Episode 31 - Godzilla vs Mothra (1992)

Doesn't seem like they're together anymore because he's he's a divorced man. So that that kind of recontextualize everything it just happened is like divorced man behavior. Hello everyone, and welcome to Castle Bravo, A Godzilla Versus retrospective. I'm Derek. And I'm Charlotte. And we're two siblings here to examine the history of the Godzilla franchise, one movie at a time. We're joined today by writer and podcaster Atma Phoenix Atma. Hi. Am I supposed to say something else? Yeah.

How you doing? Gosh are. We all slap happy today, huh? Well, so there is a world where my dog lets me sleep through the night just regularly. I'm not living currently in that world, so like, I might be a little loopy. You might get like the special atma on this on this podcast. Hell yes.

That is, that is in fact the vibe that we are going for here on Castle Bravo. That is why we explicitly give all of our guests barbiturates while they're waiting in the green room and tell them that they're sugar pills. Just so that we can get a little bit more unhinged of a performance out of everybody. Give me a second. I have to look up with that word as you. That's a trick. That's a trick I learned from Doctor Phil. Really. Doctor Phil drugs his guests Yeah, medically, for anxialytic

hypnotics and anticonvulsive. It's a drug. It's a drug. That's OK. But his bit was one very long opportunity for me to take a potshot at Doctor Phil. I guess. I don't know. But yes, I have heard he drugs people like his drugs people just to make them worse. Yes, yes. Or leaves addicts in in the green room alone for an hour with like a a full bottle of vodka and nothing else. Like you know what you're doing, bud. The good thing is shows going off the air the evil has been defeated.

Really. That's that's actually, yeah, that's good news. Yeah, we could all use a little good news these days, but that's beside the point, Atma. Yes. How you doing? Why don't you introduce yourself to our to our listeners? OK, well I'm atma. I do writing here and there. I I do a gaming podcast. I'm mostly into games. I. I also occasionally do like movie stuff. I'm I'm very, very entertainment oriented. I'm not exactly the biggest

Godzilla fan like I have. So I've seen all the American Godzillas, and I know, Derek, you're going to hate me for this, but I've seen Shin Godzilla, and that's the only Japanese one I've seen before coming into this. So The thing is, Shin Godzilla is the one that blew up, like in the one Japanese Godzilla movie that blew up in a way almost none before it have in ages. So. That is like what G witch did for condom.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Where it's just like the most recent thing, but for some combination of what was going on, it was like it hit the cultural zeitgeist just right to blow up. So. And like I said, I have, I have complicated feelings about Hideaki Ono. But like even I have to admit the movie, The movie do slap though. Yeah, so like, that is Shin Godzilla is the only movie where I've both fallen asleep while watching it and still thought it

was a decent movie. That's I'm piercing that one together in my head. I I mean, it was just I was in one of those theaters with like the real comfortable leaning back chairs and like I just like I needed a power nap and I missed like. 5 to 10 minutes of the beginning of the movie and then you know I was good for the rest of. It it's all, it's all it's all government scenes. It's fine. Yeah. Even if, like, that's part of what makes that movie unique. Like, it's it's Powered by vibes.

So you hadn't watched any other Japanese Godzilla movies other than shouldn't Godzilla before coming into this one today? I don't think so. I've or at. Least not actively watched them. Yeah. Like I I think I may have seen. Something Under the Veil of Mystery Science Theater, 3000. Quite a few were on there, yes. So like, I think I may have seen some one of the Godzilla movies through that, but otherwise no. That's incredibly interesting.

And that means your perspective is going to be like, even more interesting today, because this is a movie that. I think more than any we've covered in a long time, this is a movie that feels like it is super in concert with what was going on in the early days of the franchise. We'll talk more about that as we get in, of course. Charlotte, yeah. How you doing today? I'm doing pretty good. I'll take pretty good, yeah. That's actually a little more boisterous than I normally.

Yeah, I was gonna say. Usually it's like, that's okay. I don't know. I'm making a lot of friends lately. Good. I'm like hanging out with people. We're on a slightly less bigoted social media site and more of our friends are making it over there. Yeah, now it's been good to me. I'm in like discords. More discords. Some of them. I don't talk in our edit because you know me, but.

I mean, it's like me, right? We have the SDGC Discord and I like, I lurk and I almost never say anything, but I'm there, you know? Yeah, my eyes are. I watch again more recently. Just kind of. Occasionally I pop up and have to say something to like wag my finger at somebody, and it has the old, like Bishop TL effect of like when you used to see that Sam Jackson. Avatar pop up in a Neogaph thread and it was like, up.

Everybody shut the fuck up. I mean, every once in a while I'm sent to silently kill somebody. Yeah, exactly. Well, you know, everybody needs an assassin, so, all right, so. So let's kind of set the stage for what's going on with the Godzilla franchise before this

movie comes out. Obviously we've had this entire huge run through the 5060 seventies where, you know, the the movies just got bigger and bigger and bigger and made more and more money and then kind of got Stripmind and run into the ground with increasingly cheap, increasingly rushed. Movies especially is a lot of the talent behind the franchise was leaving because they were getting burnt out.

You know, A G Superraya, the original special effects supervisor and creator of Ultraman, died, which put kind of a big it really hit the brakes on the series and it made our original director, Ishro Honda, you know, not really want to have much to do with the series or film anymore. And eventually, Godzilla. The series collapsed under its own weight and spent almost a decade kind of in the background, with Toho struggling to figure out how they were

going to make another movie. You know, they they felt backed into a corner. Finally, in 1984, we got return of Godzilla, this great idea to hey, we're going to bring in real talent, put real money behind this, and do like a new Godzilla to something that is closer to the serious, heavy tone of the original movie. You know, try to make something that's explicitly very political again.

You know, it's about Cold War, you know, tension between the US and Russia. And then from there we've been on this string of of pretty good movies in this revival through the 80s and 90s that's known as the hey say era. We had Godzilla versus Biolante, which is excellent. The cult favorite we had, Godzilla versus King Gadora, which was the you know, I was was astounded by how much thought went into that movie and the fact that it was a movie in 1991 that was explicitly anti nationalist.

Which is not unusual for the Godzilla franchise to this point. It's been pretty antinationalist, but like, it's weird to see that in a big blockbuster in the 90s. So we're coming up on 1992 and the series longterm producer Tanaka, I cannot remember his first name, but Tanaka is like, OK, what are we going to do next with this franchise? Because. Godzilla versus Biolante only barely made its budget back. Godzilla versus King Goddora just missed making its budget

back. These are not movies that are doing well, even if they're good. Tanaka's thought is well, let's bring back King Godora again. In the end, the decision was like, OK, well, no, hang on, hang on, hang on, Because that that didn't help us last time. And Mothra polls a lot better, especially among women. And women at this point were a very large part of the Japanese

film going audience. And women are a very large part of the Godzilla audience, which is a thing that I didn't explicitly know until I was reading about this. But like, yeah, in Japan, you know, this is not like, you know, the MCU split. This is like, you know, a much closer split of men and women. You know, make up Godzilla ticket sales in Japan. And it made sense to go back to Motha as well, right? Motha is one of the most well known Kaiju of, you know, that original show of era.

Motha had had her own movie and then multiple appearances with Godzilla. They were already looking at, you know, trying to bring Motha back for a Godzilla movie or her own movie something. So what ended up happening is Kazuki Omori, who was the writer and director of the last two films. Said OK, well, I don't.

I don't know if Omori stepped back of his own volition or if this was like Tanaka pushing him back, but Omori stepped back to just a screen writing position and went to work on a script that centered Mothra again, You know, in a Godzilla story. Our new director is Takow Okawara, who is somebody who ADD under Honda and Akira Kurosawa. Damn. The A Move. It's a Curassawa movie I I haven't seen, but he ate it under the both of them on that.

And then he was an assistant director on, you know, Return of Godzilla. So somebody who is maybe not necessarily as experienced as Omori was, but a director with some experience and who has direct ties. To this era of Godzilla, to the original creator, and to Akira fucking Kurosawa. So you know you can't. You can't ask for much more than that. Special effects work continues to be Koichi Kawakida. That's not going to change. That's going to be the case all

the way through the 90s. You're going to get this real consistent visual look through the 90s as a result of this. And for the music, Akira, if Acube is back returning from Godzilla versus King Ghidorah, and I think you can fucking tell because this is a movie that makes great work of if Acube did the score for the original Mothra, right Charlotte?

