Creature design : how monsters change with time
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- Опубликовано: 18 окт 2023
- New monsters are rare, and many come from long running franchises or series that have rarely stayed the same - or are based on well known myths or other sources of fiction. But what prompts them to change, and how does this affect their interpretations?
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I think a big reason godzilla has grown in size over the years is the simple fact that buildings have gotten taller over time. The old 50 meterish godzilla would look tiny compared to a lot of modern skyscrapers. So to keep selling his size he has just gotten bigger.
That is in fact the very original reason that Godzilla was sized up during the Heisei era. Buildings in Japan's skyline had grown tremendously from the Showa era, so Godzilla needed to be sized up as well to continue to be a menacing threat among them.
Godzilla has often been a monster that represents our sins, whether that be against nature or ourselves, the act of increasing his size implies the weight of our sins growing bigger and bigger.
@@GunlessSnake this also applies to the monster-verse where godzilla keeps a canmonical record for his size, but he actually flops around a loot between being 100 to 400 meters tall depending on the scenes
with exception of earth every godzilla had an actual in universe, and URL resonable reasons to to becoming larger, and that is because the world around him outside the movies got larger and as such he needed to become even greater
except earth who is just a "he big because he strongest godzilla" or smt
Even then they still have to exaggerate his height to make him not look so tiny especially in 2014 nearly every shot boosted his height. And now in gxk he’s gonna have a new design that’s gonna be even bigger.
Which in turn makes it refreshing to see him at 50 meters again like in the upcoming minus one film
I'm surprised that when you mentioned "fast zombies" you didn't bring up The Return of the Living Dead from 1985. That movie did running zombies almost two decades before the 2000s, and they aren't even mindless rage monsters, but can think and plan while still being pretty much invulnerable reanimated corpses. I guess in a "monster cladogram" they'd be closer to vampires.
Also regarding the topic of "creature design in pop culture over time", have you ever considered making a video about the "long-legged, lanky grey thing with a short face" trend of the last 15 years or so? You know, the Primeval future predator, the Cloverfield monster, the After Earth alien, the MUTO, the Quiet Place aliens, the Tomorrow War aliens... at this point it feels like some of these are not coincidences.
Unexpected Rick-raptor appearance
Aren't those the ones where "invulnerable" is an understatement? Seem to recall even being aerosalized still carries the exact same danger. Completely and utterly unstoppable to a comical degree.
Edit:
Yeah. You got the deliberate wording. Congratulations.
@@1gient "To a comical degree" that would be because it was a comedy
Fast zombies were actually already done five years before return of the living dead in nightmare city, they could also use guns and other weapons. However you can argue that the zombies in nightmare city aren’t technically zombies, the director himself has said that it’s an infected people movie and not a zombie movie, but they pretty much come across as zombies.
I like the zombies from Return Of The Living Dead. Them and the 28 days later zombies.
Talking about dragons in older stories being some form of divine punishment made me realize that it most media set during the present day it is only really horror stories and especially cosmic horror stories that kinda keep that angle. As usually the fantasy genre is the only way more modern stories really have a good way to sell deities sending down divine punishment as something not cosmic horror.
That's probably just a product of the growing secularization of the modern world. People have a much harder time accepting the supernatural unless it's distinctly meant to be irrational and unexplainable.
I wonder if people in the future would look at our media today and conclude that supernatural slash killers were actually a thing in the 20th century
i would argue cosmic horror, especially the ones where eldritch gods are involved, are just a new iteration of divine punishment,the main difference is that contemporary cosmic horror dosen't involve gods the audience worships
"You told us to imagine. We imagined your irrelevance"
*Proceed to doom their own kind*
"No beast in nature has four legs AND wing."
Meanwhile Insects who have SIX legs and FOUR wings
Vertebrate animals. Things with backbones.
It’s still correct
Vertebrates have modified limbs, not modified exoskeleton. It's a different body structure and only analogous in function.
As someone who's never watched DragonSlayer, it's pretty neat hearing how Vermithrax pretty much created the modern dragon. Great video overall too.
It's weird that I've never heard about it before now.
