Brace yourselves as the intrepid hosts of Don't Encourage Us dive into the profound themes and stunning visuals of Godzilla Minus One (2023). This week, they explore the humanity, honor, and redemption depicted in this latest installment of the Godzilla franchise. Was it just another monster movie, or did it bring something new to the table? They discuss how the film compares to other Godzilla movies, its special effects, and the emotional depth of its characters. Plus, they touch on their recent reads, including the Three-Body Problem series, Outlaws and more.. Get ready for a deep dive into fiction, history, and the nature of monsters - you know, just real quick.
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Welcome to Don't Encourage Us, the show where we talk about the big ideas behind fiction projects of all different kinds.
Books, movies, TV shows, video games, nothing's off limits.
We're here to talk about Godzilla Minus One, the 2023 massive hit on multiple levels.
But first, what's been on your list this week?
I've been reading the second book in the Three Body Problems series.
Oh, great.
Loving it.
So how's that going?
I love it.
I mean, it's really getting better and better.
I just started it, so I can't really take a deep dive into the plot line or anything.
But so far, it's great.
I mean, even the way it starts out, tracking an ant on a tombstone, that's just brilliant.
This guy has such a way of writing that's both simplistic, but so deep and philosophical at the same time.
So many levels.
There's so much going on, and it's just brilliant.
The writing style is brilliant.
The plot is great.
The characters are really well drawn.
It's got it all, really.
Highly recommend if you haven't started that series.
I know you have, but the audience.
You think we have an audience?
I gotta say it, just in case.
Just in case one day, right?
Yeah, someone finds the time capsule.
They're like, what's this?
What are these eight tracks?
Let's put it in the VCR.
Yeah, no, it's a super solid book series, and the second book, I recall kind of starting off a bit slow, but I was really glad I stuck with it.
It just gets better and better, and the third book even, I feel like, blows the first two out of the water.
So amazing.
And as we talked about with the Netflix series, it does take some stuff from the second book.
So you're going to hit a few things that are familiar from watching the show, but they're different enough in the books, and they have way more context and depth and kind of fit better.
I think things in the show kind of just kind of came on quickly and were a little bit, they weren't prefaced as much as I would have liked, but again, I think that's just if you read a book, you always feel that way.
And the context is so critical in this type of book.
And really, you've mentioned it before several times, it's really about the human aspect of relationships between humans, what they do in dire circumstances, their ability or inability to collaborate.
That part is so fascinating to me, like the human psychology part, and also the alien psychology, how they perceive the way we think and why we do what we do.
It's really amazing.
Yeah, it really is.
And like all good science fiction, every character, every alien species are just another facet or possible version of humans.
So it really bears true in this as well.
As alien as they seem, they just represent parts of us and kind of take it to the extreme.
So really, I love everything he's written.
I've read pretty much everything.
I think literally everything they've translated into English, and nothing's really let me down.
I think I read Ball Lightning, a novel, after this one, and he has a lot of fun with some of the unknown elements of that natural phenomenon, so really cool stuff.
But again, it's about people.
It's about humanity.
Is it a standalone novel or is it part of the series?
No, it's a standalone.
Again, you know, really interesting characters that develop over time, and then there's some cool sci-fi stuff kind of mixed in that enhances your understanding of those characters.
Really solid.
That's cool.
Not at all unlike our film Today, which was really less about Godzilla and really more about the characters, which was kind of a refreshing change from the American Godzilla movies.
But we'll dive into that in a minute.
Good.
Anything else you've been reading or watching or learning this week that you think is interesting?
I took a look.
I started that series, I know it's two seasons so far, The Tourist on Netflix about a guy who has amnesia and all these strange cast of characters that he ends up meeting in the Outback in Australia.
It's a well-done series, but I think it kind of falls apart a little bit at the end of season one.
It just takes a really kind of left turn.
Because the way they kind of resolve his amnesia is through him just having a hallucinatory experience on LSD.
And it just comes on all of a sudden, and basically creates his entire backstory, introduces new characters, everything about the show.
So it's mystery, mystery.
Oh, he's kind of understanding what might have happened here.
His memory is coming back very, very little.
Then all of a sudden, just all at once, he's in a fever dream remembering everything.
And it's just...
Sounds lazy.
Yeah, that's a good way to put it, lazy.
He takes a bunch of LSD by accident.
Oh, by accident.
By accident because he drinks this guy's water, which is laced with LSD.
And now we've got a whole other show on our hands, which is the entire back...
He remembers everything now.
It was really lazy.
It's a great way to put it.
But up until then, I thought it was really well done.
He's a great actor.
The cast is really great.
But I don't know.
It's kind of lacking in that respect.
They needed something to happen quickly, I guess.
Could they have like a six-episode run or something?
Like, okay, why don't we make this one huge hallucination that kind of resolves everything that's going on?
Okay, we'll do that.
It was kind of...
Yeah.
I wonder if they thought it was a twist.
They're like, oh, this is a great twist.
I think they did.
But in reality, it was just kind of sloppy exposition, rebooting.
You know what I thought was going to happen?
He was just going to wake up, and he was in the hospital, and all of it was a dream.
It was going to be one of those shows.
I was like, we're getting there.
This seems kind of close.
We're on the edge.
Uh-huh.
That's too bad.
But it's hard to write brilliant stuff that everybody loves.
Yeah, that's true.
How about you?
Well, I finally got around to making a playlist on YouTube and on Spotify of all the songs that we've been talking about on the show.
So for those of you who are interested in the music that we've discussed, I think I got them all.
Put them all on a playlist on both of those networks.
So if you're interested, you can check out Encouraged Grooves on YouTube or Spotify.
I also added a few songs.
I included a new song that I discovered by Laverne, who is a 23-year-old DJ from the Netherlands.
So it's Dutch house music, and the song I put on there, I think it's called Sunshine.
Great summer song.
I just really enjoyed it, and I think people would get into that this time of year.
And I also included a Wu-Tang remix, because why not?
Why not?
It's a summer song.
Yeah.
Yeah, sure.
Why not?
So yeah, so I've been listening to new stuff, and anytime I come across something I really like that I want to promote that maybe not everybody's heard, I will throw it on to that playlist.
So if you want to check that out from time to time as a listener or as a co-host, there will be some music there for you to listen to, and that way I don't have to text it to people and say, hey, listen to this new artist or band because they are cool.
So a lot of the stuff we've talked about is on there from past episodes.
Feel free to bookmark that or check it out.
I also finally watched Scarface.
You'd never watched it?
Yeah, many times.
I had never seen Scarface, yeah.
And?
It was great.
So I forgot or never knew.
Brian DePalma, he wrote that screenplay, right?
Like, isn't that, yeah, that's huge.
Oliver Stone wrote it and Brian DePalma directed it.
Quite a team.
Yes, absolutely.
So I had never realized how many shows and movies reference Scarface.
