Hi everyone. Derek here. So this episode was actually done almost two months ago, and the reason that there's been such a huge delay despite season three moving at a pretty good clip, there's been such a huge delay in getting this episode to you all. Is that less than three days after recording this episode, my mother died and I'm not look I'm not you know, seeking the the, you know, a bunch of of solace. Like obviously this is the thing I am working through. It's a whole process.
But you know, we recorded this on a Tuesday evening and then Friday morning I went over to pick up my mother to help her with some some necessary errands and she had passed in her home. And then I found her. And I mean, obviously I have been busy. We have been busy.
It turns out that editing and putting out your Godzilla podcast is kind of not as important as things like, you know, settling somebody's affairs and preparing a funeral and and informing family and and trying to keep life moving in the aftermath of all that. And and you know, frankly this this was an awkward and weird 1 to get back to just because I
was very overwhelmed. I don't think we say anything about it in the episode, but I was very overwhelmed while recording this episode because I had been spending the last couple of months increasingly like taking care of of my mother with her dementia. And it's it's hard going back to something where I know in the back of my mind I was that frustrated and then I was going to lose her so soon after that. And that's that's just the thing I've been grappling with.
I'm I'm talking to people like, you know, I'm able to be frank about this and about how complicated this all is for me. Because, you know, I have. Because my parents taught me to be open about these things. Because I have do do have good friends and and family who are emotionally open and who encouraged that emotional openness. And I am I am sorting through and processing and talking about
these feelings. This is a long, long, rambly thing, but the long and short of it is Castle Bravo is going to be getting back on track here shortly. You know, we still have a little, little little hubbub about the actor strike that we'll worry about when we get to Godzilla 98, but we're getting back on track. I just wanted people to understand why there was this random big gap. It's it's because mom died and dealing with family stuff is I love you all.
I love this podcast. This is this has been a wonderful little artistic exercise for me and it's been great to re explore my relationship. With these movies. But like, that is clearly a thing that gets put on hold when you have much more important life stuff going on. So don't worry about me, don't worry about Charlotte, Don't worry about us. Like, everything's good. Just understand that. That's, that's why we disappeared for a little bit.
But we're we're coming back. Don't let this drag down the energy of the rest of the episode because it is a weird episode and a weird movie, and it is, you know, Godzilla versus Space. Godzilla is a movie that managed to do something very rare, which is drag, kind of like the writer out of me, and make me think about what would need to have happened different to make this movie. Something that hit me better. But you know you, I digress.
There's an episode ahead. You can see you're listening to it now. And we'll get to all of that. Thank you all for your patience. Not that you know. I needed it in the 1st place episode. Hello everyone, and welcome to Castle Bravo, A Godzilla Verse 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 podcaster and fellow SDGC host Matthew Finneman.
Matthew, to us, but Finn within our hearts. Finn, How you doing, buddy? You know what I'm doing? I I'm. Doing, I would say, yeah, we're doing this at a super unusual time for this show, so the energy is going to be a little weird yet. Normally we're like early on the early in the day on Sunday kind of thing. But like you have been we, you and me both have been so ridiculously busy. It's been a rough, yeah. Yeah, several years, right?
No, no. Like, like the the past couple weeks have just been really busy. Yeah, I had birthdays, trade shows, Expos, Caitlin's birthday. Then it was PAX, then it was a work show. And now I'm finally back and we're like, you know what? And then it was Martha's birthday and I was just like, you know what? That's cool. Yeah, I know. But yeah, we are. We are here. We are ready, Charlotte. Hello. How you doing today? I'm all right.
Got a little throat thing, but general things are pretty OK. Most people have a little throat thing stop. Doing your Godzilla voice before right before the show. They do call it you. They do call it a uvula. I I believe Uvolva probably not that. No. No. I I'm pretty, I'm pretty sure that's actually the correct pronunciation. Derek, you you've. Done surgery, you would know. I've been in the OR have you? No. So it does make you more of an expert than me. That's true. This is facts. So.
Let me set the stage, yes. Oh no, no, please go. Oh, I was going to start getting into like the pre movie history stuff before he went to the movie, but what did you have to see? Keep going. You just had a bad bullshit joke, didn't you? You're. Damn right, son, and I cannot wait to unleash it upon. You. I am ready for a just a torrent of awful puns this episode. So where we currently are in time, it is 1994. We are in. Finn, you're.
Correct me if I'm wrong, you don't know like Jack shit Godzilla, right? OK, let me tell. You. Yeah. What's your history with it? My history. With Godzilla is the Matthew Broderick film is the peak of cinema, and nothing else in the Godzilla verse will ever come close to it. I'm kidding, but that is one of the first I've ever seen in theaters. Like most of America, I knew it existed.
But, like, I knew it existed in the same way that, like, you knew how Power Rangers actually were, right? Like. Yeah, that it was originally a Japanese show. And so, like, I knew about it. I had a friend that was really into it. It it was never really my thing because I've never been like really big on like old stuff. That's just that's just a me thing. But but I appreciated the impact it had and also it had some pretty cool video games.
Yeah. Shout out to PS2 War of the Monsters. But but also, I actually ended up working for the Godzilla company. They were one of my clients for a for a a. Very brief moment in time. Like I I don't want to say brief, but like, we worked alongside of them for a while because the boss of the the firm I worked for, his girlfriend, was like a higher up in the Godzilla universe. So we, like, snagged that contract.
Super dope. Yeah. But anyway, it was super great and all the people at the Godzilla, Godzilla, Versa were awesome. And I actually have an interview floating around the Internet from San Diego Comic Con where I got to interview the people from Godzilla because they came there for that big anniversary that year. I think it was like, I don't know, they they were releasing some Shin Godzilla stuff and it was like a huge anniversary for Godzilla.
