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Why do people love giant monsters?
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I don't know.
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Why I love giant monsters is because they wreak havoc.
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I love monsters a lot.
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And to have a monster that's the size of a skyscraper
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is just the best thing in the world.
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There isn't a culture on Earth that doesn't
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tell stories about monsters.
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I think because they represent part of ourselves.
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It's that constant battle between our more elevated
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human nature and are much more animalistic, ferocious, feral,
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and violent, and scary nature.
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With most giant monster kaiju films,
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there's some upset giant creature
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that is getting from point A to point
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B, whatever its purpose is, and just
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messing up things in its path.
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It's as simple as that.
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What are the must see giant monster movies?
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Horror film, science fiction films,
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they mirror the anxieties of the age.
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And the 1950s was the Communist menace
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and fear of nuclear war, atomic war,
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and the effects of radiation.
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So you had all of these movies like Invasion
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of the Body Snatchers--
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They're after you.
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They're after all of us, our wives, our children, everyone.
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They're here already!
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--I Married A Monster From Outer Space.
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So people look the same, but they're not.
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There's some thing that crept into Bill's body.
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They're evil like your neighbor.
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It could be an alien, or a pod person, or a commie.
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Or giant bugs, because of radioactive fallout
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from mankind's messing with atomic energy.
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Them! is probably the one that leaps to mind.
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Them!
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Them! is a classic giant bug movie.
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One of the family of Formicidae, an ant.
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An ant?
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I don't believe it.
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It's not possible.
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When these creatures become so big,
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that they can dominate the human race,
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I mean, how do you fight that?
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How do you fight this creature that has zero interest in you
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other than as maybe food?
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The practical effects that were used,
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seeing those giant mandibles in frame and people
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touching the hairy bristles that were just
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giant porcupine quills, that stuff really,
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really was quite visceral.
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You think about a movie like Them!
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and you think about the look on people's face.
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The performance is everything, right?
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Because we can't linger our camera
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too long on these creatures because you're
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going to really quickly see that this is pretty ridiculous.
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I can only imagine how difficult it was to perform
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amongst those physical props.
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So as an actor, you have to give it your all.
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It's very cool to watch how they did this.
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And what they did with the budget they had.
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And it makes you wish that a lot of these movies that came out
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in the next few years had as much of a budget
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because some of them didn't quite look as good.
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We just made spiders big, ants big.
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Whatever it was, just made them bigger.
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Was it as creative as it could be?
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Not necessarily, but it was more effective
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in that each of these giant creatures was totally relatable.
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We know what a spider is.
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We know what an ant is.
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And to imagine them that big, that's the horrifying part is we
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know what it is.
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I have never seen a black and white film
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about a irradiated giant animals on the attack,
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which I haven't loved.
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There is something some eternal 10-year-old inside of me that
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just wants to see giant spiders or giant ants march on Santa Fe.
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Oh, Jesus!
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What the hell is going on?
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I mean, what the hell is going on!
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They might not be very big compared to King Kong
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or Godzilla, but one of my favorite giant monsters
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are the Graboids in Tremors, which
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are these underground slugs that basically have the ability
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to like jet propel themselves underneath the Nevada desert
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and then pop up and eat people whenever they please.
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Tremors is the best monster movie of the '90s, full stop.
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Probably one of the smartest monster movies
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you're going to get just in general.
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The characterization in that movie is fantastic.
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The ensemble is amazing.
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It's scary.
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The humor works.
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Uh, roger that, Burt, and congratulations.
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Be advised, however, there are two more,
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repeat, two more mother humpers.
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It takes two guys that we
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all can relate to in some way.
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They're are good old boys.
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They're guys that, like, you would have gone to high school
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with.
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They have no special skills, really.
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They are not scientists.
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I don't even know if they're bright.
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Well, I'll tell you.
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Nobody handles garbage better than we do.
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And then it puts them in a monster movie.
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Tremors also capitalizes on the Jaws POV
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like you were in the killer perspective.
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No way!
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And that is horrifying.
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And the practical effects of that movie still hold up.
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When they trick the one Graboid into smashing into the cement
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wall, and then they, like, dig up one end of it,
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and Kevin Bacon picks it up.
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I found the ass end.
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You feel the scope.
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You feel how big that thing is because they created that thing,
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you know?
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And it just feels real.
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When the Graboid comes smashing through Burt Gummer's wall,
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and the tentacles come out, it's just so good.
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It does kind of take that old school Western idea
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that if anybody tries to invade us, we've got guns,
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and we're Americans, and we'll blow your ass away.
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It's got that message, but done in an amped up
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kind of satirical way.
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Broke into the wrong goddamn rec room, didn't you,
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you bastard?
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There is a gleefulness to the movie
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that's very hard to recreate.
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It's been often imitated, but very hard to recreate.
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There's just something very genuine.
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It was coming from a genuine place.
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And no one saw it coming.
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I want to watch this movie tonight.
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So good.
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Get inside!
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Cloverfield is a perfect Godzilla film for America
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because you care about the people.
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There is nothing I can do about that.
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The girl that I love more than anything is dying,
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and it's my fault. She should have been with me tonight,
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and I let her go.
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Cloverfield makes
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you care about this romance falling apart
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and these goofy young people in Manhattan.
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--and bring some guy to my party?
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You haven't talked to me in weeks.
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God, man. Sorry.
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Come on.
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And you're seeing these emotional dramas
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between people.
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This soap opera element of it is very American.
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Rob and Beth totally had sex together.
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I knew it.
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And it's about their survival.
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Cloverfield showed you can be a successful American
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young person, your life is great,
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and at the drop of a hat--
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And hang on to the people that you care about the most.
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Oh, god.
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What the hell was that?
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What was that?
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It can all be taken away by terrorists, or giant kaiju, or
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an invading army, or whatever.
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Like, you are not safe.
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No matter how much money they put into the military,
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it's not going to last forever.
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And it's coming.
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And partly, it already has come with 9/11.
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I think without taking into account 9/11
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as context with Cloverfield, you're
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missing the point in the way that you would miss the point
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if you didn't talk about the atomic bomb
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when watching Godzilla.
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It's the same connection, and it's why it works.
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It works because we're exorcizing
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demons through this film.
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Cloverfield, for me, is one of those movies that just feels
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about as close as you can get to seeing a giant monster attack
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because the way it was shot.
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You're in it.
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Doing a found footage approach to that, I think,
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was absolutely brilliant because it's putting you on the ground.
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You're basically looking at eye level,
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looking at soldiers running around,
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and all the camera has to do is go--
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and you're just seeing a giant monster
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face looking down at you.
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That's really horrifying.
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The most important part of the Cloverfield creature
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that I think dare I say why it was successful
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was the fact that we understood his motivation.
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The common trait with kaiju type creatures, giant monsters,
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is that they are just knocking over buildings
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with no specific reason other than violence.
