01]: I was listening to a rings and rituals episode with Marilyn Sarah and they were talking about the eagle and the eagle being this martial symbol because Tolkien uses it and the Romans used it and of course obviously you know in the United States it's our national symbol, the American bald eagle, one of many global eagle species.
51:32
[SPEAKER_01]: But our eagle was a past, Alaska had a bounty on them because they were so, they were, you know, so economically devastating to certain farming industries, never mind the DDT and the chemical effects of, you know,
51:51
[SPEAKER_01]: modern chemistry on eagle populations, but they were so numerous that they were seen as a pest, but yet it's our national symbol.
51:59
[SPEAKER_01]: It's seen as, you know, stoic and powerful and big claws and war and peace kind of stuff.
52:05
[SPEAKER_01]: So our national symbols often are born out of these really complex nuanced spaces.
52:12
[SPEAKER_01]: And when you see, we talked about the face turn of Godzilla.
52:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Godzilla now is the
52:20
[SPEAKER_02]: which are evil and dastardly and multi-headed, you know, all in the, which if we want to continue going down the lines of metaphors can be a metaphor for the relationship between Japan and the United States, the enemies that bond the bond Japan into rubble.
52:40
[SPEAKER_02]: then over the Cold War became Japan's protector.
52:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
52:45
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, wow.
52:46
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
52:47
[SPEAKER_02]: So it was the United States, yeah.
52:50
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
52:50
[SPEAKER_02]: And she's ally, right?
52:52
[SPEAKER_02]: And she's ally.
52:53
[SPEAKER_02]: And she's ally.
52:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Japan can directly underneath the American nuclear umbrella, which let me tell you brings up some complicated feelings.
53:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
53:01
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, and so forth.
53:03
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, we want to end in and we talk about business and we talk about the the from early.
53:09
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, once it once Japan went to a European based market economy kind of thing stock markets all that kind of show go early show We know what we got in in the show gun stories, but yeah, I mean if you look at a movie like high and low Man, I'm looking at San Francisco.
53:25
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm looking at Chicago.
53:26
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm looking at all kinds of American cities and there one for one
53:32
[SPEAKER_01]: street cars, buildings, the house, the dude, the house that that dude lives in looks like houses, my family is lifted in various ways of their lives, you know?
53:42
[SPEAKER_01]: It's wise I told you, so there's a really tight action all the way through to, oh my gosh, we feel in the 80s.
53:49
[SPEAKER_01]: So what was the...
53:51
[SPEAKER_01]: was it a Michael Keaton movie about being a manager at a plant in an auto plant and having yes yes yes that's what it was.
54:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Which is funny because that's a it's a Chinese term originally popularized by the US Marine Corps, but that's right.
54:09
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah long history, long connected history.
54:11
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
54:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, and as I tell my students as we go through the modern history of Japan and right now we'll like literally this week, I was this morning, I was lecturing about the Japanese experience in World War II and on Wednesday we'll read oral history accounts from average everyday Japanese people and what they experience.
54:30
[SPEAKER_02]: But everything that Japan's experiencing is not
54:34
[SPEAKER_02]: There's unique aspects about it, but it's all part of the world as it's going through and adapting to the modern condition.
54:43
[SPEAKER_02]: And so there may be different aspects of how it deals with it and different circumstances that it that it's dealing with as it goes through, but many of the processes.
54:54
[SPEAKER_02]: are things like we relate it to things going on in the Britain and in Germany and Italy and the United States and France and so forth, and to bring it back to Godzilla, this is probably one reason why not only has Godzilla been a popular thing in Japan, but
55:12
[SPEAKER_02]: became a worldwide property, because you can resonate, you know, it can resonate, right, regardless of where you're at, because everybody around the world had fears about nuclear war, right, and in some ways we still do.
55:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Everybody has concerns about the environment and what we're doing to it and the way that man has, you know,
55:40
[SPEAKER_02]: destroyed things and made the environment a more unstable place.
55:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that message resonates.
55:48
[SPEAKER_01]: So, and so this is where Godzilla 2 operates as like this 70s disaster film, zeitgeist things, right?
55:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Like we're projecting, we can project a lot of things on Godzilla.
55:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely, absolutely.