Vermithrax represents the advancement in creature effects more than actual dragon design. It reflects when a movie dragon could finally match the dragons we'd long been imagining.
Agreed
Unfortunetly.
Also, the film is pretty hard to find. It's a co-production between Disney and Paramount, much like Popeye.
I'm a simple man. I see Godzilla and I click
I’m a simple woman. I see dalek and I click.
Men and women of culture I see.
Same..
Me see monster I click
Amen brother
The best thing about monsters is that you have the freedom use them however you like and have so much lore and history to work from as a baseline.
One funny thing about the Daleks revival is that they actually did TOO good of a job. Specifically, the way the Dalek effortlessly glides through the compound in 'Dalek' was criticised by the showrunner, who specifically requested the return of the 'wobble' that the Daleks had.
Also, it's important to note that the previous designs for the Daleks and Cybermen were not exactly bad. Earthshock and Remembrance of the Daleks were (and still are) both extremely popular stories with extremely popular interpretations of the monsters. The latter actually addressed many of the same issues that 'Dalek' did, but none of it entered the public conscious.
The Mondasian cybermen have a very specific aura of body horror that unnerves me in a way other designs don’t. The sleek, shiny Cybus design works for the themes in their debut episode but the budget iron-man look of everything that follows doesn’t work in the same way. Chibnall’s Lone Cyberman specifically needed that surgical horror element as a partially-converted specimen.
@@idle_speculation Oh, I absolutely agree. While the Cybus-men were a great interpretation, they certainly shouldn't have been the definitive reinvention of them.
And yeah, the Lone Cyberman definitely benefited from the original Mondasian body-horror elements. I think in general, Chibnall (and Alderton) reframing the Cybermen to be a parallel of both Frankenstein AND his Monster was genius. Basically the best of both worlds in terms of the Mondas vs Cybus interpretations.
@@tTaseric To be fair, the Dalek in Remembrance still take like 2 minutes to slowly hover up a flight of stairs. And they aren't exactly threatening, if you have access to plastic explosives, since they lack agility. But it is a shame that they never referenced Ace beating the living crap out of one with a futuristic baseball bat.
@@BlazeQuadZ That baseball bat had been enhanced by the Stellar Manipulator though. It's a testament to just how tanky the canned mutants really are that you need a bit of power from the Hand of Omega to do that.
@@Reddotzebra I wasn't referencing the baseball bat when talking about their durability. Normal human-made plastic explosive bypass their armor and can kill them. They wouldn't be much of a threat against a real army when the episode aired, much less against a modern one.
I think Gamera is probably a good pick for a kaiju representing climate change. Heck, he was frozen before being thawed out in the first movie. You could easily make a movie with the reasoning being the changing climate.
I always thought gamera would be better for a Jurassic park type of allegory. Not playing god with genetic power, etc.
Hedorah also makes a very good kaiju allegory for industrially-induced climate change being ignored until it's too late.
i think the problem with that is i don't think climate change wishes to be friends with kids
@@howdyimhowdy3751 Beast from 20,000 fathoms is another good pick
Once again, Unnatural History proves that he’s the objectively superior spec evo/creature analysis channel. I’m excited to see monster Hunter in the next video, but I can’t think of a topic I’ve enjoyed seeing you cover more. Also, Go Go Godzilla
What about C.M. Kosemen?
@@takenname8053 does C. M. Koseman have a RUclips channel (please say yes please say yes)
@@matthiasbarish1296 Of course he does, but the uploads are unscheduled I'm pretty sure. Lots of tips for writers and artists as well :) .
@@takenname8053and he's fuckin *funny*
@@Star-pl1xs I hope he release an album with all his song covers lol
I appreciate the changes of the werewolf over time. (My favorite monster) In mythology they started as a Celtic belief that werewolves were the defenders of humanity, saving people from evil spirits and monsters, Christians had a less favorable opinion of wolves than the Celts and so they slowly morphed into something more evil but after some intense deliberation eventually concluded a few things: all things are possible through God and therefore if Werewolves are truly defenders of humanity then they must be made by God himself.