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And Cloverfield was a newborn, brand new baby hatched out
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of an egg that found itself in an environment
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that it was afraid of.
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So it was never really trying to destroy New York.
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It was just trying to find its mom.
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Are you guys seeing this shit right now?
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Oh, my god.
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Oh, god.
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If you can imbue a creature with a motivation, one
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that works for the story, it makes
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everyone's job so much easier.
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And it makes the consumption of that creature
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by an audience so much more easy and rich.
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Nope.
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Nope, oh, my gosh.
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I haven't seen a movie in so long
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where something as simple as a cloud became menacing.
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OJ, it's in the cloud.
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Mm-hmm.
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It's like the other side of a Joni Mitchell song, right?
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Like, clouds, when I see them up and down.
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And now, I'm fucking terrified.
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In Jordan Peele's Nope, you've got this spacecraft that
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is ultimately revealed to not be a spacecraft,
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but to actually be this interdimensional,
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interstellar creature that has just decided
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to live above the desert.
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And then once we get into that creature,
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as it devours those people, it squishes them in the mouth.
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Oh, it was so good and so singular.
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I had never seen anything like that before.
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Once you realize that people are getting sucked up
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into this thing and then going through its digestive tract,
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I was just like, this is awesome.
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And then it, like, when it regurgitates
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all of that blood on the house, that's nightmare imagery.
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You never imagine a farmhouse being covered in blood.
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Jordan takes you inside and you're living what
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this character is experiencing.
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then you pop out for the wide.
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Every kaiju movie is about nature.
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And this is absolutely a kaiju film.
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Even though there's not a fight, it's still a giant monster
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and it's eating people, but there is no expectation
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that they're going to kill it.
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Website like Cyber Dominion will
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pay $5,000 to $100k for photographic evidence
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of UFOs and shit.
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They just want to take a photo of it.
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But it opens up,
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you know, into this kind of butterfly.
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It's more dangerous because it's beautiful.
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But yet, it becomes more lethal when it really reveals itself.
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It's a film about the feeling of being observed
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and the observer.
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You can identify with the alien.
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You can identify with the band of heroes
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because we're all in that space where
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we're going back from being the subject to being the watcher.
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Are we behind the camera?
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Or are we in front of the camera?
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That's a weird position to be in.
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And that drives you crazy.
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And you see what happens to the monkey.
266
00:15:19,610 --> 00:15:21,310
You see what happens to the monster.
267
00:15:21,440 --> 00:15:25,050
And you see what happens to people of color
268
00:15:25,180 --> 00:15:29,620
when they're treated like cattle to be herded
269
00:15:29,750 --> 00:15:32,750
or anything that takes your difference
270
00:15:32,880 --> 00:15:37,190
and makes it a gimmick, something to sell.
271
00:15:37,320 --> 00:15:40,500
So people who say that that movie didn't have the same kind
272
00:15:40,630 --> 00:15:44,500
of cultural, or socioeconomic, or racial undertone the other
273
00:15:44,630 --> 00:15:47,460
two of his films had are wrong.
274
00:15:47,590 --> 00:15:48,990
It's right there.
275
00:16:06,050 --> 00:16:09,310
They're somewhat slow and lethargic until inflamed
276
00:16:09,440 --> 00:16:10,570
by the smell of blood.
277
00:16:22,930 --> 00:16:24,630
What if circumstances magnified one of them
278
00:16:24,760 --> 00:16:26,760
in size and strength?
279
00:16:26,890 --> 00:16:28,630
Then expect something that's fiercer,
280
00:16:28,770 --> 00:16:30,550
more cruel, and deadly than anything
281
00:16:30,680 --> 00:16:31,680
that ever walked the Earth.
282
00:16:35,860 --> 00:16:37,950
There's nothing out there.
283
00:16:38,080 --> 00:16:38,990
Nothing in the mist.
284
00:16:48,960 --> 00:16:53,050
Man, as the dominant species of life on Earth,
285
00:16:53,180 --> 00:16:54,700
will probably be extinct.
286
00:17:06,500 --> 00:17:08,760
You know, King Kong and Godzilla
287
00:17:08,890 --> 00:17:14,550
are not just film history, but they are cultural iconography.
288
00:17:14,680 --> 00:17:17,120
You know, like, they almost represent like America and Japan
289
00:17:17,250 --> 00:17:20,120
in various ways, but, like, they just are pop culture.
290
00:17:20,250 --> 00:17:24,860
Like, they transcend just being, oh, here's these great movies.
291
00:17:33,660 --> 00:17:35,610
My all-time favorite giant monster
292
00:17:35,750 --> 00:17:40,050
film from the classic era, you've got to go with King Kong.
293
00:17:40,180 --> 00:17:42,060
There's a magic to that movie
294
00:17:42,190 --> 00:17:45,540
that is really timeless.
295
00:17:45,670 --> 00:17:48,500
It's still galvanizes you when you watch it.
296
00:17:48,630 --> 00:17:52,460
Did you ever hear of Kong?
297
00:17:52,590 --> 00:17:57,200
It's pure fantasy at a time when things like John Carter--
298
00:17:57,330 --> 00:17:59,680
you know, Burroughs and all that stuff--
299
00:17:59,810 --> 00:18:01,080
was still so popular.
300
00:18:01,210 --> 00:18:04,510
So the idea of going out into the jungle
301
00:18:04,640 --> 00:18:10,000
and finding dinosaurs, and giant spiders, and King Kong,
302
00:18:10,130 --> 00:18:12,040
it still felt like that was possible.
303
00:18:12,170 --> 00:18:19,090
There were unknown parts of the world that you could discover.
304
00:18:19,220 --> 00:18:21,310
King Kong is worshipped as a god
305
00:18:21,440 --> 00:18:23,790
on this island of natives.
306
00:18:23,920 --> 00:18:27,540
And he's not a bad guy.
307
00:18:27,670 --> 00:18:31,150
He's just a misunderstood big giant ape
308
00:18:31,280 --> 00:18:32,930
who happens to fall in love with Fay Wray
309
00:18:33,060 --> 00:18:34,980
because she's just so beautiful.
310
00:18:35,110 --> 00:18:39,720
And he actually saves her life.
311
00:18:39,850 --> 00:18:43,160
And the human men are horrified by this romance
312
00:18:43,290 --> 00:18:45,210
because he's a giant ape.
313
00:18:45,340 --> 00:18:48,510
But we've got something he wants.
314
00:18:48,640 --> 00:18:51,560
Yeah, something he won't get again.
315
00:18:51,690 --> 00:18:56,650
One of the elements of the original film that isn't given
316
00:18:56,780 --> 00:19:00,310
the credit that it's due is the set design of that jungle
317
00:19:00,440 --> 00:19:02,310
and the matte paintings.
318
00:19:02,440 --> 00:19:03,880
It didn't look like a jungle.
319
00:19:04,010 --> 00:19:06,140
It looked like a fairy tale.