Gotcha. Hold on, I'm I'm going to find it. But anyway, also Shin Godzilla and. Evangelion Crossover was fucking just the Bomb diggity. Yeah. So you're coming at this from where I think a lot of people are, which is like people in America are like familiar with the concept of Godzilla being this big franchise that they didn't watch. A lot of people have memories of the the The 97 or 98 Tristar movie.
Yeah, people obviously are to some degree, whether they've seen them or not, like aware of the ongoing Warner Brothers, like Legendary, Godzilla, and of course Shin Godzilla. Like a surprising number of people saw Shin Godzilla because that movie particularly kind of blew up. Oh, also the most famous part of Godzilla ever, which is let them fight. Yeah, right. Also, so I pulled up. I interviewed someone named Akito Takahashi. On for Godzilla's 50th
anniversary. OK, I'll have to look up who that is in regards to like Toho and and and what their like role. Is was it San Diego Comic Con? Anyway, there was some reason Godzilla was huge there. Yeah, it was the 65th anniversary of Godzilla during the 50th anniversary of Comic Con. OK, gotcha. So where we currently are. Is we are coming towards the end of what's called the, hey say era of Godzilla. You know, Godzilla had this long continuous run, you know, from 1954 up through like 1975.
And eventually the franchise went on ice for almost 10 years, came back in 1984, and they were like, hey, you know what? You know, we kind of really want a fresh start with Godzilla, so we're going to make a new Godzilla 2. So still recognizing the original 1954 film, but starting with a new fresh sequel to that and moving forward and this like 80s, nineties run of movies has for the most part been really,
really good. We've been really, really surprised by the the quality of the production work. The quality of the directing and writing and acting there is a lot of clear love for the kind of themes of the older movies. Cause a lot of the old movies needed to be like about environmentalism or about like imperialism and colonialism like they found ways to to bring social commentary, you know in the in the vein of all great like cult like.
Pulp sci-fi of the era, right? Right now, yes, This last movie, Godzilla versus Mechagodzilla 2, was one where me and Charlotte were like, OK, this is a really good movie in terms of it's a fantastic blockbuster. But it kind of lost the plot in trying to be about things the way that we are used to. Godzilla being, what are you? Talking about it was all about the dangers of space pollution. Totally. So, so the original plan after Godzilla versus Mechagodzilla 2
was OK Well this did well. We need another one. What are we going to do? The plan. Was originally let's bring back King Ghidorah again, which has been their plan for like 3 movies in a row and once again got scrapped. Actually Charlotte, you will be really interested in this. The plan was to actually have like the real Ghidorah come in. So the idea would be that Ghidorah actually was the Shoah incarnation, where it's this
like. You know, Galactus like conqueror from space that came to devour the planet, but when it gets defeated, it would end up on the ocean floor, thus be found and be used as the basis for but, which I think would have been super cool. Maybe cooler than what we got, but whatever. The Godzilla like the history of Godzilla's so full of unmade movies, we could almost do like an entire podcast series just on that. And I'm not going to the new plan. Coward. Yeah, the new plan was the right
before. This was pretty similar to what we got the idea of a mutated Godzilla like clone from space, but with a rebuilt Mechagodzilla as a sort of sidekick to Godzilla. And eventually Mechagodzilla got reworked into Mogara, as we see I. Was going to say yeah because the this. I had to look it up because it had the dumbest acronym of all. Time. It's pretty bad. Can I can? I please just read. Yes, give us the the acronym for Moguera.
Moguera is spelled MOGUERA and it stands for something because some. Mobile Operations Godzilla Underground Expert Robot Arrow type if I remember correctly. I might be wrong. First of all, how the? That's something but but it's actually accurate, so I want you to understand. It's Universal Expert Robot Aerotype, not underground. But yeah, mobile operation. Godzilla. Universal Expert robot Aerotype goes underground, right? Horrible, horrible acronym.
This is coming from a guy that reads comics so much. That and that is a world where I can truly appreciate some dumb. Dumb acronym. Yeah, now this comes too much even for me. This comes from So Mogara is also like a classic Toho Kaiju that they kind of reinvented for this movie. Originally, Mogara comes from a movie called The Mysterians, where it is the like robot minion, the giant robot that these alien invaders used to
attack. And it's called Mogara because it's like a pun on the Japanese word for mole. So they kind of took an existing name and then like, made a bullshit acronym out of it. As you do. Yes. But yeah, so you know, it kind of went through a few revisions before we got to where we are. But you know, eventually they were like, OK, well, Mechagodzilla's already had a chance. Let's bring back another old obscure thing. And we got Mogara, which I mean, I kind of think was a good talk,
like a good call. We'll get into that as we get into like the Plot Summary. But I'm of the opinion that was the right choice. The writer for this movie was Hiroshi Kashiwabara. I'm probably butchering the the like, stress on the last name. But Kashi Kashiwabara also wrote several of the like early Millennium Godzilla movies. Many of them not very good, like, still have fond memories. I don't think there's a Millennium era movie that I truly dislike, but. Yeah, Oh no, right.
Muvu's directed. This is a newcomer in terms of the director seat for the Godzilla franchise. This is Kensho Yamashita, who does have some history with the franchise, though they they were assistant director on Terror of Mecha Godzilla and Return of Godzilla. So not necessarily a newcomer to the franchise, just somebody getting promoted from the assistant director chair up to the director chair. Special effects work. Koichi Kawakita's SFX supervisor.
Obviously I've said repeatedly that this person is is in charge of all special effects through the 80s and 90s era. Now the music gets interesting because up to this point music has mostly been by original Godzilla composer Akira Ifokube, who is a a fucking legend. And usually when it's not Ifokube, it's some nobody that we don't see or hear from again.
In this case we got Takayuki Hattori who this is their first time working on Godzilla, but after this movie he would go on to compose for like more Godzilla movies and also a couple of famous anime like motherfucking Mobile Suit Gundam maybe maybe you've heard of it. And I've only heard of G Gundam. That's the one with the racist countries that. That was the first gun that I ever heard of.