56:00
[SPEAKER_01]: So, one of the things that I was thinking of as we were preparing, my initial impression of the 2016 movie with the legendary movies,
56:11
[SPEAKER_01]: the monster verse.
56:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so the American movie is Americanized.
56:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, through continuing on now, there's still coming out.
56:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and one of the things that really struck me was seeing the shape of Godzilla change in that and then even as we were talking, I was looking at the shin Godzilla a little bit.
56:32
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's a wild one.
56:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and then obviously I watch 54 in preparation for this is long along with minus one And there are some really interesting things going on with Godzilla's form Right, there's a there's a level at which Godzilla silhouette is an icon it's iconography It's it's an it's an I can I speak English podcast or mouth
56:56
[SPEAKER_01]: It's an icon.
56:57
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a brand side.
57:00
[SPEAKER_01]: I see a silhouette of Godzilla.
57:01
[SPEAKER_01]: I know that's Godzilla.
57:03
[SPEAKER_01]: There's nothing else like it.
57:05
[SPEAKER_01]: But yet, as you, if you look at his morphology, his head shape, the eye set, what kind of body is it?
57:13
[SPEAKER_01]: How is the body carried?
57:14
[SPEAKER_01]: What's happening with the tail?
57:16
[SPEAKER_01]: How does he move?
57:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Does he move quickly?
57:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Does he move slowly?
57:21
[SPEAKER_01]: It was really interesting in minus one is a very mechanical sort of back to the original movie, almost of a person in a rubber shoot type thing.
57:32
[SPEAKER_01]: So I started to think about that a little bit and think about the, you know, things like in literary criticism, read a response theory, thinking about these questions.
57:42
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's a short haul.
57:44
[SPEAKER_01]: It's in my blog post about how filmmakers encode things and how viewers decode things.
57:50
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I started kind of decoding the monster types.
57:54
[SPEAKER_01]: And came up with like a little bit of a list of, you know, you know, we like to do framework things and tests and tools and stuff here at the Lorounds.
58:04
[SPEAKER_01]: And I came up with it because I was trying to understand what I was seeing because to me those legendary films.
58:10
[SPEAKER_01]: It codes for me is a very masculine alpha male, particular kind of American masculinity you've got.
58:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Your glasses upside down on backwards on your head, you might drive a big truck or something like that.
58:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
58:25
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's a very muscular creature, as opposed to other creatures that are maybe more scarred and sort of nuclear ravage or more,
58:38
[SPEAKER_01]: What's it what I want to say like the the original one is very ponderous and slow and this sort of the tail switches and whatnot or other ones where he's fighting or where he's a father right you can right there's a kind of a semiotics of the body type
58:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Who's making it at what time period is it being made and what cultural values are being encoded into the body shape that then we can decode and then go, oh this you know this is what they're saying about this or this is what they're saying about that sure.
59:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure.
59:10
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's a bunch, I found a five or six different websites out there.
59:15
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll list them all in the blog post.
59:16
[SPEAKER_01]: I need to go back and rework the blog post a little bit because I was realizing that I should put the shin Godzilla in there as one of the comparatives in the table that I have.
59:25
[SPEAKER_01]: But there's multiple people out there who have done visual histories of Godzilla, and so I started to look at that, like, what does it mean when the eyes are wide set and big and forward facing?
59:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, he's friendly.
59:41
[SPEAKER_01]: He looks fatherly or when their beady and recessed or when the mouth is elongated or the neck is bulging like a bodybuilder or a wrestler.
59:52
[SPEAKER_01]: What kinds of values are being encoded into that?
59:55
[SPEAKER_01]: And what does that say to us about the filmmakers point of view?
1:00:01
[SPEAKER_01]: And what does that then say from that filmmakers point of view about their cultural context and their historical context and film with them?
1:00:09
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, absolutely.
1:00:10
[SPEAKER_02]: And certainly a lot of that has to do kind of, as we've talked about with the variations in the storyline and of what Godzilla is representing in each individual film, you know, you alluded to the films where we've got Minzilla, which is Godzilla's son.
1:00:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
1:00:26
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, you know, we can strap you into, you know, it's going to be a cousin thing, whatever.
1:00:32
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm sorry, Minzilla just looks goofy.
1:00:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Did it sound to me?
1:00:35
[SPEAKER_02]: Did it sound to me?
1:00:36
[SPEAKER_02]: But we have Godzilla softened because it has become more of a kid's face turned to boy.