Like, it is truly incredible.
Like, I knew some of it because there's a couple classic lines.
Like, even if you've never seen Scarface, you can probably quote it, right?
Which says a lot about a movie right there.
But what I didn't realize is a lot of stuff that I didn't realize was from Scarface is, I don't know that you can actually watch TV or go see the movies for a week without running into a Scarface quote.
It's incredible.
It really is.
And the memes that have come out of Scarface, too, there's all kinds of memes that are trending right now that are footage from there, like the money counting scene.
Yeah.
It's all over TikTok and Instagram right now as a trend.
Oh, that's funny.
Yeah.
What a performance, huh?
Oh, my God.
Yeah.
I mean, they all crush it.
Like Michelle Pfeiffer, I didn't realize that was kind of her breakout role, but she was fabulous in that movie.
I don't know that she's ever been that good.
She's done a lot of good stuff when I'm a fan, but that was really maybe peak Pfeiffer.
That or Catwoman, I don't know, depending on your preferences.
But yeah, really, really amazing to see her.
Just so much from that has influenced so many people in movies and films.
For example, there's a song by Immortal Technique that covers the drug trade starting, I think it's called, what is it, Colombian cocaine or something like that.
I threw it into the playlist so you guys can give it a listen.
But they basically wrap every stage of the cocaine development and distribution through a criminal network, all the way up to the highest levels.
And I love that song.
I loved it from like what, a 90s when it came out.
I thought, oh, this is a great song.
It's such an interesting concept.
Yeah, right out of Scarface.
They actually literally use the music from Scarface in it as the sample background.
So I was like, oh, okay.
Another reference to Scarface.
And I was watching The Outlaws, Stephen Merchant, and the episode I was watching the next day, reference Scarface.
It's a great show.
That movie is never boring.
Every scene serves a purpose.
It's one of those perfect movies where there's never a, why are we watching this?
We can skip through this, everything.
It just shows his perf, and it's not a short movie either.
And it really shows that progression and his devolution into this drug lord.
It's fascinating to watch.
He just plays that role perfectly from someone who's so arrogant from the get-go, so cocky and so full of himself, such a narcissist, really, and a psychopath from the beginning.
And it just really, really evolves.
And all these supporting characters, like you said, are great.
Everyone he interacts with.
And there's great foreshadowing in it.
It's just so well done.
And that final scene is so crazy.
It is.
It's a solid film.
I wondered if it would hold up, because never having seen it, even though, as I said, everybody can quote Scarface, I was still relatively fresh to it.
And I was a little distracted initially that he's not Cuban, which I don't think 10 years ago I would have even thought about.
But that's something that's kind of worked its way into our culture, is an awareness of that.
And I think probably most people who've seen that movie, certainly prior to the last five or 10 years, would just be like, yeah, I mean, of course, he's Italian, right?
The actor, isn't he?
Yeah, okay, so he's an Italian American.
So they would be like, yeah, he's acting.
That's what actors do, right?
They take on a different role that involves a different culture.
But it actually distracted me for a little while in the movie.
And then you forget all about it because he's such a strong character.
You're just like, this guy is that character.
He becomes him completely, totally immersed, you know?
Yes, but it took longer than I think it probably should have because I've been influenced by that change in our culture.
So it makes me think about movie making in the future.
It really limits actors if people are that aware, I guess, of their actual ethnicity or their actual cultural background.
It limits your choice if you're a director and you're casting, right?
There's only so many people who fit whatever role it is.
And have the talent to do it, et cetera.
So there's so many factors at play.
It's an interesting topic, really, because I know there's a lot of controversy around it in all aspects, right?
Disabled, non-disabled people playing disabled characters, you know, whatever.
Right.
Non-neurodivergent people playing neurodivergent people, you know.
I think we're all unsure where the line is.
Right.
And we're all kind of dancing around it, because it's quite easy to take one extreme or the other.
Like, oh, every role should be played by someone who's lived that life entirely.
Or go the other way and be like, it never matters, and you should only hire the actor who, I don't know, sleeps with the director, has the most talent or whatever that works in Hollywood.
Right.
Whoever's nepotism gets them that role.
But I think in reality, there's probably, it probably varies.
Like, context is really important, you know.
It depends on the movie.
It depends on also the message of the film, all sorts of things like that.
So it's a really difficult question to ask.
I guess my stance, if I have one real quick, would be as long as everyone's sort of thinking about it and trying to make a smart choice, then maybe the rest of us.
I was going to say it could cut them some slack, but maybe the rest of us can cancel them and take their job or something.
Yeah.
It's a dog eat dog America these days.
That's for sure.
That's why we don't wait in those waters.
That's why this is a family friendly show.
That's why we talk about fictionalized dinosaur monsters attacking Tokyo.
And not the things that matter.
That's not the show.
Almost made a point there.
Almost.
We're all about scurvy issues here.
That's right.
So Outlaws, I think that's safe.
Really enjoyable.
I'm two seasons or a series in.
Super well written.
Really fun.
Really clever.
Christopher Walken is an absolute treat.
It's everything I'd hoped for.
I thought maybe it would be a little bit slow, but no, it moves along great.
Just to drag us back into controversy, for this show, there are two particular main characters.
One of them is, I think her family is from India, or her parents are...
One of her parents is from Poland, and the other one is from India.
Something like that.
And the actress they cast for that, perfect.
She's really good at...
She has a little bit of a Breaking Bad kind of arc going, and she played both the good little wide-eyed student and also the edged, increasingly bitter, a little bit aggressive criminal.
She did that really, really well.
Her romantic opposite or counterpart, that actor, he's kind of going the other way, or he's pulling himself out of the bad situation, trying to make his life legitimate.
Also did a really good job.
I wasn't convinced that the two of them could carry so much of the show when you have other actors who are like Christopher Walken and Stephen Merchant, who are, to me, more interesting to watch, but these two younger actors who get a lot of screen time, I feel like actually held their own, and were entertaining.
It's a great cast.
I think the girl that you mentioned is probably my favorite character.
And her shift from being the good girl who just likes to get in trouble to being kind of like a mastermind of all these different adventures that they go on, I guess, she's really great.
Hurtful.
She's hurtful and self-centered and callous, a little bit of a, what do you call it, adrenaline junkie.
Yeah, it's really well done.
And I love the redhead lady.
What's her name in the show?
She's great.
Lady...
Oh, gosh, what's her name?
Yeah, she's from Poldark.
That actress does, which, what is that?
Poldark is this show, takes place in the 1800s, like, the aristocracy in England.
It's really, really good.
And I think she might be in one of those other shows, Downton Abbey, maybe.
She's a great actress.
I could be wrong about Downton Abbey, but she's definitely in Poldark.
She's so funny.
She is Lady Gabriella.
Yes.
And her name is Eleanor Tomlinson.