Oh, and then also composed for a lesser known, but I think incredible and worth watching anime called Martian Successor Nadeshico. And anyone familiar with Nadeshico, Their ears just perked up because that that show has a truly incredible soundtrack. Charlotte, had you watched Nadeshiko? Or are you just familiar with it because of like Super Robot Wars and shit? Yeah, I'm I'm familiar with it because of SRW. Yeah, that's basically it.
Well worth watching. Very Charlotte core, but like I. Will watch it. Here's the thing. This is easily my favorite person who has not been Akira Ifokube to work on the score for these movies. I think the score for this movie fucking ruled. It's easily like the strongest point to me. Eva Kube's Grumpy Ass apparently declined to return for this movie because the script was really bad and because they wanted to use rap music in a scene. And like Eva Kube, it's called having principles.
Like, bless your heart, I guess you know you're incredible at your job. That doesn't mean mean. Like, here's the thing, we've also come to love if Akube. Because if Akube is known for being very like, outspoken and fuck you about you know like for example, the lead producer on the series, Tanaka being a money hungry Dick bag. Derek, would you say that that would make him a if? Fuck you, BAE. That's. So bad dude. Is this just a thing that happens when you become a dad like?
No Finn's been like this. Yeah, let's not pretend that this was anything to do, do with that. In fact, it was just me training. Your your Your absence from the SDGC live show has brought us like a 98% reduction in awful puns, and I do kind of miss them. But yeah, so you know, Toho has assembled a cast and crew for this. You know, we've got our plan in place. Charlotte, why don't you tell us what happens in Godzilla versus Space Godzilla? OK, so we start out in space.
Godzilla's floating through space and there's like a barrage of light that appears and it blasts the Earth. And then there's the title card, Godzilla versus Space. And then we go to land Moghera undergoing a a system check and
it's like being rebuilt. And then they discuss the the tea project, which is an attempted to telepathically control Godzilla. And Miki, who's a doctor now, doesn't want to do that, but considers it because, you know, the alternative is that they're going to take the psychic children to do it. Which would be where I want to interject for a moment. Because for us, we're like, OK, there's our girl, Miki Segusa, and her big monkey ears. She's back, right as she must be.
They're going to telepathically try to control Godzilla, Sure. But I had a moment where I was like, imagine not watching any of the, hey, say movies and then jumping into this one. Yeah, and imagine. Imagine that. So what is what is the opening of this movie like so far for you as somebody who is like coming into this with no psychic
defenses? So you know, you know, so I I loosely understood that like everything built upon itself, you know, But I I didn't know that it did it in a way that like. If you didn't watch previous ones, you were like, what the Hell's going on? Yeah, this was a bit of a problem with the last movie. And I was kind of, I had the same feeling here too early on. It's just like Mothras flowing through space. And I'm like, oh, OK And he's like shooting off baby Mothras.
And you're like, that's cool, doesn't come up again. Not a part of anything. Here comes space Crystal Godzilla here to fuck your day up. Blow up some NASA stuff. I just giant robot just there. I don't. It apparently already existed. They're trying to mind. Psychic people exist and they're trying to mind control. They got they got Xavier School for gifted telepathic Japanese kids. I'm just like, I'm just like, and then apparently yakuza people are there to fuck around and find out.
I don't know, man. A whole lot of stuff was going on here. We're getting into like the late stage MCU problem of like very, very. Quickly, I was like, you know what? Whatever, I'm just going to. Sit back and not think too much. It's hard because this is only I think the 6th movie which like, OK, 6th movie in a well, technically 7th if you include
the original whatever. But like, I just brought up, like, the late stage MCU problem of like, hope you watched a bunch of other things in order to be ready for this one. But that had not been a problem for any of this stretch of movies until the last movie. And I feel like we've hit that same wall again here where it's like we're really just gonna assume you know a bunch of shit and we're not gonna bring you
the homework. And I do think the movie suffers for it. Like, I really like that you could pick up Godzilla versus Mothra and that could be the only one you watched. And there's no part of it where you felt like you were left out of information. So, yeah, psychic kids, Mickey Sagusa. Monkey ears. Let's go. Let's go. So yeah, she senses Mothra heading towards Earth, and Mothra is leading, leaving a trail of like smaller Mothras. And I'm going to be honest, they
don't really get into that. No, that's new for us too. Yeah, but then we go to some some UNGCC soldiers named Koji and Kiyo. And they land on on an island after the explosions go off from from earlier, and there's a massive crater surrounded by crystal, and they're met with Major Yuki, who immediately saves them from like a venomous spider that they didn't notice on them. And then we meet little Godzilla, which is what I I read that it was called as opposed to to Minira or something.
Yeah, they're they're leaving the name Minia, Mini RA, Minila, whatever behind. But this is clearly like the attempt to make and. And for what it's worth, I think way more successful at making a cute little Godzilla then. Yeah. No, I don't hate this one at all. You don't. You don't immediately want to stab him. Finn, you missed out on the horror that is the original Son of Godzilla. Let me find a picture I can throw in the chat for you. But it's I'm OK. Are you sure? No, just do it.
Why not? I think. I think, I think that you deserve to understand what we're dealing with. Here gonna say you deserve to suffer. Well, also that. But let's see. We put this in the chat. Where the fuck did that photo go while Derek is here? It is. Here it is. Charlie. Keep going. Ta da. There he is in the chat. Oh my. God, why? OK, why does it look like, why does it look like the teenage version of the baby dinosaur from the 90s sitcom dinosaur?