In popular media people hung onto the “werewolves are evil” thing and over time they developed some very Christian weaknesses like becoming active at night, and being weak to silver.
Move forward even further and we get the “powerful all the time” Werewolves. Now instead of only getting strong on a full moon they can transform every night but Full Moons get special status. Some Werewolves still have wolf like abilities even as humans. Sometimes they can transform whenever they want.
Now in modern day we have the return of “Defenders of Humanity” but with the added pop culture lore with their evolution. Werewolves can be Good Guys and even though they have specific Christian Weaknesses, many of them have blood feuds with the most infamous Man Eater in mythology, Vampires.
Huh. Didn't occur to me that a lot of rules that "werewolves don't actually need the full moon to transform" are just there so that the more frequent heroic werewolves don't have to be useless 97% of the month.
@@RorikH honestly I’m more surprised that I’ve seen only one piece of media that embraced the idea of the Holy Werewolf like old Christians eventually did. Theirs a Band called Powerwolf that’s a Power Metal band with the Holy Werewolf theme in all their songs. The most emblematic of them is the song “Blessed and Possessed” which is just about a holy army of Werewolves doing battle with the forces of evil and that when they die and they go to hell they will kill Hell itself. It’s metal as hell and I want that energy more often
I think incorporating climate change into Godzilla’s themes came from a genuine place. Specifically from the destruction hurricanes and forest fires have been causing in the States lately.
Yeah , i remember a old alternative history hub video in wich he basically asked "what if godzilla was real?"
And he basically whent : yeah it would be like hurricanes ...
Times in wich somenthing from the sea comes and wipes away entire cities ...
Wich is also oddly parallel to japan experiencing storms from the pacific and the nuclear treat also coming from the other side of the pacific ...
So yeah kajius can be used to rapresent natural disasters , exprcially with the whole direction of "godzilla is just defending it's territory" that the monsterverse has took ...
It’s obviously more about brainwashing people into believing in “climate change”, which isn’t even real
Have you heard of Dragonslayer Codex by Sawyer Lee? It’s a book that’s in the works which is basically a spec/fantasy hybrid. If I’m being completely honest, his dragons have quickly become my favourite dragons in any piece of media. They’re like Vermithrax in that they have four limbs, but also in the way each species is fleshed out and defined from one another. They’re not just fantasy creatures in this world, their mere existence shapes the evolution of plants and animals around them as well as human culture.
I love them - fantastic art!
i know of both it and the man who made it, too. love that guy.
awesome
@@unnaturalhistorychannel also check out Kaimere as well! It's another fantastic spec evol fantasy project
Hey, dragons gotta eat, and if they eat, they gonna poop. That's definitely gonna have an effect on the plant life!😂
Waiiter! More analyses on how monsters and horror represent contemporary cultural anxieties, please!
It's always a pleasure to see you do meta commentary about the concept of monsters at large. Always have something interesting to take away from the videos (the lack of a proper climate-change-themed monster was not a thing I had noticed before)
Pacific Rim's Kaiju have a lot of climate change themes. This video I think may have alluded to them when talking about Kaiju that represent climate change just because they come from the sea, but the movie explicitly says that when you're in a Jaegar you can "fight a hurricane", they come from the sea to attack coastal cities, they're measured in a category system and grow over time, they may have been drawn by global warming, they cause a lot of pollution in their wake, and attempts to stop them by simply ruggedizing infrastructure fail catastrophically, with the only real option being targeted international action to deal with the source of the problem.
I think the reason for that is that the consequences of climate change have yet to hit the developed world yet. I suspect the first climate change themed monster will be something that, through its mere existence, forces people out of areas. Something causing mass migration and floods of refugees rather than literal floods of rising sea levels. Prior attempts at climate change theming in monsters tends to either be an informed attribute like "climate change unfroze this critter" or "it woke up/showed up because now the planet is ideal for it", or something tied to massive waves and floods from rising sea levels.
Pacific Rim is probably the best we've seen so far with its equation of Kaiju to massive storms as the other commenter said. But I don't think we're going to see any great climate change themed monsters until things like climate refugees and massive single climate events start happening. If the gulf stream collapses perhaps.