And for those of you who have not seen Outlaw, actually, we should just briefly, because it's so good, right?
I'm going to recommend you guys go watch it.
Maybe we'll do an episode on the whole run of the show once I catch up.
But the premise is it's in England, and it's a sort of medium-sized town, and a bunch of unlikely people are brought together to serve their community service hours.
It was created by Stephen Merchant.
He had a partner in this who did a great job.
So you learn a little bit about each one of their crimes and how they ended up in community service, and the show works with race and culture and all the kind of issues that we're not talking about as intelligently as the show does.
It does a really good job of having these characters play off each other and making points about how people on opposite ends of the political spectrum might be more similar than they are different, right?
A concept that's lost here entirely in America.
So you mentioned Eleanor Tomlinson, and she has been in Poldark, Couple Next Door, Jack the Giant Slayer, One Day, War of the Worlds, wow, look at that.
Alice in Wonderland, The Illusionist.
So yeah, she plays a coke-addicted, she's what, royalty sort of?
Yeah, she's a lady.
So she's a royal court, I guess.
They're like duke, duchesses, ladies.
Yeah, she's part of that.
She's a royal.
Right, so her dad's rich and connected somehow.
And she's unstable, she's got an anger issue, which she portrays really well.
So yeah, a lot of people who are the cast are self-destructive and heroic.
They're villains.
It's a really, really great show, really fun.
And the plotline just in general is very believable in a strange way.
It's outlandish, but at the same time believable.
Oh, and it's also got Jessica, what is her last name?
She was in that really phenomenal Netflix series, Baby Reindeer.
Jessica something.
She plays the kind of like the warden of the people in the community service.
Oh, yes.
The person in charge of supervising their service, yeah.
Highly recommend that miniseries as well.
Jessica Gunning.
Yes, she's great.
Yeah, Jessica Gunning, she's really funny.
Really funny, yeah.
She's got really good comedic timing.
She actually brings her own kind of unique flavor to it, right?
It's not as cliché, like some of her physical comedy, I think it doesn't really play off her body shape or size.
It's more like her personality.
So I thought that was really refreshing.
And also they give her a great backstory and development as well.
Like all these characters are getting fair treatment, so it's really nice to see.
I love how much backstory there is for each one of the characters.
It doesn't kind of leave you hanging where it's just, you know, physical comedy or just like gags going on.
You don't really know much about the characters themselves.
It really dies deep into each one of them, and their motivations are really solid for why they do what they do, which makes the show so much more entertaining, you know, than just like a slapsticky kind of surface level comedy.
Right.
It's got more depth.
Yeah.
And Stephen Merchant's brilliant.
He's so funny.
Yes.
It's amazing.
His output is consistently really entertaining.
And he's a great actor.
He's a great actor and a great writer.
And he's got the both.
Kind of like Ricky Gervais.
Really shocking.
Well, you know, I think one thing we can talk about as we transition here in discussing Godzilla Minus Zero One or whatever is Hollywood or entertainment in general, I don't know if Hollywood's a fair place to put it.
We're talking about more worldwide cinema now.
But you have your kind of, how do I put this, paper-thin, shiny kind of entertainment, and then you have enough of this deeper, more layered stuff, whether you're talking about Shixin Liu's series or books, or, you know, we're talking about outlaws right now.
But there's still some really deep stuff you can sink your teeth into.
It still exists.
So it's nice.
And I think this Godzilla movie and the American version really illustrate that point nicely.
Yeah, absolutely.
It's, you alluded to it earlier, that Godzilla Minus One really is a human story, not just a monster on a rampage story, which really surprised me.
I didn't know anything about this movie.
I didn't even realize that it was nominated for an Oscar, or I'd forgotten that it was nominated for an Oscar for visual effects.
Yeah, well deserved.
Oh, absolutely.
You know the significance of the title, Minus One?
I don't know if you looked it up or not.
I do.
Yeah, so the title of this film came out last year is Godzilla Minus One.
Do you want to explain what sort of the convention is around that?
But I think there's a little more to add, but what's your read on that?
What I read was that after the war, Japan was at like zero state, like at the lowest of the low, and the appearance of Godzilla brings them to a minus one state.
Like things were already bad, and now they're just that much worse, and that's why they called it Minus One.
Yeah, so I think that's part of why that name works.
And obviously it's a translation, so there's going to be layers that we would lose.
But another thing I think that's interesting is there were, or there have been 37 live action Godzilla movies, 33 of them by this studio, Toho, which has done the majority.
The previous first Godzilla movie was set in 1954, and this movie, Minus One, is set in 1945.
So despite the fact that there have been 37 films, this one is set before any of them.
And a convention in comic books is to do a zero or a minus one episode or issue.
So let's say Amazing Spider-Man is on issue 458, and you want to tell a story not about modern Spider-Man who's now married or divorced or whatever is going on with him or his powers have mutated or things have gotten really complicated.
You want to tell an early Spider-Man story.
They came up with that convention of releasing a zero or a minus one issue, which takes place like in the early days or even before someone's origin.
So I think that kind of matches here a little bit because they jumped so far back and kind of reset the story, but did it in 1945.
It's kind of like a minus one issue in a comic.
I didn't realize that.
I didn't know very much about Godzilla.
I still don't know very much about Godzilla.
I've never seen a Godzilla movie.
This is my first one, actually.
The other thing is, doesn't our pilot fly a zero?
Is that wrong?
I don't recall.
I don't remember.
In the beginning of the movie?
Yeah, I don't know.
It's a good question.
I'm going to miss that part where they talked about his plane.
I was a little distracted just trying to figure out who he was when they were confronting him.
I was like, oh, he must be a kamikaze pilot.
But yeah, I missed that part.
I think it is a zero.
I think he's flying a zero.
Which is interesting, right?
Because minus one, you know, anyway.
So I think there are a couple added elements to it.
And I wonder if they're saying minus one as a way, as part of like rebooting the continuity, kind of like you do in comics or I guess manga over there.
So anyway, yeah, I really like that.
So this was directed by Takashi Yamazaki, who I think has done a lot of special effects work in the past.
So he was able to supervise the special effects as well as direct the film, which probably contributed to the budget being 15 million, which is quite small for a big budget or for not a big budget for a big summer spectacle or big spectacle monster movie like this.
Of course, the Godzilla movies are sort of famous for doing that, doing monster movies on a budget.
But the thing here is it doesn't show, right?
I would think this if someone told me this was 115 million, I'd be like, yeah, that sounds about right.
It doesn't.
So they did a great job, not just with the monster, but with the sets, with the costumes, things like that.
So really high quality.
So just as a small side note, a lot of films in the last few years have been criticized for not looking great, even though they have huge budgets.
Like, for example, there were a couple DC movies, like The Flash, a couple Marvel movies, like Ant-Man, The Last Ant-Man, Quantum Mania, where people are like, this looks terrible.