It looks like he's just about to hit someone on the bunk, someone on the head with a frying pan and say not the Mama. Yeah, not my real dad, I keep saying. I keep saying he looks like a Cokehead Pillsbury Doughboy. It's pretty bad. So. So by comparison, little Godzilla in this movie is a is a
massive success. Yeah, yeah, and little Godzilla's also friends with the Major and walk and walks up and like greets the Major. There are Oomphies, But then an emergency meeting is called because NASA's missing a spaceship. And they don't know why they're missing a spaceship, but they just go, you know what? It was probably a huge monster, to be fair. At this point in time, that's a reasonable assumption to make. Right, So I wrote the Shobi Gin. They're called the Cosmos now, I
think. Yes, appeared to Miki and explained to her that this monster has appeared because it wants to destroy Earth. But that's not the concern of, like, the soldiers. Right now, because the soldier boys are are going around digging holes to place explosives for Godzilla. Oh, the soldier boys are in this. Yeah, little soldier boys. Sorry, I I was stopped. I was somewhere. I'm real fast. So Major wants to use like a blood coagulator to hit Godzilla in a major organ and kill it.
Because Godzilla's like the white whale to this guy, like. He wants nothing more than to kill Godzilla. To be fair, Godzilla has killed countless people in this timeline. So. Sure. Well, on every time, really. Yeah. Although, like as they kind of, I think they've brought up by now already, but we'll reinforce later. Since the appearance of the little Godzilla in the last movie, like Godzilla's mostly been chilling on this island, Godzilla's been a lot less
active. So, like, you probably just leave him alone. Not gonna, but you could. Yeah, the soldiers think that they're there to, or they state rather that they're there to work on the T project. You know, the thing to control Godzilla. But the majors, like, I don't really want to do that. I just want to kill it? I asked the Tyrant project. We're going to harvest. I'm trying to remember exactly what it was. It was like hormonal fluid from teenagers. That's how they meet the T
virus. I thought it was from a flower Resident Evil. Lore's weird. No, that's that's like oroboros or something. God. The the original there was like, I repeat myself, Resident Evil lore is weird. In the original, it was something that that people only made during puberty. Anyway, space Godzilla's rapidly approaching her. It's Etrina Chrome. Jesus, Q was right. Leave it at a hold. Of your Get a hold of your life, dude. The crystals are like undulating right now, by the way.
I don't like that as a verb. I wish you would set a different. Verb Oh, undulate. Yeah, they had to undulate because they were so moist. They were not moist at all, because they were. Undulating. So good I'm in hell. So Miki and and the others that are in charge of the tea project show up, they arrive at the island, and they had this one conversation. They're like, why are you so fond of Godzilla? I mean, you know, Godzilla's people too. It's like I've been in six
movies so far. I've got to be 5. She wasn't in Return of Godzilla anyway. Five. So they launched Mogara Derek. Don't look in chat. And Miki meets with little Godzilla, who tries to play. And then Major Yuki says, like, I think probably the hardest line in the whole movie, because someone's like, why don't you just give up hunting Godzilla and Major Yuki's like, it's man's burden. You can only keep on living if you have something you can't give up on. This was a sick ass line.
I mean, it was basically the Griffith speech. This was this was like moments that go hard for sure. Yeah, so the mines start going off, but it's little Godzilla setting off the mines. Well, if he's just bouncing around on top of the tear gas mines as they go off and this, like, pink smoke is everywhere. And he's just like like. Right. And it's like, that's not going to hurt Godzilla. Like, you've basically managed to kind of spook and startle the little Godzilla.
I don't think you're going to do much to the big guy. Right, so they decided to launch the the T Project, and while they're cleaning up the mess left behind by the mines, Godzilla arrives and the soldier boys are instructed to approach Godzilla and deliver the transmitter by launching it into Godzilla, shooting it into its neck. But at the same time, the Major is of course readying his his blood coagulator while the boys are trying to line up their shot
with the transmitter. But they do manage to get the transmitter into its neck. And so they they activate the T project and Miki takes control of Godzilla and likes walks down a beach. But I also played super Godzilla. Right. The Major's not ready to give up. My voice just cracked so bad keeping it in. Fine. You know, if I was in Resident Evil, they could technically harvest the T virus from me.
The Major isn't ready to give up and like, starts running alongside Godzilla down this beach, right? And meanwhile, Mogara is flying into space towards space Godzilla to try to head it off. Mogara's systems start to scramble. And they trade like laser attacks, but they get swiped and they careen out into space and space. Godzilla just kind of keeps going Space. Godzilla's like flying form is incredibly goofy. It's just a big balloon.
He's just, he's just a hedgehog. Yeah, he's just crystal hedgehog. Where do the legs go? They're not tucked in anywhere. I think that I thought they just like became crystals. Why can't he only morph between these two forms? I don't know. I don't know if I was him I would make like a cool like space gym sword or something. Yeah there's not. There's yeah it's it's just it's a very silly and it's kind of a
little cheap this sequence. Oh, also, I think the sequence in space is the first time in the Hey Say series I saw a wire, so they missed 1 editing it out, which is just a just worth noting that you know, whether it's a budget thing or a time thing, they missed a wire holding up one of the toys. Oh, well, that's very unlike them. It is. It is. They're usually really good about that stuff, and I, but I keep a pretty clear eye for that sort of thing, 'cause usually
like. Derek is looking for your mistakes. Yes. Well, look, the production work on these movies has been so good so far that like, it is kind of worth looking for where they dropped the ball. Yeah. No, you're right. So Mickey's mind control helmet backfires. Godzilla's released the the boys are really, really excited to fight Godzilla and make a name
for themselves. Major's like sneaking up behind it and around this time Space Godzilla shows up to the island 'cause it's not time for for Major's final final battle with Godzilla yet, no? Little Godzilla approaches, but quickly tries to flee and Space Godzilla like. Threatens little Godzilla's life to goad Godzilla Gohan is Gohan accidentally approaches Raddatz and. Yeah, exactly. Godzilla like walks up, starts blasting space. Godzilla continues to use little
Godzilla like as a liability. But little Godzilla manages to to scramble the Godzilla's side and space Godzilla starts flying around. Using its little crystal balloon form and shoots both of them below. And Godzilla just kind of falls over. Yeah, that was kind of Godzilla. Fucking chumps this fight. Like he like, he definitely, he just gets tips like a cow. Yeah. Yeah, the the booking was not
good here. Yeah, little Godzilla ends up getting taken away by space, Godzilla's tractor beam and encased in crystal. And then all the humans are like, we should go, so they go, they just leave. Yeah, the the T Project folks deem the attempt of failure and they're like, we we're gonna leave.
