443: Godzilla (1954)

This week we're unpacking the legacy of Godzilla (1954). We reflect on its national-trauma allegory, praise its practical effects, and consider the weight of its somber ending. This episode contains spoilers, beginning at 28:59.

Mentioned in the Episode

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Godzilla (1954)

Related Episodes

419: Cloverfield (2008)

297: Dracula (1931)

255: M3GAN (2023)

Main Episode

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Daigo Fukuryū Maru (Lucky Dragon No. 5)

Godzilla (1998)

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Music Credits

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Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:04

Yo quiero tako vel. Less than a decade after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japanese filmmakers turned the country's trauma into something massive, destructive, and impossible to ignore. The film leveraged groundbreaking effects in pursuit of being equal parts monster movie and a reflective response from a country still grappling with the aftermath of nuclear devastation. The end result was a film that made history and launched a franchise that has spent decades, generations, and nearly 40 films as of this recording. And it has done so largely because it digs past spectacle in action to deliver a story about fear, consequence, and what happens when humanity creates something it can't control. The story unfolds as a series of mysterious shipwrecks and disappearances lead to the discovery of a massive radiation-scarred creature. And Japan is then forced to confront a threat born from the very weapons that reshape its history. This week we're talking about Godzilla. Greetings and salutations, and welcome to Hacker Slash. If you're joining us again, welcome back. If this is your first time listening, welcome to the party. We are a horror movie review podcast dedicated to telling you whether a movie is a hack.

SPEAKER_01 1:26

A total joke, a waste of time, or a slash.

SPEAKER_02 1:29

Totally killer, pun intended.

SPEAKER_03 1:31

My name is Chris. I'm your friendly neighborhood slasher enthusiast. This week I'm joined by the Superfly Space Guy Mac.

SPEAKER_02 1:37

I won't tell anyone about this, not even my own father.

SPEAKER_03 1:40

And the classic horror connoisseur, Sean.

SPEAKER_01 1:42

In the old days, if the catch was poor for a long time, we'd sacrifice a young girl.

SPEAKER_03 1:47

That's problematic.

SPEAKER_01 1:48

Listen, you're tuning in to Godzilla from 1954. But if you support the show, you're also gonna check out our B-side at the end of this episode where we dive deep into why some of our favorite horror icons go from serious to straight up bizarre.

SPEAKER_03 2:03

But before we can dig into the other icons, we have to start with this big old boy himself. Who's seen this one before?

SPEAKER_02 2:11

This was my second Godzilla movie ever, and this is the first time I've seen it.

SPEAKER_03 2:16

Whoa! Oh my gosh, wait. Okay. Now we have to have the pleasure of guessing what your first Godzilla movie was. And there's really two, yeah. I was gonna say there's two ways we can think about this. It's either something fucking modern that he just went to recently or it's Yo Ghetto Taco Bell.

SPEAKER_02 2:32

I is it yeah, is it the Taco Bell Godzilla? It is 1998's Godzilla. Of course, of course it was, you know, because I I watched it probably like at home as soon as it hit DVD, VHS, whatever it was. It was VHS, but yeah, I remember the commercials, I remember the P. Diddy, I remember the Kashmir Led Zeppelin sample by P. Diddy. What a time we lived in.

SPEAKER_03 2:54

It might be my third favorite Matthew Broderick movie.

SPEAKER_02 2:57

Honestly, I don't hate that. That's okay.

SPEAKER_01 2:59

I ate so many Gordita Supremes during that time frame, just trying. There was some kind of game attached to it. I forget what was attached to it at Taco Bell, but I was trying for it. I just remember that.

SPEAKER_03 3:10

I have a distinct memory of being in my grandmother's living room watching that fucking Yo Ghetto Taco Bell commercial. And I don't know why I can remember this specific moment, but this was in an era of my life where I didn't really even fuck with Taco Bell very much because I didn't know that you could just get things not beef, and I didn't know you could get things without lettuce, and I just I could only get the quesadilla because my mom would get it from me, and it was a little bit too floppy sometimes. So this movie and the reputation of Godzilla really did a number on repairing and restoring my faith in Taco Bell. Actually, this was my first Godzilla movie, if you can believe it. And I saw it before the 1998 movie. I watched this a ton when I was a kid, and I was obsessed with Godzilla. Now I need to be clear that I was obsessed with the spectacle of Godzilla because there's no way in hell I could ever wrap my brain around what was actually happening, what things actually meant. But Godzilla as a kaiju, I was into it as a small child.

SPEAKER_01 4:13

Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, Godzilla, one, if you haven't, if you haven't seen any Godzillas, I mean, I don't know. There's so many of them. They're they're out there, they're everywhere. I think my first Godzilla was it, I don't think it was this Godzilla. I think it was maybe Godzilla versus King Kong or something like that. I don't remember exactly. But this is definitely one that I've seen a number of times over the years. It's and here's the thing with Godzilla, like it's just so polarizing. I feel like there's just so many Godzillas out there that it's just hard to ignore. But it's not even really that I'm a like super into Godzilla or anything. I certainly haven't seen all of the Godzilla films out there. I wouldn't call it really just my thing as a whole, but I think this movie stands out as one of those movies that you you have to see at least once for what it did to cinema, the cultural impact that this movie had, especially for its time going into Godzilla from 1954 today. Your expectations are just like a little bit tricky because this movie, to your point, Chris, like did you did you really grasp the weight of it when you first saw it? This movie carries so much of that cultural weight.

SPEAKER_03 5:22

Yeah, I need to be very clear that this is the first time I've seen this movie as an adult.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:27

As an adult who has now lived through wartime, and even with what we have in front of us right now as humanity, like in the things that we feel like we're on the brink of. This is the first time I've seen this movie and really reckoned with what this movie is actually about. Because while I saw this a lot as a child, my rewatches of Godzilla's have actually just been random ones throughout the years, and and I'm not even I'm not fully versed on the whole franchise. I've seen Godzilla throw it down with King Kong. I haven't really seen many of the modern Godzilla films. There's a lot of source material out here for Godzilla, and I am not up to speed. However, I will just say my last DD character was a lizard folk cleric, which already makes no fucking sense because lizard folks are not. I know it's it's really dumb, but he was dumb, and he basically gave himself to support a church that was a multi-level marketing scheme.

SPEAKER_01 6:30

What the fuck?

SPEAKER_03 6:31

That worshiped, and the deity was Godzilla. So one of my favorite fucking characters of all time, actually, as it turns out.

SPEAKER_01 6:38

Well, listen, I'm just piecing this together here. Clerics are like healing, right? They do some healing stuff. Lizards regenerate tales. I mean, it kind of goes hand in hand. I'm seeing the the continuity here between the two.

SPEAKER_03 6:51

I love that you're seeing the potential of the character that I hadn't quite figured out yet, but now I feel like we need a DD campaign so I can actually bring sticks back to life.

SPEAKER_01 7:00

Yeah, you gotta bring this back for sure. Yeah, I think it's that's also just very interesting. This whole, I don't know if you you call it a franchise or call it what you will, if you jump into Godzilla movies randomly throughout all the years that they've been putting them out there, you might have a very different interpretation of or what Godzilla represents. But, you know, the and I think modern audiences really just usually, even just looking back on this one, if you haven't seen it or you haven't seen it in a long time, like you have, Chris, usually think of maybe this silly rubber suit monster chaos that's just smashing the city and stuff like that. But the reality is very different in this movie. This the reality is this film is much slower, much darker, and much more somber than what the pop culture image of Godzilla suggests nowadays. And I think instead of being this campy monster movie that I think a lot of people instant in like instantly think of, it plays much closer to like this post-war disaster film.