320
00:19:06,270 --> 00:19:09,360
And that allowed-- the audience's suspension of
321
00:19:09,490 --> 00:19:13,840
disbelief went along with that.
322
00:19:13,970 --> 00:19:16,590
The 1933 Kong, it still holds up
323
00:19:16,720 --> 00:19:18,370
and it's still a pinnacle.
324
00:19:18,500 --> 00:19:21,720
And it's still like a masterwork not only of like storytelling
325
00:19:21,850 --> 00:19:24,720
for the era, but like, technically what they were doing
326
00:19:24,850 --> 00:19:28,250
on display in terms of, like, creating this like fully living,
327
00:19:28,380 --> 00:19:31,430
breathing creature, you know, that really was cotton
328
00:19:31,560 --> 00:19:35,390
and rabbit fur, you know, Kong brought that to life in a way
329
00:19:35,520 --> 00:19:37,260
that I don't think anything else had done before.
330
00:19:42,700 --> 00:19:45,090
There's something so moving
331
00:19:45,220 --> 00:19:48,880
about him lost in the city and fighting for his life.
332
00:19:54,540 --> 00:19:55,490
He's destructive.
333
00:19:55,620 --> 00:19:56,930
He's killing people.
334
00:19:57,060 --> 00:19:58,840
He's smashing planes out of the sky,
335
00:19:58,980 --> 00:20:01,720
but we're rooting for him the whole way.
336
00:20:06,110 --> 00:20:07,940
It's not really so much about, oh, no, we were
337
00:20:08,070 --> 00:20:09,550
attacked by a giant monster.
338
00:20:09,680 --> 00:20:12,990
It's really more about we kind of brought something
339
00:20:13,120 --> 00:20:14,770
here that shouldn't have been here
340
00:20:14,900 --> 00:20:16,470
that was out of its element.
341
00:20:16,600 --> 00:20:18,470
And we shouldn't have done that.
342
00:20:18,600 --> 00:20:21,430
And it's kind of sad and it's kind of our fault.
343
00:20:21,560 --> 00:20:23,650
A really bitter sweet kind of movie,
344
00:20:23,780 --> 00:20:26,440
and that's why I think it really resonated with so many people
345
00:20:26,570 --> 00:20:27,310
and still does.
346
00:20:36,140 --> 00:20:37,750
What does it matter?
347
00:20:37,880 --> 00:20:39,060
Airplanes got him.
348
00:20:39,190 --> 00:20:40,670
It wasn't the airplanes.
349
00:20:45,590 --> 00:20:48,680
It was beauty killed the beast.
350
00:20:48,810 --> 00:20:52,640
Peter Jackson's King Kong was a work of art, technically.
351
00:20:52,770 --> 00:20:55,860
I think the smartest thing about that particular King Kong
352
00:20:55,990 --> 00:21:00,380
was the performance capture utilized
353
00:21:00,520 --> 00:21:04,260
to get that King Kong to be emotive
354
00:21:04,390 --> 00:21:09,130
and to be humanized, have the audiences feel
355
00:21:09,260 --> 00:21:12,480
the empathy that we had only felt
356
00:21:12,610 --> 00:21:14,090
with the original King Kong.
357
00:21:14,220 --> 00:21:15,830
He spanned that distance of time.
358
00:21:15,970 --> 00:21:19,320
And it's like Peter Jackson did what the first King Kong did,
359
00:21:19,450 --> 00:21:21,620
which was make you feel for it.
360
00:21:24,450 --> 00:21:26,500
Peter made a great movie
361
00:21:26,630 --> 00:21:30,550
that was sort of a modern retelling of the original film
362
00:21:30,680 --> 00:21:32,760
with modern special effects.
363
00:21:32,900 --> 00:21:35,030
The thing that was lost for me in it
364
00:21:35,160 --> 00:21:40,380
was the fact that Kong was no longer a capital-M Movie Monster
365
00:21:40,510 --> 00:21:42,990
who stood upright and was bipedal,
366
00:21:43,120 --> 00:21:46,820
and instead was just turned into a giant kind
367
00:21:46,950 --> 00:21:48,080
of silverback gorilla.
368
00:21:53,610 --> 00:21:55,920
One of the things that was really important to me
369
00:21:56,050 --> 00:21:57,960
in going into Kong: Skull Island was
370
00:21:58,090 --> 00:22:01,400
bringing back that capital-M Movie Monster vibe.
371
00:22:06,540 --> 00:22:08,060
Early on in my thought process, it
372
00:22:08,190 --> 00:22:10,890
was almost like what would have happened if Kong didn't
373
00:22:11,020 --> 00:22:12,500
get taken off the island.
374
00:22:12,630 --> 00:22:14,500
Could this Kong actually just be an extension
375
00:22:14,630 --> 00:22:15,850
of the older version?
376
00:22:25,160 --> 00:22:26,820
Truly, the first image in my mind
377
00:22:26,950 --> 00:22:30,910
was Kong just silhouetted by the sun set against that orange sky
378
00:22:31,040 --> 00:22:34,390
with the choppers flanking him.
379
00:22:34,520 --> 00:22:35,830
And I've never seen a monster movie
380
00:22:35,960 --> 00:22:38,960
where you bleed in, apocalypse now
381
00:22:39,090 --> 00:22:41,360
over some insane kaiju battle.
382
00:22:45,400 --> 00:22:46,620
I've just never seen that.
383
00:22:46,750 --> 00:22:49,320
And I think so much of cinema right now
384
00:22:49,450 --> 00:22:52,280
and preserving the religious element
385
00:22:52,410 --> 00:22:54,590
of the theatrical experience is like giving people something
386
00:22:54,720 --> 00:22:55,500
they haven't seen before.
387
00:23:09,510 --> 00:23:14,740
I don't know what it is about Godzilla that
388
00:23:14,870 --> 00:23:19,650
is so compelling to people that it's still
389
00:23:19,780 --> 00:23:24,440
much more so than King Kong I think, in a pop cultural sense.
390
00:23:24,570 --> 00:23:28,360
People love him and are drawn to him.
391
00:23:28,490 --> 00:23:31,010
It appeals to something primal that much
392
00:23:31,140 --> 00:23:32,710
more so than King Kong.
393
00:23:32,840 --> 00:23:35,280
You know, Frankenstein is more popular than the Wolfman.
394
00:23:35,410 --> 00:23:36,710
I don't know why.
395
00:23:45,810 --> 00:23:47,900
American audiences know this character as Godzilla,
396
00:23:48,030 --> 00:23:51,510
but the name "Gojira" actually is pretty self-explanatory
397
00:23:51,640 --> 00:23:54,470
because it's a combination of "gorilla,"
398
00:23:54,600 --> 00:23:56,910
the Japanese pronunciation of gorilla,
399
00:23:57,040 --> 00:24:01,000
and then "kujira," which is the Japanese pronunciation of whale.