1:00:44
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, if you want, you need characters of face turned.
1:00:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, because if you want to, if you want to have a character driven story, and you want people to identify with him, he can't be reptilian.
1:00:54
[SPEAKER_01]: He can't be predatory in a particular way.
1:00:58
[SPEAKER_02]: But then I think even like when you get into the 80s and 90s when, you know,
1:01:06
[SPEAKER_02]: whatever.
1:01:07
[SPEAKER_02]: The shaping of it of Godzilla, more because we're now no longer necessarily focused on the nuclear thing.
1:01:13
[SPEAKER_02]: There's more of a biological, you know, he's fighting another Kaiju, which is a biological mutant, and it's kind of more about, you know, pollution and whatever.
1:01:22
[SPEAKER_02]: So everybody, go read the blog post.
1:01:24
[SPEAKER_02]: It's gonna be right.
1:01:26
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's five questions that I came up with, just as like to keep in the back of your mind when you're looking at the form of Godzilla at any given time and that is how heavy is he so how how inevitable is he how how what is his frame saying is he a lethal fighter that you know moves with speed or is he a pondress force that is just
1:01:50
[SPEAKER_01]: is just going to roll over everything that's in front of them.
1:01:53
[SPEAKER_01]: What does his skin look like?
1:01:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Is it rough and scarred?
1:01:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Is it glowing because of some sort of environmental or nuclear damage?
1:02:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Or is it hardened and smooth and armored?
1:02:06
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, he's more resilient in some way, you know, more aggressive.
1:02:12
[SPEAKER_01]: How can you read his face?
1:02:14
[SPEAKER_01]: What legibility in the eyes and in the brow set and the bone structure is it alligator like or is it more flat and sort of puppy like speaking of Godzilla and his family?
1:02:30
[SPEAKER_01]: how does he stand?
1:02:31
[SPEAKER_01]: How does he move?
1:02:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Is he hunched over?
1:02:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Is he dragging?
1:02:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Does he move with purpose?
1:02:38
[SPEAKER_01]: I see both in minus one and in the 2016 one, wasn't?
1:02:42
[SPEAKER_01]: 14 or 16?
1:02:44
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of Jurassic like
1:02:48
[SPEAKER_01]: bellowing at the sky, you know, sort of a T-Rex bellow stuff.
1:02:52
[SPEAKER_01]: So how does he stay and then how does he move and then how large is he relative to the world?
1:02:57
[SPEAKER_01]: And what does that tell us about a scale and how much that he commands?
1:03:01
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, those are just like five little questions that I came up because as I looked across the time, you can see definite interpretations, always Godzilla unmistakable.
1:03:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Yet his morphology is saying something about who made the film and when they made the film.
1:03:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And the message they want to convey, exactly.
1:03:21
[SPEAKER_01]: OK, cool.
1:03:22
[SPEAKER_01]: I think we're kind of wrapped up on the big stuff.
1:03:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you want to take a quick break?
1:03:25
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we'll come back and we'll talk about the 1954 movie.
1:03:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Sounds good.
1:03:36
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, everybody, as we said at the top, we're going to split this podcast into three.
1:03:43
[SPEAKER_01]: So the next podcast in your feeds will be the 1954 compared to the 2023 minus one.
1:03:51
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll get into some of the film history and some of the themes.
1:03:54
[SPEAKER_01]: There's some really interesting theme shifting as well in minus one.
1:03:59
[SPEAKER_01]: There's some different subtext messages as opposed to the 1954, which is very cool.
1:04:04
[SPEAKER_01]: and Nate and I will get into all of that and talk about the characters and the plotting and all that kind of stuff.
1:04:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Then, when the minus zero film comes out in a couple of weeks, we'll have a one shot on that, and then we'll see if there's any other lorehound hosts or co-hosts to want to get it on that action, and we'll have a breakdown of the film probably about a week after the wide release date.
1:04:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Other than that, thanks for checking out this podcast.
1:04:32
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1:04:35
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1:05:22
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1:05:25
[SPEAKER_01]: but definitely go check out that Godzilla episode that she has.
1:05:28
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a really good super insightful shit.
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1:05:32
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1:05:35
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1:05:46
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1:05:48
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1:06:11
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1:06:14
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1:06:26
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