SPEAKER_03 7:59

100%. And somber is such a perfect way to describe it. I was actually just thinking about the experience of seeing this now for the first time as an adult and really reckoning with what this story is. You go in expecting, okay, monster spectacle. I've seen this, Godzilla's gonna fuck some stuff up, it's gonna be great, but then you are just dwelling in national trauma, yeah, and that hurts, man. That hurts, it's heavy. And of course, with Soup Nation and the way that this film was made, if you separate yourself entirely from the heartbeat of this story and you just looked at look at the optics, some of it's very impressive, but some of it you might kind of laugh at. But everything from how this movie carries its violence, how it carries its uh discussions and debates and decision making between characters, even when it begins with music and destruction, it sets the tone really, really well. And it's because this movie feels heavy, it's emotionally heavy, it's oppressive, and it feels like you're mourning something the entire time.

SPEAKER_02 9:08

It does have just like such a major weight to it, and I don't think that I I didn't expect that. I think I've seen like other clips from Godzilla movies, or maybe like Mothra or something like that, and I remember specifically like color films, and they definitely had that goofier vibe to them. This was take Godzilla out of it. This was watching a natural disaster and the response to that natural disaster, and or maybe unnatural, depending on obviously the allegory, but it definitely seemed like oh, this is about the human suffering involved in like people dealing with this, and not even about a monster, and it was like such a different emotional ride than I figured we were gonna get.

SPEAKER_03 9:48

Yeah, I was even reflecting for a moment on our clover field episode and how you see people experiencing a huge attack, and you think about the parallels that that had with 9-11, but reframing this story in particular, and it's it's really dwelling in the aftermath and the aftermath of aftermath, and when you think about that, it's it's it is a very strange but also painful way to tell this story because on the one hand you think, okay, like any monster movie, we just have to look at the monster itself and then dealing with that and contending with that, but instead you have a nation that is already recovering from something horrific, and then on top of that, they have this fucking guy stomping in here, and it's it's terrible, it's a heavy thing. But I love what you said, Mac, because you're like it is this very deeply human perspective on disaster.

SPEAKER_01 10:53

Yeah, I think you're both spot on. I think emotionally this film feels so much closer to that national trauma than this traditional style horror film. This movie is literally just really it's drenched in the shadow of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. When you look at it, Godzilla, to your point, Mac, it's not just this monster, it's literally that walking metaphor for nuclear destruction. And I think some moments in this movie hit surprisingly hard, which I'm sure we're gonna really get into in the spoiler section for sure. But this movie is also really interesting because instead of these thrills that you often think that you might get in in the monster movie, a creature feature, a horror film, this film often creates dread and this sense of helplessness. And the fear in this movie is certainly it's not from the traditional scare sense, it's really this existential horror of humanity creating, like you said, Chris, in the beginning, something it can't control.

SPEAKER_03 11:56

Yeah, he can't be controlled because he's a force of nature. What's interesting is to consider what Godzilla becomes in other films, and in some moments, Godzilla is a protagonist, an antagonist, just a neutral bystander and agent of chaos and destruction. I really appreciate where this movie starts and where it grounds itself. When you consider the existential horror, the biggest thing that this movie has going for it is the allegory. I was just thinking about this as the movie ended. This is one of those that does not feel satisfying. And I'm not saying that is a bad ending, it's a great ending to a movie, but you're not left with this feeling of peace or contentment, you're not feeling a sense of closure or certainty. And it's because this movie wants to rake you across the coals of dwelling in everything that has happened to these people before Godzilla even entered the picture.

SPEAKER_01 12:57

Yeah, there's definitely so much happening, and I hear what you're saying. I think that you sit there and you watch this movie, and you might literally just be surprised watching a movie from 1954. It's actually quite long for a movie from 1954, and you're sitting there like diving into this story, and you're right. It's not that it's a bad ending, it's just it doesn't really leave you with a lot of great thoughts. You know what I mean? It's one of those movies that kind of sits with you, and what we've already been hinting at, one of the biggest surprises in this movie is really just how mournful and heavy that tone is. I think few monster movies have such a clear and powerful message about whatever you want to call it, science, war, responsibility. But this movie takes itself completely seriously, which I definitely appreciate because a lot of people think, like you said, of Godzilla, and whether it's campy or it's this anti-hero or it's this monster that's gonna now come save you from other monsters and whatnot, this is definitely not that movie. And I think the sincerity is what gives this film its lasting power and impact and really separates itself from a lot of other movies in the Godzilla franchise, if you will. What this film I think also does extremely well is how it builds the atmosphere with the black and white cinematography and the miniature effects to really create like a haunting sense of this scale and destruction.

SPEAKER_03 14:20

Oh my gosh. I want to be very clear. There are moments where you're gonna watch this movie and you're gonna say, Oh, obviously that's a miniature. Obviously, this is a person, and there's some trickery here to make it look like such. I'm not saying that it's executed with such a high level of perfection that it's gonna feel seamless. For example, I think we can all agree Star Wars, the miniatures in that feel pretty fucking seamless. This less so, but this is also 20 years before Star Wars. So give or take, yeah, I think give credits where it's due. But the effects in this movie are incredible. The miniatures are absolutely incredible, but for me, what sealed the deal is before you even see any of that, you hear rhythmic percussion, oh yeah, and then you hear an incredible score, and you hear Godzilla's roar. I know that it's not the best version of this roar that we're ever gonna get. I get it. Effects have come so far, sound design has come so far. We have so much incredible technology now.

SPEAKER_01 15:23

So good though.

SPEAKER_03 15:24

But my god, it sounds it's my favorite one. It's my favorite one. I was like, this feels like a monster movie.

SPEAKER_02 15:32

I've heard so much about how Godzilla has changed because again, I had only seen the 1998 giant raptor version of Godzilla before this, and this was so different. When I heard that roar, first of all, I thought it was gonna be weak. I didn't know it was gonna be the roar, the classic Godzilla Roar, right from the start. Had no idea they got it right the first go because it was amazing. I was like, I don't know what magic they did. I had to look it up, hear how they did it, you know. Because I'm I'm like, how did you make that happen in 1954? That was that really honestly caught me off guard to hear like that quality of a sound effect. Then again, like you said, 20 years later, we're getting Star Wars, and the sound effects there are insane. Yet these days, the best we can do is a Wilhelm scream every now and then.

SPEAKER_03 16:16

So hold on. Every once in a while we get a nice little pew-pew.

SPEAKER_02 16:20

That's true, but you know, sometimes things don't get better with age. And this is one of those things where they just got it right the first go-around. That was pretty impressive. It's weird though, because this movie starts out so strong and with an oomph, right? The opening scene kind of draws you in. We have this really steady ramp up to the point where like we're starting gentle, we build, we build, we're really blowing stuff up. And then we kind of hold steady for a little minute. Not quite, uh maybe boring a little bit. It's fine if you consider it boring. It's just steady. And then kind of like you mentioned, with the ending, we fizzle out. And I don't know what I don't know what that is. I think perhaps we're so used to the modern action adventure films that we want there to be this like massive, crazy action sequence ending. And I think back to like Jaws, you know, we're used to in the Godzilla world, if you've only seen modern stuff, you're used to like Jaws 3D.

SPEAKER_04 17:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:14

And without knowing that there's a Jaws out there, you don't know like how good and how well done something can be. And so here, yeah, this is more, this is a more mature take on that. It doesn't have to be, I guess, this whole gigantic action-focused ending. However, I wish we would have got like a little bit more because it did feel just like a little fizzle.

SPEAKER_03 17:34

Okay. I'm gonna ask a question for clarity. Is it more or less anticlimactic than the end of the original Dracula?

SPEAKER_01 17:44

Oh, come on. It's less, right? Come on. I think it's less.

SPEAKER_03 17:48

I think it's less anticlimactic. I enjoyed this, and I think it leaves you with such a sense of suffering that even if there isn't a lot more action that goes with it, it feels clear to me. Yeah. I particularly enjoyed the ending as much as I hated the feeling that it left me with. And I think it's honestly just a testament to who can appreciate this movie, right? You have horror fans who care about history, yes, check, they're gonna like this. People who like somber, serious horror, check, you're gonna like this. Kaiju fans who want the origin story and not just necessarily the big spectacles that we get now, check, you're gonna like it. However, if you are going into this expecting to see anything from any of the Godzilla movies, 1998 and forward, I think just let it go. Let it go. Just appreciate it for what it is, keep your distance, know that you're gonna see a guy in a suit, and it's gonna be fucking glorious.

