Horror's Greatest (2024) s01e02 Episode Script
Giant Monsters
[music playing]
STEVE NILES: Why do people
love giant monsters?
I don't know.
Why I love giant monsters
is because they wreak havoc.
I love monsters a lot.
And to have a monster that's
the size of a skyscraper
is just the best
thing in the world.
MICHAEL DOUGHERTY: There isn't
a culture on Earth that doesn't
tell stories about monsters.
I think because they
represent part of ourselves.
It's that constant battle
between our more elevated
human nature and are much more
animalistic, ferocious, feral,
and violent, and scary nature.
With most giant
monster kaiju films,
there's some upset
giant creature
that is getting from
point A to point
B, whatever its
purpose is, and just
messing up things in its path.
It's as simple as that.
What are the must see
giant monster movies?
Horror film,
science fiction films,
they mirror the
anxieties of the age.
And the 1950s was
the Communist menace
and fear of nuclear
war, atomic war,
and the effects of radiation.
So you had all of these
movies like Invasion
of the Body Snatchers
They're after you.
They're after all of us, our
wives, our children, everyone.
They're here already!
DANA GOULD: I Married A
Monster From Outer Space.
So people look the
same, but they're not.
There's some thing that
crept into Bill's body.
They're evil like your neighbor.
It could be an alien, or
a pod person, or a commie.
Or giant bugs, because
of radioactive fallout
from mankind's messing
with atomic energy.
Them! is probably the
one that leaps to mind.
Them!
Them!
Them!
Them! is a classic
giant bug movie.
One of the family
of Formicidae, an ant.
An ant? I don't believe it.
It's not possible.
When these creatures
become so big,
that they can dominate
the human race,
I mean, how do you fight that?
How do you fight this creature
that has zero interest in you
other than as maybe food?
NEVILLE PAGE: The practical
effects that were used,
seeing those giant mandibles
in frame and people
touching the hairy
bristles that were just
giant porcupine quills,
that stuff really,
really was quite visceral.
DAVID DASTMALCHIAN: You think
about a movie like Them!
and you think about the
look on people's face.
The performance is
everything, right?
Because we can't
linger our camera
too long on these
creatures because you're
going to really quickly see
that this is pretty ridiculous.
[screams]
I can only imagine how
difficult it was to perform
amongst those physical props.
So as an actor, you have
to give it your all.
It's very cool to
watch how they did this.
And what they did with
the budget they had.
And it makes you wish that a lot
of these movies that came out
in the next few years
had as much of a budget
because some of them
didn't quite look as good.
[screams]
We just made
spiders big, ants big.
Whatever it was, just
made them bigger.
Was it as creative
as it could be?
Not necessarily, but
it was more effective
in that each of these giant
creatures was totally relatable.
We know what a spider is.
We know what an ant is.
And to imagine them that big,
that's the horrifying part is we
know what it is.
I have never seen a
black and white film
about a irradiated giant
animals on the attack,
which I haven't loved.
There is something some eternal
10-year-old inside of me that
just wants to see giant spiders
or giant ants march on Santa Fe.
Oh, Jesus!
What the hell is going on?
I mean, what the
hell is going on!
They might not be very
big compared to King Kong
or Godzilla, but one of
my favorite giant monsters
are the Graboids
in Tremors, which
are these underground slugs
that basically have the ability
to like jet propel themselves
underneath the Nevada desert
and then pop up and eat
people whenever they please.
Tremors is the best monster
movie of the '90s, full stop.
Probably one of the
smartest monster movies
you're going to get
just in general.
The characterization in
that movie is fantastic.
The ensemble is amazing.
It's scary.
The humor works.
Uh, roger that, Burt,
and congratulations.
Be advised, however,
there are two more,
repeat, two more mother humpers.
BREA GRANT: It takes
two guys that we
all can relate to in some way.
They're are good old boys.
They're guys that, like, you
would have gone to high school
with.
They have no special
skills, really.
They are not scientists.
I don't even know
if they're bright.
Well, I'll tell you.
Nobody handles garbage
better than we do.
And then it puts them
in a monster movie.
Tremors also capitalizes
on the Jaws POV
like you were in the
killer perspective.
No way!
And that is horrifying.
And the practical effects
of that movie still hold up.
When they trick the one Graboid
into smashing into the cement
wall, and then they, like,
dig up one end of it,
and Kevin Bacon picks it up.
I found the ass end.
You feel the scope.
You feel how big that thing is because
they created that thing, you know?
And it just feels real.
When the Graboid comes smashing
through Burt Gummer's wall,
and the tentacles come
out, it's just so good.
It does kind of take that
old school Western idea
that if anybody tries to
invade us, we've got guns,
and we're Americans, and
we'll blow your ass away.
It's got that message,
but done in an amped up
kind of satirical way.
Broke into the wrong
goddamn rec room, didn't you,
you bastard?
RYAN TUREK: There is a
gleefulness to the movie
that's very hard to recreate.
It's been often imitated,
but very hard to recreate.
There's just something
very genuine.
It was coming from
a genuine place.
And no one saw it coming.
I want to watch
this movie tonight.
So good.
Get inside!
Get inside!
[screams]
Cloverfield is a perfect
Godzilla film for America
because you care
about the people.
There is nothing
I can do about that.
The girl that I love more
than anything is dying,
and it's my fault. She should
have been with me tonight,
and I let her go.
DAVE SCHILLING:
Cloverfield makes
you care about this
romance falling apart
and these goofy young
people in Manhattan.
and bring some
guy to my party?
You haven't talked
to me in weeks.
God, man.
HUD: Sorry.
Come on.
DAVE SCHILLING: And you're seeing
these emotional dramas between people.
This soap opera element
of it is very American.
HUD: Rob and Beth
totally had sex together.
I knew it.
DAVE SCHILLING: And it's
about their survival.
Cloverfield showed you
can be a successful American
young person, your
life is great,
and at the drop of a hat
And hang on to the people
that you care about the most.
Oh, god.
Oh, god.
What the hell was that?
What was that?
It can all be taken away by
terrorists, or giant kaiju, or
an invading army, or whatever.
Like, you are not safe.
No matter how much money
they put into the military,
it's not going to last forever.
And it's coming.
And partly, it already
has come with 9/11.
[screaming]
DAVE SCHILLING: I think without
taking into account 9/11
as context with
Cloverfield, you're
missing the point in the way
that you would miss the point
if you didn't talk
about the atomic bomb
when watching Godzilla.
It's the same connection,
and it's why it works.
It works because
we're exorcizing
demons through this film.
[screaming]
Cloverfield, for me, is one
of those movies that just feels
about as close as you can get
to seeing a giant monster attack
because the way it was shot.
You're in it.
Doing a found footage
approach to that, I think,
was absolutely brilliant because
it's putting you on the ground.
You're basically
looking at eye level,
looking at soldiers
running around,
and all the camera
has to do is go
and you're just
seeing a giant monster
face looking down at you.
That's really horrifying.
The most important part
of the Cloverfield creature
that I think dare I say
why it was successful
was the fact that we
understood his motivation.
The common trait with kaiju
type creatures, giant monsters,
is that they are just
knocking over buildings
with no specific reason
other than violence.
And Cloverfield was a newborn,
brand new baby hatched out
of an egg that found
itself in an environment
that it was afraid of.
So it was never really
trying to destroy New York.
It was just trying
to find its mom.
