| Ben Jarman |
Godzilla vs. Gigan plays at the Trylon Cinema from Friday, July 4th, through Sunday, July 6th. For tickets, showtimes, and other series information, visit trylon.org.
My mom is back with her take on another film that would normally disinterest her: Godzilla vs. Gigan. My mom never watched Godzilla films with me when I was a kid, but she never stopped me from watching or pretending I was a giant creature in my backyard. A giant to her is F. Scott Fitzgerald. Once again though, she is open-minded enough (and she loves me) to watch a bunch of Kaiju duking it out for supremacy. Literal monsters are not a reality so she would never give something like Godzilla Minus One or Pacific Rim a chance. There are enough horrors in the real world. But something else is going on with Godzilla films in the ’70s that, surprisingly enough, work for her: comedy. Even more, this Godzilla film isn’t funny accidentally, the cast and crew are in on it. So, while many Godzilla films are serious to good effect and the metaphor for Godzilla cannot be taken lightly, this film lightens things up for another type of audience. I even find Godzilla movies like Godzilla vs. Gigan to be a little dry due to the light story and slow-motion battles, but this one never lost my mom’s interest. Would she watch another? Probably not, but let’s see how this movie fancies her.
Last time we talked, you watched The Evil Dead for the first time and you weren’t too impressed. Godzilla vs. Gigan is a horror movie too, but it’s also a science fiction film. Does the science fiction genre interest you more than horror?
Probably a little more, but it’s got to be very specific, not anything like this. This is the first time I ever saw a Godzilla movie and that’s not the kind of science fiction I’d watch. I like Star Wars, but this stuff I always thought was too over the top for me. I like the original King Kong, but only because it was such a classic. I just thought there’s not much plot and monsters just never interested me. Godzilla was completely and totally implausible to me, and I have got to have a plot.
This movie had a plot, but what is it about Godzilla films that make you feel like there will be no plot? For instance, do you think the plot in this movie is worse than the plot in say the film The Substance?
I don’t know what The Substance is.
Oh, you haven’t seen The Substance? Okay, how about, what’s a movie you’ve seen recently that has a good plot compared to the plot in Godzilla vs. Gigan?
I felt like Conclave had a good plot.
Is it just because it’s more interesting?
Yeah. There are more layers of character development and character is a lot for me, really. But I think Godzilla vs. Gigan is more of a comedy and I have way less restrictions with comedy. It reminded me of The Firesign Theater, which was radio, so we listened to this and other comedians on vinyl. Monty Python was very big at that point in time for us too. I can see a group of my friends on a Friday night, drinking or smoking, getting a real hoot out of it.
What were you expecting?
I was expecting a bunch of army people trying to kill these monsters that everyone knew wouldn’t be killable. And a lot of blowing up and people running and screaming and buildings falling. Kind of like in the atomic age monster movies made in America at the time. But I really got a kick out of the humor in this movie.
I don’t think they accidentally made it funny. I think it was intentionally funny.
Yeah. There were the word balloon scenes with the monster’s roars getting translated for audiences. That was a choice that they made. They could have made a serious movie, but no. It was just so darn cute. And the cockroach thing. Oh, my gosh. That was very funny. But I never found anything scary or tense and I thought the actors were great because they never took themselves seriously.
So right now, Godzilla movies are very, very serious and very big budget. But this was the 70s when this movie came out. Godzilla movies at the time were very campy. And then before that, the first movie was super serious. What do you think has made Godzilla so enduring despite tonal shifts?
These movies make it because they’re made for the times. In the ’70s you started getting more horror movies like The Exorcist. Really uncomfortable and scary movies. So, I think Godzilla vs. Gigan contrasts enough with other horror movies to find an audience. It had to be campier so maybe they’ve just changed to go along with the times. I can see it being very big at drive-ins. I kept thinking this would have been big with kids, with middle schoolers and at sleepovers. Kids would have laughed at it. Kids would have got that.
The thing that does it for me with Godzilla vs. Gigan is just the creature design. I really love Gigan’s buzzsaw. I love that. It’s like they told a five-year-old kid to draw a picture of a crazy monster.