SPEAKER_01 18:48

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it's true. I think you you have to be into, I think, some of the older cinema, older horror movies to really enjoy something like this, because I think this film definitely suffers from some pacing a little bit, right? Like it can definitely feel a little bit slow to start, even though the storyline is really good. If you're not really into these slow-moving movies, it's gonna be a little bit of a struggle, I think. And I think Godzilla is used sparingly at first, it picks up a little bit later. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing given the storytelling style of the 1950s. But to your point, Chris, if you're a fan of classic cinema, of film history, you're probably gonna be into it. If you just really are into monster movies and you want to see where it all started with Godzilla 100%. But yeah, if you're just wanting modern pacing, nonstop action, this is probably not gonna be something that you truly enjoy.

SPEAKER_02 19:44

I have to admit, I'm not the world's biggest kaiju fan. Like I've seen other movies with them involved, and there's a book on my TBR, which is uh Kaiju Preservation Society by John Skalsy. Love his other work with Old Man's War, but I just haven't gotten into something like that yet about you know a giant monster. And apparently he's always funny, so apparently it's a little comical, which I'm here for that. But I wouldn't gravitate towards that normally. For some reason, Godzilla just feels so central to cinema that it doesn't matter. But I think if you are a film classicist or classicist, I think this would appeal to you kind of, you know, how everyone right now is reading John Steinbeck if you're on social media. I took off for Lent, and now that I'm back on it, that's all I'm getting is John Steinbeck, left, right, and center, which is fine. But it's like this is that thing. Like, you want to see the classics, you want to feel richer than you want to feel entertained. I think this is for you. I think if you're a modern blockbuster chaser, this is probably not the film. If you're looking for your Project Hail Mary's, look elsewhere. This is not that type of film. This is for somebody who wants to appreciate the richness that can come from cinema.

SPEAKER_03 20:55

Well, regardless of how much or how little you might get from this movie, it still stands that there are a significant number of deaths in here. But Sean, how would you describe the gore score?

SPEAKER_01 21:06

Yeah, the gore is definitely pretty low by modern horror standards. I think there's, you know, there's not really a whole lot of like graphic graphic violence. The horror comes from implication with burned cities, radiation sickness, mass destruction, those types of things. But the horror is more psychological and thematic than visceral, and I think it just earns this one probably a low gore score, I'd give it.

SPEAKER_03 21:30

And what about the animal report?

SPEAKER_02 21:32

You could say things get a little fishy here because they definitely do in a big way.

SPEAKER_03 21:36

Let's go ahead and get into our ratings. Godzilla from 1954. Is it a hack or slash?

SPEAKER_01 21:42

Well, I mean, listen, Godzilla, all of them are just there's a whole lot of different it's a roller coaster of a franchise, depending on what you like. There's probably something for someone, but Godzilla from 1954, it isn't just the birth of a franchise that is spanned across some 38 families. It's literally the blueprint for an entire genre of monster movies. And I think what starts as a giant monster movie quickly reveals itself to be something much heavier. This slow-burning, deeply somber reflection on nuclear fear and humanity's tendency to play with forces it really just doesn't understand. And emotionally, this film lingers in a place most monster movies don't really dare to touch. And I think there's a real sense of grief and unease that's baked into the destruction, especially in the quieter moments in the film, like the hospital scenes, the mourning, and really just the feeling that this isn't just chaos, it's consequence. And I think Godzilla itself isn't a villain in the traditional sense. It's more like an unstoppable reminder of what humanity has unleashed on the world. And it's also kind of wild how effective it still is to watch. I mean, there are moments where the miniature scale stands out, like you said, Chris, but overall, this looks so good for how old it is, which is why practical effects will always look better than CGI. It just stands the test of time, no matter how much there's advanced in technological whatever, practical effects just work and they age better. And all of the things they did with those miniature sets, the suit performance, and even the score, they're all foundational tools that shaped decades of cinema to come. And you can literally draw a straight line from this film to modern blockbusters, disaster movies, and basically every creature feature that followed. It's not a perfect film by any means. The pacing definitely can drag. Some of the human drama feels dated, but those are literally small trade-offs for something this influential. And I think this is the rare case where a film earns its legacy, not just because it came first, but because it still hits. And I think that it's a towering force of cinematic destruction that leaves this radioactive footprint all over film history. It's a literally a city-crushing, nuclear-charged landmark that still stomps today. And for that, this one is an undeniable slash, not even the oxygen destroyer could take down.

SPEAKER_02 24:16

Wow, I'd say that's a fairly apt review. I think this is just a powerful and memorable movie with an, of course, incredibly memorable character. It tells a serious story about fear, science, and the cost of dangerous weapons. The characters feel real, their choices matter and have lasting impact within the story. The film shows these small, powerful moments of personal loss and grief that make the disaster feel really human. And those quiet vignettes, whether it's family separated or people mourning, they add emotional weight to the story. The film is just able to balance spectacle with those intimate moments in a way that I think felt pretty effective for me. It's got a calm tone, but it's intense. And that mixture makes it feel even stronger. And of course, it stands as a pillar of classic cinema, not just horror, but film as a whole. And so because of that, it is a slash.

SPEAKER_03 25:16

You know, how can it be anything else really? What makes this movie work so well is how intentional it is with everything it's doing. And when you have a director who himself was drafted into a world war and then later crafts a film based on the horrors that he saw and experienced in his life and the message that he wants to send, that's significant. This could have easily just have been a giant monster movie, but instead, this story is grounded in destruction. And it's grounded in real destruction. There's that weight behind it that you both have mentioned, but there's meaning, and you can feel it in almost every scene, even when the movie feels like it's at its slowest, it transforms destruction into something tragic. And that sense of tragedy is such an oppressive feeling at the end of this movie. You talk about what Godzilla is, less of the villain and more of just like a consequence as a whole. It's such an interesting angle for this movie to take. And to also see that we went from this big old tragedy to the Taco Bell Chihuahua in only a few decades. This is so much more than a great monster movie. It's one of the most important horror films ever made. You both acknowledge that. It takes something as simple as a giant monster and turns it into something more deeply human and deeply painful. And the fact that it still works emotionally today obviously says so much about how effective the story is, but it also says enough about how bleak the world is, particularly in these moments. It's foundational horror, absolutely. The fact that it's still emotionally effective, more than 70 years later, says everything about how technically sound this movie is. And it's a slash. Now, with that, Godzilla from 1954 has, to no one's surprise, earned a universal slash. Now you can find this streaming online, go check it out. But when we get back, we're gonna break down all the spoilers for this one to see in a bit.

SPEAKER_01 27:45

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SPEAKER_00 28:01

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SPEAKER_01 28:31

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SPEAKER_03 29:06

We have so much to dig into here. But before we get into all the fun, John, let's go through that sleigh by sleigh.

SPEAKER_01 29:12

Yeah, let's get into it. Godzilla, listen, doesn't rack up kills in the traditional slasher sense, but instead the destruction is large-scale devastation with boat attacks, mass city rampage, and just literally pure chaos and destruction. And with 84 kills, there is definitely a lot to go over in this week's Slay by Slay. So let's start with the 34 some odd sailors that were killed when Godzilla destroyed the boats.

SPEAKER_03 29:44

Yeah, I love that we get 34 of the 84 kills within the first couple minutes of the movie. You get through the opening credits, bam, 34, gone. Whole chunk.

SPEAKER_02 29:54

Yeah, start off strong, you know. I love that we also like didn't actually see anything happening. We didn't have to see the monster yet. We just got to see these people getting demolished. And that like sets the tone for what's to come because I think in other films you would definitely get like, okay, monster squash, ooh, just saw a foot. What's gonna happen? Here, we don't know what happened. These people just got caught.