400
00:24:01,130 --> 00:24:05,220
So it's this large creature, you mash them together,
401
00:24:05,350 --> 00:24:10,140
and you have a creature that can traverse land and sea.
402
00:24:10,270 --> 00:24:11,920
There would be no Godzilla without The Beast
403
00:24:12,050 --> 00:24:13,360
from 20,000 Fathoms.
404
00:24:13,490 --> 00:24:18,450
5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
405
00:24:24,330 --> 00:24:27,200
The idea of atomic power
406
00:24:27,330 --> 00:24:30,940
unleashing a natural predator was really
407
00:24:31,070 --> 00:24:33,290
most potent in that film.
408
00:24:33,420 --> 00:24:35,210
When we released the bomb, the heat
409
00:24:35,340 --> 00:24:37,780
generated melted the ice in which this beast
410
00:24:37,910 --> 00:24:40,300
was imprisoned and freed it.
411
00:24:40,430 --> 00:24:42,350
There's a bomb testing.
412
00:24:42,480 --> 00:24:45,260
This ancient dinosaur comes out and wreaks
413
00:24:45,390 --> 00:24:48,090
havoc through America.
414
00:24:48,220 --> 00:24:53,490
And from this kind of humble, but very popular movie,
415
00:24:53,620 --> 00:24:55,140
you get Godzilla.
416
00:25:02,760 --> 00:25:09,680
And Godzilla takes this idea of nuclear power
417
00:25:09,810 --> 00:25:12,460
unleashing a natural predator.
418
00:25:12,590 --> 00:25:15,640
And gives it a resonance that Beast from 20,000 Fathoms
419
00:25:15,770 --> 00:25:17,380
didn't really have.
420
00:25:17,510 --> 00:25:21,520
Godzilla might be one of the quintessential examples of using
421
00:25:21,650 --> 00:25:24,820
horror or sort of fantastic elements
422
00:25:24,950 --> 00:25:27,960
to deal with trauma in a way that maybe if you dealt
423
00:25:28,090 --> 00:25:29,870
with it more directly, then people wouldn't just
424
00:25:30,000 --> 00:25:31,180
wouldn't want to talk about it.
425
00:25:38,580 --> 00:25:41,880
This is nine years after the end of World War II.
426
00:25:42,010 --> 00:25:45,150
Think about the atomic bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
427
00:25:53,500 --> 00:25:56,510
And I don't think it was even a complaint that the weapons had
428
00:25:56,640 --> 00:26:00,680
been used against Japan so much as the realization
429
00:26:00,820 --> 00:26:04,300
that there was now a new terror in the world.
430
00:26:04,430 --> 00:26:07,170
And the representation of this terror
431
00:26:07,300 --> 00:26:11,260
would be in the form of this giant monster figure.
432
00:26:14,180 --> 00:26:18,570
When you go to the original '54 Gojira, it is
433
00:26:18,700 --> 00:26:23,840
a dark story of cultural PTSD.
434
00:26:23,970 --> 00:26:28,840
Then Godzilla became, in the ensuing years, a toy.
435
00:26:32,370 --> 00:26:34,810
They sort of redesigned the Godzilla a little bit
436
00:26:34,940 --> 00:26:38,770
to seem more kid friendly.
437
00:26:38,900 --> 00:26:41,940
Eyes became a little bit rounder and a little bit more cartoon
438
00:26:42,070 --> 00:26:45,030
like because they realized that Godzilla was
439
00:26:45,160 --> 00:26:48,340
becoming a sort of superhero that kids
440
00:26:48,470 --> 00:26:49,910
really latched on to and loved.
441
00:26:50,040 --> 00:26:51,340
And I was one of those kids.
442
00:26:51,470 --> 00:26:54,830
So I still have a soft spot for that design.
443
00:26:54,960 --> 00:26:57,180
As a kid, you want the giant monster to be your friend.
444
00:26:57,310 --> 00:27:01,620
And with Godzilla, it was fun to cultivate sort of that feeling
445
00:27:01,750 --> 00:27:07,360
that he's on our side and he loves us, which is not
446
00:27:07,490 --> 00:27:10,320
really where it started at all.
447
00:27:10,450 --> 00:27:12,060
To be a little kid and getting
448
00:27:12,190 --> 00:27:17,110
to see this stuff on TV and these bright insane colors
449
00:27:17,240 --> 00:27:21,770
and this music just, ,, you know,
450
00:27:21,900 --> 00:27:24,290
it was just overwhelming.
451
00:27:24,420 --> 00:27:26,860
To this day, if they're on, I watch them.
452
00:27:26,990 --> 00:27:30,300
There's this tendency to want to dismiss the silly films,
453
00:27:30,430 --> 00:27:32,560
but even the ones that maybe don't have a deeper meaning,
454
00:27:32,690 --> 00:27:33,910
I also enjoy.
455
00:27:34,040 --> 00:27:35,610
I mean, I'm someone who likes, you know,
456
00:27:35,740 --> 00:27:37,650
Godzilla versus Megalon.
457
00:27:41,790 --> 00:27:43,660
Some people just aren't fans of that.
458
00:27:43,790 --> 00:27:46,790
The Godzilla of Godzilla versus Megalon
459
00:27:46,920 --> 00:27:50,360
is not the Godzilla of the original Gojira.
460
00:27:50,490 --> 00:27:53,010
It's an arc in that series where it starts
461
00:27:53,140 --> 00:27:56,060
off very gritty and realistic.
462
00:27:56,190 --> 00:27:59,980
And over time, it becomes a parody of itself.
463
00:28:00,110 --> 00:28:02,980
They go through this cycle.
464
00:28:03,110 --> 00:28:05,330
And then they have to reset.
465
00:28:05,460 --> 00:28:06,510
And then they do that a lot.
466
00:28:09,470 --> 00:28:12,470
When I was a kid, Godzilla was more like a hero, you know.
467
00:28:12,600 --> 00:28:15,340
And he was fighting and beating up all other monsters.
468
00:28:15,470 --> 00:28:18,520
And that's what I wanted.
469
00:28:18,650 --> 00:28:22,350
And I knew that, back in 2004, this
470
00:28:22,480 --> 00:28:27,180
is the last opportunity to make old school, man and suit,
471
00:28:27,310 --> 00:28:31,840
Godzilla, which I love.
472
00:28:31,970 --> 00:28:33,920
I knew that, you know, they're going to reboot it,
473
00:28:34,060 --> 00:28:36,410
you know, but it's not going to be like the Godzilla
474
00:28:36,540 --> 00:28:39,710
that I loved when I was a kid.
475
00:28:39,840 --> 00:28:45,940
Godzilla can be hero, can be, you know, scary, can be fun.
476
00:28:46,070 --> 00:28:48,550
It's just like the final big firework carnival.
477
00:28:48,680 --> 00:28:50,380
So let's have fun.