HUD: Are you guys seeing
this shit right now?
Oh, my god.
Oh, god.
If you can imbue a creature
with a motivation, one
that works for the
story, it makes
everyone's job so much easier.
And it makes the
consumption of that creature
by an audience so much
more easy and rich.
Nope.
Nope, oh, my gosh.
I haven't seen a
movie in so long
where something as simple
as a cloud became menacing.
OJ, it's in the cloud.
Mm-hmm.
It's like the other side of
a Joni Mitchell song, right?
Like, clouds, when I
see them up and down.
And now, I'm fucking terrified.
In Jordan Peele's Nope,
you've got this spacecraft that
is ultimately revealed
to not be a spacecraft,
but to actually be
this interdimensional,
interstellar creature
that has just decided
to live above the desert.
And then once we get
into that creature,
as it devours those people,
it squishes them in the mouth.
Oh, it was so good
and so singular.
I had never seen anything
like that before.
Once you realize that
people are getting sucked up
into this thing and then going
through its digestive tract,
I was just like,
this is awesome.
And then it, like,
when it regurgitates
all of that blood on the house,
that's nightmare imagery.
You never imagine a farmhouse
being covered in blood.
Jordan takes you inside
and you're living what
this character is experiencing.
then you pop out for the wide.
Every kaiju movie
is about nature.
And this is absolutely
a kaiju film.
Even though there's not a fight,
it's still a giant monster
and it's eating people,
but there is no expectation
that they're going to kill it.
Website like Cyber Dominion will
pay $5,000 to $100k for
photographic evidence
of UFOs and shit.
They just want to
take a photo of it.
[tense music]
TRACEY SALISBURY:
But it opens up,
you know, into this
kind of butterfly.
It's more dangerous
because it's beautiful.
But yet, it becomes more lethal
when it really reveals itself.
It's a film about the
feeling of being observed
and the observer.
You can identify with the alien.
You can identify with
the band of heroes
because we're all
in that space where
we're going back from being the
subject to being the watcher.
Are we behind the camera?
Or are we in front
of the camera?
[screams]
That's a weird
position to be in.
And that drives you crazy.
And you see what
happens to the monkey.
You see what happens
to the monster.
And you see what happens
to people of color
when they're treated
like cattle to be herded
or anything that
takes your difference
and makes it a gimmick,
something to sell.
So people who say that that
movie didn't have the same kind
of cultural, or socioeconomic,
or racial undertone the other
two of his films had are wrong.
It's right there.
[music playing]
MAN: They're somewhat slow
and lethargic until inflamed
by the smell of blood.
[screams]
What if circumstances
magnified one of them
in size and strength?
Then expect something
that's fiercer,
more cruel, and
deadly than anything
that ever walked the Earth.
There's nothing out there.
Nothing in the mist.
Man, as the dominant
species of life on Earth,
will probably be extinct.
[screams]
JORDAN VOGT-ROBERTS: You
know, King Kong and Godzilla
are not just film history, but
they are cultural iconography.
You know, like, they almost
represent like America and Japan
in various ways, but, like,
they just are pop culture.
Like, they transcend just being,
oh, here's these great movies.
[screams]
JOE HILL: My all-time
favorite giant monster
film from the classic era,
you've got to go with King Kong.
DANA GOULD: There's
a magic to that movie
that is really timeless.
It's still galvanizes
you when you watch it.
Did you ever hear of Kong?
It's pure fantasy at a time
when things like John Carter
you know, Burroughs
and all that stuff
was still so popular.
So the idea of going
out into the jungle
and finding dinosaurs, and
giant spiders, and King Kong,
it still felt like
that was possible.
There were unknown parts of the
world that you could discover.
HEIDI HONEYCUTT: King Kong
is worshipped as a god
on this island of natives.
And he's not a bad guy.
He's just a misunderstood
big giant ape
who happens to fall
in love with Fay Wray
because she's just so beautiful.
And he actually saves her life.
And the human men are
horrified by this romance
because he's a giant ape.
But we've got
something he wants.
Yeah, something
he won't get again.
One of the elements of the
original film that isn't given
the credit that it's due is
the set design of that jungle
and the matte paintings.
It didn't look like a jungle.
It looked like a fairy tale.
And that allowed the
audience's suspension of
disbelief went along with that.
JORDAN VOGT-ROBERTS: The
1933 Kong, it still holds up
and it's still a pinnacle.
And it's still like a masterwork
not only of like storytelling
for the era, but like,
technically what they were doing
on display in terms of, like,
creating this like fully living,
breathing creature, you
know, that really was cotton
and rabbit fur, you know, Kong
brought that to life in a way
that I don't think anything
else had done before.
JOE HILL: There's
something so moving
about him lost in the city
and fighting for his life.
He's destructive.
He's killing people.
He's smashing planes
out of the sky,
but we're rooting for
him the whole way.
It's not really so much
about, oh, no, we were
attacked by a giant monster.
It's really more about we
kind of brought something
here that shouldn't
have been here
that was out of its element.
And we shouldn't have done that.
And it's kind of sad and
it's kind of our fault.
A really bitter
sweet kind of movie,
and that's why I think it really
resonated with so many people
and still does.
What does it matter?
Airplanes got him.
It wasn't the airplanes.
It was beauty killed the beast.
Peter Jackson's King Kong
was a work of art, technically.
I think the smartest thing
about that particular King Kong
was the performance
capture utilized
to get that King
Kong to be emotive
and to be humanized,
have the audiences feel
the empathy that
we had only felt
with the original King Kong.
He spanned that
distance of time.
And it's like Peter Jackson did
what the first King Kong did,
which was make you feel for it.
JORDAN VOGT-ROBERTS:
Peter made a great movie
that was sort of a modern
retelling of the original film
with modern special effects.
The thing that was
lost for me in it
was the fact that Kong was no
longer a capital-M Movie Monster
who stood upright
and was bipedal,
and instead was just
turned into a giant kind
of silverback gorilla.
One of the things that
was really important to me
in going into Kong:
Skull Island was
bringing back that capital-M
Movie Monster vibe.
Early on in my
thought process, it
was almost like what would
have happened if Kong didn't
get taken off the island.
Could this Kong actually
just be an extension
of the older version?
Truly, the first
image in my mind
was Kong just silhouetted by the
sun set against that orange sky
with the choppers flanking him.
And I've never seen
a monster movie
where you bleed
in, apocalypse now
over some insane kaiju battle.
I've just never seen that.
And I think so much
of cinema right now
and preserving the
religious element
of the theatrical experience
is like giving people something
they haven't seen before.
[roars]
[screams]
I don't know what it
is about Godzilla that
is so compelling to
people that it's still
much more so than King Kong I
think, in a pop cultural sense.
People love him and
are drawn to him.
It appeals to something
primal that much
more so than King Kong.
You know, Frankenstein is
more popular than the Wolfman.
I don't know why.
American audiences know
this character as Godzilla,
but the name "Gojira" actually
is pretty self-explanatory
because it's a
combination of "gorilla,"
the Japanese
pronunciation of gorilla,
and then "kujira," which is the
Japanese pronunciation of whale.
So it's this large creature,
you mash them together,
and you have a creature that
can traverse land and sea.
There would be no
Godzilla without The Beast
from 20,000 Fathoms.
5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
DAVE SCHILLING: The
idea of atomic power
unleashing a natural
predator was really
most potent in that film.