Oh, my God! None of that makes sense. At first, I thought, “Oh, he’s a cockroach,” but then he’s got the saw going and then the weird face and then his pinchers made me think of lobsters or crabs. And then when they got into clapping and dancing. I think that’s why I like it. I loved the monsters going across the water saying, “Hurry up! Hurry up!” They are like old men. You couldn’t help but laugh at it. It was just a hoot. I mean, my only complaint was they didn’t do it during the battle scenes or on the way home.
Okay, now our interview is gonna spin. Are you aware of the allegory, the metaphor of Godzilla?
No, I’m not.
The original Godzilla movie was an attempt to make an allegory or metaphor out of atomic bomb destruction in Japan. Godzilla is an ominous creature that nobody knows how to stop and just comes and destroys everything. So, it’s the same thing with the bomb; nobody would know when it shows up. Now that you’re aware of the allegory, is it completely diminished since this movie wasn’t serious at all?
It did get into that whole bit about cockroaches, but it was played as more like a science fiction plot point. I thought it was an environmental message because this is what we’ve come to; we’re all cockroaches now. The protests back in the ’60s and ’70s were about the environment too, not just civil rights. The Vietnam War was still going on at that time, but maybe it was just easier to look at it in a humorous way. The invasion was from another planet so maybe that is what the filmmakers are doing. The creatures need to come and conquer and destroy us so that they can continue to survive. I’d say the allegory is in there a little bit, but it didn’t change the projection of the movie. We’re talking the 70s now, so we’re 30 years beyond the atomic bomb getting dropped. Really what we had going on in the 60s and 70s was far more dire in the sort of backdoor wars going on. And you couldn’t really make a movie that was a commentary on America without pointing fingers. It took a long time to make real movies about Vietnam. That’s the true mistake we made.
Do you personally think we needed to drop the atomic bomb on Japan? And if your opinions change throughout your life, that’s fine, too. I’m curious to hear what you think.
My opinions have changed. When I was younger, I thought the bomb was the only way, but now I think it was a line everybody was fed including a lot of people in the government. I don’t have a lot of faith in what’s coming from the government anymore. The propaganda machine worked really well for a long time, especially the Pentagon propaganda machine. When you were younger, in your mind, it would have been a better idea to drop the bomb. It wasn’t even questioned. It was a thing to do because so many people would have died. We had to end the war, and they were never going to end it until all of Japan was wiped out.
So, what’s the solution? What’s the alternative? Just keep fighting or use diplomacy?
I don’t think it was an easy decision for Truman to make, and it wasn’t his choice alone. You look at the people that made the bomb and suddenly they were the biggest advocates for nuclear disarmament and peace. I think it just took everybody by complete surprise. I think that’s what I thought is that they were so excited about this and the bomb was so easily justified because it would end the war and it would save all these people, and the world could get back to order. There are people that truly believed that this was how we kept peace; every country possible having a bomb. Which is so ludicrous, because if you drop it, I’m going to drop it too just to keep the peace. It’s like something coming out of Trump’s mouth.
Would you take me to this film as an 8-year-old?
Yeah, I mean a family would have a blast at a drive-in. And it wouldn’t have been something that would have really scared kids. Better than kids looking for humor in the Wild West of YouTube.
My mom’s response to Godzilla vs. Gigan was not what I suspected. I’m surprised of the genuine kick she got out of it. I think she laughed more than me. Outside of the monster design, I have a hard time sticking with entire Godzilla movies due to the scenes with humans and the slow-motion battles so I thought Godzilla vs. Gigan would do nothing for her since The Evil Dead bored her. Humor does funny things, and I was also happy to see the humor wasn’t accidental; I was thinking the movie was going to be funny due to budget restrictions. The one thing I’m not sure about is my mom’s responses to our atomic bomb discussion. I had a feeling there was something she was leaving out, lost to history; something about the horrible things that happened during World War 2 and after and American relations with Japan, including Japanese stereotypes Americans created. This is not a comfortable conversation for her, but I know she came out of it knowing the stereotypes were wrong. I admit though, this is not a great way to end a conversation after a comedy.
Edited by Olga Tchepikova-Treon