That was my attempt to make a Godzilla so out. My name is Jason Concepcion.
And I'm Rthy Knight.
And welcome to a bite sized, but a giant kid you mouth bite sized episode of x RA revision of the podcast where we dive deep into your favorite shows, movies, comics, and pop culture.
In this episode, we have been waiting to talk about it. You guys are waiting to hear it. It's everything Godzilla. There's been a lot of Godzilla since we were lost in yours, so we had to talk about all of it.
Folks.
You may not know this, but you are lucky enough, as am I, to be in the presence today of a bona fide Godzilla expert, an expert in all things Kaiju, in all things giant, nuclear fire breathing lizard.
That is our.
Number one Godzilla brainiac. Rosie Night, Rosie, are you ready to have multiple questions about all the recent Godzilla projects thrown at you like Tokyo train cars sailing across the city scape?
Yes, I am I, as I am an expert. I'm speaking in my NPR voice, but yes, no, I'm ready throw those train cars at me. I'm wearing my Manila, son of Godzilla Tisha. Just to prove my expertise and I'm ready to answer all your Godzilla questions.
Here are the projects which we will be discussing today on Apple TV. Plus Monarch Legacy of Monster created by Matt Fraction and Chris Black.
We have the Oscar.
Winning film Godzilla Minus one from Toho Studios, written and directed by Takashi Yamazaki, recently released in theaters. Godzilla ex King Kong New Empire Well from Legendary Pictures, directed by Adam Wingard, is the sequel to Godzilla Versus cong part of the Monster Verse. And then on the comic side, Oh, it will be plug time Godzilla Monster Island Summer Camp on IDW, of course, written by Rosie Knight, art by Oliver Ono, letters and colors by Jody Trautman and Nick Barrita.
Who Next, we're gonna dive into our recap of Apple TV's Monarch Legacy of Monsters. But first some news.
Seeing as it is the seventieth anniversary of Godzilla, we are getting a smorgas board of Godzilla news. First, a baby Godzilla sized news update. I'm sad about this one because I spoke to him and he told me what his plans were for the next movie, and it sounded amazing. But Adam Wingar, director and co writer of Godzilla X. Kong or Godzilla Kong as you're supposed to say it, the New Empire and Godzilla Versus Kong, will not be helming the third movie. It's not because of anything scary
or bad. It's just because he's making a movie called Onslaught, not to do with Marvel, and it means the schedules clash because obviously New Empire is a huge success and I'm sure Legendary just wants to make the movie now. Also today, this is a big one if you like it, if you're an indie gamer, if you've been playing these games, Mint Rocket's award winning game Dave the Diver is getting a brand new Godzilla theme DLCs.
Didn't see that.
One coming, love it. Excited to see it. The DLC is completely free, but only available to play for a limited time May twenty third till November twenty third due to licensing rights with Toho, which I will say is exciting because that probably means Toho is planning on some kind of Godzilla video game, because why else would they limit it otherwise, So I would like to see that.
And what will you do in the game. You will help an injured Godzilla about the deep sea Kaiju a bearer, a bearer who may or may not appear in my upcoming graphic novel Monster in Summer Camp. He's like a shrimp, basically giant shrimp.
Now, pre order it now and you will get to have some new gameplay with a submarine.
And it looks really fun.
That is a game, a beautiful pick slurk game of the kind of cutesy, relaxing game genre where you basically dive in the ocean and then run a sushi restaurant. So I wonder if will Godzilla help you acquire fish for the restaurant?
Kaiju?
She who's to say?
Okay, let's dive into our recap for Apple TV's Monarch Legacy of Monsters. Okay, tell us about this Godzilla project.
It is actually like hard to put in toowards how good this show is.
It is it It's unbelievably good. And basically it sets one year.