When we released
the bomb, the heat
generated melted the
ice in which this beast
was imprisoned and freed it.
DAVE SCHILLING:
There's a bomb testing.
This ancient dinosaur
comes out and wreaks
havoc through America.
And from this kind of humble,
but very popular movie,
you get Godzilla.
And Godzilla takes this
idea of nuclear power
unleashing a natural predator.
And gives it a resonance that
Beast from 20,000 Fathoms
didn't really have.
Godzilla might be one of the
quintessential examples of using
horror or sort of
fantastic elements
to deal with trauma in a
way that maybe if you dealt
with it more directly,
then people wouldn't just
wouldn't want to talk about it.
This is nine years after
the end of World War II.
Think about the atomic bombings
of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
And I don't think it was even
a complaint that the weapons had
been used against Japan
so much as the realization
that there was now a
new terror in the world.
And the representation
of this terror
would be in the form of
this giant monster figure.
When you go to the
original '54 Gojira, it is
a dark story of cultural PTSD.
Then Godzilla became, in
the ensuing years, a toy.
They sort of redesigned
the Godzilla a little bit
to seem more kid friendly.
Eyes became a little bit rounder
and a little bit more cartoon
like because they
realized that Godzilla was
becoming a sort of
superhero that kids
really latched on to and loved.
And I was one of those kids.
So I still have a soft
spot for that design.
As a kid, you want the giant
monster to be your friend.
And with Godzilla, it was fun to
cultivate sort of that feeling
that he's on our side and
he loves us, which is not
really where it started at all.
DANA GOULD: To be a
little kid and getting
to see this stuff on TV and
these bright insane colors
and this music just,
[vocalizing], you know,
it was just overwhelming.
To this day, if they're
on, I watch them.
There's this tendency to want
to dismiss the silly films,
but even the ones that maybe
don't have a deeper meaning,
I also enjoy.
I mean, I'm someone
who likes, you know,
Godzilla versus Megalon.
Some people just
aren't fans of that.
The Godzilla of
Godzilla versus Megalon
is not the Godzilla of
the original Gojira.
It's an arc in that
series where it starts
off very gritty and realistic.
And over time, it becomes
a parody of itself.
They go through this cycle.
And then they have to reset.
And then they do that a lot.
When I was a kid, Godzilla
was more like a hero, you know.
And he was fighting and
beating up all other monsters.
And that's what I wanted.
And I knew that,
back in 2004, this
is the last opportunity to
make old school, man and suit,
Godzilla, which I love.
I knew that, you know,
they're going to reboot it,
you know, but it's not going
to be like the Godzilla
that I loved when I was a kid.
Godzilla can be hero, can be,
you know, scary, can be fun.
It's just like the final
big firework carnival.
So let's have fun.
[screams]
A great Japanese kaiju
has a mixture of creature
that comes from nature.
So there are elements
of reptiles or mammals,
but they also have a
mythological elements to them,
almost a fantastical
aspect to their design.
Typically, they don't
just take an animal
that we're familiar
with and just, you know,
make it 200 feet tall.
There's always
flourishes to them.
What I find so compelling
about the Japanese point of view
is that they are fearless
in respects to aesthetics
and certain choices about these
creatures because they go crazy.
I mean, some of them
are absolutely zany.
Did you ever see the
movie Big Man Japan?
[music playing]
That is nuts.
The stuff makes no
sense whatsoever
biologically speaking.
NEVILLE PAGE: But that's
what's so wonderful about it.
As a creative person, I realize
how stifled my creativity must
be because I could never
come up with that kind
of wonderful lunacy.
DAVE SCHILLING: For
me, Mothra always
has a special place in my
heart because, ultimately, she
ends up being a mother, right?
So there you go.
Come on.
You got to go with the mother.
The idea of, yeah, big moth.
That'll be scary.
Well, how do we summon it?
Let's have identical twin
tiny people and they'll sing.
[SINGING] Mosuraya, Mosura.
It's like, wait, what?
I remember watching
Mothra, and they were on,
and my dad coming in, like,
what the hell are you watching?
Because it is hard to explain.
Ghidorah was always my favorite
of the entire Toho stable.
Back in the first run,
they tended to, like,
give the monsters
human qualities,
and anthropomorphize
them a little,
and kind of made
them almost cuddly.
Ghidorah was the one who didn't.
Ghidorah was a vicious bastard
in every film he appeared in.
And, you know, it's
a great design.
It's like a classical
dragon with three
heads and the golden color.
It's just a very striking
creature to look at.
Gamera is my
second favorite giant
monster kaiju from Japanese
kaiju monster movies.
He is a turtle.
He's essentially like
Mothra, represents
the good and the heroic.
And he inspires
hope in people that
are being attacked
by other giant kaijus
or other forms of evil.
Now those films are
really kind of silly,
and Gamera is fighting
a monster that
was basically a giant butcher
knife with eyes and legs.
And then Shusuke Kaneko
came along in the '90s
and completely reimagined
the character, put him
into a series of serious,
mature, beautifully
crafted films
starting with Gamera:
Guardian of the Universe.
Then Gamera 3, I
think is, out of all
the Japanese kaiju films from
any studio, it's my favorite.
It has a really powerful story.
It has some really
interesting themes to it.
It has amazing monster action.
And it is just shot and composed
and dramatized in a really,
really powerful way.
The Gamera 3 takes a
goofy impossible character
and turns it into a
pretty serious film
about the poisonous effects
of anger and revenge
on the human soul.
Japan had a closed
society for 400 years
in which access to the
country was strictly
limited that
undoubtedly has shaped
a kind of cultural sensibility
for many, many years, centuries
after.
And maybe kaiju are a
place where some of this
gets worked through
and worked out
this idea of things coming from
outside, from beneath the ocean,
from the sky.
So all of these things being
dislodged from the Earth
and coming strangely
enough at Japan.
[screams]
JOE HILL: Before Bong
Joon-ho directed Parasite,
he directed The Host, which
is a giant monster film which
is actually about income
inequality in South Korea,
but by extension, and throughout
the industrial capitalist world.
And so you do get the thrills
of a giant monster movie,
but you also get this kind
of touching, funny, slightly
heartbreaking story about people
who are living on the margins
because they're
living, you know,
making it paycheck to paycheck.
You know, the first
30 minutes of that film
from meeting the family
and the river attack,
that's perfect filmmaking.
[screaming]
And the creature, that
in itself feels fresh.
And it was so inelegant
in the way that it moved
and the way that it almost
tripped over itself.
And you just had this sense that
it lived a pained existence.
The beauty of his
filmmaking is all of the set
pieces relate to character.
JOE HILL: When this monster
starts tearing through things,
in the panic, he loses
track of his daughter,
tries to rescue her, grabs
the wrong girl's hand.
Looks behind him
and the one thing
that he was supposed
to do right,
which is protect
his daughter, fails.
JORDAN VOGT-ROBERTS: And you
have that great shot of her just
there, as like, you
know, it's framed
in a way where the creature
isn't even fully in the shot.
Its tail grabs her and
rips her out of the frame.
So this family who have had
this rough patchy relationship
now have to come together to
break away from the government
that's trying to
keep them quarantined
to go find this missing girl.
It was layered with great
creature design, cool ideas,
and then this Korean
point of view that was
all of it was different
than what I was expecting.
So the film kind of left me
gobsmacked at the end of it.
I was like, this was powerful.