478
00:30:08,850 --> 00:30:15,680
A great Japanese kaiju has a mixture of creature
479
00:30:15,810 --> 00:30:17,380
that comes from nature.
480
00:30:17,510 --> 00:30:20,860
So there are elements of reptiles or mammals,
481
00:30:20,990 --> 00:30:25,040
but they also have a mythological elements to them,
482
00:30:25,170 --> 00:30:30,000
almost a fantastical aspect to their design.
483
00:30:30,130 --> 00:30:32,170
Typically, they don't just take an animal
484
00:30:32,300 --> 00:30:34,440
that we're familiar with and just, you know,
485
00:30:34,570 --> 00:30:36,830
make it 200 feet tall.
486
00:30:36,960 --> 00:30:39,440
There's always flourishes to them.
487
00:30:39,570 --> 00:30:43,490
What I find so compelling about the Japanese point of view
488
00:30:43,620 --> 00:30:48,800
is that they are fearless in respects to aesthetics
489
00:30:48,930 --> 00:30:53,150
and certain choices about these creatures because they go crazy.
490
00:30:53,280 --> 00:30:54,980
I mean, some of them are absolutely zany.
491
00:30:55,110 --> 00:30:57,070
Did you ever see the movie Big Man Japan?
492
00:31:06,820 --> 00:31:08,690
That is nuts.
493
00:31:08,820 --> 00:31:11,210
The stuff makes no sense whatsoever
494
00:31:11,340 --> 00:31:12,390
biologically speaking.
495
00:31:27,100 --> 00:31:30,670
But that's what's so wonderful about it.
496
00:31:30,800 --> 00:31:34,630
As a creative person, I realize how stifled my creativity must
497
00:31:34,760 --> 00:31:36,450
be because I could never come up with that kind
498
00:31:36,590 --> 00:31:38,410
of wonderful lunacy.
499
00:31:43,290 --> 00:31:44,810
For me, Mothra always
500
00:31:44,990 --> 00:31:48,420
has a special place in my heart because, ultimately, she
501
00:31:48,550 --> 00:31:50,250
ends up being a mother, right?
502
00:31:50,380 --> 00:31:51,080
So there you go.
503
00:31:51,210 --> 00:31:52,120
Come on.
504
00:31:52,250 --> 00:31:55,040
You got to go with the mother.
505
00:31:55,170 --> 00:31:56,780
The idea of, yeah, big moth.
506
00:31:56,910 --> 00:31:59,000
That'll be scary.
507
00:31:59,130 --> 00:32:01,040
Well, how do we summon it?
508
00:32:01,180 --> 00:32:05,570
Let's have identical twin tiny people and they'll sing.
509
00:32:05,700 --> 00:32:08,440
Mosuraya, Mosura.
510
00:32:12,800 --> 00:32:14,840
It's like, wait, what?
511
00:32:14,970 --> 00:32:18,020
I remember watching Mothra, and they were on,
512
00:32:18,150 --> 00:32:20,410
and my dad coming in, like, what the hell are you watching?
513
00:32:20,540 --> 00:32:21,630
Because it is hard to explain.
514
00:32:25,980 --> 00:32:27,640
Ghidorah was always my favorite
515
00:32:27,770 --> 00:32:30,160
of the entire Toho stable.
516
00:32:30,290 --> 00:32:32,730
Back in the first run, they tended to, like,
517
00:32:32,860 --> 00:32:34,640
give the monsters human qualities,
518
00:32:34,770 --> 00:32:36,950
and anthropomorphize them a little,
519
00:32:37,080 --> 00:32:40,910
and kind of made them almost cuddly.
520
00:32:41,040 --> 00:32:43,520
Ghidorah was the one who didn't.
521
00:32:43,650 --> 00:32:46,830
Ghidorah was a vicious bastard in every film he appeared in.
522
00:32:46,960 --> 00:32:49,140
And, you know, it's a great design.
523
00:32:49,270 --> 00:32:50,920
It's like a classical dragon with three
524
00:32:51,050 --> 00:32:52,880
heads and the golden color.
525
00:32:53,010 --> 00:32:54,920
It's just a very striking creature to look at.
526
00:33:05,460 --> 00:33:08,850
Gamera is my second favorite giant
527
00:33:08,980 --> 00:33:12,160
monster kaiju from Japanese kaiju monster movies.
528
00:33:12,290 --> 00:33:13,640
He is a turtle.
529
00:33:13,770 --> 00:33:16,600
He's essentially like Mothra, represents
530
00:33:16,730 --> 00:33:18,990
the good and the heroic.
531
00:33:19,120 --> 00:33:22,130
And he inspires hope in people that
532
00:33:22,260 --> 00:33:24,690
are being attacked by other giant kaijus
533
00:33:24,820 --> 00:33:26,430
or other forms of evil.
534
00:33:29,480 --> 00:33:32,530
Now those films are really kind of silly,
535
00:33:32,660 --> 00:33:34,790
and Gamera is fighting a monster that
536
00:33:34,920 --> 00:33:37,450
was basically a giant butcher knife with eyes and legs.
537
00:33:43,580 --> 00:33:46,110
And then Shusuke Kaneko came along in the '90s
538
00:33:46,240 --> 00:33:50,760
and completely reimagined the character, put him
539
00:33:50,890 --> 00:33:53,200
into a series of serious, mature, beautifully
540
00:33:53,330 --> 00:33:55,900
crafted films starting with Gamera:
541
00:33:56,030 --> 00:33:59,550
Guardian of the Universe.
542
00:33:59,680 --> 00:34:03,300
Then Gamera 3, I think is, out of all
543
00:34:03,430 --> 00:34:06,910
the Japanese kaiju films from any studio, it's my favorite.
544
00:34:07,040 --> 00:34:08,910
It has a really powerful story.
545
00:34:09,040 --> 00:34:12,000
It has some really interesting themes to it.
546
00:34:12,130 --> 00:34:15,530
It has amazing monster action.
547
00:34:15,660 --> 00:34:19,790
And it is just shot and composed and dramatized in a really,
548
00:34:19,920 --> 00:34:22,970
really powerful way.
549
00:34:23,100 --> 00:34:26,880
The Gamera 3 takes a goofy impossible character
550
00:34:27,020 --> 00:34:30,060
and turns it into a pretty serious film
551
00:34:30,190 --> 00:34:33,810
about the poisonous effects of anger and revenge
552
00:34:33,940 --> 00:34:36,070
on the human soul.
553
00:34:36,200 --> 00:34:42,250
Japan had a closed society for 400 years
554
00:34:42,380 --> 00:34:44,950
in which access to the country was strictly
555
00:34:45,080 --> 00:34:48,170
limited that undoubtedly has shaped
556
00:34:48,300 --> 00:34:53,390
a kind of cultural sensibility for many, many years, centuries
557
00:34:53,520 --> 00:34:54,870
after.