I think so. This is a gigantic info dump for Atma, so like, you know, I'm aware, but like, there's a lot that's gone on in the history of this series to even get us to this point. The original Mothra film Music by No. The original was music by Yuji Kosaki. Not somebody I know off the top of my head, but so never mind. But anyway, if a kube goes to work on this movie, so. Music in this movie slaps. Yes, it. Was really good.

It's it's it's there are new and rearranged compositions both of like classic Godzilla music, but also a lot of classic like like piece of music that are attached to Mothra in various older movies and it really blends incredibly well and is incredibly faithful to like that sound of the 60s in a lot of ways. Just with, you know, bigger, more modern orchestras, more modern recordings, more modern audio mixing, stuff like that, so.

So we're set at a good point. There's a lot of talent attached to this movie with just the director swapped out. But Omor, he's still on screen writing because he's proven he's a really fucking good screenwriter, you know.

And with Mothra, who is probably the most popular non Godzilla monster in the franchise attached to this movie we have finally Godzilla versus Mothra, sometimes known as Godzilla versus Mothra Battle for Earth. You know, Mothra, being that that important to people is interesting to me only because talking to you earlier in life, I would have thought that like Rodan was it. Oh well, because I fucking love Rodan. Because I love the original Rodan. It's just so good.

It's it's one of my favorite of those early early movies. And Rodan does get Rodan gets more play, I think in the early movies than than like adult Mothra does. But this is, of course like a point where we're everything's reset to 0 and you know, Mothra's getting a shot to reestablish some, like, cultural presence. 11 minor aside, because of course I researched these movies 1 by 1 as we come up to them, I don't want to, like, look ahead.

This is weirdly the first time I saw Tanaka the the series like producer and manager. Named as the creator of Godzilla, and I don't think that's fucking true. Like I think you can write that in an article, but that's odd.

Like, I think if you listen to, I mean, I don't think it's possible to go back especially to what we were looking at in that first season of Casso Bravo, right, And not understand that this was Honda and Subaria. Right, Like Tanaka, Tanaka does not have a screen writing credit. He didn't direct one of these. I mean, obviously a producer has some input on on these sorts of things, but Tanaka's Tanaka's the one responsible for over producing this series into the

ground, right? With just cheat, meaningless. Men in rubber suits, wrestling fests, yeah. And Honda's the one who's bringing like ideology into things. And and Super I is the one who put like real thought and care into the design work of the series in the visual language of the series. And of course like at this point. Honda, Efacube, and, you know our new writer, director, now just writer Amorri, have all criticized to knock his handling

of the franchise. So like, I just don't think it's right to credit the producer as the creator of this when you can feel the soul of excuse me, I got coffee hiccups, the soul of Ishiro Honda in so many of these movies. Yeah, but I mean, that's just an aside. Somebody's going to yell at me, I guess, if I didn't address that at some point, but has anyone yelled at you for

anything yet? A. Couple a couple things, but not like, yell, yell, not yell, yell, But like a couple people have had like, you know, wanted corrections or like took an issue with the way I phrased something and it's like, hey. Give me a goddamn break. I I do be autistic. So, like, you know, sometimes I'm going to use words in an order that, you know don't necessarily communicate the exact same thing to you.

Try my best up here. You know, this whole podcast is that's just masking normal human speech back and forth. Yeah, 100%. So you know. Anyway, all that fucking aside, Charlotte. Yeah. Talk to, talk to. Let's tell. Fucking stutters. You want to try again? Yeah, I am on one today. This is my first cup of coffee the day at at 1:00 PM, so please forgive me. Charlotte, why don't you tell us what happens in Godzilla versus Mothra? I will. I didn't stutter once that time

you didn't. If you don't leave the stutter in, that's going to be a weird time. I'm going to leave the stutter in beside note those who don't know. I've struggled with a stutter all my life, but at a certain point you've listened to enough of me podcasting to fucking hear it. So. Stutter, Fam, Unite. So Godzilla versus Mothra begins with a meteor just immediately in space going towards the Earth.

And it's gigantic. And it's going to land in the Pacific. And of course, it's going to land exactly close enough to piss off Godzilla. Ain't that just how this fucking works? My man cannot catch a nap. Where else do meteors go other than the Pacific? Like, it's just like a natural magnet there, yeah. The Pacific Ocean is massive.

True. Like if you're rolling it like a a dice, you know, Pacific Ocean takes up like one through 7 on a 20 sided dice, I think, yeah, but it it is as big as it is, right? But it landed right next to guns, so. So this meteor crashes and it's causing havoc all over the world as a meteor would. There's a typhoon emerging near Indonesia and like the water and wind is like eroding the earth. There's this giant egg.

But now we cut to Thailand and there's there's a young man stealing an idol from an underground temple because someone really liked Indiana Jones, I think. Hell yeah, they did. When did when did the first Indiana Jones come out? I'm going to look it up. Right now. 1981 was Raiders of the Lost Ark, so it was 10 years previous. So yeah, at this point, yeah, Last Crusade was 89. So the whole original trilogy is out by this point. Like somebody's a fan, right?

Like this was like literally down to he's looking for something and he's also a former archaeology professor. Yeah. Like there there is Liberal 0, not it being an Indiana Jones. I've seen people say like they ripped off Indiana Jones and it's like, I think it's an intentional like reference. I I don't think you can be as big as Indiana Jones was and get this directly referenced and it not be an intentional nod, right? Right. Like it was just them having fun. Well, he sorry.

There was like a barking. Yeah, it's Twig. She's throwing a fit for some fucking reason. Hi Twig. So as he makes his way out, like everything starts to collapse because again, Indiana Jones and he does barely manage to pull himself out. Like as the stairs fall out from underneath him. He's like pulling up on vines, trying to get up, but he's greeted with a gun barrel to the face and the police are surrounding him. Like, completely. I mean even like the whole pulling myself up.

And then there's a gun barrel in my face. Is so Indiana Jones like, so he's in jail now and a group of of men in suits approached his cell and they just start talking about him in the cell. They're like your name is Takia Fujito and. Then they start explaining his back story and Masako, who's like one of his, well actually, it's just that the person that he had daughter with doesn't seem like they're together anymore because he's he's a divorced man and so that kind of recontextualizer.

Did they say divorced? He's yeah, she said. Divorced. So that that kind of recontextualize everything it just happened is like divorced man behavior. So this group is called the National Environment Planning Bureau and they they take them outside to discuss this meteorite that's destroying the earth's environment. And they tell him about the egg on an Indonesian island and the the area is closed off to the Bureau, but the area is being quote UN quote supported by the

Japanese government. They're they're trying to develop the area which we've. In a plot point. Super familiar for, you know, early Mothra movies, right? And then there's this guy Ando, who shows up and he's from the same organization. He serves everybody tea. And that there's this scene where Takia and Massaco are going back and forth. Takia, like, eats an entire lemon slice, which is the thing you do when you're tough, right?

Because Mosica was like, I don't think you can even handle this. And he's like chewing on this limb. And like, well, there was only one woman I couldn't handle, you know? So he finally asked the question, like, OK, so if I accept this, I get to go free. And they're like, yeah, And he goes, OK, I refuse. It's. Such a piece of shit. I love him. I love this fucking skis bag. Yeah, so. No, I'm just. I'm just blown away by just like in how little time it takes this

guy to just be a complete idiot. Yeah, I love him. Yeah, This entire like cast, like this core trio that we've already established of. You know, adventure dude, his exwife and then big stocky businessman. Like, immediately the amount of personality that's been imbued on to them reminds me so much of the original standalone Mothra, right? Like I I I think that plus like you know birth island being like under development by a big Japanese corporation is very like somebody watched.

Every movie Mothra appeared in so far and really wanted to be faithful to the tone and idea and and even certain events that happened in those old movies. Yeah. So he refuses, Yeah, yeah, Takiya refuses. He's back in his cell now and he's like, yeah, I'll probably be out in a week. And the Mosaco is like, well, actually they're pretty harsh on thieves here, especially the ones that destroy temples. So I think you're probably going to get about 15 years. So they just start walking away

and he's like, wait, no, wait. I got just great sequence because she's clearly just like, beaming at the thought of how it's going to make him squirm and like straight up like fucking sashays away as he's like wait, please don't do anything right. So then we cut to Professor Fugazawa and he's visiting the Bureau now and he's like, oh, where're the others? And they basically just say that, you know, Masako, Ando and Takia have left for Bangkok.