Bong Joon-ho and
that movie, like,
it's just such an incredible
piece of filmmaking where all
of the spectacle,
all of the genre,
all of the things that people
would normally write off
as, like, oh, it's just monsters
running around, whatever, like,
it's all based in
character, and it's all
based in like relationships.
[music playing]
Let's do this.
[music playing]
MICHAEL GINGOLD: The less
said about the Roland
Emmerich Godzilla, the better.
But I have to say,
I was very impressed
with the first American
Godzilla of the trilogy
that came out more recently,
Gareth Edwards' film.
RYAN TUREK: Gareth Edwards
made this film called
Monsters before Godzilla.
It was really one
of those DIY efforts
where Gareth had a
hand in everything
even the VFX and creation
of the monsters themselves,
but it was one of those
kind of handheld, you know,
found footage movies.
The monsters were
just used sparingly.
And, you know, he
did the same thing
with Godzilla for better or
for worse or to the detriment
of some fans.
Open fire!
RYAN TUREK: But it
was smart, you know.
It was just smart to blend
that kind of docu style
to both movies.
I really enjoyed the fact
that it was shot from kind
of a human's eye
view in a sense where
you don't quite see everything
that's going on as you wouldn't.
If Godzilla was really
rampaging through your city,
you would not get a
great look at him.
Edwards really kind of
choreographed the whole thing
in such a way that
you really identified
with the people looking
at this giant monster
that's come to destroy them.
We've just been wired and coded
that when we see a
giant monster movie,
we got to get the spectacle.
And so I respect Gareth
for doing what he did.
And then, of course,
Mike Dougherty steps in,
and he's like, here we go.
Let me give you
let me give you
all the monsters,
and you're going to
see them all the time.
[music playing]
MICHAEL DOUGHERTY: It's
tough because there's
a lot of baggage.
Whenever you're dealing
with a legacy character,
there are expectations
that the fans have.
But at the same time, you can't
craft a movie just for the fans
because then you're alienating
your larger general audience.
So you have to find the right
balance between the two.
Dougherty's movie, I
mean, I don't know what
else you could want, you know?
I mean, I still watch
every once in a while.
I'll throw the Rodan
attack scene where Rodan
shows up for the first time.
Bear McCreary's music is just
like, boom, boom, boom, boom.
We got jet fighters flying in.
Rodan doing spins.
I get chills even
thinking about it.
I'm like, this is exactly what
I want from a kaiju movie.
This is incredible.
When I came on board, they said,
well, we want to do a sequel.
Would you mind using Rodan,
Mothra, and King Ghidorah?
And I was like, yes.
Like, no, I would not mind.
I mean, that's just like
the best party in the world
this to go hang
out with that crew.
I actually wanted to use more.
But then Adam Wingard just
went, I'm going to top that.
I'm going to give you a buddy
movie, where King Kong is
the hero, and he's
John McClane, and he's
going to take on Godzilla.
DANA GOULD: Godzilla
versus Kong has
a gorilla that uses a magic ax.
It's like and it's funny.
I believe King Kong.
I don't believe he
would use an ax.
You draw your own line.
Godzilla versus Kong, I thought
was very fun and a welcome
surprise, but it just
we haven't figured out how to
make you feel anything the way
that you felt something
with the first Godzilla.
We just haven't figured it
out because he's not ours.
He doesn't belong to us.
He belongs to them.
He belongs to the Japanese.
I think any good franchise, it's
able to constantly
reboot itself to reflect
the fears of the time.
And so if the
first Godzilla film
was reflecting fear
of the nuclear age,
then you get to like Hedorah.
You know, he was called
the smog monster which
is way less cool in America.
But, you know, Hedorah
is technically an alien,
but he feeds off pollution.
And that was coming
out in the '70s
when, like, Tokyo was
famously gross polluted city.
JORDAN VOGT-ROBERTS: And to me,
in addition to Hedorah being,
you know, symbolism for,
like, Tokyo and pollution,
he's just a great
foe in that canon.
The Godzilla films always
started as a response
to things that were affecting
the Japanese people.
And the same thing
with Shin Godzilla.
AKIRA MIZUTA LIPPIT: It's hard
not to see that film, which
was released in 2016, as a
reflection on Japan's response
to 2011, the earthquake,
tsunami, and the nuclear crisis
with the Fukushima
nuclear reactor.
AKIRA MIZUTA LIPPIT: And
Japanese government's
inability to respond
quickly, and swiftly,
and protect its citizens.
It is a funny movie, but
it is about almost like
Terry Gilliam
Brazil-esque in terms
of the madness of bureaucracy.
Like, let's have a meeting to
have a meeting about having
a meeting about how we deal with
a giant kaiju in this country.
Godzilla's outside, and
I'm stuck in meetings.
But that was part
of the point that we
have to deal with bureaucracy
and decision making.
And I get it, and it's great.
But Godzilla Minus One is
a whole different level
of Godzilla movie.
[speaking japanese]
And if it weren't for
the original Godzilla,
I would say it's the best.
TANANARIVE DUE: It's
really, really delving
into characterization, and
not only that, but the waste
and the horror of war itself.
You can almost take Godzilla
out of Godzilla Minus One
and you would still
have a hugely compelling
story, the devastation of war
from the Japanese point of view.
I really haven't seen that
many films that I think really
tackle what it felt like to have
gone through this experience.
Midway through, there's possibly
the greatest Godzilla
destroys a district
in Japan sequence ever filmed.
[speaking japanese]
There's this thing that
happens with this tail
where his spikes jut out.
And, you know, like, something really,
really bad is about to happen.
It had me crying, which
I had no idea would be
happening in a Godzilla movie.
The Godzilla monster
effects are so much fun.
The devastation is,
of course, everything
you want from a Godzilla movie,
but it has this beautiful core
that you walk out of the theater
feeling like, yes, human life
is precious, every single one.
And that's not what you
expect from a Godzilla movie.
[screams]
Ultimately, there's
something about kaiju
that is very cinematic, right?
You go to the movie theater.
You look at the big screen.
And so things were better
suited to the big screen
than big monsters
destroying cities, right?
The appeal of giant
monsters and kaiju
is that these are forces so
big, so beyond our control
that we can't even
begin to truly
defend ourselves against them.
In fact, they sometimes don't
even really notice we're there.
Like, it gives us the impression
of how we treat insects,
how we crush their
houses, and step
on them like they're nothing.
I think this is very true of
most monsters and most kaiju,
which is that at
the end of the day,
there's actually like an
intense tragedy to them
and an intense
loneliness to them.
Whether be King Kong, or
Godzilla, or any monsters,
everybody, every day,
the most painful thing
that happens over and over again
is that you're misunderstood.
JORDAN VOGT-ROBERTS: And to me,
kaiju and monster films just
fundamentally tap into that core
feeling of being misunderstood.
I believe he is the power.
[SINGING] Mothra.
Gamera.
Have you found anything yet?
Say over.
- I just said it.
- I know. Say it again.
- Oh, over.
I know an enemy when I see it.
Two, three.
We can capture him alive.
Why, you're crazy.
Man: There's been a lot
of great Japanese horror films
that are very moody and subtle.
And then on the other side
of the coin,
you have movies that are
absolutely out of their minds.
[Screams]
This guy has been
shoving metal into his own leg.
[Growling]
Man #2: 40 kids or whatever
killing each other
in the most brutal of ways.
Man #1: You could just feel
everyone just be like,
"Oh, my God."