After the legendary Monster Verse Godzilla movie, which came out in twenty fourteen and starred Aaron Taylor. Johnson and Brian
Cranston momentarily. And so this is set in twenty fifteen, and you're basically living in the wake of what they call g Day and you have our hero is played by Anna Sui who plays Kate Randa, you might recognize that surname, and she goes off to find her father in Japan, who was a Monarch agent, and she discovers he had a secret family and she has a half brother called Kentaro, and as they investigate where their father hero she has gone, they get entangled in this incredible
adventure alongside Monarch, including the wonderfully eccentric and ageless Monarch agent k Russell as me. So that's kind of your modern day. And then the fantastic thing about this show is it is told within two timelines. So then you have Wyatt Russell playing youngle in the fifties and you sort of get to see how Monarch evolved and how it became the militarized anti Kaiju unit that it is today, and how its origins were actually so much more evolved
and holistic. It was more about disinvestigating the kaiju and learning about them rather than or as they called in the Monster Verse, the Titans, and it is honestly just blew me away. So Matt Fraction obviously big comic book name. There also a lot of the team. We had Marico Tamaki, another legendary comic book creator. So this was just such a delightful show and the reveals as they go through
a fantastic Now. I will say, if you love a big monster smashing things up, this might not necessarily immediately appeal to you, because the monster action is secondary to the human action. But if you love a good drama, and you love a family intrigue, and you love Anna Sawai because you have been watching Shogun, one of the best shows of the last decade, then this is such
a fantastic show to watch. And it does build out a lot of what we know about the Monster Verse in this interesting time period kind of post Godzilla and then pre the rest of the films in the Monster Verse.
Also starring Shogun's tech a hero hero oh as ANSI's father, mysterious father. What has he been up to?
What's he been up to? Hiroshi Randa, what are you doing? What's going on?
Yeah?
It's so good and Tamlin Tamta is in it as Kate Randers as Caroline Rander, who's Kate Randers mum so Karai kid legend. There there's so many fantastic actors, but one of my favorite people in the whole show is Kei Ko, who is the scientist who is essentially the founder of Monarch with Bill Randa and Lee Shaw, and there's a fantastic love triangle element there, and she's played
by Marie Amamoto. And the emotional human stories they tell in this are mind blowing, especially because everyone knows, especially in the American Godzilla films, the human stories are not always the best, so yeah, so this really contradicts that.
It also kind of acts as a bit of a response to the criticisms that people have had about how the American Godzilla films are often like we're the Army and we're gonna kill Godzilla and then that's kind and this is a really kind of more interesting hard sci fi and it has Kissey Clemmens, who I also love, who's fantastic and she gets a really interesting role here as kind of like a hacker. And yeah, it's just one of the best TV shows I watched in the
last year. It's really fantastic you know what I really appreciate it is it's obviously a tie in project, right you mentioned comes after it's set in the timeline after.
Twenty fourteen's Godzilla movie. You have some tie ins to cong Skull Island.
But you don't have to have seen any of that stuff, Like this is a standalone story. If you've seen that stuff, those times are going to be like, oh wow, that's cool. But if you haven't, don't worry about it, because this is just a interesting espionage family drama set in the Godzilla universe.
Yeah, I think something that I spoke to Chris Black, Yeah, I think I'd speak to him five gen I spoke Chris, I did it. But the interesting thing there is like he I think he talked about it being like a ground up view Like when we watch these movies, it's often from the Godzilla perspective. You're smashing things things a black but this is all about looking up at the monsters and what would it be like if you lived
in a world. We get to see things like in Japan they have Godzilla siren raids to practice for if he's going to come, and and there are little things about life living under a kind of Titan or Kaiju threat that is really interestingly built out here in a kind of slice of life grounded way that I think really adds to the films.
The other thing I really liked as well, and it's a thing that our next project that we're going to discuss also shares, is that they brought the fear home in Monarch Legacy of Monsters, the PTSD that you would have from witnessing one of these attacks, and there's so much fear in our next project. Let's move to the movie theater with Godzilla minus one Toho Studios, written and directed by Takashi Yamazaki, winner of course of the Oscar for Best Special Effects. And the thing that stands out
to me from Godzilla minus one is the screaming. There's the there's so and it's absolutely appropriate.
Characters in this movie are.
Like throat, raw screaming with fear all the time shaking because it is the scariest thing you've ever seen. This is like Godzilla and authentic Godzilla at its scariest. Set in the post World War Two, the years directly following World War Two, Japan under American occupation and Godzilla emerges. Tell us about Godzilla minus one.