The professors, like, I bet Masako and Takia are still in love. I don't know where he get that from. But the Bureau is concerned about the ozone layer, which is a thing that we talked about forever in the 90s. Holes in the ozone layer. The meteor also apparently raised so much silt into the air that they can't track Godzilla's movements. And then it cuts to, like, underneath the waves and like,

everything's rumbling. There's a monster down there that we haven't seen before crawling around. So Takia is like, they're all on this boat. Takia is like, I don't know what I'm doing when we get there. And Moscow is like, I think I'll just let you sweat it out, actually, I'll tell you when we get there. But they know they're going to Infant Island or Berwick Island, and they venture into the jungle there and they're kind of

marching around. And Chachio warns the others not to drink too much or they'll get tired. I don't know if that's the thing. Not to my not. I mean, obviously, like, don't drink so much water that you have a stomach full of water before you go hiking, right? Right. It's something like swimming, right? If you drink too much 30 minutes before you go hiking, you know you might pass out. Right. I mean, look, I could as somebody who is, Who is?

You know, down to gallon of water and then went hiking and and lost a significant amount of that water. I can tell you that that's give it, give it a little time, but right. So they they go along and they see the strip mining on the Cliff faces and they lament it, you know? Is is this where he He says. What an ugly mound that might be. Yeah, because like I it was to me that part.

Like. I know Jurassic Park hadn't happened yet, but it was almost the same cut as Ian Malcolm coming around 1/4 and being like that's a huge. Pile of shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that is it then, cuz it's basically how it went. Yeah. They're basically like, and humans will strip everything away or something. And they're like, I think that already happened here. So they crossed this bridge and it's made from like logs and vines and Tokyo's like, it's fine, we're going to be fine,

yeah. He's like, how much does everybody weigh? Okay. Yeah. Now this will be fine. He, like, does the math. And he's like, this should hold that amount of weight. Yeah. I don't know how he did the math, but he was wrong and snatched under the pressure and like they're they're hanging on the other edge basically like you would. I thought they were going to try to use it.

As a ladder, but hanging, hanging from the suspension bridge and the only thing he can think to be to say is like to berate his exwife for having gained weight and not told him and just like, are you serious? Seems like that's like the entire setup, like he broke the bridge just so he could poke at his exwife. I mean, I wouldn't put it past him. Like. The amount of it cannot be stated how much.

Of this movie is dedicated to these two divorced people like snipping at each other in incredibly entertaining ways. It fuels me, yeah. So their only way to get forward from here is to to go to down into the water below, mostly unwillingly, Like he has to pry pry her hands off the the bridge. But as it turns out, the river will actually get them where they're going a lot faster. So they they start. And it's like almost like a like

an old, like American cartoon. Like pacing to the gag of him, like them all landing in the water and him grabbing the map and being like, oh, this was the right way anyway. And then you look back and like Misako and Ando are like just like like glaring at him pouring water out of out of things and just, like glaring at him and comically angry faces. It's very good. Once again, this is a movie.

Just like the original Mothra that like knows it's being silly and is having a fucking blast with it. Yeah. So they for some reason I'm spacing on whether or not it's like a raft or? It's like a raft. Yeah. It's like an inflatable raft. Yeah, so. So they're on this raft. And Ando is like super good at rowing. He's a big beefy boy. Yeah, Talk. He was like, how'd you get so good at rowing? And he's like company training.

Okay. So the underrated gag of them zooming out in the boat is just going in a circle because they're collectively rowing very badly. Yeah, So they can't for the night. And Mossico talks to to talk to you about their their daughter, and she has lied to their daughter about who Takia is because she wrote him like a little little note on the back of a picture being like, I'm going to help you chase down the bad guys when I get older. Takia is the bad guy, somewhat depending. Do you know?

I mean, it's not, it's not a good guy who goes around stealing relics from from that part, no. But when he steals from a company later, I'm like whatever. Well, yeah, that's that's not even theft. So yeah, so the next morning they walk into this cave and they're like, wow, these ruins have to be like 10,000 years old. You can just tell there's a, there's a mural of Mothra fighting some other creature on the wall.

And there's this, this window, and light passes through the window and it's like in this design and remember that design for later, But the the light goes up and reveals this new passage out and it leads outside directly to the egg, like it's just right there. So they're they're observing this egg and they hear a voice from the flowers. And it's the cosmos, which are the showbizgen. But they're called the cosmos here.

And they explained that Mothra was the protector of the Earth 12,000 years ago until a group of scientists, the the scientists that existed 12,000 years ago, created machines to drain the Earth's life force. And Batra appeared to match Mothra and punished. The Earth's hubris, basically. And their fight like flooded the earth and the cosmos are worried that Bach was alive again. And of course they're right. That was the creature we saw earlier.

I like if I if I can interject here, I like this change because of course, you know, famously in the 50s and 60s and 70s. You know, Infant Island is home to like a group of Polynesian natives that are not always portrayed super well. It's often Japanese people in in some form of brown face, although at least the makeup work got less offensive as time went on. But you know, as a concept, right? Like that still doesn't sit great with me. But now we've gone to the like

twin. The tiny twin priestesses are in fact like relics of an ancient super civilization. Like that's clearly the implication here is like 12,000 years ago we had like fucking Atlantis in, you know, Polynesia and you know we fucked up and and paid for our hubris because you know, Mothra and Batra act as the yin and Yang of this sort of like planetary immune response system, right? And I love this type of, this type of story. Like you remember that? You remember loofed.

Yeah, that we released. That's, that's just the story of Loofed. Is it that the the planet's immune system is trying to kill you because it was overmind. But so this, this and like the time travel from the last movie like this is this is my territory. Yeah, we're getting, look, the 90s is getting weird and I like if if Godzilla versus King Gadora went very super science. Right. We're getting a little into mysticism here and the blending of mysticism and science in kind

of a fun way, honestly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I I really like like super civilization that has left stuff on earth. I'm a sucker for that shit. And now, like you know, we have to figure out what to do to not become them. Is like catnip to. Yeah, yeah. So this was like I I I knew coming into it. I don't know how, maybe it was through osmosis or or something, but like, I knew that Mothra always usually came with like the two. The fairies, basically.

The fairies, Yeah. Yeah. And I I knew that that was like a part of Mothra's existence. And I think it was because in the American movies, like, they didn't have that and people were talking about it or something. I don't. Know, Yeah, that was definitely a big thing of people being like, you know, it it was weirdly absent. But usually, even when it's absent, it's a thing that's kind of hinted at. You know, the legendary movies famously have two twins.

In the second one, the one that moth was in, that you you don't find out that the one Chinese researcher lady is a twin who comes from like a family of twins dating back forever. And it's like, up there's our, you know, little nod, but there's always something. So I I really like this. Implementation of it, of them being like the guardians of Martha and Martha, has been around for so long.

Yeah, it also gives us like a it gives us the ability to sidestep like, you know, previously again, that had been a big pain point of like, OK, these movies were sympathetic to like Pacific Islanders and and SE Asians and and, you know, people like that, but often in a very paternalistic way.

You know and you know, at least this way, right, like obviously, like we've we've jumped around through like you know, Thailand and the Philippines and now we're in, you know, Infant Island is just a, you know, fictional island in, you know, off of the coast. But we don't have to have Japanese extras and brown face, you know. So like we avoided that. Congratulations. Progress. Yeah. So the earth is being excavated and there's like people protesting construction going on.

Do you love how we go directly from the explanation of hey, by the way we like over exploited the earth's resources and we were and and the earth like spewed forward a monster to punish us for it. An immediate cut to bulldozers and climate protests, right? Yeah, this movie is not subtle about what it's trying to talk about. If you miss the point of this movie, I don't know what to tell you. People have missed the point of

other movies. People watched Godzilla versus King Gdorah and thought it was pro nationalism. That's. So I don't, you know, I don't know. Well, a company man from the construction company shows up and he's really annoyed by the administrations because of course he is. He gets a call and they they tell him about the egg and he's just like, I don't whatever, I'm trying to do construction, you

know, money. So the the Cosmos are hopeful that Mothra can help Takia and the others stop the earth's destruction, basically. Massico reported back to the Bureau about Batra and it was just in time because they they noticed something was moving that was not Godzilla and it because it was Batra swimming through the through the ocean and they they deployed jets but they don't work and it's quickly

moving towards the mainland. Takias crew like gets the egg off the island on this huge barge. They didn't show how they did that. I'm a little interested to know, but I'm I don't. I didn't need to see it, so you know. Yeah, Like I I I was I I'm really. Glad about watching this movie because so many movies get caught up in over explaining things. And like, these characters are like, oh, you're tiny fairies who say you're 12,000 years old. We're on board.