What is going on?
And I don't mean to single out comic book movies.
There's a ton of other films that had huge budgets and don't look great.
This film, $15 million, pretty much flawless on the special effects, would you say?
I didn't notice anything that was less than flawless, really.
I was really impressed.
When you said $15 million, I was like, did I hear that right?
$15 million?
Especially water.
Water, like water vapor and water and jet.
I mean, it's completely real.
Like all of the scenes, even when he's in Tokyo, it's flawless, really.
I don't know how they pulled it off.
But continue with your point.
I think I know where you're going.
Yeah, well, I mean, just to kind of build on what you were saying, there was a scene in, I think it was Godzilla vs.
Kong or one of the recent ones, where I believe Godzilla is strapped to an aircraft carrier.
And no, no, sorry, King Kong is strapped to an aircraft carrier, and Godzilla decides to attack him, or maybe he's like resting.
No, he's strapped on it.
So anyway, I would say everything in this movie looks better, like all the scenes in this movie with the battleships and fighting in the water look as good, if not better, than the scenes in the much higher budget film with the same, you know, one of the same characters in it.
So what do you think is going on?
How come you get such different results when you're talking about, you know, it's the opposite of what you would expect in terms of budget and impact?
They both, I would say Japan and the US have access to the same technology, right, in terms of level of technology for special effects, I would assume.
Presumably, yeah.
Based on that, I would just assume that it's pay scale.
Things are just a lot cheaper to do in the production side of a Japanese film in terms of how much they pay the actors in terms of the budget.
So it would basically, not pay scale, I would say budget allocation.
I think you can spend less on the actors and much more on the production side, which is going to elevate the quality of the movie overall, as opposed to a U.S.-based production, which if you throw in a couple big stars and you're talking a huge take for the stars, plus costs in the US in terms of special effects are much higher.
Labor costs in general are much higher, so that's what I would imagine.
So I think in order to get an equivalent amount of quality out of the production, I think you'd need to really raise the budget on a U.S.-based production that you wouldn't have to do necessarily on a Japanese production, but I could be wrong.
But that would be my guess.
Yeah, that's interesting.
That could be, right?
So then the next question, I guess, would be, could a big-budget superhero movie tap into that?
Could they get their special effects done maybe by this same studio at the Japanese price, so to speak, and get the same quality?
Or is there something about being a foreign production company that means price goes up, quality goes down, or something like that?
That's a really good question.
I don't know.
I mean, I think with all these US-based productions, you still have to deal with the big-budget director, big-budget actors.
I think that right there is taking such a chunk out of your production.
Plus, you've got all these marketing costs.
They may not have spent that much marketing Godzilla Minus One.
They might have spent a fraction of that.
So again, you're just getting such a flow of money into the production side and to the effects side that you normally wouldn't get.
And the studio may not even approve that.
Like, well, what's gonna sell the movie are the stars and the director for a US-based production.
There may not work that way.
I don't know what the pay is for above-the-line talent in Japan, but that would be my guess.
Could we apply those same concepts?
I think we could, but I think when it comes to the relationships with studios and special effects houses, they tend to go with the same special effects houses for these big-budget movies here, no matter what, like in Industrial Light and Magic.
I'm sure they're not, you know, giving discount rates to studios, you know?
Yeah, well, that suggests perhaps then this director, who has presumably a lot of relationships with special effects studios, maybe even could do some work on this movie in-house, because he used to work in that area, right?
Like, that was his area of specialization before.
So maybe that helped save.
Maybe that got better quality.
Maybe he could cherry-pick the best people.
Maybe they did some work as a favor, and not so much for money.
It's quite possible.
Interesting.
And someone who's that close to that particular area of filmmaking, they'll know what's right.
They'll know when things are going over budget that shouldn't be going over budget since they're so close to it.
So you could probably shave off so much extra waste on those productions than a director who may not be really educated in special effects in general.
So it might make a huge difference in terms of budget because of the director, like you said.
It's interesting.
Yeah, it's like the difference between having a boss who's done your job before or not.
Exactly.
You can't PS.
You know, this whole Godzilla coming out of the water is going to take three months.
He's like, it takes three hours.
He's like, just do it.
Nice try.
Yep.
Listen, boss, this is the best we can make Modoc's face look.
I'm sorry.
The technology just isn't there.
Do better.
Door slams.
All right.
So for those of you listening, you might be a little confused why there are two Godzilla franchises running in theaters presently, like unrelated movies with the same character.
It's not because Godzilla is now in the public domain.
Far from it.
Actually, the studio's Toho and Legendary Entertainment, that's the American studio, they have a deal, and the specifics are unknown.
That prevented Toho, I guess the deal they made, from making any Godzilla movies for several years.
I think that was 2016 to 2020.
And then COVID stepped in and delayed that a little bit further.
So this movie benefited from more time to work on the screenplay, which I think really shows.
And also, it appears, even though the specifics of the deal are unknown, that there are some sort of elements that suggest you can't or that require them not to overlap the movie and theaters and to create kind of buffers around streaming windows.
I noticed that this film, even though it came out late last year, there was no information about when it was going to be available to stream, and then suddenly it appeared on Netflix.
So I think that there was some sort of condition around how long the other Godzilla movie, the legendary one, Godzilla X-Kong or whatever, how long that was allowed to be in theaters and stream before Godzilla Minus One would pop up and presumably confuse the audience or compete with it in some way.
So I think that deal is going to continue for a while.
So we should see a sequel to Godzilla Minus One, and I think next year we're going to get another sequel.
What is it?
Godzilla Kong New Empire is coming out.
So there's going to be that little leapfrogging where they kind of clear out of each other's way in the theaters and again in streaming.
So kind of interesting.
I don't recall any other time that's happened.
Yeah, I can't think of anything or any other franchise like that.
Right.
So unique, I think.
Certainly on this scale.
Definitely.
And with the addition of streaming, that much more complicated.
But it seems like they're playing nice.
Maybe we'll find out years from now that it's just constant battles between executives.
But yeah, it's interesting, too, because they've chosen such different pathways in terms of the style of the film or the approach to the film or to telling a story about Godzilla.
You would think, hey, it's a giant monster.
There's really only so many directions you can go.
These films are going to be very similar.
But actually, they're quite different, and they approach it in very different ways.
Like Godzilla as a character is very different, and his role in the story and the use of human characters are all really radically different.
So anyway, so what do you think the story was?
I think the story is really, it's about a kamikaze pilot who has lost his honor and is trying to figure out ways to redeem himself because of a mistake that he made when he first encountered, well, two big mistakes, like where he didn't go through with being a kamikaze pilot, mistake number one, and mistake number two, when he first encounters Godzilla and he doesn't fire his weapon and all his colleagues or the mechanics on the island where he lands, they all end up dying.
And then beyond that, it's a story about him trying to find a family in a sense of connection after his family dies.