- [Screams]
[music playing]
STEVE NILES: Why do people
love giant monsters?
I don't know.
Why I love giant monsters
is because they wreak havoc.
I love monsters a lot.
And to have a monster that's
the size of a skyscraper
is just the best
thing in the world.
MICHAEL DOUGHERTY: There isn't
a culture on Earth that doesn't
tell stories about monsters.
I think because they
represent part of ourselves.
It's that constant battle
between our more elevated
human nature and are much more
animalistic, ferocious, feral,
and violent, and scary nature.
With most giant
monster kaiju films,
there's some upset
giant creature
that is getting from
point A to point
B, whatever its
purpose is, and just
messing up things in its path.
It's as simple as that.
What are the must see
giant monster movies?
Horror film,
science fiction films,
they mirror the
anxieties of the age.
And the 1950s was
the Communist menace
and fear of nuclear
war, atomic war,
and the effects of radiation.
So you had all of these
movies like Invasion
of the Body Snatchers
They're after you.
They're after all of us, our
wives, our children, everyone.
They're here already!
DANA GOULD: I Married A
Monster From Outer Space.
So people look the
same, but they're not.
There's some thing that
crept into Bill's body.
They're evil like your neighbor.
It could be an alien, or
a pod person, or a commie.
Or giant bugs, because
of radioactive fallout
from mankind's messing
with atomic energy.
Them! is probably the
one that leaps to mind.
Them!
Them!
Them!
Them! is a classic
giant bug movie.
One of the family
of Formicidae, an ant.
An ant? I don't believe it.
It's not possible.
When these creatures
become so big,
that they can dominate
the human race,
I mean, how do you fight that?
How do you fight this creature
that has zero interest in you
other than as maybe food?
NEVILLE PAGE: The practical
effects that were used,
seeing those giant mandibles
in frame and people
touching the hairy
bristles that were just
giant porcupine quills,
that stuff really,
really was quite visceral.
DAVID DASTMALCHIAN: You think
about a movie like Them!
and you think about the
look on people's face.
The performance is
everything, right?
Because we can't
linger our camera
too long on these
creatures because you're
going to really quickly see
that this is pretty ridiculous.
[screams]
I can only imagine how
difficult it was to perform
amongst those physical props.
So as an actor, you have
to give it your all.
It's very cool to
watch how they did this.
And what they did with
the budget they had.
And it makes you wish that a lot
of these movies that came out
in the next few years
had as much of a budget
because some of them
didn't quite look as good.
[screams]
We just made
spiders big, ants big.
Whatever it was, just
made them bigger.
Was it as creative
as it could be?
Not necessarily, but
it was more effective
in that each of these giant
creatures was totally relatable.
We know what a spider is.
We know what an ant is.
And to imagine them that big,
that's the horrifying part is we
know what it is.
I have never seen a
black and white film
about a irradiated giant
animals on the attack,
which I haven't loved.
There is something some eternal
10-year-old inside of me that
just wants to see giant spiders
or giant ants march on Santa Fe.
Oh, Jesus!
What the hell is going on?
I mean, what the
hell is going on!
They might not be very
big compared to King Kong
or Godzilla, but one of
my favorite giant monsters
are the Graboids
in Tremors, which
are these underground slugs
that basically have the ability
to like jet propel themselves
underneath the Nevada desert
and then pop up and eat
people whenever they please.
Tremors is the best monster
movie of the '90s, full stop.
Probably one of the
smartest monster movies
you're going to get
just in general.
The characterization in
that movie is fantastic.
The ensemble is amazing.
It's scary.
The humor works.
Uh, roger that, Burt,
and congratulations.
Be advised, however,
there are two more,
repeat, two more mother humpers.
BREA GRANT: It takes
two guys that we
all can relate to in some way.
They're are good old boys.
They're guys that, like, you
would have gone to high school
with.
They have no special
skills, really.
They are not scientists.
I don't even know
if they're bright.
Well, I'll tell you.
Nobody handles garbage
better than we do.
And then it puts them
in a monster movie.
Tremors also capitalizes
on the Jaws POV
like you were in the
killer perspective.
No way!
And that is horrifying.
And the practical effects
of that movie still hold up.
When they trick the one Graboid
into smashing into the cement
wall, and then they, like,
dig up one end of it,
and Kevin Bacon picks it up.
I found the ass end.
You feel the scope.
You feel how big that thing is because
they created that thing, you know?
And it just feels real.
When the Graboid comes smashing
through Burt Gummer's wall,
and the tentacles come
out, it's just so good.
It does kind of take that
old school Western idea
that if anybody tries to
invade us, we've got guns,
and we're Americans, and
we'll blow your ass away.
It's got that message,
but done in an amped up
kind of satirical way.
Broke into the wrong
goddamn rec room, didn't you,
you bastard?
RYAN TUREK: There is a
gleefulness to the movie
that's very hard to recreate.
It's been often imitated,
but very hard to recreate.
There's just something
very genuine.
It was coming from
a genuine place.
And no one saw it coming.
I want to watch
this movie tonight.
So good.
Get inside!
Get inside!
[screams]
Cloverfield is a perfect
Godzilla film for America
because you care
about the people.
There is nothing
I can do about that.
The girl that I love more
than anything is dying,
and it's my fault. She should
have been with me tonight,
and I let her go.
DAVE SCHILLING:
Cloverfield makes
you care about this
romance falling apart
and these goofy young
people in Manhattan.
and bring some
guy to my party?
You haven't talked
to me in weeks.
God, man.
HUD: Sorry.
Come on.
DAVE SCHILLING: And you're seeing
these emotional dramas between people.
This soap opera element
of it is very American.
HUD: Rob and Beth
totally had sex together.
I knew it.
DAVE SCHILLING: And it's
about their survival.
Cloverfield showed you
can be a successful American
young person, your
life is great,
and at the drop of a hat
And hang on to the people
that you care about the most.
Oh, god.
Oh, god.
What the hell was that?
What was that?
It can all be taken away by
terrorists, or giant kaiju, or
an invading army, or whatever.
Like, you are not safe.
No matter how much money
they put into the military,
it's not going to last forever.
And it's coming.
And partly, it already
has come with 9/11.
[screaming]
DAVE SCHILLING: I think without
taking into account 9/11
as context with
Cloverfield, you're
missing the point in the way
that you would miss the point
if you didn't talk
about the atomic bomb
when watching Godzilla.
It's the same connection,
and it's why it works.
It works because
we're exorcizing
demons through this film.
[screaming]
Cloverfield, for me, is one
of those movies that just feels
about as close as you can get
to seeing a giant monster attack
because the way it was shot.
You're in it.
Doing a found footage
approach to that, I think,
was absolutely brilliant because
it's putting you on the ground.
You're basically
looking at eye level,
looking at soldiers
running around,
and all the camera
has to do is go
and you're just
seeing a giant monster
face looking down at you.
That's really horrifying.
The most important part
of the Cloverfield creature
that I think dare I say
why it was successful
was the fact that we
understood his motivation.
The common trait with kaiju
type creatures, giant monsters,
is that they are just
knocking over buildings
with no specific reason
other than violence.
And Cloverfield was a newborn,
brand new baby hatched out
of an egg that found
itself in an environment
that it was afraid of.
So it was never really
trying to destroy New York.
It was just trying
to find its mom.
HUD: Are you guys seeing
this shit right now?
Oh, my god.