Oh, we need to transport this egg to to the mainland. It's on a ship. Let's go. Yeah, yeah. You can't really argue with the the, the 1 foot tall twin fairy women when they're like, hey, this is our story, it's like. Well, you ain't nothing I've seen before, so I'm going to take your word for it. Why did you start talking like we do down here? Shut up the spirit, I blanked out in the spirit of Kentucky took over. Use some new kind of armant.

You got bourbon where you're from, so Batchra attacks. The military tries, you know, completely and effectively to stop Batrow's advance. It's destroying buildings just by ramming into them. It has, like, electrified horn blasts and eye lasers. It has a lot of moves, but just as as Batrow's moving in, Godzilla emerges from the ocean near the egg barge, and they talk about how like, you know, the meteor may have triggered all this to happen, but it's all

it's really humanity's fault. In the end, they created all these natural disasters with their actions. Takia wants to release the egg, you know, to get to get it away from Godzilla because he doesn't want author to die. And of course Ando tries to stop him because he's salary man and it's his job. It's like I will literally have wasted so much money. I will never get promoted.

Yeah, so they fight about it, but Motha emerges from the egg regardless of what they do. Honestly, the cosmos don't seem very concerned about this confrontation. They just kind of look at what's going on. Like I cut to them and I expected them to look worried or something. And they're just like, yeah, this is Motha's got it. Godzilla, like blasts the barge.

Just like the part that stuff that had the egg on it and the humans start escaping from from the I keep wanting to call like the truck bed part of the bars, that's not what it's called. I don't know the part with the egg on it. They they leave it. The truck bed. Yeah, the truck bed. The the the truck bed part of the barge. Martha tries to fight like using that part of the barge as cover, basically uses like string shot on Godzilla, and then ends up getting tossed.

So this this part had probably my favorite part of the entire movie. Where like Martha sort of like slinks out of the egg and goes into the ocean and like you see if you cut to Godzilla who's looking around and then Godzilla just screams like he stubbed his toe. And you see his tail come out of the water, and Mothra has like chomped down on the. Tail. Bite of his tail and it was just like I was laughing. It was. Perfect. It was so great. The patented Mothra tail bite.

Mothra has been Mothra like baby Mothra has been biting Godzilla's tail for decades and it never it I mark out every single time. It's so good. This whole extended action sequence I think is brilliant.

I love the way that they have this big middle of the ocean battle with the like floating like hauler with the eggshell as a sort of, like geographical marker by which you can Orient the fight around, you know, I think it's a it's just a great way to add like a piece of like dynamic environmental, you know, to what would otherwise just be two things out in a swimming pool. You know, and instead Mothra's hiding behind the the barge, right?

Mothra's like going under, going around, you know, and it just it's it's a great way to like really create a memorable set piece out of one single object. Right. It it also, like it reminded me of that that Leslie Nielsen joke. I can't. I think it might have been a naked gun. Where it's like the two of them are like shooting at each other and they're like right, they're hiding behind the exact same

thing. They're like 2 feet away from each other And Godzilla like firing his his breath into the barge and then moth are come popping out and shooting string shot at him. Like just the two of them like going back and forth around the bar, just like this one object they're both hiding behind. It was. It was fantastic, yeah. Just incredibly good sequence. Well. One second. No. OK, fine, Batter appears. So batter appears and drags Godzilla underwater, and Mothra

uses this confusion to escape. And then there's one of my favorite parts where Godzilla just grabs batters like, I guess tail, but like half its body, basically just slamming it into the ocean floor. The amount of power. That something would have to have to move an object that large through the ocean. Well, it's like, remember just last movie, Godzilla did this exact same thing to King Gadora

up on land, right? Grabbing him by the tails and just like lifting him into the air and slamming him back into the earth. I love that this is now like a consistent thing that Godzilla goes to as as like, look, I'm strong as fuck and I don't. Have to. I don't have arms for punching, but I can sure grab you and slam you around. That's all. He used to have arms for punching, yeah, that's all he used to be. Quite the boxer got a littler arms now. Yeah.

But you got them big old thighs. It makes him sturdy. So Godzilla does this basically until the earth splits open like the platonic plates are shifting. Imagine getting slammed into the earth so fucking hard you open an undersea volcanic. Vent God damn like Batra. To be clear, baby Batra is doing a hell of a job. Like holding up to Godzilla, But it's really not fair. Batra's just soaking up a lot of abuse. Yeah. Can. I So am I allowed to talk about batress design real quick?

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. OK so like Batres design in in in like baby batre form. I kept just like it looked so much like a Pokémon to me. It doesn't have big Pokémon energy. Yeah, like like it looks like a bisharp fucked a caterpie. Like that is what Batre looks like to me. At least in the baby for like I just it it was and then like the the attacks it has, like the electric attacks from its horn, like I was thinking like this is a gigantic Pokémon sent to like

destroy the earth. Like, that's all I could think about during this entire season, pretty much. I got to say, like, Batter's design is very striking because you hear, OK, we have a Black Mothra, right? And you think it's going to literally be a Black Mothra. And I mean, obviously there's a lot of design parallels, but you know, the the black, red and yellow is a very striking color scheme. The, like very heavy armor plating and the horns and the Tusk make it clear that this is

something that like fights. This is not a little little worm just trying to survive. And yeah, it's. The name is odd to me. It's Battle Mothra. You're thinking it was like this is you're thinking bat, but you got to remember in Japanese it'd be like Bat Ora. So it was literally meant to be like a play on Battle Mothra. So the the, the name translation does not work super well. But yeah, in in Japanese it's Battlera, so Battle Mothra. That's that's really cool. I like that.

So, but, yeah, and then also, you know, Godzilla's foes up until this point have largely been either very mundane, but like large things, right? They've been things like, well, the first half of the show era, right. It was all big dinosaur, like animals, right? And then as we got the back half, we got some alien stuff. But even then it was broadly still like we have, you know, things that physically fight more than they do anything.

And it might have a beam, right? King Gadora is about as crazy as shit got, and King Gadora had the the gravity bolts, batter shows up, and batters just got multiple different kinds of laser attacks that it can spam everywhere. This is finally something that fights kind of in the same way that show a Godzilla or not show a hey say Godzilla does where it's big, it's bulky, and it just can shoot out and throw enough energy out that probably anything that's path gets melted. It's just.

And its name is pronounced the exact same way as you would pronounce the the main character in. I mean echo. Fuck. It is. How do you like battler? No, it went battler. It's damn. Yeah, I had to work through that in my head. I don't like that. I I I don't like that either. I've been stunned. Locked about it for a moment. So yeah, the other water, Volcato. Unless you weren't finished. No, that's. I mean, that's what I've got is like, yeah, the design's really

good. It fights really unlike anything else so far. It's it's sturdy in a way that like, you know, Biolante and King Ghidorah got blown to bits. You know, when Godzilla let the breath out. But Batres taken a hit or two, You know, as a baby. So. Yeah, and now they're all taking a huge volcanic blast underwater. But now the gang is in Manila and Moscow and Takia talk about

their past. You know their their honeymoon in Cairo. The the the Maritomo group, which is the the group doing development, the unwelcome development. Want to take the cosmos and, like, turn them into spokespeople? You know, they want to do the thing that we learned was a bad idea, and the thing in the first Godzilla or the first Mothra that, yeah, turned out so well for everyone involved.

Yeah. Mosiko, of course, is like, well, we can't break our promise to the cosmos because that we we told them that we would help them. And she goes, She greets her, her daughter Midori, and Takia just slips out the back because he has other things. He has other old plans. He's scheming. So Professor Fugazella from earlier, he's investing the volcanic activity because like basically the meteor caused it from the impact overall, but you know, it's all very

interconnected. The Maritomo group, when asked, will not return the cosmos to to the Bureau. Hey, we own these living beings. Right, right. The the cosmos start looking around the room they're trapped in, like there's a huge fish tank and stuff, and they're out. They look at the sunset and then they start singing the song to call Mothra to them. So as we know, when they sing that song, Mothra begins moving in a straight line towards them.

And fuck anything that happens to be in that straight line. It's actually incredible. I almost feel like this movie, like this movie obviously works if you have not watched any Godzillara Mothra stuff before, but. If you I can attest to that, if you've seen the original Mothra, like the bit of them singing the song and then Mothra heading into the water feels like direct, like, oh, she gonna do it. Yeah.