And then ultimately, I think there's the redemption piece at the end around how he's able to really save the day against all odds.
But I think it's a really human story more than a monster story, and that's why I don't really mention Godzilla too much.
I mean, Godzilla obviously is the critical figure in the movie, but there's so much humanity in this one that he just becomes a vehicle for that redemption piece with this character.
And I think it's also a movie about really Japan winning its honor back after its total destruction of the cities by both the war and also Godzilla.
It's like redemption and revenge kind of tied into each other.
Yeah.
So last year, big film Oppenheimer, which we discussed, do you think this movie is a sequel to Oppenheimer?
Where we get to see Oppenheimer's evil plan to finish off Japan.
This is part two.
This is like on the ground.
In a way, yeah, you could have some flashes back to Oppenheimer in there, and you'd pretty much have Oppenheimer too, right?
Like what happened over there and what happens over here?
They line up.
Yeah.
Geez, I didn't think about it that way.
Consequences.
This is what happens.
They could shoot some footage of him watching The Monster on TV and being like, hmm, okay, another consequence of my work.
I feel weird about this.
With The Monster thrown in.
No, I think it's a very good question.
What is this movie really about?
I think it's thematically so profound, which I was very shocked about.
I thought I was going to watch a typical Monster movie.
Monster is going to attack Tokyo or Ginza in Tokyo, and how do we beat the Monster?
But it's so much more than that, which was such a really great thing to see in a Monster movie.
I was entertained the entire time.
I wasn't bored at all.
No, it's great.
I think an untapped setting is post-war.
If you look at a country or even a region of the world, after a war, I think it's kind of a rich, it's a very rich environment to set complicated human dramas.
And I think they do a great job with this one.
So for those of you who haven't seen it, it's post-World War II.
We catch the very end of it in the opening where we first meet our main character and a smaller, pre-irradiated Godzilla-saurus.
And then it moves on post-nuclear testing, I guess was that Project Crossroads was a test, yeah.
And then we see how our shell-shocked pilot is trying to find a new life and settle in a devastated part of Japan.
Tokyo, right, is set in Tokyo, I believe.
So part of the city, I guess most of the city had been bombed.
So it was damaged, and he and some other survivors are trying to rebuild, and he's trying to deal with his trauma.
So really, that's the story.
It's about him.
It's about his attempt to come to terms with what he's been through and the decisions he's made.
And he's on a somewhat suicidal course at times, and how the community, ultimately, in the last act come together, so to overcome this new threat and regain a sense of national pride.
I don't think there's anything controversial about any of that, right?
I don't think it's disrespectful to anyone involved in World War II.
I don't think it really tells a story about even Japan or Japanese culture as much as just about humanity and overcoming the conflict and the results of a war they didn't presumably start, like not the characters in this film.
So it was handled very, I think, very intelligently, and I really enjoyed it.
And I think Godzilla is back as being a force of nature, you know?
Somebody who's, he's a character who's not on your side, but also not your specific enemy, just kind of a force of nature.
It's really important in the story.
And they use him well.
He's not in it as much as he's in Godzilla, V-Kong, or whatever any of those other movies.
But when he's in it, they use him well, so I really enjoyed that.
As cliché as it sounds, it's a story about the human spirit, really, coming together against a force of nature, like you said, which was really, really well done.
And I like the fact that Godzilla wasn't in every scene, or were just both constant battle scenes with Godzilla.
There were just enough to drive the plot forward and to show the different aspects of where Godzilla was vulnerable and how they could defeat him.
But it wasn't just a nonstop action movie with no character development.
Yeah, well, it's a good reminder to those of you who are working on monster movies to make sure that every time the monster or the killer or whatever your big bad is, every time it shows up, that it moves the plot forward, that it's critical to the story and the development of the other characters.
It's not just a spectacle for the sake of being a spectacle.
If you do that, you end up with, you know, it's fine if you like these movies, but the legendary Godzilla Kong movies right now, I don't know.
I mean, they're okay, but if you miss one, you don't feel bad about it.
You know, if you watch it, you don't really think about it too much.
It's fine.
It is what it is, right?
But if you want a more impactful film, if you want to elevate your story, then this is an easy way to do it.
Just make sure that the appearance of the character, the monster, the whatever it is, it really does move the plot forward.
It is really critical to the development of the characters and time it accordingly.
And I think if you do that, it just automatically makes the story better.
In this case, definitely.
Yeah, I think they did a really good job of showing this whole honor values, how the value of honors is really held in high esteem by the culture and how that can really, really drive someone's motivation.
I thought that was really well done.
And this idea of shame and how consuming it becomes.
Ah, yeah.
Yeah.
It was painful to watch that character and all the blame he really puts on himself throughout the whole movie.
Well, he was put in an impossible situation, but he didn't handle it as well as a moviegoer, as someone watching the story, as you might think you would, or you might be tempted to judge him.
And he attempts to sacrifice his life to pay for his mistakes.
And there's something about that that's very, I don't know, moving, I guess, is the way to put that, but it's very emotionally impactful.
And they did a good job.
They did a great job with his arc.
He was appropriately unstable at times.
His values were sort of shuffled around a couple times, and then the end, it all kind of comes together.
So I really enjoyed that.
Yeah, it's good writing.
Very good writing.
It's hard sometimes to review this type of movie because it's so good in so many ways that it's hard to really be critical of it, which is a great thing for a moviegoer.
What stood out to you?
Is there anything else that stood out to you about this movie?
Because I think you're right.
I mean, I think we can sit here and we can pick apart different things or talk about what was good, but this is another great example of if you're at all interested, if you've been listening this long, just go watch it.
There's plenty that we haven't really touched on, like the finale, which is interesting, so just go do that.
But you and I can dedicate the rest of this episode just a few highlights.
So is there anything that jumped out to you, good, bad, or otherwise, and that you wanted to touch on briefly?
I thought that scene where they're rallying the civilian, like the, I guess, former Navy soldiers from the war or our Naval crew, and they're trying to rally them to go fight Godzilla.
I thought it was very moving, the fact that everyone kept talking about their family, but then ultimately it becomes the greater good that they're going after, you know?
And they, in that speech that the, I guess it was General or Captain gave, he's like, we can't make you go, we understand the sacrifice that you're making.
Typically in these types of movies, it's like there is no volunteering, you're just gonna go, you know what I mean?
That was a very, very kind of poignant way to show the humanity of each one of those people who had given so much for Japan, and now they're still willing to give that much more.
I liked that scene a lot.
I thought it was very well done.
Also, I really thought the scene where Godzilla is kind of rampaging and grabs the train, I thought that was really phenomenal special effects.
He's tearing it apart.
It was good drama too.
I mean, it looked great, but there was an air of danger.
Like when he was rampaging, very often, I've seen a lot of Godzilla movies, maybe not 37, but I've seen a lot of them.