SPEAKER_03 30:15

Yeah, and think about where this shows up later in film history. Jaws. We get how many kills in Jaws before we ever actually get to see Jaws in all of his entirety.

SPEAKER_01 30:26

Yeah, that's true. Yeah, we get all these kills up front in the movie. We don't see the monster, we don't see Godzilla up front, which I think is really cool. We get all this destruction, we don't see the monster, and then when we do see the monster, it's like maybe like a glimpse, and then we have that reveal of the monster, which is really cool. But yeah, we get all these kills, even like these two other guys that we see that are killed off-screen by Godzilla, their bodies are seen, but then we get into the next part of like this entire destruction, and and it's when Godzilla is going through the town, and you have Masagi and Shin Kichi's mother that's crushed by Godzilla when they're destroyed when he's destroying the house, you know, and it's just so cool the way that whole thing unfolded. It was just wild to watch.

SPEAKER_02 31:12

That was legit like watching Twister. Honestly, that's what I felt was hurricane, tornado. This is just a completely other scenario. Oh, also, there's a monster because what they were going through in that moment and everything collapsing, and like the fear in their eyes and their voices. I'm like, I don't even need to see the monster. I I can I can tell kind of like what's going on in that moment. It's it's horrifying.

SPEAKER_03 31:36

It is incredible what they could achieve in that scene without showing the monster at all. Because it really did feel like a natural disaster situation. And even as that scene ended, I was just like reflecting on this and thinking about this. Damn, it really is the case that like less is more. And I remember watching this a few days ago when I was like catching up on this movie. And when we get this moment of just the rain, the wind, again, you don't really see anything from Godzilla. I was like, man, is this motherfucker controlling the weather? Is he more supernatural than I remember? I had to like really reframe and recenter myself to just appreciate what was happening and get my head out of my ass on that. But I was like, how do I not remember this from watching this so many times?

SPEAKER_01 32:28

Yeah, it's true. I I hear what you're saying, but you know, like not really necessarily controlling the weather, but he is causing these tsunamis that are fucking annihilating the town, and another 17 people, somewhat, you know, they've got to put a number to it, but it's around 17 people die from this tsunami that's caused by Godzilla. So not even Godzilla coming and crushing your house, he's just throwing tsunamis at you.

SPEAKER_03 32:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:53

Ridiculous. And then you get to this part where Godzilla is like just taking this train out, and it's actually one of my favorite kills or parts of deaths in this movie because you got the train drivers that get crushed by Godzilla, but just watching Godzilla casually SWAT this commuter train just feels shockingly brutal.

SPEAKER_03 33:11

Yeah, it makes me wonder I have to watch the 1998 one again because did that not take place in New York City?

SPEAKER_01 33:18

Oh, yeah, I think it did.

SPEAKER_03 33:20

There's gotta be some train action in that movie. I haven't seen that one truly in forever.

SPEAKER_02 33:24

Yeah, it's been the part better part of like 20 years for me since I've watched it, like right after it came out, like maybe two or three more times, you know, because VHS and DVD, and I don't I don't remember the kills at all.

SPEAKER_01 33:36

We're gonna have to watch it back. You gotta go on a Godzilla marathon. That's right.

SPEAKER_03 33:40

I almost did, honestly. I I re-watched this movie again today just to refresh myself on my notes, and it wasn't very tempting to just keep hitting play on every Godzilla movie that came up after it. Then I thought, well, I don't have time for 40 fucking movies today. Yeah, I mean catch me out here watching Tremors and Tremors too, but uh uh we can't do the whole Godzilla franchise.

SPEAKER_01 34:03

Yeah, we would literally just be watching Godzilla for days. We'd just be sitting there like red-eyed, just like trying to drink some coffee, like, yeah, we're good.

SPEAKER_03 34:10

Actually, I mean, listen, if we wanted to fuck her if we wanted to fuck around and find out, we could do 40 weeks of Godzilla, and it would in fact not be a full year of content for us.

SPEAKER_01 34:22

Oh my god, that's insane, actually. A whole Godzilla theme. That's a whole other podcast right there. It's the sub podcast.

SPEAKER_03 34:31

It's a whole other podcast, and if we ever do a conspiracy theory podcast where we talk about like the lizard people who are running the government, we'll just do Godzilla.

SPEAKER_01 34:41

Nice, nice. I love it, I love it. And listen, that doesn't stop here. The the tsunami, the train, it doesn't stop here because Godzilla continues its rampage. We go and see another like eight some odd firefighters that are getting crushed underneath pieces of this building that are being destroyed by Godzilla. So it's just this this rampage continues and it's terrible. It's absolutely wild. And then we get to the atomic breath of it all, and this is cool, folks. I mean, for 1954, you have to. If you haven't seen it, you're already past the spoiler-free section. So if you haven't seen what we're talking about right now for 1954, fire breath, go see that. Go see that.

SPEAKER_03 35:25

Yeah, folks, this is halitosis. This is why you should hydrate. This is why you need good oral hygiene.

SPEAKER_02 35:32

It is so insane because when I think I think when it's used on like buildings and stuff, that Starbucks halitosis, it's one thing because you're like, oh, that's cool. Monster takes out building. I'm ex I'm here for that, right? When he targets specific people, not that he's like aiming that specifically, he's just like hitting an area, and there happen to be people exactly where he's aiming. That's when it gets awful. And that's when I'm thinking the allegory and imagining people turning into shadows, and that's horrible. And those moments are are like so grossly effective.

SPEAKER_03 36:01

Oh man, Mac. I just want to take a moment here because this whole scene, Sean, that you're describing is like the destruction of Tokyo.

SPEAKER_04 36:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:10

And that's where the movie fully leans into what its own identity is. And Mac, you talk about pupils running into shadows. Fuck, man. I just got chills hearing that. This is where it leans more heavily into the tragedy because sure, up until this point, we've gotten destruction. We just talked about all these other scenes where Godzilla fucks some stuff up.

SPEAKER_04 36:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:33

But in this moment, it's relentless. The music is coming back in, the same theme from the opening, and it just builds like this overwhelming sense of dread. And there's zero excitement. It feels inevitable, but you're not happy about what you're seeing. Whereas in other monster movies, we'd be like, Oh, yeah, this is great. Please destroy everything. And what really makes this hit it's that human perspective. So, Mac, you talk about where people are. That moment with the mother and her children that hurt my very soul. She's holding them, she's trying to comfort them. She tells them they're gonna go join their father. And that's not a line that I expected in a movie like this. It also makes me, what the fuck was I doing watching this as a child and not absorbing what this was? But it does completely reframe what you're watching, right? This is about people realizing they're not gonna make it and they're just trying to make peace with that in real time, and it's it's devastating. It's it hurts so much.

SPEAKER_02 37:35

And you don't get that anymore because modern films they're focused on like the escape of it all. The main characters have to make it out. The side characters that get got usually they get like a scream or something, and we get to see them dispatched. You know, I'm thinking Cloverfield again, and it's like, oh, okay, like, you know, they get stomped or bitten or whatever, and no big deal. But here it's oh, there's a life and dreams and hopes and a history and a future now extinguished, and we're like we have a close-up of that, and it's not even in like a fighting kind of way with other creatures where they can try to fend off for even just a minute to survive. No, vaporized, just pink mist.