Yeah, I mean you summed it up perfectly. The title minus one is because after World War Two and the horrific attacks on Japan, Japan was at zero. It had to rebuild. And then this is imagining what is worse than zero. It's if Godzilla emerges and just as you're trying to rebuild, you have to deal with this in terrifying, entirely new threat. This is very much in the mold of the nineteen fifty four original Godzilla. It's Godzilla as a threat of war. Godzilla is a threat of nuclear war.
Godzilla as this monstrous form that is going to force you to face up to your fears and discover how you feel about your family and your country, and something that I found just totally. Also, I just have to say to Kashi Yamazaki, the director and writer. He was also head of.
The FX, so he's crazy hats every hat and he did this on a budget of ten to twelve million.
You have, I mean that part of it.
There's only a few moments where you're like, there's a scene with you know, an elevated train moving across Tokyo where you're like, okay, I can kind of see it, but the rest of the time one hundred percent. You never feel any kind of budgetary constriction at all.
Looks fantastic, Yeah, And I think like one of the most one of the things again that this does that. As we're talking about that Monarch does that. These movies have often been critiqued for even some of the Japanese movies, though I often love the human characters in those, this movie he has a really strong human storyline, which is Koichi is a he's a kamikazi pilot and he basically is too scared to do his duty for his country.
And he says his plane is malfunctioning, and he lands on an island to have it fixed, and he sees an attack by Godzilla and it's terrifying and he can't bring himself to shoot it because he kind of has PTSD. And there is a lot of rumination and exploration here
of PTSD and the cost of war. And something I actually found really powerful in this movie is there is a lot of critique of the Japanese government and the way that soldiers are treated and the way that war is approached, and there is this really beautiful found family storyline, and all of that makes these Godzilla attacks even more terrifying because you actually care about the people who might be harmed, and it makes the success or the fight
against Godzilla incredibly rip roaring, and everyone in the cinema is kind of cheering, and you got grown men just crying in the cinema. This is a very emotional movie and I just thought it's fantastic. I mean, this is Look, the last Japanese Godzilla movie was Shing Godzilla, which is widely seen as one of the best Godzilla movies, but it is very experimental. The design of Godzilla is extremely strange.
It has different evolutions, some of which are incredibly grotesque, and a lot of the movie, as is the way with a lot of recent Japanese Godzilla movies, is set focused on humans because of budgetary constraints, so a lot of it is like the bureaucracy of Japan trying to deal with this new Godzilla attack. And it's seems still as a highlight in the sphere, but it's very much I think for Godzilla fans or fans of cinema in
that kind of mold. This movie is so blockbuster, huge event film that that's why it ended up up becoming you know, this smash hit, making over one hundred million dollars at the box office at the fifth highest grossing Japanese film of twenty twenty three and one of the highest grossing Japanese films ever in America. And it is
just so incredible. And the thing that's very interesting here is we get to see Godzilla as he was, and then we get to see Godilla post this new clear bomb, and it is really just such a fantastic, wonderful movie. And it doesn't rely on you know, oh this other monster, isn't it, or oh, this you know Cameo or this connection. This is a straight down the line disaster movie. And what they achieved with it and that fear and the sound design is so spectacular, and I'm not surprised it
became a huge success. I think that's just absolutely justified.
I think this movie is the platonic ideal of how you present the monster. The evolution of all of the set piece scenes to the end when you start seeing Godzilla in the in the stark daylight, like all of him is amazing, and you start with like in shadow you don't know what's going on, and.
Of the body.
Yeah, just the big foot coming down and smashing jeeps and things like what's going on? Then you have what I think is clearly an homage Jaws.
Where you see portion, you see a portion of.
The of Godzilla, but what you see is absolutely terrifying. And then you know in the final set pieces, there he is, and he's in the city and he's kicking trains.
Across the cityscape.
Just incredible, an unbelievable achievement.
We'll be right back after a quick break, and we're back.
We move to the other film, another entry into the Monster Verse Godzilla Verse, King Kong New Empire, a sequel to the King Kong franchise and the Godzilla franchise tie in Godzilla Versus Kong by Legendary Pictures, directed by Adam Winguard. Tell us about this newest entry into the Monster Verse, and will Godzilla minus one ever cross over the Monster Verse over Kire or do those two things are are they just forever separate?