Oh, god.
If you can imbue a creature
with a motivation, one
that works for the
story, it makes
everyone's job so much easier.
And it makes the
consumption of that creature
by an audience so much
more easy and rich.
Nope.
Nope, oh, my gosh.
I haven't seen a
movie in so long
where something as simple
as a cloud became menacing.
OJ, it's in the cloud.
Mm-hmm.
It's like the other side of
a Joni Mitchell song, right?
Like, clouds, when I
see them up and down.
And now, I'm fucking terrified.
In Jordan Peele's Nope,
you've got this spacecraft that
is ultimately revealed
to not be a spacecraft,
but to actually be
this interdimensional,
interstellar creature
that has just decided
to live above the desert.
And then once we get
into that creature,
as it devours those people,
it squishes them in the mouth.
Oh, it was so good
and so singular.
I had never seen anything
like that before.
Once you realize that
people are getting sucked up
into this thing and then going
through its digestive tract,
I was just like,
this is awesome.
And then it, like,
when it regurgitates
all of that blood on the house,
that's nightmare imagery.
You never imagine a farmhouse
being covered in blood.
Jordan takes you inside
and you're living what
this character is experiencing.
then you pop out for the wide.
Every kaiju movie
is about nature.
And this is absolutely
a kaiju film.
Even though there's not a fight,
it's still a giant monster
and it's eating people,
but there is no expectation
that they're going to kill it.
Website like Cyber Dominion will
pay $5,000 to $100k for
photographic evidence
of UFOs and shit.
They just want to
take a photo of it.
[tense music]
TRACEY SALISBURY:
But it opens up,
you know, into this
kind of butterfly.
It's more dangerous
because it's beautiful.
But yet, it becomes more lethal
when it really reveals itself.
It's a film about the
feeling of being observed
and the observer.
You can identify with the alien.
You can identify with
the band of heroes
because we're all
in that space where
we're going back from being the
subject to being the watcher.
Are we behind the camera?
Or are we in front
of the camera?
[screams]
That's a weird
position to be in.
And that drives you crazy.
And you see what
happens to the monkey.
You see what happens
to the monster.
And you see what happens
to people of color
when they're treated
like cattle to be herded
or anything that
takes your difference
and makes it a gimmick,
something to sell.
So people who say that that
movie didn't have the same kind
of cultural, or socioeconomic,
or racial undertone the other
two of his films had are wrong.
It's right there.
[music playing]
MAN: They're somewhat slow
and lethargic until inflamed
by the smell of blood.
[screams]
What if circumstances
magnified one of them
in size and strength?
Then expect something
that's fiercer,
more cruel, and
deadly than anything
that ever walked the Earth.
There's nothing out there.
Nothing in the mist.
Man, as the dominant
species of life on Earth,
will probably be extinct.
[screams]
JORDAN VOGT-ROBERTS: You
know, King Kong and Godzilla
are not just film history, but
they are cultural iconography.
You know, like, they almost
represent like America and Japan
in various ways, but, like,
they just are pop culture.
Like, they transcend just being,
oh, here's these great movies.
[screams]
JOE HILL: My all-time
favorite giant monster
film from the classic era,
you've got to go with King Kong.
DANA GOULD: There's
a magic to that movie
that is really timeless.
It's still galvanizes
you when you watch it.
Did you ever hear of Kong?
It's pure fantasy at a time
when things like John Carter
you know, Burroughs
and all that stuff
was still so popular.
So the idea of going
out into the jungle
and finding dinosaurs, and
giant spiders, and King Kong,
it still felt like
that was possible.
There were unknown parts of the
world that you could discover.
HEIDI HONEYCUTT: King Kong
is worshipped as a god
on this island of natives.
And he's not a bad guy.
He's just a misunderstood
big giant ape
who happens to fall
in love with Fay Wray
because she's just so beautiful.
And he actually saves her life.
And the human men are
horrified by this romance
because he's a giant ape.
But we've got
something he wants.
Yeah, something
he won't get again.
One of the elements of the
original film that isn't given
the credit that it's due is
the set design of that jungle
and the matte paintings.
It didn't look like a jungle.
It looked like a fairy tale.
And that allowed the
audience's suspension of
disbelief went along with that.
JORDAN VOGT-ROBERTS: The
1933 Kong, it still holds up
and it's still a pinnacle.
And it's still like a masterwork
not only of like storytelling
for the era, but like,
technically what they were doing
on display in terms of, like,
creating this like fully living,
breathing creature, you
know, that really was cotton
and rabbit fur, you know, Kong
brought that to life in a way
that I don't think anything
else had done before.
JOE HILL: There's
something so moving
about him lost in the city
and fighting for his life.
He's destructive.
He's killing people.
He's smashing planes
out of the sky,
but we're rooting for
him the whole way.
It's not really so much
about, oh, no, we were
attacked by a giant monster.
It's really more about we
kind of brought something
here that shouldn't
have been here
that was out of its element.
And we shouldn't have done that.
And it's kind of sad and
it's kind of our fault.
A really bitter
sweet kind of movie,
and that's why I think it really
resonated with so many people
and still does.
What does it matter?
Airplanes got him.
It wasn't the airplanes.
It was beauty killed the beast.
Peter Jackson's King Kong
was a work of art, technically.
I think the smartest thing
about that particular King Kong
was the performance
capture utilized
to get that King
Kong to be emotive
and to be humanized,
have the audiences feel
the empathy that
we had only felt
with the original King Kong.
He spanned that
distance of time.
And it's like Peter Jackson did
what the first King Kong did,
which was make you feel for it.
JORDAN VOGT-ROBERTS:
Peter made a great movie
that was sort of a modern
retelling of the original film
with modern special effects.
The thing that was
lost for me in it
was the fact that Kong was no
longer a capital-M Movie Monster
who stood upright
and was bipedal,
and instead was just
turned into a giant kind
of silverback gorilla.
One of the things that
was really important to me
in going into Kong:
Skull Island was
bringing back that capital-M
Movie Monster vibe.
Early on in my
thought process, it
was almost like what would
have happened if Kong didn't
get taken off the island.
Could this Kong actually
just be an extension
of the older version?
Truly, the first
image in my mind
was Kong just silhouetted by the
sun set against that orange sky
with the choppers flanking him.
And I've never seen
a monster movie
where you bleed
in, apocalypse now
over some insane kaiju battle.
I've just never seen that.
And I think so much
of cinema right now
and preserving the
religious element
of the theatrical experience
is like giving people something
they haven't seen before.
[roars]
[screams]
I don't know what it
is about Godzilla that
is so compelling to
people that it's still
much more so than King Kong I
think, in a pop cultural sense.
People love him and
are drawn to him.
It appeals to something
primal that much
more so than King Kong.
You know, Frankenstein is
more popular than the Wolfman.
I don't know why.
American audiences know
this character as Godzilla,
but the name "Gojira" actually
is pretty self-explanatory
because it's a
combination of "gorilla,"
the Japanese
pronunciation of gorilla,
and then "kujira," which is the
Japanese pronunciation of whale.
So it's this large creature,
you mash them together,
and you have a creature that
can traverse land and sea.
There would be no
Godzilla without The Beast
from 20,000 Fathoms.
5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
DAVE SCHILLING: The
idea of atomic power
unleashing a natural
predator was really
most potent in that film.
When we released
the bomb, the heat
generated melted the
ice in which this beast
was imprisoned and freed it.