But Miki's like, I kind of want to stay with Godzilla, you know, I kind of like Godzilla. And Kyo and Koji are like, we'll stay behind and protect Miki, 'cause, you know, you gotta do what you gotta do. They collect some Space Godzilla cells from Moghera. And it's determined that the cells are are like basically identical to Godzilla's. And they theorize that a Godzilla cell from Biolante or Mothra went through a black hole, merged with crystals, and
then turned into space. Godzilla and came back to Earth. Genuinely insane theories. Although, although given those two options, I do look at the the extra little little horizontal teethy things on space, Godzilla in the corners of his mouth and I go Violante. It's gotta be Violante. But once again, like, did you do your homework for this movie? We fucking hope so. Right. Because they just mentioned those things. They don't really explain what they are.
Yeah, there's not a lot of context for like, what is a violante and why did it go into space? Why the fuck is Mothra in space? Why does Mothra have Godzilla cells on it? Like, you know. Right, so they resolved to power up MO Guerra to fight again, and Major Yuki is asked to to commandeer MO Guerra for the coming battle. Miki's sitting on on the island and receives a message from the cosmos. That's just like, you know, if everybody worked together, I think there wouldn't be an issue here.
And they're right. Mothra is always Mothra. The Mothra Party is correct, but overly optimistic. Right. Because then they go into the fact that, like, some people only think about fighting, right? Right. That's just like their whole mindset, like the Major and also space Godzilla. Right. So the boys get beat up in their tent. Miki gets kidnapped. But the boys and major tracker to to the headquarters of this organized crime syndicate which is like the Akos I mentioned earlier.
And it was one of the men in charge of the tea project that took her because he wants to like, make a like scan her brain in and then use that model to control Godzilla using his brain. 1994 computers are very capable of this. Yeah, of course. But he wants to use Godzilla to destroy everything. Because reasons. This is like a really underbaked side plot to me. It is. Yeah, it doesn't. This could have just not happened. Yeah, like there's there's kind of no, I mean, I'll agree with
you, this happened. I'm like, why? Yeah, I honestly everything to do with the telepathy subplot and the T Project feels grafted on almost just as a reason to have Mickey Sagusa in the movie, right? Yeah, I could see that because it doesn't really play anything into Mogara or Space Godzilla. So like a lot of these, here's the, here's the the secret, right, a lot of these movies is, is it's a lot like writing a good sitcom episode. You have an A plot and AB plot, right?
And then you find out how these two things either mirror each other or converge at the end to impact each other. That is, that is always how like the good Godzilla movies have worked. It is a rule for good sitcom episodes. Those are the two things that I know, Godzilla and Sitcoms. And this has like an A plot, B plot, C plot D plot already because we have space Godzilla thing that came from space to kill Godzilla and maybe take over the earth or destroy it question mark.
We have Mogara which was built maybe to fight Godzilla I guess, even though it never does that out of the wreckage of Mechagodzilla. Never really a good reason for why they have Mogara other than that, and they never try to use it for that purpose. You have the C plot with the like telepathy project to can mine control Godzilla, which at least could have been a good mirror if like Space, Godzilla was psychic in the way that it mine controls things.
But that's not the case, and controlling Godzilla seems counterintuitive if Mogar is supposed to kill it. So none of that. And of course this doesn't go anywhere, like the the technology behind the telekinesis or the telepathic project never like becomes important for fighting space Godzilla or powering up Mogara
or anything like that. And then you have just the Major who wants to kill Godzilla with his blood coagulant and and again goes nowhere like and is not connected to anything else. So it's it's very overstuffed with ideas that are not really cohesive together. Right. It's kind of weird, yeah. Fun ideas, just not puzzle pieces that snap together for this movie. Right. Also, it's a little weird that space Godzilla's attack is called the corona beam.
I thought they were going with COVID-19 beam. It's about it's about 25 years too early. Oh, in that case, corona light beam. God, I like a Corona. The beer, not the virus. Right. Space Godzilla comes with a lime. Those are actually salt crystals on him. There we go. We're pulling it together. OK, so here they act. Tequila Gundam. We've made it go full. We've gone full circle. They activate the tea project, and it does seem like it's working space.
Godzilla arrives and like fries all the electronics in the city, including the tea project machines, making this entire side thing moot. The city evacuates and the boys arrived to save Miki, who uses her telekinesis to help them save her. Basically, And Miki's like, hey, space, Godzilla's on the way. She does lift a bed. She does lift the she lifts the sideways like Gurney that that. Yeah. Impressive work. Yeah, we. I didn't think she was
telekinetic. Up to this point, she has only ever been the telepathic kind of psychic, but I guess she's literally just Charles Xavier. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. So they flee and the equipment explodes. And now? Mogira's prepped for lunch, but they have to find the major because just like last movie, I think several times in this series so far, the the person who's supposed to pilot a machine is not there. Not a lot of people showing up for work, man. Nobody wants to work these days.