It Mothra. At this point, to me, it was it was like, she's like a giant golden retriever who like, got called across the yard. And is now just like barreling through all the picnic tables and coolers because it's like, oh, I'm coming, I'm coming, yes. And the thing about Mothra, like a one of Mothra's superpowers, I think is being underestimated at

this point. And like BOK, obviously Mothra cannot hold up in a fight against Godzilla or Batra, but in the grand scheme of things, that is a massive tube of meat that is just ramming at high speed. OKI need to really rephrase that entire. Yeah, can you please? That is a massive creature, like the amount of physical mass on even the infant Mothra. Just barrelling at at at actually surprisingly fast through the water like your boat's going to get fucking

broke. I don't know what else to say. So yeah, Mothra is like swimming directly for them. And of course the Bureau is concerned because they're like, well, there's about to be a lot of destruction. We don't really know where the cosmos are being held, so, so we can't even actually project where Mothra is going necessarily. Right, but everything between those two points is about to be gone. But that said, now the cosmos go missing because it turns out Takia or our thief boy stole them.

To sell to an American company for $1,000,000. No, I mean, he did steal from a company, but he's also selling living beings. Yeah. Can we stop trafficking the fucking fairies? Right. Like, I really, I I kind of lost track of what was happening here because like one minute the evil corporation has them and then suddenly Takia has them and is selling them. And like, it's never. Really made clear how they got from point A to point B and how

he knew where they were. But like, also, I'm just going to go with it. Yeah, it does feel like there's a small chunk of movie that happened off screen that would have been better if it happened on screen, you know, because they've, they very intentionally wanted to drop him out of the narrative for a while where we stopped being connected to his

point of view. But like, yeah, we went from A to C and it's like, I would like, I would like to have had B happen in a couple of scenes, you know? Yeah, five extra minutes of footage could have gone a long way, but. Yeah, well, forces are deployed to stop Mothra. Still doesn't work. They keep trying, but it never works. The Cosmos continue to sing from Mothra, from Takia's house now. And so Masako, Midori and Mickey, who is back again. Are in the car and Miki uses her choir.

Miki Sagusa cameo. Yeah, she's like trying to listen for the song basically to to lead them there. Mothra arrives. People are evacuating on those. Like, we should probably get out of here. But like, the head of the company is like, no, it's fine, It can just destroy everything. I'll just buy new buildings. Yeah. In fact, have the military unload everything they have. Fuck whatever we do. This city. Right. Godzilla wants you to remember that capitalists are never the

good guys. That's right. So they determined the Mothra is headed for Akasaka for they're going now. So Mosco, Miki, Midori all arrived. They they start grilling, talking about what's going on. His daughter knew what was happening. Like what did not have to be told. Like has just figured everything out. The cosmos say that they'll they'll stop Mothra from attacking, But like you need to take us to Mothra for us to do that.

So they they have the cosmos talk to Mothra, and as Martha turns to leave back the way that she came, the military continues to fire at her and manages to hurt her and she kind of keels over onto this building. And meanwhile, the volcanic activity is still increasing. The cosmos are like, well, it's Mothra's not dying, right? She's just completing her her larval stage. And so she rolls up in her cocoon on this on this huge building.

There is a There's a really funny cut, and this is my sense of humor. So there's this real funny cut Where? The guy is talking about like, oh, the volcano is going to explode in like 30 minutes. We've got to do something. And then it's smash cuts to tanks rolling up and in my brain, I'm just like, they're going to attack the volcano with this. We got to shoot this. This movie doesn't take place in America, OK? Yeah, we're not going to nuke

her. Do you ever stop and think about how close we came to nuking a random hurricane? I prefer not to, Yeah. Yeah. We don't live in a serious timeline in new. York I have a lot of alcohol on my friend, and it'll be more now that I've taught you about infusing. That's right. So the Cosmos are on TV and the Maritomo group is like, super mad that that their property, quote UN quote, was stolen from them. But Mount Fuji erupts. And on those, finally, like, you know what? They're right.

The Earth is angry and you're the bad guy now. He gets fired, but you know good, good for him. Godzilla arrives and then one of my other favorite scenes in terms of like camping this happens and like the main guy from the Bureau goes main screen on and like or two it is English and the entire room spins around like well that the whole room but like the table they're on and near like the whole center

of the room turns. And they're all just staring at this wall as it opens up. Like, it's huge. It's so good. I love this fucking random scifi headquarters they have in this movie. And like that there's there's the most 90s computer simulation of anything, and it's like choosing areas to zoom in and makes no sense. But like, shows Godzilla's stats. Apparently Godzilla weighs like

60,000 tons, which is a lot. And it just shows that for some reason, I don't know what they were doing with that. I think they just wanted a cool secret. I had the Wikipedia page open. Yeah, yeah, I love that. They just have like a Godzilla, you know, info screen just ready whenever they whenever Godzilla might show up. Well, and I mean that's been kind of, I would have established over the last few movies that like because this, this is 1 continuous thing that's happening to them.

So they they had to develop some type of countermeasure. I do love because this is the thing that you called out with Godzilla versus Biolante is like, OK, the original Godzilla is 1954 and then in this timeline we wait 30 more years before the 2nd Godzilla appears. You know and we we get into this shit, you know everyone thought they were good.

We learned we're not. And then versus Biolante opening with them like setting up the the various like Defcon 135 on Godzilla. What do we do at each of these stages of awake? Just yeah, this is this is a world that is now just had to evolve and change based on the existence of Godzilla. And I mean, they have all these DEFCON levels. They always get to the maximum one and then they go to the next one that isn't listed, which is basically just fuck it, wee ball.

Yeah, fuck it, wee ball. Hey, I do just want you to know, I think, I think to mock me for the tube of meat thing. I'm pretty sure, yeah, my wife just slid an onto a sausage under the door. So thanks for that Hun. Well, so as I said, Mount Fuji erupting. Godzilla broke through the Earth's mantle. Just punched its way out of this mountain, basically as it was erupting. Didn't care. Kool-aid manned his way through the earth. Right, so he it shows up crashes to the power line.

The description that this is just the thing that Godzilla has probably been doing for a while, right? That Godzilla clearly just sometimes what he needs to get somewhere quick, fucking bust down through the mantle or through the the crust into the mantle and swims through the mantle to where he needs to go is very like, that's metal as shit. Godzilla also moves in straight lines. I think so. Godzilla does a reverse airplane. He just goes down and goes. Yeah.

So Godzilla crashes through some power lines and everybody switches to emergency power and Mothra finally emerges from her cocoon and goes to battle Batra. So now that we got like Batra in the ocean, Godzilla's attacking from this mountain I love. So I think the image of Mothra building her cocoon on Tokyo Tower in the original movie is a more powerful like location than the the diet building. But like what are you going to do do Tokyo Tower again? I just don't.

You know, they wanted something different, a little more modern, whatever. But the actual sequence of Mothra emerging from the cocoon is so fucking good. And the wings unfolding and and and all of this is again a physical prop and puppet. Doing all of this is just wild to me. You know how good the sequence looks, how good the cocoon looks, you know, got how good Mothra looks, right? We, we had like this, this very

fun, like ratty looking ass. You know Mothra in the 50s and 60s and now we have this very clean, pristine, like whiter than snow, you know Mothra. And there is kind of a sense of wonder to it that has been missing for a bit in Godzilla. And I I'm, I'm kind of here for those, those quiet moments of

all. Yeah, well the military does what it can to hold off Godzilla, what little that is, and Mothra and Batra start fighting as Godzilla makes its way towards Yokohara. We also talk about Batra transforming because Mothra has the whole great like Cocoon Sequence and Batra. They they they cut to batter. It's the first time we've seen batters since he disappeared under the water with Godzilla. And is this batters swimming as

hard as possible? It goes like before, just immediately, like rage, transforming in a ball of light into the adult form which looks like a goddamn demon. Yeah. Yeah. But I love. Like Batra is pissed. Everything about Batra's movement reads pissed.

It's it's very good, yeah. There there's also a a part in this where like the music is going like there's this real like Final Fantasy as heroic music playing as the military is trying to like attack Godzilla, and Godzilla is just like swatting all of them down and killing all of them. And the music just has this abrupt cut and just stops when

the last plane explodes. Like there's all this, like fantastic music and then like the last plane explodes and then it's silence and Godzilla starts walking towards, you know, you know, like the where the big battle is going to happen. And I love that. Yeah. Yeah. It's IFA Kube fucking popped off on this movie. Hey folks, Derek here.

So we dealt with some technical difficulties during the recording of this episode and it required us to take a little bit of a break and get those things taken care of. It is now a week later. As you can tell, I'm sick, I'm sick and my voice is completely fucked up, so that's going to be just how I sound the rest of this episode. Charlotte atma Y'all, y'all with me. Hello. Yeah, we're here. This is not the worst catastrophic tech failure we've

faced. We were able to recover everything we'd recorded up to a certain point. But obviously, you know, it's it's it is a little inside baseball, but like sometimes that's all you can do is just go. This is what we've got. We'll pick up from this point on another day. So why don't you pick us up from there, Charlotte? So Batra is coming from the sea. Godzilla is like coming from the

mountain. Because as I believe I had already mentioned in the version that we saved, you know, Godzilla has been like digging up through the Earth's mantle to get to where it needs to be. The military is trying to fend off Godzilla as best that they can. But this is when Mothra and Batra start fighting each other as Godzilla is like making its way into Yokohama. And this is where the the building collapses on Godzilla.