Related to the slow zombies and fast zombies distinction, there's the distinction between zombies and "infected". I know most people consider infected to be just lazy therminology invented because filmmakers thought the word "zombi" was too corny and would undermine the seriousness of their movies (or the coolness, or the grittiness, or the edgyness, or whatever); but I think there's an important and often overlook aspect of the infected as a monster distinct from the zombie: *infected are still alive.* The main characters battling the infected are killing sick people, and no matter how justified their actions are, they still will have a psychological toll that killing zombies will not and can be an interesting source of conflict if the writers are creative enough
Your videos always give me fantastic resources and insight when trying to design the actual biology of the sci-fi and fantasy things I like making. It always starts with a fun idea for something visually or thematically but then I end up asking "well, why is that?" and try to research ways to make it believable.
Always good to remember something doesn't have to strictly work in our world or even make perfect sense. You're telling a story, you've got the artistic freedom to just say "it works because I want it to" and leave it at that. Makes the effort put into *making* it work all the more special yet doesn't degrade the art where it isn't done.
Speaking of zombies, Left 4 Dead and its iteration of the infected and the zombie virus is still my favorite. It is very videogame-oriented (especially if you compare it to similar but more serious media, aka TLoU) but I can't feel but love it.
... I really like the 2014 Godzillas.
Great video once again but I somehow felt the topics were missing something. I think the impact the "media-monster" has on society in specific time frames is also important to mention. You mentioned a bit on the movement speed of the zombies but missed out dragons and kaijus. Also the saturation of one type gives space for some other types to shine again. I remember when there was a "zombie-oversaturation" after the Resident Evil 5 era and also a "dragon-oversaturation" during the 2011s.
I think that Dragon Heart has finally truly manifested the Dragon as a living and thinking existence in modern fantasy and thus set the foundation for literally all medieval fantasy "monsters" that came after that. Even orcs had an arc on their own. Beginning as Tolkiens depraved cannibalistic jobbers for some BBEG they've become a shaman and warrior culture with their own social system. So orcs have literally turned from monsters to humans.
One of my favorite examples of a monster movie is where the monster is an allegory for climate change is Bong Joon Ho’s The Host.
And like you said, it succeeds because it has a specific focus, and even a specific incident, that it’s based off of.
The film was inspired by a widely-circulated scandal in 2000 where a Korean mortician working for the U.S. Military was ordered to dump excessive quantities of formaldehyde down the drain, which ended up getting into the Han River.
This event was, itself, very analogous to the horrifying scale of the United States’ prolonged political and environmental impact on Korea, and on Southeast Asia as a whole.
As such, it wasn’t difficult to translate that into both a pointed satire, and an effective monster movie.
I think a lot of the application of climate change-adjacent themes to pre-existing kaiju was the result of looking at what Pacific Rim did and thinking, "I wanna do that too!", not realizing that Pacific Rim worked because it was essentially made from scratch - albeit, with _inspiration_ from previous kaiju media as opposed to direct adaptation - and thus was not subject to the pressures of incorporating its themes into properties intended to be adapted.
For climate change hedorah could come back in a Godzilla film was his whole theme in his movie from way back in the day
While the plot is very...inuyasha...
The concept of the monsters in the 90s anime BlueSeed where Yokais where angry at the world for polluting it created Kaiju seeds that germinating after infecting random animals worked well enough in that anime but mainly cause the monsters where sentient and very angry and out for blood. The anime has not aged well but a modern remake would be very cool.
Interesting? Idk how that's so Inuyasha but I haven't watched it in full
@@elgatochurro well...because the way to stop half the kaijus is for a high school girl and a dude that was implanted whit a yokai seed to kill them together all while arguing and pretending they dont like each other.
The other half is the japanese secret service hunting the kaijus down whit missiles and chemical weapons but still alot of High school girl and Demon Dude will they wont theying
King Kong is a wierd monster to analyze because Toho Kong is really different from RKO Kong. RKO Kong was made to essentially tell a conservationist story, as it was emotionally based on Merian Cooper's experiences with a Komodo Dragon that he watched die in captivity. King Kong is a symbol of the wilderness and his tragedy is how he is removed from context for the sake of science. The 2005 Jackson film changed the reason for Kong's relocation to greed and a desire for spectacle, which I think still works with Kong.