558
00:34:55,000 --> 00:34:58,090
And maybe kaiju are a place where some of this
559
00:34:58,220 --> 00:35:00,220
gets worked through and worked out
560
00:35:00,350 --> 00:35:06,580
this idea of things coming from outside, from beneath the ocean,
561
00:35:06,710 --> 00:35:09,450
from the sky.
562
00:35:09,580 --> 00:35:12,630
So all of these things being dislodged from the Earth
563
00:35:12,760 --> 00:35:15,110
and coming strangely enough at Japan.
564
00:35:26,680 --> 00:35:29,300
Before Bong Joon-ho directed Parasite,
565
00:35:29,430 --> 00:35:33,130
he directed The Host, which is a giant monster film which
566
00:35:33,260 --> 00:35:40,390
is actually about income inequality in South Korea,
567
00:35:40,520 --> 00:35:48,580
but by extension, and throughout the industrial capitalist world.
568
00:35:48,710 --> 00:35:52,280
And so you do get the thrills of a giant monster movie,
569
00:35:52,410 --> 00:35:57,060
but you also get this kind of touching, funny, slightly
570
00:35:57,190 --> 00:36:00,810
heartbreaking story about people who are living on the margins
571
00:36:00,940 --> 00:36:02,330
because they're living, you know,
572
00:36:02,460 --> 00:36:03,680
making it paycheck to paycheck.
573
00:36:16,040 --> 00:36:19,080
You know, the first 30 minutes of that film
574
00:36:19,220 --> 00:36:25,270
from meeting the family and the river attack,
575
00:36:25,400 --> 00:36:27,050
that's perfect filmmaking.
576
00:36:47,550 --> 00:36:51,120
And the creature, that in itself feels fresh.
577
00:36:51,250 --> 00:36:54,290
And it was so inelegant in the way that it moved
578
00:36:54,420 --> 00:36:56,510
and the way that it almost tripped over itself.
579
00:36:56,640 --> 00:37:00,910
And you just had this sense that it lived a pained existence.
580
00:37:07,260 --> 00:37:10,880
The beauty of his filmmaking is all of the set
581
00:37:11,010 --> 00:37:15,400
pieces relate to character.
582
00:37:15,530 --> 00:37:18,450
When this monster starts tearing through things,
583
00:37:18,580 --> 00:37:23,670
in the panic, he loses track of his daughter,
584
00:37:23,800 --> 00:37:28,150
tries to rescue her, grabs the wrong girl's hand.
585
00:37:28,280 --> 00:37:29,550
Looks behind him and the one thing
586
00:37:29,680 --> 00:37:30,940
that he was supposed to do right,
587
00:37:31,070 --> 00:37:32,420
which is protect his daughter, fails.
588
00:37:38,770 --> 00:37:41,600
And you have that great shot of her just
589
00:37:41,730 --> 00:37:43,560
there, as like, you know, it's framed
590
00:37:43,690 --> 00:37:48,220
in a way where the creature isn't even fully in the shot.
591
00:37:48,350 --> 00:37:50,390
Its tail grabs her and rips her out of the frame.
592
00:38:04,450 --> 00:38:09,890
So this family who have had this rough patchy relationship
593
00:38:10,020 --> 00:38:13,290
now have to come together to break away from the government
594
00:38:13,420 --> 00:38:15,420
that's trying to keep them quarantined
595
00:38:15,550 --> 00:38:17,640
to go find this missing girl.
596
00:38:23,990 --> 00:38:33,480
It was layered with great creature design, cool ideas,
597
00:38:33,610 --> 00:38:37,180
and then this Korean point of view that was--
598
00:38:37,310 --> 00:38:39,620
all of it was different than what I was expecting.
599
00:38:39,750 --> 00:38:43,270
So the film kind of left me gobsmacked at the end of it.
600
00:38:43,400 --> 00:38:45,930
I was like, this was powerful.
601
00:38:46,060 --> 00:38:47,800
Bong Joon-ho and that movie, like,
602
00:38:47,930 --> 00:38:52,110
it's just such an incredible piece of filmmaking where all
603
00:38:52,240 --> 00:38:54,370
of the spectacle, all of the genre,
604
00:38:54,500 --> 00:38:56,810
all of the things that people would normally write off
605
00:38:56,940 --> 00:39:00,460
as, like, oh, it's just monsters running around, whatever, like,
606
00:39:00,590 --> 00:39:02,470
it's all based in character, and it's all
607
00:39:02,600 --> 00:39:04,640
based in like relationships.
608
00:39:54,780 --> 00:39:56,260
Let's do this.
609
00:40:23,980 --> 00:40:25,770
The less said about the Roland
610
00:40:25,900 --> 00:40:27,460
Emmerich Godzilla, the better.
611
00:40:27,590 --> 00:40:29,900
But I have to say, I was very impressed
612
00:40:30,030 --> 00:40:32,380
with the first American Godzilla of the trilogy
613
00:40:32,510 --> 00:40:35,380
that came out more recently, Gareth Edwards' film.
614
00:40:38,170 --> 00:40:39,910
Gareth Edwards made this film called
615
00:40:40,040 --> 00:40:42,350
Monsters before Godzilla.
616
00:40:42,480 --> 00:40:44,650
It was really one of those DIY efforts
617
00:40:44,790 --> 00:40:46,700
where Gareth had a hand in everything
618
00:40:46,830 --> 00:40:50,010
even the VFX and creation of the monsters themselves,
619
00:40:50,140 --> 00:40:52,230
but it was one of those kind of handheld, you know,
620
00:40:52,360 --> 00:40:55,360
found footage movies.
621
00:40:55,490 --> 00:40:57,320
The monsters were just used sparingly.
622
00:41:00,020 --> 00:41:01,630
And, you know, he did the same thing
623
00:41:01,760 --> 00:41:04,720
with Godzilla for better or for worse or to the detriment
624
00:41:04,850 --> 00:41:06,370
of some fans.
625
00:41:06,500 --> 00:41:07,460
Open fire!
626
00:41:12,160 --> 00:41:13,730
But it was smart, you know.
627
00:41:13,860 --> 00:41:16,340
It was just smart to blend that kind of docu style
628
00:41:16,470 --> 00:41:17,950
to both movies.
629
00:41:18,080 --> 00:41:19,690
I really enjoyed the fact that it was shot from kind
630
00:41:19,820 --> 00:41:22,820
of a human's eye view in a sense where
631
00:41:22,950 --> 00:41:25,780
you don't quite see everything that's going on as you wouldn't.
632
00:41:25,910 --> 00:41:27,920
If Godzilla was really rampaging through your city,
633
00:41:28,050 --> 00:41:29,480
you would not get a great look at him.
634
00:41:32,490 --> 00:41:34,570
Edwards really kind of choreographed the whole thing
635
00:41:34,700 --> 00:41:36,270
in such a way that you really identified
636
00:41:36,400 --> 00:41:38,620
with the people looking at this giant monster
637
00:41:38,750 --> 00:41:39,970
that's come to destroy them.