I think that's an interesting question, So I will first explain so as I have learned, so this is a hilarious trend. The title for this movie is Godzilla x. Kong The New Empire, but you don't pronounce the X, I got told that an official press release. So it's Godzilla Kong the New Empire. Okay, So now I did a really fun press junkit for this five G and as Brian Tyree Henry said, the ex implies that they do like a collab. You know, they're not. It's not
Masses anymore right now, they're teaming up. You know, they're bros. Like, it's not it's not who's going to win in a fight, it's who are they going to fight against? So if you didn't know, Godzilla Versus Kong came out during COVID was actually a massive success. Even though it was day to day on HBO. It ended up making I think like forty or fifty million dollars, which for COVID times was really good, especially when people could stream it at home.
That was also directed by Adam Wingard. It was a hard sci fi kind of turn, had a lot of bisexual lighting. They were going into the center of the earth. Alex Scarless God was in it. It was totally out there and people just really responded to it in a way
that I don't even think Legendary was expecting. So this is a sequel to that, and Essentially you have Rebecca Hall who's returning, Brian Harry Henry who's returning, Kaylee Hottle who plays this young character called Jea who communicates with Kong and lived with him on Skull Island, And this is essentially just a completely that shit crazy sci fi movie.
Dan Stevens plays a Titan vet as in a veterinarian for Titans, and we meet him when he swings down to do to extract a bad tooth that Kong has, And essentially the status quo that we have is Kong lives in the Hollow Earth. So in this the Hollow
Earth conspiracies are real. The Hollow Earth which was found by Bill Randa, who is the grandparent of the Randa kids from Monarch, and Kong lives in the Hollow Earth, and Godzilla lives on the surface world and in the seas, and he is basically there to stop any Titan catastrophes, but he's still like causing problems, Like Godzilla's like going to sleep in the Colisseum and he's not. You know, I would be happy if he was here, but not
everyone's happy he's here. So Monic is kind of dealing with these two different worlds, and they have to go back into the Hollow Earth to get Kong to team up with Godzilla against this new threat, which is a giant ape called the scar King, and he rules over this kind of indentured servitude race of apes in the depths of the Hollow Earth, and he's been trying to get to the surface world to take it over. And
this is a really fun throwback. It's definitely I spoke to Adam Wingard a couple of times, who's a fantastic director. He directed a lot of cool horror movies. He directed The Guest, which is so fantastic with Dan Stevens, so this is a little bit of a reunion for them. And this is very much inspired by the later Shower era Godzilla movies. It's those wacky, campy fun stories that you remember when you're a kid. Everything that happens in
this movie is a bombastic surprise. You get unexpected monsters who show up, we get some really cool law building.
Gea gets a really focused role, which I love because Kayley Hole is a fantastic young deaf actress and it's awesome to see her leading this franch Kong also gets a cool robotic arm called his Beast Arm, which is like completely bonkers, and it's just I think something that I really love that I've seen the internet embrace if you are a Godzilla fan, Godzilla's been around since nineteen fifty four, right, there are so many different versions of Godzilla.
Manilla is a campy, silly version. You have this most obvious original Godzilla movie is an unbelievably dark and reflective treatise on the horrors of war. But you can also have mecha Godzilla fighting King Gnora in space, you know.
So what's fantastic is to see people understand that Godzilla minus one can exist and it can make a ton of money, and it can be this really heartfelt, fantastic masterpiece that wins Oscars, and two months later you can have Godzilla Kong the New Empire come out and you can enjoy both of them.
And that's actually the point of these movies and the power of what Godzilla can do is you can tell so many different stories within this world and that's why it has been keeping people so engaged for you know, seven decades, And I think that's what's really cool.
And at first I saw a lot of memes of people being like, oh, it's gonna look so bad after Godzilla Minus one, and then I kind of sort of started to see people change their minds and be like, you can enjoy both guys, Like you can have the point of the Godzilla franchises, you can have all these different versions. So in that case, I've been very happy to see people embrace that, and this was a huge success. So I think we can expect to see another movie
in wing Guards part of the Monster Verse. And he did tell me that his hope if he did a third one of these films would be to do for Godzilla what he did for Kong here and what he did for Cong here was kind of look at his roots and find him a family and kind of give
him that role as king. So I think for the next Monster Verse movie, if we do get one, which is quite likely, I think this is almost its overfour one hundred mens dollars already, we'll get that big Godzilla story where Godzilla is the focus and we learn about Godzilla's origins in this legendary monster use and.