And typically when he's rampaging, it's kind of neat.
It's a little bit like...
What was that Roland Emmerich movie where every natural disaster occurred was a day after tomorrow or whatever.
Right, so you see a movie like that, and you see people being flung around out of buildings or into the ocean or cruise ships or aircraft carriers being flipped over or whatever, and you're like, wow, that's a real spectacle.
But in this film, when Godzilla is rampaging, it feels more visceral because you're more connected to the people who are going through that, and it's easier to imagine yourself being in a train that's picked up or being thrown around by Godzilla.
So I think they did a much better job of bringing the audience into those special effects shots.
And I think that's huge.
That's something that a lot of movies these days, I don't even think they think about it.
In the cuts, you're too quick, oftentimes, and the monster or the villains, let's say, even in The Avengers, they're destroying everything so fast that you don't even get a chance to process it.
I really enjoyed the shots from the train to Godzilla.
It really put you in the perspective of the characters and how they would be feeling when you've got this monster just moving along, there's nothing you can do about it.
They did a great job of that.
On the editing front, there weren't these typical rapid-fire cuts that you see in action movies these days, which was very refreshing.
You know, the two-second cut, where you can't process anything.
This was really well done, where they would really hold on these shots, even when the plane's circling Godzilla, for instance, you really get this sense of being in the moment, as opposed to cutting to the cockpit, back to Godzilla, to his hand, to the ground, to his foot, wide shot, tight shot, medium shot, like of all these different angles, plus sound effects going, like, didn't have any of that, which was really great to see, because it really put you in that space and didn't distract you with these rapid fire music video edits.
Yeah, absolutely.
It's easy to miss, but I think that was a key part of the success of this film.
Because I think the original legendary Godzilla movie, they tried to use Godzilla sparingly.
They tried to show the point of view of the characters observing him, so you just sort of see parts of him and stuff like that.
But I don't think it worked nearly as well.
I don't think they understood how to capture an audience member and drag them into the scene.
And this film, I think, did that at times, and it was very impactful and really made those rampaging scenes work.
And also the finale worked a lot better.
You can kind of feel the danger and the fragility of all the characters on the scene, even if they're just sort of background characters.
I didn't get that at all from the original legendary Godzilla movie from a few years ago.
It just sort of feels like he's this big monster, and he's in a digital world.
Right.
No, the people really feel real.
Even though I think in that movie, they kill Bryan Cranston pretty early.
Spoiler alert if you haven't seen that movie from like seven years ago.
But yeah, even then, it didn't really raise the stakes or increase your sense of danger for the characters.
Not for me.
What did you think of that ending?
I thought it was a little bit cheesy.
I liked it.
So for those of you who haven't seen it, our main character who originally was a kamikaze pilot but faked engine trouble to get out of suicide, now a couple years, what, three years down the road or whatever, he's...
Yeah, so he's got a second chance.
He's gonna fly this experimental new plane.
He's gonna...
His plan is to crash it into Godzilla's mouth and blow it up, which he thinks is the only way to kill Godzilla.
So what we find out is the engineer, the mechanic who was the only other survivor from our first meeting with Godzilla and who resents our main character for not trying to kill Godzilla when everybody else was being attacked, who sort of hates him and says, it's good you're gonna die or kill yourself, actually puts an ejector seat in, and right as our pilot is kamikaze-ing, he is able to eject and kill Godzilla but not die.
I thought that was fine.
You tell me, right?
So just personal preference.
I think it would have been better if when the mechanic told the pilot, pull this lever and it will activate the bomb that I put in your plane, if he had actually made that activate the bomb and eject the pilot.
So our main character didn't know that he wasn't sacrificing himself, that this mechanic who supposedly hated him tricked him into saving his own life.
I think that would have been better.
Now, maybe there are practical problems with that that I'm not aware of.
But since he told him, pull this lever right before, this is the very last thing you do before you crash into Godzilla, I think it still works.
I think so too.
That's really clever.
I would have liked to have seen that.
With that ending, I didn't like how they telegraphed that he had an ejector seat.
Did you catch that?
Yes.
It was just so obvious.
They showed you the seat and all that kind of stuff.
Yeah.
He just says to him, oh, and I also added, and then they cut.
That was right before he took off.
Yeah.
Pretty obvious that he added an ejector seat because they had talked about the ejector seats earlier.
But yeah, I see what you mean.
I think the tricking him would have been, he was so determined to die anyway, but that guy didn't let him.
And maybe he was just trying to trick him and he didn't want to die.
I mean, he was just trying to trick him and he didn't want to die.
That would have been a really interesting bonus scene if he was just like, he thought he was going to die.
He's alive, and then he thinks about it.
Yeah, and then there's a conversation with someone who helps him realize that his life is worth living, and he doesn't have to sacraf—.
And so.
He ends up shacking up with her and they kind of raise the kid together.
But he's so traumatized and his self-esteem is so destroyed by what happened before that, that I guess they never really cross that line and become a romantic couple.
He just helps raise that child from a sense of duty and take care of her, even though she has feelings for him and he has feelings for her.
And then partway through the movie, when Godzilla is rampaging through Tokyo, she gets an atomic blast to the face, saving him, but she dies, we think.
And then at the very end of the film, in sort of a postscript here, she shows up pretty much healed, right?
Yeah, I had a little problem with that.
The way they show her, take that blast, it's like there's no way anyone's surviving that.
She literally flies through the air at 150 miles an hour, 300 miles an hour, gets blown so far away that he can't see her at all.
Like she could be on the other side of Japan.
But she's got like a broken arm, and it looks like a head wound or something, maybe with some eye, little scratch on her eye.
Yeah, but I think the implication is she's picked up Godzilla's radiation super healing factor.
So she's now like regenerating.
That would make some sense.
They should have mentioned that, because I was like...
Well, they showed that she had the little black bubbly skin or whatever, the vein kind of thing.
Oh, I didn't realize that.
Yeah, it's blinking.
You'll miss it.
But I think she was infected.
So maybe she'll turn into a giant monster in the next one.
Yeah, it could be.
What a twist that would be.
Not in a good way.
And now she's chasing the kid in hand, you know?
She's like, I love you.
I still love you.
But you're a monster.
It's a metaphor for relationships.
Seriously.
Yeah, so I thought that stuff was great.
There are a few little things I might have done differently with the story, but that's not a criticism.
It's a really well put together story.
It was well edited.
Maybe some of these differences are cultural.
So I wouldn't presume to go in and make changes.
But yeah, there were a couple of things about the ending I might have tweaked.
These are such minor things, though.
It's easy to be the Monday morning quarterback and go in like, yeah, they shouldn't have done this, but the rest of the movie was so well done, so well structured.
I really loved those supporting characters, too.
They were great.
The doc and all the other guys.
Little comedic relief and the one scientist in Japan who does everything.
So a couple of things stood out to me.