638
00:41:46,240 --> 00:41:49,280
We've just been wired and coded
639
00:41:49,410 --> 00:41:50,980
that when we see a giant monster movie,
640
00:41:51,110 --> 00:41:52,770
we got to get the spectacle.
641
00:41:52,900 --> 00:41:55,510
And so I respect Gareth for doing what he did.
642
00:41:55,640 --> 00:41:57,210
And then, of course, Mike Dougherty steps in,
643
00:41:57,340 --> 00:41:58,990
and he's like, here we go.
644
00:41:59,120 --> 00:42:00,160
Let me give you--
645
00:42:00,300 --> 00:42:01,560
let me give you all the monsters,
646
00:42:01,690 --> 00:42:03,170
and you're going to see them all the time.
647
00:42:13,790 --> 00:42:15,700
It's tough because there's
648
00:42:15,830 --> 00:42:17,140
a lot of baggage.
649
00:42:17,270 --> 00:42:18,880
Whenever you're dealing with a legacy character,
650
00:42:19,010 --> 00:42:22,880
there are expectations that the fans have.
651
00:42:23,010 --> 00:42:26,540
But at the same time, you can't craft a movie just for the fans
652
00:42:26,670 --> 00:42:30,110
because then you're alienating your larger general audience.
653
00:42:30,240 --> 00:42:32,940
So you have to find the right balance between the two.
654
00:42:33,070 --> 00:42:34,720
Dougherty's movie, I mean, I don't know what
655
00:42:34,850 --> 00:42:37,460
else you could want, you know?
656
00:42:37,590 --> 00:42:39,420
I mean, I still watch every once in a while.
657
00:42:39,550 --> 00:42:42,420
I'll throw the Rodan attack scene where Rodan
658
00:42:42,560 --> 00:42:43,860
shows up for the first time.
659
00:42:48,210 --> 00:42:51,170
Bear McCreary's music is just like, boom, boom, boom, boom.
660
00:42:54,520 --> 00:42:56,260
We got jet fighters flying in.
661
00:42:58,880 --> 00:43:00,090
Rodan doing spins.
662
00:43:05,710 --> 00:43:07,190
I get chills even thinking about it.
663
00:43:07,360 --> 00:43:09,540
I'm like, this is exactly what I want from a kaiju movie.
664
00:43:09,670 --> 00:43:10,710
This is incredible.
665
00:43:10,840 --> 00:43:12,540
When I came on board, they said,
666
00:43:12,670 --> 00:43:14,200
well, we want to do a sequel.
667
00:43:14,330 --> 00:43:18,370
Would you mind using Rodan, Mothra, and King Ghidorah?
668
00:43:18,500 --> 00:43:21,380
And I was like, yes.
669
00:43:21,510 --> 00:43:24,730
Like, no, I would not mind.
670
00:43:24,860 --> 00:43:26,820
I mean, that's just like the best party in the world
671
00:43:26,950 --> 00:43:28,080
this to go hang out with that crew.
672
00:43:32,040 --> 00:43:33,560
I actually wanted to use more.
673
00:43:33,690 --> 00:43:36,390
But then Adam Wingard just went, I'm going to top that.
674
00:43:36,520 --> 00:43:41,180
I'm going to give you a buddy movie, where King Kong is
675
00:43:41,310 --> 00:43:43,700
the hero, and he's John McClane, and he's
676
00:43:43,830 --> 00:43:47,010
going to take on Godzilla.
677
00:43:47,140 --> 00:43:48,970
Godzilla versus Kong has
678
00:43:49,100 --> 00:43:51,320
a gorilla that uses a magic ax.
679
00:43:54,890 --> 00:43:57,590
It's like-- and it's funny.
680
00:43:57,720 --> 00:43:59,240
I believe King Kong.
681
00:43:59,370 --> 00:44:01,850
I don't believe he would use an ax.
682
00:44:01,980 --> 00:44:03,330
You draw your own line.
683
00:44:09,250 --> 00:44:10,640
Godzilla versus Kong, I thought
684
00:44:10,770 --> 00:44:17,650
was very fun and a welcome surprise, but it just--
685
00:44:17,780 --> 00:44:20,910
we haven't figured out how to make you feel anything the way
686
00:44:21,040 --> 00:44:23,570
that you felt something with the first Godzilla.
687
00:44:23,700 --> 00:44:26,270
We just haven't figured it out because he's not ours.
688
00:44:26,400 --> 00:44:27,440
He doesn't belong to us.
689
00:44:27,570 --> 00:44:28,440
He belongs to them.
690
00:44:28,570 --> 00:44:29,840
He belongs to the Japanese.
691
00:44:35,490 --> 00:44:37,150
I think any good franchise, it's
692
00:44:37,280 --> 00:44:41,630
able to constantly reboot itself to reflect
693
00:44:41,760 --> 00:44:44,020
the fears of the time.
694
00:44:44,150 --> 00:44:46,420
And so if the first Godzilla film
695
00:44:46,550 --> 00:44:49,680
was reflecting fear of the nuclear age,
696
00:44:49,810 --> 00:44:53,950
then you get to like Hedorah.
697
00:44:54,080 --> 00:44:56,820
You know, he was called the smog monster which
698
00:44:56,950 --> 00:44:58,690
is way less cool in America.
699
00:45:02,130 --> 00:45:03,830
But, you know, Hedorah is technically an alien,
700
00:45:03,960 --> 00:45:05,440
but he feeds off pollution.
701
00:45:05,570 --> 00:45:07,220
And that was coming out in the '70s
702
00:45:07,350 --> 00:45:10,700
when, like, Tokyo was famously gross polluted city.
703
00:45:18,280 --> 00:45:21,670
And to me, in addition to Hedorah being,
704
00:45:21,800 --> 00:45:24,890
you know, symbolism for, like, Tokyo and pollution,
705
00:45:25,020 --> 00:45:28,020
he's just a great foe in that canon.
706
00:45:30,590 --> 00:45:33,200
The Godzilla films always started as a response
707
00:45:33,330 --> 00:45:35,770
to things that were affecting the Japanese people.
708
00:45:35,900 --> 00:45:38,080
And the same thing with Shin Godzilla.
709
00:45:47,830 --> 00:45:50,180
It's hard not to see that film, which
710
00:45:50,310 --> 00:45:54,880
was released in 2016, as a reflection on Japan's response
711
00:45:55,010 --> 00:45:58,580
to 2011, the earthquake, tsunami, and the nuclear crisis
712
00:45:58,710 --> 00:46:00,750
with the Fukushima nuclear reactor.
713
00:46:08,460 --> 00:46:10,110
And Japanese government's
714
00:46:10,240 --> 00:46:13,330
inability to respond quickly, and swiftly,
715
00:46:13,460 --> 00:46:14,640
and protect its citizens.