DAVE SCHILLING:
There's a bomb testing.
This ancient dinosaur
comes out and wreaks
havoc through America.
And from this kind of humble,
but very popular movie,
you get Godzilla.
And Godzilla takes this
idea of nuclear power
unleashing a natural predator.
And gives it a resonance that
Beast from 20,000 Fathoms
didn't really have.
Godzilla might be one of the
quintessential examples of using
horror or sort of
fantastic elements
to deal with trauma in a
way that maybe if you dealt
with it more directly,
then people wouldn't just
wouldn't want to talk about it.
This is nine years after
the end of World War II.
Think about the atomic bombings
of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
And I don't think it was even
a complaint that the weapons had
been used against Japan
so much as the realization
that there was now a
new terror in the world.
And the representation
of this terror
would be in the form of
this giant monster figure.
When you go to the
original '54 Gojira, it is
a dark story of cultural PTSD.
Then Godzilla became, in
the ensuing years, a toy.
They sort of redesigned
the Godzilla a little bit
to seem more kid friendly.
Eyes became a little bit rounder
and a little bit more cartoon
like because they
realized that Godzilla was
becoming a sort of
superhero that kids
really latched on to and loved.
And I was one of those kids.
So I still have a soft
spot for that design.
As a kid, you want the giant
monster to be your friend.
And with Godzilla, it was fun to
cultivate sort of that feeling
that he's on our side and
he loves us, which is not
really where it started at all.
DANA GOULD: To be a
little kid and getting
to see this stuff on TV and
these bright insane colors
and this music just,
[vocalizing], you know,
it was just overwhelming.
To this day, if they're
on, I watch them.
There's this tendency to want
to dismiss the silly films,
but even the ones that maybe
don't have a deeper meaning,
I also enjoy.
I mean, I'm someone
who likes, you know,
Godzilla versus Megalon.
Some people just
aren't fans of that.
The Godzilla of
Godzilla versus Megalon
is not the Godzilla of
the original Gojira.
It's an arc in that
series where it starts
off very gritty and realistic.
And over time, it becomes
a parody of itself.
They go through this cycle.
And then they have to reset.
And then they do that a lot.
When I was a kid, Godzilla
was more like a hero, you know.
And he was fighting and
beating up all other monsters.
And that's what I wanted.
And I knew that,
back in 2004, this
is the last opportunity to
make old school, man and suit,
Godzilla, which I love.
I knew that, you know,
they're going to reboot it,
you know, but it's not going
to be like the Godzilla
that I loved when I was a kid.
Godzilla can be hero, can be,
you know, scary, can be fun.
It's just like the final
big firework carnival.
So let's have fun.
[screams]
A great Japanese kaiju
has a mixture of creature
that comes from nature.
So there are elements
of reptiles or mammals,
but they also have a
mythological elements to them,
almost a fantastical
aspect to their design.
Typically, they don't
just take an animal
that we're familiar
with and just, you know,
make it 200 feet tall.
There's always
flourishes to them.
What I find so compelling
about the Japanese point of view
is that they are fearless
in respects to aesthetics
and certain choices about these
creatures because they go crazy.
I mean, some of them
are absolutely zany.
Did you ever see the
movie Big Man Japan?
[music playing]
That is nuts.
The stuff makes no
sense whatsoever
biologically speaking.
NEVILLE PAGE: But that's
what's so wonderful about it.
As a creative person, I realize
how stifled my creativity must
be because I could never
come up with that kind
of wonderful lunacy.
DAVE SCHILLING: For
me, Mothra always
has a special place in my
heart because, ultimately, she
ends up being a mother, right?
So there you go.
Come on.
You got to go with the mother.
The idea of, yeah, big moth.
That'll be scary.
Well, how do we summon it?
Let's have identical twin
tiny people and they'll sing.
[SINGING] Mosuraya, Mosura.
It's like, wait, what?
I remember watching
Mothra, and they were on,
and my dad coming in, like,
what the hell are you watching?
Because it is hard to explain.
Ghidorah was always my favorite
of the entire Toho stable.
Back in the first run,
they tended to, like,
give the monsters
human qualities,
and anthropomorphize
them a little,
and kind of made
them almost cuddly.
Ghidorah was the one who didn't.
Ghidorah was a vicious bastard
in every film he appeared in.
And, you know, it's
a great design.
It's like a classical
dragon with three
heads and the golden color.
It's just a very striking
creature to look at.
Gamera is my
second favorite giant
monster kaiju from Japanese
kaiju monster movies.
He is a turtle.
He's essentially like
Mothra, represents
the good and the heroic.
And he inspires
hope in people that
are being attacked
by other giant kaijus
or other forms of evil.
Now those films are
really kind of silly,
and Gamera is fighting
a monster that
was basically a giant butcher
knife with eyes and legs.
And then Shusuke Kaneko
came along in the '90s
and completely reimagined
the character, put him
into a series of serious,
mature, beautifully
crafted films
starting with Gamera:
Guardian of the Universe.
Then Gamera 3, I
think is, out of all
the Japanese kaiju films from
any studio, it's my favorite.
It has a really powerful story.
It has some really
interesting themes to it.
It has amazing monster action.
And it is just shot and composed
and dramatized in a really,
really powerful way.
The Gamera 3 takes a
goofy impossible character
and turns it into a
pretty serious film
about the poisonous effects
of anger and revenge
on the human soul.
Japan had a closed
society for 400 years
in which access to the
country was strictly
limited that
undoubtedly has shaped
a kind of cultural sensibility
for many, many years, centuries
after.
And maybe kaiju are a
place where some of this
gets worked through
and worked out
this idea of things coming from
outside, from beneath the ocean,
from the sky.
So all of these things being
dislodged from the Earth
and coming strangely
enough at Japan.
[screams]
JOE HILL: Before Bong
Joon-ho directed Parasite,
he directed The Host, which
is a giant monster film which
is actually about income
inequality in South Korea,
but by extension, and throughout
the industrial capitalist world.
And so you do get the thrills
of a giant monster movie,
but you also get this kind
of touching, funny, slightly
heartbreaking story about people
who are living on the margins
because they're
living, you know,
making it paycheck to paycheck.
You know, the first
30 minutes of that film
from meeting the family
and the river attack,
that's perfect filmmaking.
[screaming]
And the creature, that
in itself feels fresh.
And it was so inelegant
in the way that it moved
and the way that it almost
tripped over itself.
And you just had this sense that
it lived a pained existence.
The beauty of his
filmmaking is all of the set
pieces relate to character.
JOE HILL: When this monster
starts tearing through things,
in the panic, he loses
track of his daughter,
tries to rescue her, grabs
the wrong girl's hand.
Looks behind him
and the one thing
that he was supposed
to do right,
which is protect
his daughter, fails.
JORDAN VOGT-ROBERTS: And you
have that great shot of her just
there, as like, you
know, it's framed
in a way where the creature
isn't even fully in the shot.
Its tail grabs her and
rips her out of the frame.
So this family who have had
this rough patchy relationship
now have to come together to
break away from the government
that's trying to
keep them quarantined
to go find this missing girl.
It was layered with great
creature design, cool ideas,
and then this Korean
point of view that was
all of it was different
than what I was expecting.
So the film kind of left me
gobsmacked at the end of it.
I was like, this was powerful.