I thought it was interesting that Godzilla's origin is apparently that he's like an amphibious dinosaur that lives in deep water and who comes to land from time to time because the islanders had a name for him, so clearly they've encountered him before.
And then the atomic bomb testing exposed him to radiation, which he absorbed and was mutated by.
So the initial version we see is a much smaller, differently shaped Godzilla.
He's got a different posture.
He moves differently.
He's faster.
I thought that was really interesting.
Yeah.
They also tell of...
What's the word I'm looking for?
They sort of foreshadowed...
There you go.
They foreshadowed the way to kill him with those dead deep sea fish.
So I think they were trying to say the reason, so those of you who haven't seen the movie, before Godzilla shows up, a bunch of deep sea fish show up on the surface dead.
They like float up.
And that's how we know Godzilla's on the way.
And I guess that's because he's a deep water creature, like at extreme pressures.
And then he comes up, and these fish probably get caught up in the current, you know, when he comes out.
And then they all die from the pressure change, which was the strategy to kill him at the end of the film.
So I thought that was a really neat connection that they made.
I didn't realize it was a pressure change thing.
I was wondering, why were those fish dying?
I didn't realize it was the change of pressure, but that's pretty cool.
Yeah, I don't know if that's true.
I just assume.
I mean, unless he's what?
He shouldn't have been radioactive in the beginning, so that wouldn't kill them.
Yeah.
Right?
So then I don't know what else.
I just assumed it was them.
You know, the poor fish got caught up in the Godzilla swim to the surface.
That's a good way to go fishing.
It was funny to me how he never...
Like, as he's getting wound up with those, what, CO2 canisters or whatever, or those freon gas canisters, he just kind of stands there.
He's just, like, waiting for them to wrap him up in it, you know?
Yeah.
It was funny.
But I guess you're supposed to see him like he's not the brightest guy, you know?
He's just like...
Yeah.
He's a one-note character.
He just does one thing.
He just destroys things.
He doesn't really think things through too much.
Yeah.
I didn't think about that, but I guess he's an animal, and he was surprised.
And it was distracted, I guess, by the fighter pilot.
There's that, too.
Yeah.
Oh.
That makes sense.
So I also noticed the Shinden fighter, the prototype that we see at the end, that our pilot flies.
Really interesting.
That is a real-life Japanese fighter that was designed and due to go into service towards the end of the war.
So it wasn't really mass-produced.
There is actually one left.
It is at the Udvar-Hazy Center outside of DC and Northern Virginia.
So if you want to go see one, they actually have one there.
I think that's the only one.
So the fighter, Shinden, means Magnificent Lightning.
And it was designed to destroy USB-29 bombers.
It was an interceptor.
And I guess from what I read, the Japanese tended not to design their own planes, for the most part.
They copied American and German designs or just bought them British designs, things like that, for the most part.
But this is one that they actually developed.
So interesting.
And I think right in line with the theme of Japanese pride, it's something that the Japanese created and it wasn't used really in the war too much, from what I understand.
So it doesn't have that negative association that it might otherwise.
So interesting choice and very visually appealing.
So I think that was a very smart detail that they added.
Another thing that stood out to me, so Japan is being attacked by a giant monster, and every other country is busy.
They're like, oh, big, huge dinosaur lizard that's like a million feet tall attacking your country.
Yawn.
Well, good luck, Japan.
You know, take pictures.
Were they just eluding the fact that they had just lost the war and no one wanted to help Japan in general?
Just period.
I mean, I assume it was a metaphor, but it's a giant lizard.
Like, nobody's like, yeah, we'll go check it out.
You know, they're like, no, we'll just watch on TV.
You would think.
Yeah.
Yeah, they made a point of saying that a few times, that I guess we're on our own again.
What is going on elsewhere in the world that's more interesting than this?
That might be an international threat, that there's this, like, massive dinosaur the size of the Empire State Building just roaming the waters ready to destroy cities.
Right?
Yeah, just randomly popping up.
You'd think they'd want to check it out.
Track them a little bit.
Maybe get a picture or something.
Maybe get a sample something.
Like, no, not really.
Not interesting.
What was our CIA doing back then?
Not much, I guess.
Was it taking a break or what?
We heard about that thing, yeah.
We're not sure if it's real or not.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, anyway, what's the farm report?
That's a good point.
Anyway, it was also great to hear the classic theme music.
You know, that Godzilla theme from back in the day.
They certainly used that a lot, which was cool, and I haven't heard that much since.
There's a song Simon Says by Pharaoh Monk, which I think was 1999 or whatever his debut album.
He sampled that theme, so I was like, made me think about that song every time I heard it, which was a lot in this movie.
That's funny.
So that was fun.
Yeah, I'm not familiar with the movies other than this one, but I really enjoyed the special, like the sound effects and everything in this movie.
The sound design was really good.
So you think we'll get a sequel?
Oh, yeah, for sure.
With that ending, where he's starting to regenerate already, they spent no time between the scene with our protagonist and his, I guess, now girlfriend, wife, and showing us that.
I mean, they jumped right into it, you know?
Oh, yeah.
So yeah.
Don't worry.
Don't worry, there's a sequel.
He'll be back.
And maybe she'll be back.
Well, I like that.
It could be.
It could be.
I like that approach.
Like, so again, for those of you who haven't seen it, Godzilla is blown up.
There's just kind of a chunk left that's sinking.
But his super healing factor kicks in.
And I guess there's enough tissue there to start regenerating an entire Godzilla.
But it's a little bit cheesy, honestly.
But I like that it opens the door for a redesign.
So if they do a sequel, they can give him new powers.
They can change the way he looks, right?
They can give you new visuals for his atomic breath, if they want to.
Because there's nothing that says when he's destroyed that much or when there's that little of him left, that he can't come back maybe with new defenses against the ways in which he was killed.
Like, maybe his mouth will be more armored or something.
What if he's just like a little gecko who can swim?
Because he can regenerate all of them.
He's just really small.
It's like a goldfish.
They will not go that way.
Yeah.
It's like, look how cute Godzilla is.
He's breathing that atomic breath again.
When will I light my cigarette?
That's funny.
Yeah.
And it's a little bit of a metaphor, I guess, for Japan in that you can wreck it and it keeps coming back.
You know, that's the theme there.
And they'll probably develop more this idea of the infection that she got.
I guess if you're hit with the atomic breath, then maybe you become infected with some of this radiation.
Maybe we'll see that happen.
You turn into a part lizard, dinosaur?
I don't know.
So in a sequel, maybe we'll see that some of the people who survived somehow play a significant role in being a new threat or in maybe Godzilla comes back and deals with them or something.
I don't know.
There's a lot of sci-fi ways to go with an infected group of people.
Yeah, I mean, anything's possible, I guess.
But it'll be, with that sequel, yeah.
I mean, it really opens you up to a lot.