716
00:46:23,820 --> 00:46:26,950
It is a funny movie, but it is about almost like
717
00:46:27,080 --> 00:46:29,260
Terry Gilliam Brazil-esque in terms
718
00:46:29,390 --> 00:46:31,960
of the madness of bureaucracy.
719
00:46:32,090 --> 00:46:34,530
Like, let's have a meeting to have a meeting about having
720
00:46:34,660 --> 00:46:39,050
a meeting about how we deal with a giant kaiju in this country.
721
00:46:44,880 --> 00:46:47,150
Godzilla's outside, and I'm stuck in meetings.
722
00:46:47,280 --> 00:46:49,670
But that was part of the point that we
723
00:46:49,800 --> 00:46:51,980
have to deal with bureaucracy and decision making.
724
00:46:52,110 --> 00:46:53,500
And I get it, and it's great.
725
00:46:53,630 --> 00:46:57,460
But Godzilla Minus One is a whole different level
726
00:46:57,590 --> 00:46:58,640
of Godzilla movie.
727
00:47:08,430 --> 00:47:10,690
And if it weren't for the original Godzilla,
728
00:47:10,820 --> 00:47:14,350
I would say it's the best.
729
00:47:14,480 --> 00:47:17,130
It's really, really delving
730
00:47:17,260 --> 00:47:22,490
into characterization, and not only that, but the waste
731
00:47:22,620 --> 00:47:24,710
and the horror of war itself.
732
00:47:29,360 --> 00:47:32,670
You can almost take Godzilla out of Godzilla Minus One
733
00:47:32,800 --> 00:47:34,930
and you would still have a hugely compelling
734
00:47:35,060 --> 00:47:39,810
story, the devastation of war from the Japanese point of view.
735
00:47:39,940 --> 00:47:43,290
I really haven't seen that many films that I think really
736
00:47:43,420 --> 00:47:49,950
tackle what it felt like to have gone through this experience.
737
00:47:50,080 --> 00:47:52,730
Midway through, there's possibly
738
00:47:52,870 --> 00:47:55,390
the greatest Godzilla destroys a district
739
00:47:55,520 --> 00:47:58,610
in Japan sequence ever filmed.
740
00:48:03,920 --> 00:48:05,570
There's this thing that happens with this tail
741
00:48:05,700 --> 00:48:07,530
where his spikes jut out.
742
00:48:11,750 --> 00:48:13,490
And, you know, like, something really, really bad
743
00:48:13,620 --> 00:48:14,410
is about to happen.
744
00:48:17,760 --> 00:48:20,370
It had me crying, which I had no idea would be
745
00:48:20,500 --> 00:48:22,070
happening in a Godzilla movie.
746
00:48:22,200 --> 00:48:27,200
The Godzilla monster effects are so much fun.
747
00:48:27,330 --> 00:48:29,380
The devastation is, of course, everything
748
00:48:29,510 --> 00:48:34,340
you want from a Godzilla movie, but it has this beautiful core
749
00:48:34,470 --> 00:48:37,870
that you walk out of the theater feeling like, yes, human life
750
00:48:38,000 --> 00:48:39,910
is precious, every single one.
751
00:48:44,180 --> 00:48:46,220
And that's not what you expect from a Godzilla movie.
752
00:48:57,580 --> 00:48:59,240
Ultimately, there's something about kaiju
753
00:48:59,370 --> 00:49:01,240
that is very cinematic, right?
754
00:49:01,370 --> 00:49:02,670
You go to the movie theater.
755
00:49:02,800 --> 00:49:06,500
You look at the big screen.
756
00:49:06,630 --> 00:49:09,770
And so things were better suited to the big screen
757
00:49:09,900 --> 00:49:12,120
than big monsters destroying cities, right?
758
00:49:16,250 --> 00:49:20,080
The appeal of giant monsters and kaiju
759
00:49:20,210 --> 00:49:27,790
is that these are forces so big, so beyond our control
760
00:49:27,920 --> 00:49:29,740
that we can't even begin to truly
761
00:49:29,870 --> 00:49:31,530
defend ourselves against them.
762
00:49:31,660 --> 00:49:34,880
In fact, they sometimes don't even really notice we're there.
763
00:49:35,010 --> 00:49:39,930
Like, it gives us the impression of how we treat insects,
764
00:49:40,060 --> 00:49:43,110
how we crush their houses, and step
765
00:49:43,240 --> 00:49:46,760
on them like they're nothing.
766
00:49:46,890 --> 00:49:50,590
I think this is very true of most monsters and most kaiju,
767
00:49:50,720 --> 00:49:52,380
which is that at the end of the day,
768
00:49:52,510 --> 00:49:54,860
there's actually like an intense tragedy to them
769
00:49:54,990 --> 00:49:56,990
and an intense loneliness to them.
770
00:50:00,510 --> 00:50:05,390
Whether be King Kong, or Godzilla, or any monsters,
771
00:50:05,520 --> 00:50:07,740
everybody, every day, the most painful thing
772
00:50:07,870 --> 00:50:10,520
that happens over and over again is that you're misunderstood.
773
00:50:15,880 --> 00:50:19,270
And to me, kaiju and monster films just
774
00:50:19,400 --> 00:50:23,540
fundamentally tap into that core feeling of being misunderstood.
775
00:50:41,080 --> 00:50:43,510
I believe he is the power.
776
00:50:46,210 --> 00:50:46,910
Mothra.
777
00:50:53,960 --> 00:50:54,740
Gamera.
778
00:51:02,230 --> 00:51:04,190
Have you found anything yet?
779
00:51:04,320 --> 00:51:05,670
- Say over. - I just said it.
780
00:51:05,800 --> 00:51:06,410
I know. Say it again.
781
00:51:06,540 --> 00:51:08,060
Oh, over.
782
00:51:12,850 --> 00:51:14,410
I know an enemy when I see it.
783
00:51:23,250 --> 00:51:24,420
Two, three.
784
00:51:41,920 --> 00:51:42,920
We can capture him alive.
785
00:51:43,050 --> 00:51:43,790
Why, you're crazy.
786
00:52:02,110 --> 00:52:04,290
Man: There's been a lot of great Japanese horror films
787
00:52:04,420 --> 00:52:06,340
that are very moody and subtle.
788
00:52:06,470 --> 00:52:08,340
And then on the other side of the coin,
789
00:52:08,470 --> 00:52:10,730
you have movies that are absolutely out of their minds.
790
00:52:12,690 --> 00:52:15,080
This guy has been shoving metal into his own leg.
791
00:52:17,130 --> 00:52:18,570
Man #2: 40 kids or whatever killing each other
792
00:52:18,700 --> 00:52:20,440
in the most brutal of ways.
793
00:52:20,570 --> 00:52:21,570
Man #1: You could just feel everyone just be like,
794
00:52:21,700 --> 00:52:23,830
"Oh, my God."
62148
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