SPEAKER_03 38:14

Yeah, there is this white dread about it because it's just acceptance, they have resigned themselves to this fate. I'm thinking about the mom and her kids specifically. Talk about how we don't get that anymore. I want to point out the moment that I can think of that feels the closest to this, and it's such a bad comparison, and I'm gonna get roasted for this. Catching fire, the sequel to the Hunger Games. And I'm sorry if you haven't seen the sequel to the Hunger Games, but spoiler alert, a lot of fucking people die. There is a tribute in the Quarter Quell named Mags, is an old woman. She was a mentor of one of the other victors, and she is at this point where she like she's beloved, and Finnic O'Dare carries her on his back, but she also knows that she's slowing them down, and so she kind of self-sacrifices and she's like, No, I gotta go. You can't hear her at all, like she doesn't, she's she's mute, so she just stands up and just lets her lets the mist take her, and she just accepts her fate. It's a terrible moment in the book, it's like very painful in the movie, it's also not easy to swallow. But this moment with the mom and her kids and just accepting this fate, it just reminded me of that.

SPEAKER_02 39:33

And it's powerful because we don't know this character at all. I think that's why it means something because it's just a zoom in for a second, and you hear about the fact that they're gonna rejoin their father, and you have to do the math and think, how did their father go? Was it the war? Was it this? Does it it doesn't matter? But now I'm thinking about it. Now this two-second moment has become another story that your brain has created to fill in the gaps, and that's what this film does really well. These vignettes, it is so dark, and that's why it's like, yeah, great, great cinema and everything, but at the same time, oh my gosh, the human loss is immeasurable. And thank you for reminding me of that.

SPEAKER_03 40:14

Fuck, Mac. I had not once considered if their father was lost in the war. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_01 40:22

Yeah, I hate that.

SPEAKER_03 40:24

I was just thinking, wow, they've already known a life of loss, and here they are about to be extinguished, and I didn't even consider the trauma of the fact that their father was lost, most likely the same way.

SPEAKER_04 40:41

Jesus. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 40:43

Sean, I know you have to get on with this slay by slay, but I think the next set of deaths, correct me if I'm wrong, are our journalists up in the tower, the television tower.

unknown 40:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:54

Oh my god. Yeah, because we had the clock tower and the other tower. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 40:58

Ooh, talk about commitment to a bit and your job. Think about even Titanic and the musicians who chose their last moments to just try to keep everybody calm and just play them out. You've got these broadcasters out there reporting live, fully aware that Godzilla's approaching, and instead of running, they stay. They keep broadcasting, one of them literally says goodbye as it's happening. And there's something so dark about that because it feels like this commitment to documenting the moment, even at the cost of your own life, and the way that it's shot, is super super powerful. I love that you get the close-up on the tower itself, you get the wide shot of people falling, which is also terrible. It sends you back to 2001, and we all saw this shit happen live on television. And that POV perspective, as they drop and get closer to the ground, it's disorienting, it's sudden. It doesn't really give you a lot of time to process it before you move on. And between these two moments, right? Between the mother and her children and the Tokyo television tower, you get both sides of horror, the intimate personal loss, and then the public collective tragedy. And I think that's what makes this entire moment, this entire scene so powerful, because it's yes, it's Godzilla destroying the city, but it's also showing you firsthand, Mac, like you mentioned, what destruction actually means for the people living through it in a way that I think was also done really well, as gross as it is and as painful as it is in the show Invincible.

SPEAKER_02 42:39

I haven't made it that far. I only watched a couple clips from Invincible.

SPEAKER_03 42:42

So Oh my god, no, Mac, you need to watch Invincible. Okay, listen, if anyone is listening to this podcast, their Arkaiju in Invincible, I need you to watch Invincible. And if you don't like to watch TV and animation, read the graphic novels, read the comic books, I have the compendiums. This is, I think, my favorite superhero story ever told. What you reckon with here, the horror of destruction and the scale of that, it does it so fucking well.

SPEAKER_01 43:16

It's a lot for sure. It's wild. And I think I'm also just trying to think, I don't know if I've ever seen it, but I think shortly after this came out, they did make this American version of this film that came out in the US that I'm sure was shifted around quite a bit to decrease the impact that this movie has. I don't, I haven't seen it. Maybe somebody in our new subreddit can shed some light if you've seen it and you're listening to this episode. But I think, man, I just want to see. Now I kind of want to watch that one and just see what they did to it. I don't even know where you can find it. I'd have to look, but I just want to see does the it does the emotional weight and the impact of it actually carry over? Because I hear that it doesn't.

SPEAKER_03 43:57

I would expect that it doesn't. I mean That movie's probably bland as fuck.

SPEAKER_01 44:02

Yeah. 100%. No seasoning. No seasoning at all. Yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_03 44:06

No trauma, no seasoning, just unearned gumption.

SPEAKER_01 44:10

Terrible.

SPEAKER_02 44:11

It's probably optimized to sell units, though. Plenty of burgers going out. Whether or not there's uh any seasoning in there. Yeah, just some American cheese, you know.

SPEAKER_03 44:20

Exactly. Two slices of pickle, three onions, and nothing more, nothing less.

SPEAKER_01 44:26

Consistency. Oh man. All right. Well, moving on from this from this, I mean, we did see a lot of destruction. These were arguably some of the most intense scenes for sure. But the the heaviness of the film doesn't stop here because we then get towards the end of this film, and we have Dr. Sarazawa that cuts his own line under the ocean to take out Godzilla and like, wow, what an impact that had.

SPEAKER_02 44:57

I was not sure how he was going to take himself out up to that point because I knew that it was coming. And I'm like, is he about to give them the ball and then just pop a cap in his ass? You know, what's what's going to go on here? And so when he's involved and he's demanding the suit, I was like, oh, okay, yeah, he's gonna definitely go down with the ship here. He's gonna make sure that no one else can ever develop this weapon again, but at the same time be the hero. And that's that's cool. But they really did not do it quickly. They made us watch and made us soak in the moment and watch him cutting that line and be down there and watch the thing set off. And it wasn't like it happened in 30 seconds. It it took what, like four minutes or something for this whole thing to go down. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 45:39

Oh, we lingered.

SPEAKER_01 45:41

We definitely did. It was a time, it was a long time. It felt like a long time for sure. And yeah, it was heavy. It was that whole situation that led to not only his demise, but you know, eventually Godzilla getting dissolved, disintegrated, whatever you want to call it, by the oxygen destroyer that was deployed underneath or detonated underneath. And then the implications of what that did underwater and everything. But it's just really intense because you know, for you gotta understand 1954 could we have had some crazier effects, maybe in in modern cinema, but it still for its time was pretty fucking solid.

SPEAKER_03 46:17

It was stunning, and I know that obviously there's these moments where yeah, it's obvious like what we're looking at, but the level of detail absolutely sells it, even for as goofy as the suit can look on Godzilla, just to be clear, the googly eyes are certainly googly. The movie is shot so well and with such great contrast that it is very hard to pinpoint moments where it looks terrible.

SPEAKER_01 46:45

Oh, it's so true for sure. And this movie punches way above its weight considering the budget that it had. I think when you when you look at all of the effects as a whole, this movie really stands out. You can be thinking of those miniature effects that are used in the destruction of Tokyo because it was incredibly detailed. The entire miniature city blocks were constructed literally just to destroy them. But you just mentioned the suit, Chris. The suit mation and how Nakajima was able to bring that performance to life inside the Godzilla suit is absolutely legendary. He gives the monster weight and personality, and the suit, from what I've seen, was literally almost torture. I mean, the original Godzilla suit weighed around 200 fucking pounds and had almost no ventilation. And Nakajima could only wear it for a few minutes at a time before overheating and reportedly passed out multiple times during filming. So it just to make the movement feel so heavy and so monstrous, he just did so much with such little time. Just think of everything that went into that as just crazy. He studied heavily to try to bring that to life. The animals, the you know, bears, elephants, and stuff, which is why I think that monster movement really came to life, and Godzilla has that slow, kind of lumbering presence. Just think of having to work in a suit like that while still trying to bring all of these things to life. It was just really incredible the effects in that suit.