Believe it was. Bachelor that brings brings a building down on top of Godzilla and Godzilla was like buried under the rubble, right? And so the Mothra Bachelor is still fighting Mothra like crash Lands as Godzilla emerges from this rubble to, like, grab and toss Batra. And like Godzilla was probably just using the building as cover at that point, you know? Yeah, it definitely felt like he was kind of lying and wait to like, jump out when Batra got

close. Yeah, And then Godzilla like starts moving in on Batra, but Mothra swoops in to swoops back in like blasts Godzilla back into a building and lands next to Batra. And then they start talking like the the cosmos are singing and there's energy going back and forth between Mothra and Batra. They're not, like, actually, like, audibly communicating, but you see, like the antenna glow and they're clearly having, like, a sort of psychic

communication, right? Godzilla interrupts it, but Mothra releases like this powder that reflects all of Godzilla's beams back. Which is sick. I love this. So of course you might remember the original Mothra had, like, the poison scales from the wings. But I think there's something so much more interesting about, like the scale cloud that like dampens and reflects and refracts energy. It's, you know it. It's a very interesting take on

like a defensive ability, right? And so Mothra ends up getting flipped over and Godzilla moves in to finish her. But then Batra swoops in on that. Batra picks up an entire Ferris wheel and throws it at Godzilla, and Mother is like following up. Sick ass sequence. That. Was my throwing the fucking Ferris wheel. Yeah, yeah, that that was I I, in my notes, I wrote that down as Oh my God, Batra with the steel chair. Yeah, because, like, that was

just amazing. That was the fucking that was the fucking Smackdown moment for sure. Yeah. And I I just have to point out as part of you know, growing up with not growing up with but like mainly watching American Godzilla aside from you know like Broadzilla what Matthew, what's I called Matthew Broderick's. Yeah, yeah. The 98 Tristar, Yeah. Yeah, Godzilla is usually. The hero, sort of in the newer American Godzilla movies. And so for me, the big plot twist here like that, I didn't

see coming. Like the entire time I was expecting Godzilla and Mothra to team up on Batra because Batra's the bad one, you know, And like that's bad Mothra. But no, no, it's, it's Mothra and Batra teaming up here on Godzilla, which is like, I just like, it blows my mind. I like this is like. Junior Godzilla moment.

A lot of people are used to the idea, primarily because I think a lot of like cultural consciousness of Godzilla comes from the later, like 60s and 70s movies where Godzilla's straight up just a good guy, like damn near a superhero. And of course, that's the direction that the legendary movies have leaned in as well, that Godzilla is, you know, something large and benevolent that.

You know, devastation that I'm sorry about the dogs, but like the devastation that occurs around Godzilla is just accidental as he does his job as a sort of you know, planetary like immune system. And the reality of it is that actually Batra in this movie is closer to that idea of of something now. So you have like Mothra and Batra, who are both sort of agents of the planet in their way, Mothra representing a view of environmentalism that includes humans as a part of that.

And Batra coming from more of like you know a fucking like do Marie perspective of like you know the Earth can only survive if you get rid of humanity, you know? But Godzilla is not even on that scale. Godzilla is just. A singular walking catastrophe, yeah. Yeah, yeah. See a last minute fucking plot twist? This 3 way becomes A1V2. Yeah, Mothra and Bachelor just are Wambo comboing. Godzilla. Godzilla goes down. Bachelor goes to grab Godzilla, but gets like chomped just bleeding.

Oh yeah, yeah. Like Batra, like, lands on his chest, right? Yeah. To like try and lift him and Mothra is trying to lift from like the tail. But Batra clearly has the dangerous end right? Yeah, so but but Bachelor and Mothra like pick up Godzilla to carry him out to see. But like Bachelor is wounded and like bleeding everywhere, bleeding on Godzilla also ends up getting atomic breaths, because Godzilla doesn't want to be carried out to sea.

But Bachelor and Godzilla fall into the ocean and Motha creates like this energy ring that ascends down towards them. And that ring has the symbol on it from the from the window earlier where the light came through in that cave. Yeah, it's a It's a really interesting sequence because, like, it's actually very. Like I think it's really impactful because you see Batra just taking hit after hit after hit as they both try to carry Godzilla out to sea.

And then you finally see the point where Batra's eyes go dark and stops moving and is basically just gliding and and Martha kind of has the realization and just lets go and lets Godzilla and and Batres corpse plummet into the sea. And it's like I think it's, you know, it's, it's it's kind of

impactful I feel like. Yeah. Yeah, it really was the the just the imagery of like the two of them working together and carrying Godzilla out and he's like this crying baby that's like atomic breathing and just like struggling as he's being, like shipped out to sea. Like I really like that. Yeah. And then I'm not and the movie doesn't really specifically say my interpretation of the whole Ring of Light thing is that it's something close to like a seal, if that makes sense.

I mean, Mothra is always traded in very like East Asian, you know, like the. The, the. The. The twin like shrine maidens and everything like that. So yeah, my read on that is that it's it's something of a seal to like, keep Godzilla in place for a time. You know, so that he can't just, like, immediately get back up and go fuck people up again. Yeah, So in a in another huge plot twist, the cosmos warn everyone that there's going to be another meteor coming at the

end of the 20th century. And Batra was supposed to stop that meteor, apparently. But with Batra dead, Mothra is going to have to find a new way to help everyone. So everyone waves goodbye as Mothra flies off at the cosmos. And they're basically like, hey, as we as we go to the next, you know, as we get past the year 2000, please think about Mothra. But then they say that Mothra will come back. But until then, it's up to the people to save the Earth.

And I mean it's it's 1992. So we know that we haven't done that yet. But Mothra flies. It has. Done an incredibly bad job, in fact, yeah, Mothra flies into space in the credits role. Yeah, that's it. I also I love the the the cosmos like literally turn into energy and like merge into Mothra as Mothra goes off into space to just intercept this meteor. So yeah. Yeah, good ass. Movie. So let's talk a little bit about kind of what happens in the aftermath of this movie.

So First off, the good news. This bitch made money in a way that versus Bayolante and versus King Gadora did not. So, you know, this was the shot in the arm, really, that the Hey Say series needed. In order to continue going like it was a good call, Mothra is very popular. They made a really, really fucking good movie that captured all of the reasons why. Like the Mothra movies were some of the best out of the original batch. So, I mean, it was a good choice.

It paid off. We do have a new Godzilla suit in this movie. Just a second, man. Which is the thing that happens every so often anyway. You can kind of somewhat tell because they they the the suit they used in Godzilla versus King Ghidorah was lost. I I say lost. It was stolen actually during filming and like somebody that worked there. They never found out who stole the suit. It was eventually found. Much later, just like all kinds of fucked up near Tokyo Bay. So somebody took the suit.

And I mean, I don't know if they were going to parties as Godzilla or what, but but so they say, I don't know, you know, I don't think they found it like on the beach. I think it was like. Close by. But like, it was definitely water damaged. Like again, somebody had had some fun with this thing. So what they ended up doing was, excuse me, I've read some places say that this happens after they recover the suit, and I've read some other places that don't mention that detail, so I don't

know which one is true, but. This suit would primarily be used for, like the underwater sequences and like heavily obscured shots, which is the thing they've been doing for a while, actually, if you look back, sometimes they used the old suit that was falling apart for like, you know, the bits where it needed to get blown up because they didn't want to do

it to the nice new suit. And it's the kind of thing that most people don't pay a lot of attention to because, like the underwater scenes here are filmed through, you know, panes of of water. So you know it's heavily darkened now one before I get into this next bit that's a little bit lengthy about about kind of the the tail end of history regarding this movie. Now Charlotte, I know you are pretty familiar with Akira Kurosawa Atma. How familiar are you with director Akira Kurosawa?