That's right. Everyone wants to make a living wage, right? I don't like supply and demand in economics when it does not go my way. No, it's the invisible hand. My hand, Yeah. He eventually arrives. Moghera launches. He gets to pick his crew, so he picks the boys, obviously. Right. How could you not pick the boys? Right, Space Godzilla lands in in Fukuoka and the city starts turning into crystals because basically space Godzilla can like, terraform the area to absorb power from these
crystals. Yeah, it's like he seeds the crystals and then the crystals bro. And then the crystals become like power conduits. Sort of. Right. Wireless charging. Tesla was right all along. That's right, Godzilla arrives and they start heading towards
each other. Mogara reaches Godzilla and Major Yuki's like, OK now I'm going to kill Godzilla, but Koji and Kiyo knock Yuki out, take over Mogara and like, turned it around and go to space Godzilla. And then they use an attack called the spiral grenade missile, which is neither a spiral nor a grenade. Those are rockets. To missile yeah, it hits. I mean, it does hit him, but you know, don't do much, but it it it is a cool attack. Yeah, Mogara got lots of cool little attacks.
True. Godzilla's like, pissed now. Like charging through buildings, you know. Mogara and Space Godzilla like physically clash, but Mogara is like immediately overpowered by a blast and has a struggle to come back online. But they do manage to fly away just as Godzilla shows up. Godzilla and Space Godzilla fight, and there's like some telekinesis happening and they're just kind of floating around. Sure, there's like crystal pillars flying. Godzilla fire some energy blasts.
But space Godzilla can can deflect Godzilla's atomic breath using like a crystal shield that it kind of makes around. It's like really transparent. It's an AT field. Basically, yeah, We are still several years before Evangelion. And yet, I do feel a lot of Evangelion in this movie because. I do too, because ano, the criminal invented nothing. Shin Godzilla's going to be an episode Mickey. Mickey Sagusa. Fucking pilot Godzilla. Or we'll make the kids do it
again. Literally the plot of the beginning of this movie. If in case, we've already. Forgotten. Did you know that? I had a conversation with people recently because somebody watched that again and that line, that line specifically is not in the dub of the sub. No, it's it's it's a horribly truncated version from our memory that made it that we can popular on like image macros, but that is not how it's, that is not even close to how it's worded at any point.
No. So right, They're fighting space. Godzilla's deflecting atomic breath. Godzilla goes, OK, it's clearly these crystals that are giving space Godzilla power. So he he starts attacking the crystals, which is I think like the second or third time Godzilla has done more than like try to wrestle things to the ground he plans sometimes. Usually when you can't wrestle, wrestling comes first. It's plan A. So the Major prepares to to pilot the star Falcon, which is like the top half.
The * Falcon is a legitimately great fucking name that rules so much. If you tell me you've got anything, a car, a plane, a robot, and it's called the fucking * Falcon, I'm there. Honestly, Yeah. You can contribute at any time. I did just now is. Great did did. I said big mood. Yeah, I don't know if you were there. I I said. The energy on this one was going to be a weird one. So let's keep going. The Star Falcon and the ground unit.
And the ground unit can travel underground, which is, you know, more of a call back to the original Moghera. And it it even goes underground to attack a tower, which is what the original Moghera did. But it's the tower that space Godzilla's getting energy from, and Yuki in the * Falcon harasses space Godzilla as they advance, they keep them safe and he ends up working with Godzilla to take down the tower. And then they recombine Moghera, so he had to work with his
little white whale. Space Godzilla is now stuck like between Mogara and Godzilla, and Mogara starts firing like a full volley. From one side, Godzilla's using atomic breath. On the other side, they use another spiral grenade missile, and this time they shatter one of the crystals on Space. Godzilla's back. Horrible, horrible image when that giant shoulder crystal explodes and there's just meat under there.
No, I don't like that. Yeah, I'm reminded that these movies can get gross and violent sometimes when they want to be, and it looks horrid. Yeah, it's something. They fire lasers and they hit Godzilla more than anything as as as it falls over and they managed to destroy the other crystal before getting grabbed by by space Godzilla's tail and tossed aside. The Major leaves Mulgara to try to hunt Godzilla again. Because that's the thing you should be doing right now. Yeah, yeah.
Get out of the giant robot designed to fight giant monsters and chase him on foot. Right. But he he's just like, I have to kill Godzilla before Space Godzilla kills. OK, that's not how this fight's going, bud, But. Right. Godzilla's like full of energy from all the recent attacks on it. So it So it gets back up the the major Rams Moghera. Into Space Godzilla. And then they like, they crash into a building and Godzilla and Space Godzilla continued their fight.
Space Godzilla's absorbing energy from Godzilla, and now the concern is that it'll explode. So they're like, we got to get people out of here, 'cause that's going to blow. And Godzilla starts using like red atomic breath. Yeah brings back the the spiral ray that he's briefly against Mechagodzilla at the end of the last movie. A thing that they did not attempt to recontextualize here. Right.
Like not. Hey remember how how this happened like after a power up like no, it's just hey, Godzilla did a red beam this time. It also doesn't look any more impressive. You think at this point you you should like we've joked that this is the DBZ one, right? But like, I feel like Godzilla should have to charge that thing up and it should be, like, more impactful than. I was waiting for a beam struggle, right. Oh my God, they they did that last movie.
How are you going to not have two Godzilla's do a beam like clash against each other? Yeah, missed opportunity. Yeah, it could be the blue, you know, the Godzilla's regular breath, and then the corona beam meeting in the middle, struggling. And then Godzilla fucking powers it up into the spiral beam. And then that's what overpowers it. Like, you know, Well, I'm writing this movie for them. Right. You could have done. You would have done it better. I would have. In fact, I will.
In an extremely rare moment when we're done with the Plot Summary, I will say exactly what this movie needed to fucking do. But. OK, but when we're done, so Godzilla's the the last one standing, all the humans get together. Relieved. Major Yuki finally is like, you know what? Maybe I won't kill Godzilla. Nikki removes the transmitter from Godzilla's neck and Godzilla like looks back at her and actually looks pretty appreciative. Kind of gives like a like a bro nod.
