Watched: 04/26/2024
Format: Amazon
Viewing: Fourth?
Director: Ryuhei Kitamura
Selection: Me
It's been over a decade since I'd rewatched Godzilla: Final Wars (2004). Because of the *when* of its release date, it was also one of the first Godzilla movies I saw when I re-engaged with Godzilla at the start of the 21st Century and Godzilla movies, at the time, were kind of hard to come by.
For those of you who aren't wasting your life with Godzilla minutia: this is the 50th Anniversary offering from Toho, as Gojira had debuted in 1954. It is also Toho's final man-in-suit kaiju feature film (they have continued to make shorts and commercials, etc... starring a man-in-suit). Following this movie, Toho put G on ice, renting him to Legendary pictures, who released Godzilla in 2014 until finally making a new Godzilla movie with Shin Godzilla, released in 2016.
Most of the post 1998 American Godzilla movies made by Toho had their own shared continuity separate from the Showa and Heisei era films, but Godzilla: Final Wars is probably not directly associated with Godzilla 2000, Megaguirus, Giant Monsters All-Out Attack, Against Mechagodzilla or Tokyo S.O.S. And good luck figuring out the continuity of those movies, tbh. So it is *odd* that the final movie from Toho (and they really did think they were done, at least for a while) wasn't a conclusion to those movies as much as a conclusion to the concept of Godzilla as much as anything.