I know the movies. He's directed by reputation, for sure, yeah. Yeah, like I and I know like stylistically sort of what influence he's had and that sort of thing. But I I don't know a lot about. It yeah. So Kurosawa, who is broadly considered one of history's best filmmakers, I mean the The Seven Samurai is widely regarded one of the best films ever made, you know, in history. Hiro Kurosawa was actually a close personal friend of Ishiro Honda, the original Godzilla

director. In fact, when Honda retired from filmmaking, he would go work as like a second unit director for Kurosawa through like the 80s and and early 90s. You might also be familiar with actor Toshiro Mifune, who is a very famous actor who blew up in. Kurosawa's films especially, but then found a lot of success in Hollywood, if I remember correctly after the fact. And sadly, Kurosawa and Mifune ended up kind of growing apart because Mifune would only become like more and more popular and

in demand as an actor. And Kurosawa, you know, the back chunk of his career is not nearly as well regarded as a lot of his earlier stuff. So you have like everybody knows the Seven Samurai, everyone knows like the Hidden Fortress, right? But just a second. But then like very few people have seen or know about like Mata Dio for example. Yeah. And I mean, it's just clear that Kurosawa was very jealous that, you know, he and Mifune kind of came up in popularity together.

And then Mifune would go on to retain a lot of that popularity and and and again only find further success while Kurosawa kind of went into obscurity later. This is kind of important back information for what's coming up. So Ishiro Honda visited the set. During filming sometime late in 1992, I'm not sure if it's the thing that he commonly did or if Godzilla versus Martha was like

a unique situation. I don't read a lot about him coming back to the set of like these, hey say movies, you know, I mean, he wasn't working on the series anymore, so you know, he didn't really have any obligation to be there. But he visited the set in 1992. And it would be one of the last things that happened while he was healthy. Shortly after visiting the set, Kurosawa was hosting a party for the cast and crew of Mata Dio, which would be out in early 93.

And Honda went home early. Just appeared to be suffering from some light cold symptoms, you know, so in the months that followed this party. His symptoms would only get worse and worse until he was hospitalized, and on February of 1993, Youshiro Honda sadly died of respiratory failure at the age of I believe he was in his early 80s. So not a young man, not necessarily a fully surprising death, but certainly far too early. I mean his his wife would, would survive.

For another 1520 years past his death at Honda's funeral, Akira Kurosawa and Toshi Romi Fune finally reconnected after many, many years of separation and silence. So Godzilla versus Mothra here in a lot of ways, while while being a. True love letter. I would say to Honda's era of Godzilla. That first 1015 years of the franchise is also the last thing he was even tangentially connected to, which is sad, you know, I mean, I guess it's we knew this was going to have to

happen at some point, right? That we'd talk about the movie where you sure, oh, Honda died. But. Yeah, that's heavy to read about that. This was, you know, he was on the set here only months before his death. So and you know, comes for all of us, I guess, but you know, couldn't have, couldn't have happened in regards to a movie that was more loving and respectful of the work that he did to get, you know, these

characters off the ground. I know I've brought the entire fucking mood down after a really good movie, but like, in a lot of ways, isn't that just how it goes, you know? Yeah. I mean, you know, we weren't expecting to be talking about the death of a G Subraya, you know, right at the beginning of Space Amoeba. And yet here we are, You know, that's what happens. We're talking about decades of filmmaking here and.

Eventually the legends who got the stuff off the ground, you know don't make it to the end here. You know as as these characters in these stories change hands, you know over many many years and are told in different ways and you know espouse kind of different versions of of different like expressing different like ideological like themes. But excuse me to this point. And this is something Charlotte can chime in on more, I think, but like. These movies have.

Stayed very true to a lot of the energy that Honda put in from the beginning right of like being environmentalist, of being anti nationalist, of being about how you know. The the heroes should be academics and scientists and journalists, right? Right. Villains are always capitalists or imperialists. You know that when people commit evil acts, it is an example of evil people showing the worst aspects of humankind, Not their country, not their background, but.

When people do the right thing, when people do heroic things or show growth, that that is a an example of the best of us, an example of what is inside all people, you know that that more optimistic view. I've seen people describe Godzilla as being about how humans are the real monsters, and having seen so many of these Movies Now, I think that's just a very shallow read. Because I. It's way too humanist for that, I think these movies are, yes, they're incredibly humanist. They are in.

They are about, you know, showing an example of the ways we can be better, the ways we can put national borders beside us. You know, you may argue naively, right? Like it's naive to believe that we could overcome Cold War tensions as easily as was done and return of Godzilla. That, you know, the people slammed this movie for being naive and and heavyhanded and its messages about environmentalism. But, like, I might argue that it's just being earnest, you

know, which is a thing. That's in rare supply these days is an earnestness for preaching, you know, a message of of hope for the future. So. Yeah, like sometimes there's a time for subtlety and like metaphorical messaging, and sometimes there's a time for earnest messaging and and just putting it out there as part of it. And like, I feel like this movie did a really good job of. The latter of just being, like, yeah, this is about, you know, humans having to work together

to save the environment. And like, that's okay Well. And I think especially like, you know, the subject, like, there's definitely room to be more subtle when you talk about like the subject of nationalism, for example. But when you're talking about the environment, you know what's not ever going to help is being a cynical doomer about climate

change. Like, you know, though, the one, the one way most guaranteed not to help is to throw your hands up and say we can't fucking fix this, Stop, you know, bludging me over the head with it. You kind of need to be very straightforward, very obvious. You know, you don't have to be Captain Planet corny about it. But you know, there's no need

for subtlety here. So Speaking of cold symptoms being the the forewarning of I'm, I'm, I'm proud to announce here that I will be dying before we begin Season 4. You think I? Could carry this on my own. Are you kidding? I joke, I joke. I am doing better already. I just have a fucked up throat and voice still, so I'm actually feeling better today than I felt in days. I think I had whatever you have, just a cold. I never even had a fever at any point. Honestly, it's just been

drainage. Sounded like that for like a week. Yes. Summer cold. So. So I do have. I do have two excellent titles, by the way, for. This movie? Yes. So Taiwan. And neither of these are like, funny. Well, OK, one of them's great and one of them's funny. In Taiwan, the movie was called Butterfly Dragon Mothra which fucking ribs like. That sounds like a bad name. That sounds like a bad name. Butterfly Dragon. Mothra is so sick and I just have to hand it to Taiwan.

They did good on that one. Russia, Meanwhile, return of the dinosaur and Russia see me after. Class, you didn't even try. Not all dinosaurs. Just one dinosaur, yeah, return of the one dinosaur. Don't worry about the moths. It's the dinosaur really that it's all about. So very different aspects to those titles. Taiwan was like, we know this is really a movie about Mothra and Russia was like big lizard. So mentioned that this reinvigorated the hey say era,

right? Like multiple of these movies underperformed, but God Silver's and Mothra did really, really well. It's cemented that this was going to at least get a couple more sequels very specifically. It also really reinvigorated interest in Mothra who had not appeared in anything in some time. Let me double check real quick, but I don't think Mothra appeared since Destroy All Monsters in 68.

Mothra was missing from that entire chunk after Destroy All Monsters. So you know, despite being who we consider one of the biggest names in in Kaiju, you know Motha really was absent for a while. And this, this revival. And this. Proof of popularity for Mothra as a character, as well as proof that the, you know, these these kind of retooled elements of Martha worked really, really well with like families and then

children especially. Ended up getting the green light for Martha to have her own trilogy, which we will cover later this season. Charlotte, I'm really excited for you to watch those three because God, do I have opinions on them. Like positive or just opinions? Honestly, we'll we'll get to it. I guess my last questions because, like, did the movie have any interesting thematic elements? I mean, kind of no.

Fucking duh, right? Yeah. Yeah, you know, this is the movie that that decided to be hardcore on the environmental messaging. It brought a little bit of elements of like spirituality and mysticism back into this era of Godzilla. It got flashy in a way that, you know, a lot of the movies before hadn't been. I guess my question. Oh, sorry, you. It introduced the series first, like Scrunco, because like Battra was definitely Battra existed to to destroy us for our hubris at one point.

But, you know, decided to become like an antihero, basically. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And then also give it to life for us. And like once again, I think that's funny because there's a lot of of Godzilla fans, right? Who cuz it's I think there's a lot of you. I'm not like a gatekeeper on this sort of stuff, right? I think there's a lot of fans of things who maybe don't engage a lot with like especially older

primary media, you know? But like there's a lot of fans of Godzilla who didn't have access to a lot of the older movies. Who saw some of these? Who looked a lot of this stuff up? Who like you Charlotte, played a lot of video games and probably thought Batra was a much bigger part of this franchise and more of a permanent part of like Mothra's mythology rather than just being part of 1 movie? Right. But you know. Does does Batra ever come back or was this though I'm sorry, you cut out.