Yeah, yeah, the cosmos are happy and they thank her. And then they're like, we should stop polluting the earth. And also men. Have to fight each other, to understand each other or whatever, and then Godzilla walks into the sea. Don't police, don't space. They're going to make this fucking anime called Planetus in a large number of years and it's going to be so good. Y'all. Yeah, I don't think space pollution is why we have space, Godzilla. Because I don't. I don't.
It's black holes in crystals. Nope. Space. They were like, hey, these movies are supposed to have meanings. Let's throw something in. In the final act. Not even the final like 30 seconds of the movie. Throw the end title card. Bam. Done Space. Pollution. Watch Planetus. Don't don't know what else to say, but watch Planetus all. Right. Keep going. So here's the thing.
Like I said before, like the problem is we've got like 4 different major plot lines that get varying amounts of attention, but also broadly do not intersect, right. You can say that Mogara and Spacegodzilla intersect in that they are both part of the final battle, but like there's never any larger point to Mogara, right? Here's here's what I think. I think that this part of the problem is that this is a a much less experienced writer, right?
This is not the guy who's been writing most of these, hey say era movies. You know, this is somebody who will write some better or later movies, but like at this point we can, we can assume is much less experienced. No, I'm going to leave that in for sure. But I think what needed to happen, I think you got to cut the telepathy stuff out entirely. I think what you've got to do is you've got to, you've got to save space Godzilla for the second-half of the movie, right?
I think you need a, you need an opening chunk of the movie where they are building Mogara out of the ruins of Mechagodzilla. One movie ago, the the fucking world government was building Mechagodzilla to kill Godzilla, right? Like, right, The idea. Like, surely that's what Mogara is there for. But they don't really lean into that. The movie should start being about, OK, we've built Mogara, we're picking up where
Mechagodzilla left off, right? Which also allows you to better contextualize, you know, some background for why we have a giant robot, right? Hey, we've tried to kill Godzilla with Mechagodzilla. It's not working. We have this thing we've built out of the wreckage. You know we can it can split in two. It has some new specialized weapons, like we're going to figure this thing out, right? Goes after Godzilla, Godzilla and Mogara fight Mogara, maybe threatens Baby Godzilla like
space Godzilla does. Gets ass beat down by Godzilla because you don't touch the baby. Right. So what we've done now so far is we've contextualized why Mogara is actually there. And we can you can even still have like the major like having a grudge against Godzilla. Like why does he need to be like he has a he can have a robot instead of blood coagulant. You know, you don't need the blood coagulant to have that character with that grudge. He lost somebody in the last
movie, right? Like, you know, who died in the attack on Kyoto. So now what you have is this idea of like, OK, you know, we are setting up that we have attacked Godzilla over and over and over again, right through the movies. And this repeated plan of it's our job to kill Godzilla is not working. And it's especially, like, less justifiable now that Godzilla's spending more time on the island with the baby, right?
So it actually puts us in a worse position than the previous attempt where it's like, OK, you know, we've rebuilt Mechagodzilla into Mogara. We're trying again, but we don't need to. Now this is purely about a grudge, rather than trying to, like, stop Godzilla from causing more damage. Then Space Godzilla shows up, right? And then Mogara, like, gets wrecked by Space Godzilla as well. And then it takes Godzilla to fight off Space Godzilla.
And then your message in the end is like, OK, we've got to learn to live with this guy. Because nothing we build, nothing we make you know, can match it. But also, you know, Godzilla's our best chance against external threats. Like, it's still not a deep and meaningful plot, but it is at least a coherent A&B melding together into something. And a lot of the pieces are there. But this just feels like an amateur scriptwriter's attempt to throw in all the cool ideas
he had, right? So I know, I never, ever, ever do like, you know, and this is off the top of my head right now, right? But like, I never do fan rewrite stuff. Like, I think that's usually pretty obnoxious, but we were like a pass or two away from this potentially being really great. And to be clear, like, it's still a big, fun, flashy movie. It kind of rips when Space Godzilla impales Mogara with its tail and like, flings it around, you know?
Yeah, yeah, you know Space Godzilla is at this point a cult favorite Godzilla villain. And I get it because like Space, Godzilla has a really cool design, but like, doesn't get a lot of opportunity to do much other than stand around menacingly and and spit fun curvy laser beams. Yeah, so you know, you you were DM ING me as you were watching the movie and you said that for you, Mogara was the highlight of the movie. Yeah, it was. Because I think Mogara's really cool.
It's a cool design. There's lots of cool like special effects stuff where parts open up and separate and transform and. I like when robots are made of other smaller things. So Voltron changed your brain chemistry for good back in the day. Yeah, I mean, for some now, when I think about that, it's, it's Getter. Yeah. Getter Robo, right? Yeah, Yeah. Yeah, you were. I remember you were a Power Rangers kid, for sure. I was, yeah.
Getter done. That's right, Finn. Man, this must have been a truly confusing roller coaster ride coming from the position that you were in at the start of this movie. Yeah, I think you could say that. What? Is there anything you could even take away from this other than man, a lot of lights and colors sure did happen. No, and that's fine. You know, like, not everything has to have deep meaning. What it was enjoyable to watch, maybe enjoyable. It was entertaining to watch.
Things happened and it was fun. This is definitely like the 90s Godzilla equivalent of just jingling keys in front of us for an hour and 20 minutes. Yeah, you know what it is, what it is. Right? Like it's fine. It's fine. It's it's, it. I don't think it would ever be anybody's first recommendation to get someone into the Godzilla
version. Yeah, I just think it's so funny because like, I picked this to bring you on because I obviously like wanted to get all the SDGC folks on at one point and I was like, I know. Actually, no, that's that's not nepotism. We're not related. Yay, crony. Yeah, but I was like, I really want this one, 'cause I remembered that this is like, this is just like the Saiyan saga, right? This is this is just that. This is the most DBZA Godzilla movie gets. And I'm going to be real.