They still have to rebuild, right?
After all that.
Yep.
Well, and as you were saying, our main character, if we want to continue to follow these characters, presumably, they're gonna have a relationship now.
Could be a happy ever after kind of a thing, or with her illness or infection, it could create new problems.
I don't know.
Yeah, I think it'll be good.
Could be.
It's a tough one.
I mean, they took their time.
As I said, they took about three years working on this script because of the delays.
And a good script takes a long time to perfect.
It takes a lot of getting, writing it, getting some distance from it, coming back, realizing little bits of it that you like, need to go, or the timing's a bit off, or what you're visualizing in your head isn't really accurately represented on the page.
Other people come in and they add new details and things that are good, and maybe if you're the writer, initially you hate that, and you get all frustrated that somebody suggested you use this particular type of plane, and then you think about it for six months or a month, and you realize, ah, that is actually better, damn it.
Like a great podcast.
Just like a great podcast if such a thing exists.
So yeah, so hopefully they'll take their time on this one.
I think it's quality over quantity, especially when you make as much money as they're making on such a low budget.
It's really a better strategy to take your time and really perfect it.
So maybe we'll get another round of COVID and get some good development time for everybody.
Yeah, one can hope.
Godzilla plus one, fantastic.
Yeah, I guess, yeah, what's the other one?
Is it negative two or is it gonna be zero?
That's the plot thickens, right?
Never know, it could be anything.
Like negative 100 Celsius.
And then we'll do Kelvin, all the scales.
All right, so who would you recommend this movie to?
Recommend it to anyone who likes any type of monster movie, someone who really enjoys even like period pieces around, you know, World War II movies, I would recommend it because of the human...
The history piece.
Yeah, the history piece, the human story, the survival aspect, the...
For history buffs and movie fans, or monster fans, I would recommend it.
But I would add people who enjoy very relatively small scale human dramas, and they just want a little bit of a break from low stakes, you know?
There's so many of those movies, it's like, wow, if this goes the wrong way, someone could be mildly inconvenienced and very upset about it, right?
But they're not gonna lose their job or anything like that.
That's a good point, yeah.
Maybe there's a breakup, right?
So if you like that kind of movie, that really intense human drama, then this is fun.
This is a great one because it has that, but then there's also like much larger stakes and some spectacle.
But it's not dominating the whole film.
You're not spending the whole movie watching people run away from a monster or the exploding sun or something like that.
Not that that's a bad thing, but it's not everybody's thing.
And this movie has the pieces for the sort of heavy, not heavy, what's the way to put that?
More realistic drama, I guess.
More emotion forward, human relationship stuff.
And then there's a nice fun piece here and there with the monster that, like I said, moves the plot forward and is important to the character development.
So I would recommend it to people like that who normally would never see a Godzilla movie.
And I think that's a real testament to the quality of this film.
It's almost like anyone who enjoys a low budget drama would enjoy this, you know?
Yeah, so nobody.
Us, and that's it.
All right, anything else?
Any other highlights?
Anything else that stood out to you?
Just thought it was just a really clever way to start the movie, how this character was already drawn for you in a lot of ways in terms of you caring about him from the opening scene.
I thought that was really well done.
Once you know he's a kamikaze pilot, you have all the connotations of being a kamikaze pilot in your head and why he feels so much shame, right?
Because what's a kamikaze pilot supposed to do, right?
Not be alive, and there he is alive.
Like instantly, you have that affinity for the main character, which is really rare to see in a lot of ways in a lot of movies, you know?
Takes a little while for you to really connect with that character, but I felt like it was easy for anyone to connect with him.
Yeah, oh no, it was great.
I mean, I think at other times in history, audiences, maybe Japanese audiences or certain people in America would reject a character like that, the whole film.
They would see him as a coward.
He's responsible for, he didn't do his duty.
He then is partially responsible for a lot of deaths, like right off the bat.
And he's sitting there point blank in the cockpit, his 22-millimeter machine guns or whatever they were, 22s, 30, whatever.
He had the plane's machine guns point blank aimed at Godzilla's head and did nothing.
And it's like, well, how do you come back from that?
But then we've got another hour and a half to answer that question.
It really reinforced his dishonor.
Yep, good choice.
And he had a lot of guilt around that.
And I think the actor did a good job.
I think the acting pretty much all the way around was good.
Nothing really stood out to me as very obviously acting or negative.
So that's good.
All right, any questions for the audience?
Anything you wanna hear from people who watch this?
Do you think a sequel could be successful if it revolved more around following Godzilla in kind of his point of view?
Do you think it could actually work?
Or does this series have to always be pretty much 90% human-centered for it to work?
Like, is there a new perspective or point of view that this franchise could take that would still work, but maybe involve the monster even more?
Okay, yeah, yeah, I think if you use Jaws and the Jaws series as a bit of a template, I think that answers the question, like, no.
Right.
You know, like, you're just gonna make it something totally different, and it's gonna essentially be the American films.
But, hey, that doesn't mean it can't be done.
That doesn't mean there isn't some brilliant writer out there, even if it's not their job.
You know, they're just commuting to their boring accounting office job or something.
But in their head, they have a version of this story that could work for sure, so I'd love to hear it.
Maybe they could take it in that direction and make it even more poignant and more human, despite the fact that we're following Godzilla's perspective more.
So, yeah, I'm sure it can be done.
I'm just not sure it has been done very often.
So, I'm always curious which version people like.
So, there have been a lot of different versions of Godzilla over the years, and right now there are two that are kind of actively running, but not too long ago, there was a trilogy of animated films on Netflix, which I watched, and I thought they were interesting.
It was a lot more heavy sci-fi.
It was set in like the distant future and sort of post-war, I guess, on Earth and this whole very sci-fi story.
But there have been tons and tons of versions, and Toho, as I said, does tend to reboot or partially reboot the continuity and Godzilla, like his nature and his powers and all that kind of stuff.
So I'm always curious which version people like and why.
I think for super fans, they probably have strong opinions, and for your average moviegoer, they've maybe seen this movie and the legendary films presently.
Maybe some people prefer the legendary films.
I could see that.
There's a certain perspective there, which I'd love to hear from the audience.
All right, so as always, thank you to the people who made Godzilla Minus One, and personally, I hope they are hard at work on Godzilla Plus One.
What do you think you said?
Plus a hundred?
I don't know.
Yeah, maybe they'll just average to zero eventually.
Thank you to the listeners.
If you'd like, you can reach us via Don't Encourage It Gmail or social media.
Just don't encourage us.
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Next time, I don't know, what do you think?
We are gonna do an episode on Deadpool 3 and the state of the MCU with our friend of the show, Matt Bachman, here in a month or so, but I don't know, you think we'll do anything between now and then?
Probably Dead Heat.
Yeah, we should probably do Dead Heat.
I think it's time, yeah.
All right, well until then, goodbye everybody.