SPEAKER_02 48:15

I think once you get past how obvious it is, I think that's when you can really appreciate how good it is. Because yeah, like you said, Chris, we got googly eyes, and sometimes the movements you can tell are kind of strained. When you see it in action and you suspend disbelief, I think it doesn't feel like the movies we get later, like it, or even TV shows like Power Rangers. It doesn't feel like that. It doesn't feel like two people wearing suits fighting each other and scaling it so that it looks like they're giant or anything like that. It it does feel like this weird alien-style creature demolishing things and that juxtaposed against all the miniatures. Somehow we're getting real people involved. It just gives you this real sense of scale. And one that I appreciate in contrast to the 1998 Godzilla, because that Godzilla felt really small, but every time you would see it, it would be like super close and and focused. And I don't know, that's like an another modern cinematography thing. Everything's got to be like zoomed in. And here we see if everything from afar. We see Godzilla in full glory. We see up against like the power lines or whatever that was with the electric fence that we got going on. So you get a feeling of this is not a little T-Rex from Jurassic Park that's that's hunting these people. This is a massive towering creature. And I love that. I wish more creature features when they would show us the full thing would do it at this type of scale. So you could actually feel how big it is.

SPEAKER_01 49:47

So good. So good. Yeah, I mean, there's just so much to it. I think you know, the the suit is one thing. I think the other effects that you think for its time, like the fire breath that we were talking about earlier, literally this smoke and mirrors effect that I think is so so clever. And the atomic breath, the fire breath, whatever you want to call it, they used like a mix of this, it took multiple techniques combined to create something that I feel like only lasted seconds on screen. They used these hand-drawn animation layered over film, this compressed air and smoke effects to really bring that to life. I mean, just really cool. And if you watch it, it just it's so it feels like it's so subtle, but it's so cool the way they brought that to light.

SPEAKER_02 50:27

The effects here are a lot of fun. Even when we talk about miniatures and flipping over trains and cars and stuff like that, you do get a sense of action, but the way that they pace the action to me is closer to like a war movie. It's closer to watching, you know, Saving Private Ryan, where it's happening in real time, we're seeing things happen up close, and then we zoom out and see kind of the effect, the devastation that's caused by each little sweep of an arm or blast with this heat. And so I I love that because again, it doesn't really feel like a creature feature. It feels like when you watch a twister take the roof off of a building and then the building collapses, and the people are in the basement hoping they can survive. It has like that that feeling to it of of grandeur almost in a way, and so it's much more effective than zooming in on the eyeball of a raptor-shaped Godzilla climbing on a building.

SPEAKER_03 51:20

100%. And I actually want to jump in here for just a moment to point out the grandeur and the scale, that electric barrier that they set up, as if you're gonna contain him with an electric fence. It's it's such a wild concept. It is one of my favorite moments in the entire movie, specifically because of that sense of scale that you mentioned, and because of how powerless humanity is in a situation like this. So just think about this. You have the military throwing everything they have at Godzilla, they have this massive electrified defense, in a sense, constant gunfire, coordinated defense, and on paper, that should be enough. And it feels like a moment where the movie is saying, like, all right, cool, we got it. Don't worry, ladies and gentlemen, we're gonna get them. And then they just fucking don't. Like, they don't, they don't have the situation under control. Godzilla hits the barrier, you get this incredible visual of the electricity coursing through him, and for a second, you think, okay, maybe something, but then also he pushes through it like a toddler who will not be stopped. Yeah, and every single time he takes a step and roars, I just think it seems like he's stamping on a Lego and he's just mildly inconvenienced. He destroys the towers and he keeps moving forward, and then their entire plan just means nothing. And I actually want to highlight, Sean, you mentioned we have a new subreddit for Hacker Slash, it's R slash hacker slash pod. Come join us, hang out, have great discussions. One of our community members posted, What are your favorite individual shots from a horror film and why? Unrelated and unknowing that we're gonna be doing this episode. Uh he shares it, and it is this image of Godzilla from the electric barrier. What he shared is Gogeta 1954, Godzilla's ominous silhouette slowly approaching the power lines in the original film, especially with the flashes of electricity followed by the flames of the atomic breath, give some beautiful contrast in the black and white cinematography, and the dichotomy between the ancient beast and a symbol of modern technology is a strong visualization of man versus nature and gives some scale. So what a fucking great explanation of that.

SPEAKER_01 53:43

Fantastic. Yeah, really great shout out for that. What's iconic for sure, absolutely iconic. But you know, not to lighten that mood a little bit, but I couldn't stop but think like as you're kind of explaining, Chris, the scene of Godzilla pushing through the electric barrier like a toddler, stepping on these things like their Legos. I don't know about you, but I feel pretty big compared to a Lego. But if I step on a Lego, I'm going down personally. That thing hurts like a motherfucker.

SPEAKER_03 54:11

100% because your feet are so soft underneath, and not like you specifically, but like we as people were not. How'd you know?

SPEAKER_01 54:19

My feet are so soft. I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 54:21

I never want to know how soft your feet are because I hate feet actually, as it turns out. But what I mean to say is you don't probably have leathery feet, I would imagine. You seem like you take care of yourself. And part of why Legos hurt so much is because it's hitting such a soft part of our body.

SPEAKER_04 54:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 54:39

And we're not conditioned for that. Godzilla, he's a little scaly boy. Yeah. I think he's just mildly inconvenienced if it hits exactly the wrong spot, but I think he's pretty tough. He's okay.

SPEAKER_02 54:50

It didn't even seem like an inconvenience, though, to me. I think maybe because we know what to expect going into this, having seen other properties, but like I imagined this was that moment in other slasher films where somebody is going to try to attack Michael Myers or someone's gonna try to attack Jason with, you know, a baseball bat or something that they find, and you watching go, no, dude, that that's not gonna do anything. He's gonna grab it and hit you with it or throw it into your head or something. Like, who knows, right? And so when those barriers are there and they're lit up, the only thing I'm thinking is, is this gonna charge him up? Is this gonna make him worse? Is he gonna like flick it over? Is he gonna just like walk through it and look back like uh what was that? I don't know what to expect, but I did not even think for a moment that he was gonna be phased.

SPEAKER_03 55:36

It's gonna be Jason lives him.

SPEAKER_02 55:38

Yeah, I was curious. I was curious if walking through this, his fins would light up. I was like, oh, they're just giving him what he needs. That'd be cool.

SPEAKER_03 55:46

Godzilla too, electric kaiju.

SPEAKER_01 55:49

Yeah, wild for sure. For me, the slow reveal of how we got to, and then the moment that we first really see Godzilla is what makes I think this movie also really special because we have the scene where the village is getting torn apart, the tsunami hits, all this stuff is going on, and there's a moment where this house is being destroyed, and I feel like I don't know, I could have been like just it could have been like a glimpse, it could have been my mind saying, like, oh well, I know it's a Godzilla movie, so I thought maybe I saw Godzilla's tail or something hit the house or something crazy, but they didn't show it, and so like super, super effective. Mac, you compared it to like watching twisters. Yeah, 100%. It was wild, but all of that happens, you're still not really seeing anything, it's super effective, and then we get that moment when the villagers see Godzilla popping over the hill for the first time. It's it's really a major shock moment, and just the reveal of the monster and how big Godzilla is for you know his head to be over the hill like that and just coming at him. It's just wild, and it was so good.

SPEAKER_03 56:56

You know, as soon as I saw his head break the horizon over that hill, I thought he was saying, Yohoo, big summer blowout from frozen.

SPEAKER_01 57:05

Oh my god. Oh, geez.