Bong Joon-ho and
that movie, like,
it's just such an incredible
piece of filmmaking where all
of the spectacle,
all of the genre,
all of the things that people
would normally write off
as, like, oh, it's just monsters
running around, whatever, like,
it's all based in
character, and it's all
based in like relationships.
[music playing]
Let's do this.
[music playing]
MICHAEL GINGOLD: The less
said about the Roland
Emmerich Godzilla, the better.
But I have to say,
I was very impressed
with the first American
Godzilla of the trilogy
that came out more recently,
Gareth Edwards' film.
RYAN TUREK: Gareth Edwards
made this film called
Monsters before Godzilla.
It was really one
of those DIY efforts
where Gareth had a
hand in everything
even the VFX and creation
of the monsters themselves,
but it was one of those
kind of handheld, you know,
found footage movies.
The monsters were
just used sparingly.
And, you know, he
did the same thing
with Godzilla for better or
for worse or to the detriment
of some fans.
Open fire!
RYAN TUREK: But it
was smart, you know.
It was just smart to blend
that kind of docu style
to both movies.
I really enjoyed the fact
that it was shot from kind
of a human's eye
view in a sense where
you don't quite see everything
that's going on as you wouldn't.
If Godzilla was really
rampaging through your city,
you would not get a
great look at him.
Edwards really kind of
choreographed the whole thing
in such a way that
you really identified
with the people looking
at this giant monster
that's come to destroy them.
We've just been wired and coded
that when we see a
giant monster movie,
we got to get the spectacle.
And so I respect Gareth
for doing what he did.
And then, of course,
Mike Dougherty steps in,
and he's like, here we go.
Let me give you
let me give you
all the monsters,
and you're going to
see them all the time.
[music playing]
MICHAEL DOUGHERTY: It's
tough because there's
a lot of baggage.
Whenever you're dealing
with a legacy character,
there are expectations
that the fans have.
But at the same time, you can't
craft a movie just for the fans
because then you're alienating
your larger general audience.
So you have to find the right
balance between the two.
Dougherty's movie, I
mean, I don't know what
else you could want, you know?
I mean, I still watch
every once in a while.
I'll throw the Rodan
attack scene where Rodan
shows up for the first time.
Bear McCreary's music is just
like, boom, boom, boom, boom.
We got jet fighters flying in.
Rodan doing spins.
I get chills even
thinking about it.
I'm like, this is exactly what
I want from a kaiju movie.
This is incredible.
When I came on board, they said,
well, we want to do a sequel.
Would you mind using Rodan,
Mothra, and King Ghidorah?
And I was like, yes.
Like, no, I would not mind.
I mean, that's just like
the best party in the world
this to go hang
out with that crew.
I actually wanted to use more.
But then Adam Wingard just
went, I'm going to top that.
I'm going to give you a buddy
movie, where King Kong is
the hero, and he's
John McClane, and he's
going to take on Godzilla.
DANA GOULD: Godzilla
versus Kong has
a gorilla that uses a magic ax.
It's like and it's funny.
I believe King Kong.
I don't believe he
would use an ax.
You draw your own line.
Godzilla versus Kong, I thought
was very fun and a welcome
surprise, but it just
we haven't figured out how to
make you feel anything the way
that you felt something
with the first Godzilla.
We just haven't figured it
out because he's not ours.
He doesn't belong to us.
He belongs to them.
He belongs to the Japanese.
I think any good franchise, it's
able to constantly
reboot itself to reflect
the fears of the time.
And so if the
first Godzilla film
was reflecting fear
of the nuclear age,
then you get to like Hedorah.
You know, he was called
the smog monster which
is way less cool in America.
But, you know, Hedorah
is technically an alien,
but he feeds off pollution.
And that was coming
out in the '70s
when, like, Tokyo was
famously gross polluted city.
JORDAN VOGT-ROBERTS: And to me,
in addition to Hedorah being,
you know, symbolism for,
like, Tokyo and pollution,
he's just a great
foe in that canon.
The Godzilla films always
started as a response
to things that were affecting
the Japanese people.
And the same thing
with Shin Godzilla.
AKIRA MIZUTA LIPPIT: It's hard
not to see that film, which
was released in 2016, as a
reflection on Japan's response
to 2011, the earthquake,
tsunami, and the nuclear crisis
with the Fukushima
nuclear reactor.
AKIRA MIZUTA LIPPIT: And
Japanese government's
inability to respond
quickly, and swiftly,
and protect its citizens.
It is a funny movie, but
it is about almost like
Terry Gilliam
Brazil-esque in terms
of the madness of bureaucracy.
Like, let's have a meeting to
have a meeting about having
a meeting about how we deal with
a giant kaiju in this country.
Godzilla's outside, and
I'm stuck in meetings.
But that was part
of the point that we
have to deal with bureaucracy
and decision making.
And I get it, and it's great.
But Godzilla Minus One is
a whole different level
of Godzilla movie.
[speaking japanese]
And if it weren't for
the original Godzilla,
I would say it's the best.
TANANARIVE DUE: It's
really, really delving
into characterization, and
not only that, but the waste
and the horror of war itself.
You can almost take Godzilla
out of Godzilla Minus One
and you would still
have a hugely compelling
story, the devastation of war
from the Japanese point of view.
I really haven't seen that
many films that I think really
tackle what it felt like to have
gone through this experience.
Midway through, there's possibly
the greatest Godzilla
destroys a district
in Japan sequence ever filmed.
[speaking japanese]
There's this thing that
happens with this tail
where his spikes jut out.
And, you know, like, something really,
really bad is about to happen.
It had me crying, which
I had no idea would be
happening in a Godzilla movie.
The Godzilla monster
effects are so much fun.
The devastation is,
of course, everything
you want from a Godzilla movie,
but it has this beautiful core
that you walk out of the theater
feeling like, yes, human life
is precious, every single one.
And that's not what you
expect from a Godzilla movie.
[screams]
Ultimately, there's
something about kaiju
that is very cinematic, right?
You go to the movie theater.
You look at the big screen.
And so things were better
suited to the big screen
than big monsters
destroying cities, right?
The appeal of giant
monsters and kaiju
is that these are forces so
big, so beyond our control
that we can't even
begin to truly
defend ourselves against them.
In fact, they sometimes don't
even really notice we're there.
Like, it gives us the impression
of how we treat insects,
how we crush their
houses, and step
on them like they're nothing.
I think this is very true of
most monsters and most kaiju,
which is that at
the end of the day,
there's actually like an
intense tragedy to them
and an intense
loneliness to them.
Whether be King Kong, or
Godzilla, or any monsters,
everybody, every day,
the most painful thing
that happens over and over again
is that you're misunderstood.
JORDAN VOGT-ROBERTS: And to me,
kaiju and monster films just
fundamentally tap into that core
feeling of being misunderstood.
I believe he is the power.
[SINGING] Mothra.
Gamera.
Have you found anything yet?
Say over.
- I just said it.
- I know. Say it again.
- Oh, over.
I know an enemy when I see it.
Two, three.
We can capture him alive.
Why, you're crazy.
Man: There's been a lot
of great Japanese horror films
that are very moody and subtle.
And then on the other side
of the coin,
you have movies that are
absolutely out of their minds.
[Screams]
This guy has been
shoving metal into his own leg.
[Growling]
Man #2: 40 kids or whatever
killing each other
in the most brutal of ways.
Man #1: You could just feel
everyone just be like,
"Oh, my God."
- [Screams]
[music playing]