Then finally we go to the comic space in the longtime home of the Godzilla ip idw it's trushing and the comic Godzilla Monster Island Summer Camp written by none other than yourself, with art by the wonderful Olive Oil.
Oh He's amazing.
Letters by Jody Troutman, colors by Nick Marino, A wonderful project featuring everybody's favorite child, Godzilla.
Tell Us about tell Us about this?
Well, I feel very honored I got to write this. I love Manila. I have a Manilla tattoo. So years ago now, when Jazz Joyner was working on IDW, they were looking for Godzilla pictures and I came up with this idea for a kid's graphic novel that was called Godzilla Monstra Island Summer Camp. And it was basically like,
what if Manila was at summer camp? Right, because I've never been summer camp, and I think it seems cute, and they really liked it, and then you know, life happens and did and it takes a long time to get licensing and stuff like that, and a year later they said, oh, actually we're gonna make it, so I said, oh great, and then that's been like the last two years of our lives has been doing this and Nick ended up getting brought on to do color assists to
help Oliver finish the book. So those two got this really great rapport and made something really beautiful. And Jody's
letters are just out of this world. So basically it's about our leader is a girl called Zelda who's named after very famous syndicated cartoonists called Jackie Zelder ORMs, and she goes to a summer camp that's supposed to be an art summer camp, but when she gets there, they've turned it into a kind of maniacal high tech sports summer camp, sports saus sport anna and she's less than happy about it, but luckily she has a great cabin with a couple of really cool mates, Ramiko, whos named
after Ramiko Takahashi and Weezy who's named after Louis Simonson some other great comic creators that I love. And together they have this adventure that leads them to a strange portal where they discover that the summer camp is built
on Monster Island, the famed Godzilla location. Zelda meets Manila and they realize that something is going on with more ink summer camp that is making the monsters on Monster Island angry, and they have to find out what happens and maybe commit some eco terrorism on the way to help them escape. And we got to have so much fun here. There's so many monsters we get to introduce,
both idw I mean, oh, we've had some great editors. Obviously, Jazz was the one who picked it up, and then David Marriott, who is a sonic die hard who's now over at Boom. He was on the book for a while, and then Jake Williams is the guy who's really gotten us over the finish line. And they've all been so supportive and great, and Toho as well, was just so open to and into this story and they were really cool.
I mean, one of the only notes I got from Toho, which was so good, was like Godzilla can't give a thumbs up. They were like, he can't do that, okay, And I was like, oh yeah. I was like, I've seen him do it, but like I understand in the context of this book that he can't do it. But they did let Manila wave at one point because they said it was an emotional moment, so I was like, I got that one in there. But yeah, it's beautiful.
The book is so gorgeous and I'm just so honored that we got to tell this super fun graphic novel, which I think is like the first IDW Godzilla Kids graphic novel. It's not going going to be comics first. You can't buy it in the single issues in the comic shop. It's just one hundred page graphic novel and we got to do some really fun how to make a comic stuff In the back. I got to do biographies of each of them cartoonists and comic creators who
inspired the main characters. Has just been a total dream.
It drops in August, so pre ordered now if you are interested in the art. Is just absolutely delightful. That is Godzilla, Monster Island Summer Camp on IDW. Let's go to Who's Who. Every show we close the show with a variety of fast moving segments. Today it's Who's Who, in which we talk about some of our favorite weird
characters from a characters from a given universe. In this episode, Rosie, I'm gonna ask you to power rank, yes, your top three favorite Monster Island, Godzilla adjacent friends and foes characters from the Godzilla universe.
We'll be right back after a quick brick and we're back, Rosie. I hand it to you.