SPEAKER_02 57:07

Somebody make that video happen for us immediately. Paste it in there, post it in the subreddit. We need to see it. It's right. We need we need that. I think a lot of your favorite moments so far, you know, hover around Godzilla. And we've mentioned some of my favorite moments, and they hovered around people. And the one that we talked about earlier with a mother and the two kids, I want to read to you the only lines that this character has. A little longer, a little longer, and we'll be with your daddy. That is it. So this brief moment, this fleeting moment that filled us with like such emotion, that was all the character got to say while embracing the children. And I think that just captured like such a feeling for me that that was one of my favorite moments. I mean, yeah, like getting through this film, you know, that you're expecting a lot of destruction, you're expecting cool creature features stuff, all right, stomping on some stuff. I was not expecting to just like focus in for a moment on a character and like you said, like accepting their fate and this loss of control. We talked about that in the radio tower as well, where it's like, you can't run. Yeah, there is no possible way that you're gonna get away from what's coming to you right now. And so it's like, what do you do with that? You know, how do you embrace that moment? I think sometimes some of us think about that. If if the worst comes worse in real life, do you just call some folks and just tell them you love them real quick? Or what you know, what are you gonna do? And so, yeah, these people, these people were humans in in those moments and and really nailed it because I think obviously this nation had just gone through this and just had to experience it. And so it doesn't feel fake at all. It feels it honestly feels like we went back and and somehow went to the past and grabbed what people actually said and went through and then put that into a movie. And I think that's like worse somehow. I don't I don't know why I feel worse about it, but maybe we all should in a way.

SPEAKER_01 59:05

Yeah, it's the parallels, I think, just like you're saying. I think one, that line is all we needed to get the impact for sure. And you're you're getting the vibes of did they just go through this, you know, and they're just portraying some of the emotions that they have. It's those parallels to what this movie is portraying and what really happened in real life. And I think it also translates really well when we get like the hospital scene, and I think this is another area where the movie's emotional core really hits because you see the aftermath of Godzilla's attack, and it really mirrors the atomic bomb survivor imagery, which I think is just really harrowing, it's super harrowing.

SPEAKER_02 59:44

The hospital scene hearing the child cry for their mother. Yeah, I'm like, stop. Okay, it's too much.

SPEAKER_03 59:52

It is so painful. I actually want to just highlight another death that we're talking about. And we're we we talked about this a little bit with Serezawa, but the oxygen destroyer ending, we acknowledge that the weapon's gotta go. We acknowledge that he's gotta go, and I get it. I also consider like the the dynamic of what his engagement to her was supposed to be in like this quasi-love triangle that he was unbothered by because he was a man focused on science and and what he was doing. But for as much pain and havoc and destruction that we see Godzilla inflict upon Tokyo, there is still something that is so sad about watching Godzilla sink, dissolve, and disappear because it's a creature that is still suffering. And in our characters in this movie as a whole, you have Yamane and you have Serisawa, who neither one of them are aligned with Godzilla at all, but you have two men of science who A want to understand, or at the very least, want to solve it with a completely different solution, knowing that this type of weapon is exactly what created this type of thing in the first place. So that's where I think the ending of this movie is super interesting because it it undercuts any sense of closure with sadness, with this displaced concern for Godzilla, but then also with the warning that if nuclear testing continues, it will continue to happen. Godzilla will strike again, and it makes it hard. Where I really want to dig in here is the fact that we just had Barbenheimer a couple summers ago, and yet we have Sede Sawa here on the polar opposite end. He's afraid of becoming the next Oppenheimer. Think about the duality here and think about how characters or men like this are presented in media, and then we have this guy who understands what it means to use a technology he builds and he hates for the greater good, but is so deeply committed to this never happening again that he takes himself out too.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:10

It's wild because yeah, he is really one of the standout characters representing this moral dilemma of scientific discovery when knowledge is too dangerous to exist all the way to this final decision. It's just one of the most powerful moments. And yeah, uh really just a standout character when you think of like all the things that Dr. Sarazawa represents in this film.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:34

It's interesting how both scientists who are focused on different things have in them this forward momentum when it comes to what they want to do and how they're pulled into now going to the past instead and repeating mistakes when they really don't want to. And they're they're forced into it. And I think he he gives up at a certain point, Sarizawa, and and says, like, fine, you know, I'm gonna go with you, you guys, along with on this plan, because he realizes okay, they're right, this is the only way to stop the destruction, but he's he's so broken to get to that point. And I think we don't get that same level of depth with uh Dr. Yamane. And I wish we I wish we did, because I think your angle there when it comes to like the fact that this is a living, breathing thing and somehow got turned into this or somehow grew into this, like we don't really focus that much past like kind of the initial concern about it. It's kind of swept away for the rest of the film.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:34

Yeah, I want to actually counter with this thought. We have Halloween 2018, and we have Dr. Sartane in that movie. And what is Dr. Sartane, if not a man who sees a force of evil or this creature who is inflicting violence and mayhem, and he doesn't want Michael Myers to die because he wants to continue studying him. That is a movie in which we can all solidly say, What the hell are you thinking, man? That makes no sense, eventually becomes a villain, right? But Datsunio Mane, let's consider this for a moment because in 1954 he would be this Dr. Sartane in this moment because he doesn't want to kill Godzilla. But he's a guy who's so obsessed with knowledge that he's willing to risk everything for it, not because of his ego or his desire for power or his endless curiosity, but instead of it coming from curiosity for curiosity's sake, it's coming from someone who understands what created the situation in the first place, has lived through the nuclear fallout of this bombing and this testing, and is trying to make sure that if there's a moment for us to learn how to survive this, that he learns what that is. And there's this sense that he's already seen the consequences of humanity's actions, right? Especially as I mentioned with the nuclear weapons. So he wants to squeeze this for as much juice as he can get from it. And I respect it, right? This movie does not fully validate him, it also does not fully condemn him. There's no black or white here. This movie is super gray. It's I guess ironic for being a black and white movie. But on the one hand, he's right. There could be breakthroughs. We could actually learn something from this, but on the other hand, fuck, people are actually dying, my guy. We can't we can't spend a lot of time on this. You might want to study him post mortem.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:40

Yeah, there's a lot of sacrificing for the greater good here. Like not necessarily getting rid of your morals or your beliefs, but jumping in to make sure that you can kind of all survive as a group. And culturally, that feels perhaps a little different than we're used to these days. And it's kind of a nice thing to see because. Everybody does have their say at least, but then they're all kind of resigned to the fact that, yeah, we have to do what's best for us, not for me. And that's that's impressive, even when it comes to like the little love triangle there, because I was kind of confused how Emiko and Dr. Serizawa, like, where did that start? Where was this going? We have Ogata coming in here as well. It seems pretty clear to me Ogata was the guy from from the jump. Like he was he was gonna make it through. And maybe that's because that's where his focus was. The three of them together, I think Serizawa just knew he had to sacrifice for everyone's greater good.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:40

For sure. It the little love triangle there definitely added some emotional stakes to the film. I do think I don't know. I do think it's an it's an interesting dynamic for sure. It might have been arguably for me one of the one of the weaker elements of the film, but I think it did also weirdly add emotional stakes. I don't know. It was kind of like back and forth on that little triangle.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:02

I got no emotional stakes from that moment and that angle. I got so much more emotion from literally everything else that was happening in this movie. And I'm like, do we really need this? There's no there's nothing between Sarisawa and her, like, there's nothing that's what I mean. This man tormented and haunted by his work. Obviously, this isn't going anywhere. There's no stakes here. There's no stakes.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:26

Yeah, I think that's what yeah, that's kind of what I mean. I it's probably going for that. It just ended up being, I think, one of the more weaker elements of the film. But what I think is interesting for again, we've been talking about this movie for quite some time now, and I feel like we've mentioned the fact that there's a lot of different types of Godzilla out there. And when you go back to the first one, Godzilla, this movie, 1954, you quickly realize that Godzilla was never meant to be a hero. In this original film, Godzilla is not misunderstood, it's he's not sympathetic, it's he's not a protector of any kind. Godzilla is pure destruction, it's a force of nature, it's tied to nuclear horror, and really the hero, Godzilla, didn't it really emerge until way later in sequels, and it's just very interesting to see the I guess you could call it the the tones over the years and the different themes that have that we've seen with Godzilla over the years.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:28