It's because you called it that. When you first told me about this movie that I kept expecting like a bleep beam clash, I know I could swear there was one in this movie. How's your boy gonna say it's like Dragon Ball and then not? Give me. There's been so many beam clashes that I was, like, surprised there wasn't one in this, right? That should have been what happened. They should have done the beam clash. And then Godzilla like, charged it further into the spiral, right?
And it would have been like, hike moment, you know? But yeah, it's it's, it's it's weird. And like, I can't talk about this until we get into the next movie. But this movie kind of breaks up a little of the pacing of something that's to come in a way that that like just slightly redoing the the the Last Battle to like have Godzilla like charge up more and like use more you know like do more. Godzilla doesn't do much in this
movie, right. Like Godzilla kind of get falls over in the first just gets he he basically. Jobs the first like 3/4 of the movie until Megara comes in and like saves the day. Yeah, and like Megara's got to destroy the the tower so that space Godzilla's not getting any more energy. But like, Space Godzilla didn't have that when they fought on the island. So Godzilla should have been able to just like, fucking merk him right there, you know? So yeah, I don't know.
But like, it is still. There's some, I mean the the designs for MO Gara and Space Godzilla are really cool. A lot of the special effects work and like the, you know, the special effects on like the corona beam and on MO Gara's various weapons are sick. The soundtrack is, I mean, again, like love, love, love. The musical space that this movie takes place in, you know? It's it's cool. It's just not. It's not much more than cool. And I think I agree with you then.
Like, if I was going to convince somebody to watch any Godzilla movie to try to get them into it, this would probably be really low on the list. Which means that I've probably just blocked you off from ever watching another Godzilla movie again. So I've actually been counterproductive here. Nah, you're good. I, me and Charlotte talked a lot about our fears that that we would eventually see the death of themes right in the showa
era. Like we knew that the the 60s and 70s movies were eventually just going to become Big Lizard wrestling matches. And they did. Eventually they stopped being about things and started being, you know, big Lizard. And we loved those. We still loved them. Then the 80s came back so strong and we were like, holy shit, each one of these is hitting so well, you know, But we knew it was coming.
And Godzilla versus Mechagodzilla Two was a major drop in what we expected thematically from these movies and was just a big blockbuster. And I feel like this kind of doubled down on that. And, you know, it's hard not to pretend to like, to pretend not to be a little down about that, but there's still a lot I'm going to take away from this movie in terms of like, memorable scenes, memorable designs, things like that. So what?
What would you want out of a Godzilla movie, Finn, if I was going to hand you before you watched this, what were you kind of hoping you were going to get? I believe I've already been very clear about that. A Beam Clash, motherfucker. No. Like like I would. I'll tell you what I wasn't expecting was psychics and a weird yakuza subplot that led nowhere and just padded at the
time. I just wanted Godzilla versus space Godzilla and then with with humans that were initially determined to fight Godzilla but then progressionally teamed up because enemy of my enemy is my friend. And then, Oh no, now we're kind of friends and it's basically Goku and Vegeta. Then yeah, I just double checked and this movie's 107 minutes. It's, it's it's it's an hour and 47 minutes long and I don't believe that. I I cannot think of an hour and 47 minutes worth of things that
happened in this movie. I feel like you could recut this into like an 18 minute short film, right? Like on YouTube. I don't give you the Topher Grace cut. So, Charlotte, what? You've been a little quiet since we ended the Plot Summary. What do you think really sticks with you out of this movie? I've kind of made my like what my expectations were and where my hopes were, but I just haven't heard so much out of. You. I mean, that's Mulgarra was my
favorite part, you know? And that's weird because it's a it's a movie that's supposed to be about Godzilla versus Space Godzilla. I wish Space Godzilla was better, Yeah. You know, I just wish it was better. I wish it did something. It's a really cool suit design and like the one thing he does other than slightly move and let special effects happen is the tail impaling Mogara, which is a cool shot, but it happens once. Right. I don't know.
I would have done something crazier with Space Godzilla since it definitely looks like like make it something else at 1st and then make it like go out into space and get. Sells from Violante and then turn into that or something. I don't know. Give it like multiple forms. Yeah, it's it's got to be hard coming from like the PS2 fighting game, right? Or like other like Godzilla games where space Godzilla fucking rules. And then in this movie, he mostly stands menacingly.
Yeah, no. In the games you can like summon crystals and then like you have like an area that you're way stronger in if you're near that crystal. And then he just looks cool, Yeah. You know, well, you know, we we knew this one was coming. But I think, I think it's worth, you know, rapping on like this movie let me down some, but even one of the worst times I've had with a Godzilla movie has still mostly been a pretty fun like blockbuster. It's just hard.
It's also not easy to be super head empty about this movie when it is very upfront. At least it's very dependent on you being like in the know about what the fuck is happening in the Godzilla world, which stops being important after about 30 minutes. So anyone got anything else to to throw in? No. I don't think so. Well, that is a wrap on this episode and mercifully on the shorter side for once. Thank you all so much for joining us on our journey so
far. Finn, do you got anything you feel like plugging for our listeners? You know I'm on some show It's all right. It's. I've I've Nola Nerdcast oh. No, I was talking about SDGC. No, NOLA Nerdcast is my comic focused one, but SDGC Super Deluxe Games cast is is where the real action is. Feel good, people. Doing cool things. Our packs coverage is going up soon. You know Twitter, I'm at Nola Nerdcast for as long as that website's still a thing.
Well, I'm also at Nola Nerdcast. Everywhere else to let me be yeah, find me on threads. Pretty sure I'm Nola Nerdcast. dot, Blue Sky. Find me on Hive. Yeah. Give me on Hive. I'm on Nola Nerdcast. You know, living my best life, you can find me at phone number. Hashtag sake Bless. You can find me at phone number 4/07 867-5309.
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