Okay, So probably the most powerful character in the Godzilla universe. It's hard. I would say that Geigan is pretty high up there. He has a very strange blades as part of his body. He's quite quite a powerful guy. I would say Mecha Godzilla, I think is a number classic mecha Godzilla. I would say we go so three Geigan, okay, two Mecha Godzilla because he is like really powerful and he is like a cool robot. One. I probably just have to go for Mathra because I think Mathra is
she always comes in at the last moment. She often there to save Godzilla. She can kind of power Godzilla up by wrapping him in her wings, so I think she is really up there. Obviously, Godzilla's the original boy, but just for fun, I'm gonna leave him out this time. Some other big ones that have to shout out so that Godzilla bros don't hate me. Just destroy very very powerful coy kiro who's like a cool Godzilla with like guns on his back. You know. Kingodora obviously up there, but I.
Do think like that's one of my favorites.
Yeah, Kingidora is like very cool, but his.
No love for uh no, love for the smog monster.
Hit or you know what I think, sadlygenic, I actually love I love Herdora. He almost actually got he he almost made it into our book, but he was not the right fit for our ecological tale. But I do. I would say he's probably quite weak when it comes to his actual powers. Sadly, but the movie, the movie
is incredible, and I will say, uh, Godzilla Kong. New Empire director Adam Wingard did say Her Doora is like one of the movies that for him is why Godzilla will always top Kong when it comes to like the best movies, because it is so experimental and strange, I mean, hilariously. I'm a fan of weak Godzilla characters, like no surprises, Like I love Nilla, who, to be honest, can just like blow a smoke and it's always like rolling over somebody's tail all the fire.
It's kind of a fiery he's doing his best.
And I also like Kamakouris is in our book, who's like this really cool giant kind of like praying Mantis, because that's like a classic character who is in who lives on Monster Island, but realistically very weak, like I don't really think he's doing much. Ibira giant Shrimp, I'm a big fan of him. Also probably not one of your strongest characters. I mean, throughout the years, there's been so many outrageous kind of like you know, Jet Jaguar.
I think, right, he's just really really cool and he can fly and he can change size, but like, what else has he really got going on? Like also probably quite weak, sadly, but there is just there's so many of these characters. I think that's part of why people love it so much. It's so easy to find your favorite. Is it Hidora? Is it someone weird? Is it Kyro? You know, kids love Cayrou because he's like super cool?
Is it Geiger? Who? Is it Biolante, who is literally no joke, a DNA combination of a scientist, dead daughter and a rose, and then she becomes this kind of crazy monstrous beast whose spores can create monsters, I mean, unbelievable. Mathra is probably the most overpowered person in the franchise, so I do believe that she's well, But then you have weird things like Monster X. You know, there's so many good, weird characters that I think, really any poweranking
is kind of so subjective. I once ranked all the Godzilla movies and that was just the most subjective thing ever. I know some people were in there like what is wrong with you? But that's kind of the fun of all of this stuff. And yeah, so I would say I will stand by the fact that I do think Mathra is probably the most powerful monster in the Godzilla vers.
And also as for you, you know you mentioned earlier, and I do think people think about this a lot, the Legendary Monster Verse and the Toho Verse, like ever kind of crossover. The answer is, hypothetically yes, because Legendary licenses everything from Toho, so everything has to be approved by Toho the same way in our comics it does. And we've seen Legendary already do some really interesting crossovers.
They recently did the Godzilla Justice League crossover, which has been like so popular, it's been just the total smash for DC comics and Legendary. So I think there's always potential. And I mean in the past, the Americanized Godzilla, who is you know from the Godzilla movie with the American
the very hilarious American casting of Sarah Jesscamarka's husband Matthew Broderick. Yes, that Godzilla has actually featured in Japanese Godzilla movies getting killed, so you know there is a precedent, and I do believe that with the success of what's going on, it's unlikely that would necessarily be like a minus one, but I wouldn't be surprised if at some point we could see some kind of portal space where those streams may cross. But who knows.
Well, Rosie, thank you for blessing us with your copious Godzilla knowledge.
Always say I'd love to be Godzilla ring.
This has been our massive, bite sized Godzilla episode of X ray Vision.
See you next time. Bye.
X ray Vision is hosted by Jason Kisumsion and Rosie Knight and is a production of iHeart Podcasts. Our executive producers are Joelle Smith and Aaron Kaufman. Our supervising producer is a Boo Zafar. Our producers are Carmen Laurent and Mia Taylor. Our theme song is by Brian Basquez.
Special thanks to Soul Rubin and Chris Lord, Kenny Goodman and Heidi a Disco moderator.