Yeah, Godzilla for me in this movie is honestly a victim. R.I.P. Godzilla. You made a lot of victims yourself and hurt people, hurt people, I get it. But again, he is that consequence, and this Godzilla in particular, right, is something that is disturbed and mutated by nuclear testing. So everything that happens after feels for me less his fault. Not like he's attacking out of malice, right? He's just existing in a way that is completely incompatible with the world around him. You're not rooting for him, we're not rooting for him, but you're also not really rooting against him in the same way that you would root against a traditional horror villain. He's a victim of humanity's actions just as much as the people are victims of him. It's again the great circle of life.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:18

Yeah, for sure. Speaking of circle of life, too, I think there's also that chilling final line that's warning that another Godzilla could appear in in nuclear testing if it continues, which really kind of reinforces the film's message, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_03 1:09:34

Yeah, oh my gosh. I watched this movie a few days ago, obviously, and then again today. And I need to stay away from the news. I kind of stay away from a lot of things.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:46

And I'm not one that like really dives into that anyway. I'm not like beholden to it, but when you have the last line of this movie, and then you have this moment to really flip over to current events. This movie is just so much about escalation and the dangers of escalation. This entire situation exists because of nuclear weapons testing. Uh-huh. And the response to Godzilla is more weapons, bigger weapons, stronger defenses, more force. None of it works. If this movie was made in America, fuck. We would have been throwing AR-15s at this guy. So the movie kind of traps you in this cycle where humanity keeps trying to solve a problem that it already created itself by doubling down on the same fucking thing that caused it in the first place. And when they eventually find something that can stop Godzilla, it's not presented as a victory, which I appreciate. It's not a win. It's presented as the danger of stepping forward because now you've created something potentially worse. And it's again, it's not this like we saved the day. It's really the reality that every solution risks creating a bigger problem. It feels like so alarmingly relevant right now.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:05

Too, too, too relevant. Oh gosh. I mean, we have all sorts of technologies investigating um what are we looking into? AI killing machines, basically, at this point. And so, yeah, you know, you can't count on the stuff to do exactly what you need it to do, only when you want it to do that. I mean, Terminator is one way of thinking about it, but we've got self-driving cars that have been hitting people for years. And so, you know, when you amplify that to drones that are allowed to bomb things on their own without a human intervention, that worries me. That worries me greatly. Just just saying, I mean, people there there's an effect on human beings anytime you test this kind of stuff. The fishing boat at the beginning of the movie was based on a real life thing from atomic testing, from from dropping bombs, and it was Lucky Dragon number five who paid the price for that. It was contaminated by radioactive fallout from uh uh from a hydrogen bomb test at the bikini atoll. So this is real life stuff that they're basing it on, and yeah, this human patterns, we just can't break them, and they're dangerous.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:07

Do you think the folks who made the first atomic or hydrogen bombs could have ever imagined a world in which there is a straight line that's drawn from their weapons of mass destruction to a talking dog saying Yo Kiero Taco Bell?

SPEAKER_01 1:12:25

Oh no. Oh my gosh. One of the things that I think works really, really well, and I think what this film did really, really well, is the powerful allegory about nuclear weapons and scientific responsibility. And I think very few monster movies feel this meaningful for sure, but I just can't get enough of talking about the effects in this movie and the different things. And there's one one thing that, you know, Mac, I think you mentioned it at the beginning of this that you had to look up just to see because it was it just stood out to you. And it's one that we hadn't been able to talk about yet. And I just want to highlight it as like you know, lump it in there with the effects that is one of the best parts of the film, and it is literally it is literally the roar of Godzilla. It's such an iconic roar, and I you ended up looking it up, right? I mean, it's it's actually wild what made that sound, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:13:17

Yeah, so we used a bass guitar. We dragged something across the loosened strings and then modulated the sound. I don't know if we slowed it down, I think, and that's how you get the roar. Yeah, they used these there's like some reverb and yeah, it's crazy.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:32

Yeah, they used this bass and they used these leather gloves that were coated in pintar and slid those across the bass and made one of what became one of the most recognizable audio signatures in film history.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:46

Bro, does that mean that we can make our own Godzilla movie?

SPEAKER_01 1:13:49

Yeah, we just gotta slap at the bass.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:51

Oh, that makes me wonder if the Chili Peppers have ever done that while practicing. Oh, yeah, probably naked too. Only socks here. And okay, I I do want to go back to something we mentioned earlier, which is the pacing of this film, because you can have very different reactions to this. You can probably enjoy it, not enjoy it very much at all, especially if you're, you know, a fan of like fast-moving things. But I actually don't have an issue with the pacing for most of it. I think we have a good build. I just think we left we let the throttle off right at the peak. And we got really somber because we have this explosive destruction scene, and I think we have still plenty of emotion in in these smaller moments during that. And I'm surprised that we we took such a step down afterwards, even saying goodbye to Godzilla felt like a whisper in a way. I mean, it was big, obviously, it's still an important moment, but it feels sad, you know, it kind of feels low and slow and depressing. And I'm just surprised that we didn't carry that destruction and action all the way to the end.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:57

Yeah, I don't disagree with you. I think it's more satisfying for me, perhaps, than it is for you, because I still found there to be a lot of activity there. For me, where the pacing wobbles just a touch is in the love triangle that didn't need to exist. It felt like it was pulling focus and hamming things up where we didn't really need it to be. But beyond that, I have zero complaints about this movie. I just think a modern audience watching this now, if they cannot put on a hat of like, okay, let me just leave well enough alone and understand that I'm watching a movie from 1954.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:33

And you know what, it just reminds me of kind of my journey now as a reader. I spent most of my 20s and 30s not reading books. I kind of gave up after middle school because I was reading for fun, reached a post-collegiate level of uh reading comprehension, and then I was like, cool, I'm done. And then I didn't really pick it back up for fun until like my 30s. And now I realize how I let myself down. There's a lot of classics that I've never read. The Count of Monte Cristo never happened in my life. And I'm I'm missing that richness. And so when I see a movie like this for the first time, I kind of feel bad because I feel like I let myself down. I feel like I could have actually enriched my being earlier when it came to cinema. And so, yeah, I think this is worthy of a rewatch because now as I'm exploring classics and literature, or at least eyeballing them, I'm thinking there's like this feeling to I need to complete everything. I need to get to the important stuff that like makes you a complete reader. And now for cinema, yeah, let me let me get more Godzilla and kind of see where this goes. I know of Mothra. Have I seen the Mothra film? Have I seen when the two interact? Have I seen when Godzilla and King Kong interact? I don't think I have. I'm familiar with the concept, but now I feel like there's this whole other picture that I still need to paint, and I'm willing to give this another shot in there.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:48

Yeah, for sure. I agree. I think it is something that is worth a rewatch. It's something that I have re-watched, it's something that I will re-watch, though probably not very casually. I think that this isn't a throw it on for fun monster movie. It's it's more of a historically important horror sci-fi film that is worth revisiting occasionally. And I think it's kind of the it's just kind of the movie that gains appreciation over time as you recognize really the craftsmanship, the cultural impact, and really just the seriousness of its message.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:23

Yeah, you don't throw this on for fun, you throw this on for depression. But I mean, it is worth watching several times over, if for nothing more than just to appreciate the origin and the craft. And I actually can't wait to watch even more Godzilla movies after this. I think we're not gonna be obviously covering 40 some odd episodes of Godzilla this year, don't worry. But I think I am gonna start a little tradition of watching one Godzilla movie a week and just see how it goes. I'll put on another one tonight. But for now, there you have it, folks. Godzilla 1954, the original that started it all, has earned a Universal Slash. Now we've certainly had a robust discussion here, but the conversation doesn't end here by any means.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:06

No, because if you want to see more of what's lurking in the murky depths of the waters of this episode, check out our new subreddit, hacker slash pod. This is where you can keep the conversation alive with all kinds of other horror fans.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:21

We'll see you next time, folks, and remember the truth must be made public.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:26

This is awful. Atomic tuna, radioactive fallout, and now this Godzilla to top it off.