Can you? Repeat that. Did Batra ever come back or was this his only appearance? This is Batra's only appearance in the films. Batra would appear in a bunch of video games because the design's super popular. The concept is super popular, but yeah, this is the only movie Batra ever appears in. It's interesting, but I mean, it's also like one of the

definitive. Like if if somebody wanted to know Mothra like this is almost the one I would recommend them, even over some of the older ones like even though I'd say the original Mothra is like one of my favorite movies out of this franchise. It has problems. So it's hard to, yeah, I mean, you know, again like people in brown face, but also like, it's just not accessible in the same

way, you know? And I think, yeah, it's also a matter of like people are more likely to watch something from the 90s with like much better special effects work and more modern production values than you know, something from the 50s, so. It's been weird getting back to the 90s and being like this is what I'm used to movies looking like. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean just the the quality of the film, right, the resolution, the, you know, better like lighting that we have and set design, you know, And like the production quality work on the the 80s and 90s series is absurd if you ask me. I mean, once again, we talked about this with versus by Alante, but look at how good the night battle sequence is at the end in the city with Godzilla, Mothra and Batra. It's absurd how well you can see every detail despite it very

clearly being a night sequence. You know, this is actually something we hadn't talked about this at all with Atma yet. But like Atma, think about how illegible many sequences in the dark are in like, modern Hollywood. And then look at this last fight scene, right? Yeah, yeah, I know. I, you know, I didn't think about that until you brought it up.

But like, gosh, last couple years movies and TV shows, you just, you can't see anything if it's a night sequence and it's just like, I want to see what's happening and my screen is blue and black and I just can't see anything. And this one like. They just have a brawl at in the middle of the night and everything is lit up and perfectly sequenced and it's really like well done and God, I I wish more movies were done this like this.

Especially because like as a person who hasn't seen a lot of Godzilla of the especially the early ones, you know, like Godzilla and and these movies kind of had the the reputation. Of like the rubber suits and like the really bad, sort of like funny looking fights and stuff like this.

And I like came away from this one very impressed with what was going on. Yeah, I I cannot stress enough, like if you have the time, like watch the original Godzilla, the 1954 film, like into the the 80s and 90s series, because the original film is still like in continuity with this rebooted timeline. But so far, like this has been the most consistently good, high quality stretch of Godzilla that we've had. I mean, it's it's insane and it's so watchable. It's so good, Really good scifi

filmmaking. Yeah, I'm like anxious for when it's going to fall. I mean, there's look, here's the thing, I'm not spoiling anything. I know that versus Space Godzilla is a bit of a mess. I remember I've seen that movie like 6 times. Like, I know that it's fucking stupid that the antagonist is called Space Godzilla. Like, I hate to break it to you, but like you know, they're not sending their best by this point. Listen, I I. All I know about space Godzilla is the crystals.

Godzilla's sick, don't get me wrong. But like, I know that one's a mess. And then I know Versus Destroyer is one of my favorite, like, almost everyone's favorite in the franchise. It's so good. So the only question mark is this next movie versus Mecca Godzilla. Like, I don't remember super well. So like, is this going to be a near perfect series with one notable myths or are we going to have like a a fullblown 2 movie dip in the middle? I don't know.

We'll find out. I guess my last questions would be like, what about this movie do you think sticks with you the most? Like, you know, five years from now, if this movie comes up, what is it that you think about? Let me start with Atma. So like I I am definitely going to remember the whole like, environmentalism message. Like it's kind of hard to miss that. But also again just from coming from a not Godzilla fan, like this was a good movie. Like I would just be like, hey,

you should watch this and. And some of my favorite parts like in my brain, I know me and I am going to remember Bachelor taking out Godzilla with a Ferris wheel and. Yeah. Yeah, and then like the, you know. Third person cover shooter fight between Godzilla and Mothra in the middle of the ocean. Because both of those are like very well done, well filmed action sequences and I I love action.

So like whenever a movie gives me that I'm going to remember it And so those things altogether like I I would recommend this movie like this is this is a really good movie. I enjoyed watching it. Yeah, Charlotte. Yeah. I don't know. This might sound weird, but I'm just going to remember Mothra

moving. I don't know like because when you watch the original and the way that Mothra moves in that movie compared to now this one, and the way that Martha just looks so detailed and you can pick out everything on Mothra. Big fan of moths. Don't know if everyone knows that. But. Yeah, so living out in the country, you'd wake up and get those gigantic moths on the outside of the the cabin. Yeah, yeah. When I was in my car once, there

was a poodle moth there. Don't know how, but, but yeah, I don't know. It's just I'm going to think about Mothra. If somebody's like, oh, have you seen that? And I'm going to be like, yeah, Mothra looks really good in that movie. That's what I'm going to say, yeah. I mean, I love this 90s redesign. The cleaner white, the the extra color pattern on the wings. The the red, black, yellow pattern on the wings is so

iconic. Like in the same way that when I close my eyes, it's the it's the 90s Godzilla that I see when I close my eyes. It is the 90s Mothra that I see over and over again. This is the definitive look for her. So yeah. Yeah, like I I saw the. Whatever the sequel was, I don't remember the name of it. Godzilla, King of, not King of the monsters with that. King of the Monsters was the the

second legendary movie. The second, yeah, the second legendary movie and like I could not tell you what Mothra looked like in that movie and I I know she was in it, but like this this design for me, like it's very, very well done and just like vibrant and sticks in your brain. Like, I will definitely think of this version of Mothra. Versus the the the legendary version of her. Yeah. And like it's super. Let me find a picture for you real quick and throw it in the

in the chat. You know like this is from 1964. Like the design is kept very faithful to the original but they've gone in and really brightened up. I mean, it's that clean white, you know, kind of fur like covering and the much more vibrance, you know, in the yellows and Reds and oranges in the wing pattern. The really bright blue eyes that, yeah, just make this, this, like Mothra looks clean, looks pristine, looks sacred in a lot of ways that none of the monsters we've seen up to this

point look like that. They look naturalistic. And she looks like something painted, crafted, perfect. I don't know. I don't know how to explain it beyond that. So yeah. Yeah. This this screenshot sure is like the 90s are missing a lot of the skunk, but yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, they've they're missing. They're missing some of the grunge and the dirt and the dust that made a lot of the the 60s movies feel a little real.

But I mean, at the same time, there's something about the like design work and the movement of everything in the 90s and 90s that looks so good. And of course it you don't want Mothra to have to be dirty. Well, right. So does anybody that's. What all the dust is for, right? Like it cleans, cleans her off. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, like a chinchilla. Maybe I don't. Know like a chinchilla. Yeah. I don't know. Does anybody have any other final takes? No. No, I. I thank you for for having me on

and having me watch this movie. No, thank you for joining us. First off, it's always just fun to like share these movies with friends and acquaintances, right? Like especially like it's been fun to have Godzilla fans on. And it's also been fun to have people who are not, who have not really seen a lot of these movies because it's kind of broken down the myth to a lot of people of oh shit like this is what watching Godzilla movies like like these, these can be

good. These can be different from the image that I have in my head, instilled by death decades of like American pop culture satire of Godzilla. Yeah, like, I I can see like, this came out in 92, right? Yes. So I would have been seven. And I can see if I was 7 and watch this movie, I would become a Godzilla fan. Like, like, I could see how that would just be like, all right, I got to watch all these Movies Now. How could you not? Yeah. Yeah. So that's a wrap on this episode.

Thank you all so much for joining us on our journey so far. Atma, do you have anything you feel like plugging for our listeners? Normally, here's where I would plug my podcast. I do a podcast with my friend. It's called Make Me a Gamer. We are currently on hiatus because we've both been having computer issues, so there isn't a rough time when we're going to be coming back. But we have. Nearly 150 episodes already there. If you feel like going to listen to that.

It's a good backlog for people to work through while you guys get back up and running again. Yeah, yeah, there's plenty of good stuff in there. We're we're a little weird as most podcasters are. But yeah, that. That's my plug. And again, thank you for for having me on. Thank you for being here. It was a blast. Yeah.

Thank you. If you've enjoyed this episode of Castle Bravo, please consider rating and reviewing us on your podcast app of choice and recommend the show to your friends and cohorts to help us beat the whims of the almighty algorithms. Especially now that there is not a single fucking good social media network to work with. God damn it, Blue Sky, you had one fucking job.

That's all we've got this week. See you next whenever and take care of everyone, or at least take better care of yourself than I've taken care of myself. Nap Time Castle Bravo is a production of Derek Van Dyke and Charlotte Landdale. All editing is performed by Derek Van Dyke. Special thanks to Curiae Lamont for our art assets and to David Van Dyke for our theme song Pools of Memory.