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zombiewhacker
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1475 Posts |
 Posted - 05/24/2010 : 2:56:15 PM
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Yo, dude, Gamera would so totally kick Godzilla's...
Just kidding.
Recently nostalgia got the better of me and I broke down and watched an old Gamera movie, in this case Destroy All Planets, which was largely comprised of stock footage from Gamera's previous movies to date.
And, man, what a bummer memory lane turned out to be.
In a nutshell: all the worst elements of the kaiju genre are on full display here, including not one but two Kenny's in the new footage, as well as another nonsensical alien invasion plot. What really struck me, though, was how bad all the kaiju footage was.
Admittedly, it takes a special kind of movie fan who's willing to subject himself to ninety minutes of grown men in rubber monster suits knocking over toy train sets... but sheez, even given my diminished expectations for the genre, these fight scenes seemed pretty lame.
And that's when it hit me: one reason why Toho films generally fared better than their (then) Daiei competitors isn't simply because kaiju fans prefer their fire-breathers to be dinosaurs (way cool) rather than flying turtles (way uncool). It's because the Toho directors, if nothing else, at least knew how to deliver a rousing action scene or two. Even an overall turkey like 1974's Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla still knew how to push all the right buttons for a slam-bang action finale. In comparison, the fight scenes in Gamera films are so sloooowww:
Gamera yowls.
Baragon growls.
Gamera waves his arms.
Baragon takes two steps forward.
Gamera takes one step forward.
Baragon knocks over a building with his tail.
Gamera stands there.
Baragon growls again.
Gamera still stands there.
Baragon rears on his hind legs.
Gamera takes another step forward now.
Baragon responds by knocking over another building.
Gamera responds by letting out another yowl.
Cut to reactions shots of Tokyans fleeing for their lives.
It's about to get ugly here, folks!
And so on.
You could make the argument that the Gamera films' real failing was that they took the whole Kenny thing too far, whereas the Godzilla films only occasionally did. In my case, I don't mind enduring a whiny ten year old as the hero if the action part of the movie at least delivers. Watching Gabra get the tar pounded out of him meant that Godzilla's Revenge wasn't a total loss. But when the kaiju stuff itself starts piling on the suckitude, that's it brother. |
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Flangepart
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
2329 Posts |
Posted - 05/25/2010 : 07:11:30 AM
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(ahem)...Yo, dude. 1990s Gamera would so totally kick Godzilla's...
Good points, ZW.
Original Gamera, yeah he had wasted potential, even for a turtle.
Ah, but in the 90s!...quite a nice come back for the 'ol terripin.
(sigh) I can see it now...
Atomic breath Vs. plasma burps, teeth Vs. slashing arm blades, tail slams Vs. death from above...it would be all good!
"Vulcans : The designated drivers of the universe."
"Hoody Hoo, i waste 'em with my cross bow!" Bob Herzog- KODT
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The Rev. D.D.
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
203 Posts |
Posted - 05/31/2010 : 11:36:46 AM
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In a once-in-a-lifetime moment, WGN or some channel played this on a Sunday afternoon when I was in high school, and I taped it and watched it. JESUS it sucked bad.
Still, some of the better monster fights aren't in that movie. The better of Gamera vs. Gyaos wasn't included, for example. The rest of them were pretty severely truncated. Granted, some of them (Gamera vs. Viras, Gamera vs. Zigra) weren't that good to begin with...
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They're definitely not the place to go for quality monster smackdown, I will say that much. |
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Bobby-G
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
904 Posts |
Posted - 05/31/2010 : 8:00:40 PM
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I haven't seen a GAMERA flick since the 1970s. I remember when I saw the first one, I thought it was pretty cool (I like turtles!), and they didn't destroy him in the end but sent him off in a rocket!
From what I can remember from the follow-ups, they seem like Kaiju torture-porn, with Gamera getting sliced, diced and skewered, while he yowled and blood shot all over the place until he finally would triumph against his enemy.
Since it's been so long since I've seen these films, tell me -- Is the first movie better then the sequels?
Rob |
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hentai_wolf
Preeminent Apostolic Prelate of the Discipleship of Jabootu
139 Posts |
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Bobby-G
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
904 Posts |
Posted - 06/02/2010 : 01:11:34 AM
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Classic!
Rob |
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