Toho Kong was made to punch Godzilla and doesn't really have many deeper elements to him outside of his relatability, as he is much more human-like than most monsters. I think the Monsterverse ran face first into this lack of depth because while they really wanted Kong to be a major character there just isn't much to him. Kong is America's monster but he's never really had a chance to truly menace us or take us to task in the same way Godzilla has for Japan. I'd say Kong: Skull Island almost made Kong an allegory for the Vietnam War; Kong is a foe in a jungle halfway across the world that is utterly pointless to fight, yet the gruff military men want the fight anyway because of personal honor and dogmatism.
I don't agree with you that Godzilla becoming associated with climate change is completely out of left field. Godzilla was created (or awoken) by nuclear testing, he is an unforseen negative outcome of mankind tempering with natural forces that we don't fully understand. Climate change and the destruction it's caused are similar in that regard. That being said I think the climate change elements of Legendary Goji more have to do with Godzilla's later role as the defender of the planet, Godzilla punches alien monsters then it also makes sense for him to figuratively punch climate change.
In general I don't think the Legendary movies handled these themes well, as while the credits of Godzilla: King of the Monsters imply that civilization has been permanently, radically changed by the presence of Godzilla and the other Kaiju; Godzilla vs. Kong shows that human civilization hasn't changed at all and the industrial capitalist status quo has been maintained. In this way Legendary Goji can be interpreted as an almost parodically positive take on nuclear energy, he is the solution to all of civilization's problems. This is also my problem with most nuclear power proponents, as they pitch it as a way to be "green" without having to change our lifestyle.
I think we're overdue for a fresh take on Hedorah, who was literally made to symbolize urban air pollution and the asthma epidemic it caused in Japan. We already have a pollution Kaiju and I think Hedorah could easily become a climate change Kaiju in the hands of a skilled writer.
Interesting response - though I think it's very generous to the people who created both nuclear weapons and contributed most to climate change to say that they were 'dabbling in forces they didn't understand'.
They typically know exactly what they're doing and the consequences.
I think the problem the Monsterverse had with Kong fighting Godzilla was the same fundamental mistake so many other people seem to make: the concept was self-satirical. The Japanese version of 'King Kong vs Godzilla' was making FUN of the idea, criticizing the exploding commercial landscape of the time and the absurd lengths companies would go to sell a product. The fact that KKvsG ended up setting a standard for giant monster movie formulas is a supreme cinematic irony, and 2021's 'Godzilla vs. Kong' is arguably the culmination of said irony.
I do agree that, generally speaking, the Monsterverse has been struggling with its themes - although 'Kong: Skull Island' was a pretty solid postwar commentary. I also think G2014 did an alright job with a broad theme about being reliant on nuclear solutions (I don't think climate change had anything to do with it), but undermined itself in the end by A: failing to let Ford stop the bomb's explosion, and B: treating Godzilla's departure as an inarguable hero's sendoff. 'Godzilla: King of the Monsters' sorta-kinda tries more back-and-forth nuance about our relationship with the planet, but it's just too sloppily written to succeed (which is a problem many of Toho's 90s and 2000s films have too, imo). By 'Godzilla vs. Kong' it felt like the Monsterverse was barely trying anymore.
I completely agree that we're overdue to see Hedorah again.
Nowadays Godzilla fans don’t want allegory’s they want power scaling that’s why everyone was crying about there being no destoryah, space Godzilla or gigan, etc. and I think It’s fine for Kong not to have an allegory for these movies cause he’s pretty much the protagonist of the monster verse with the most well developed character and the emotional core of these movies.
@@unnaturalhistorychannel No, they THINK they know and understand what they’re doing and the consequences, but in reality know very little, if at all. Like in 2014 when the military thought that they could kill the monsters that eat radiation with a nuclear bomb because “the blast is more powerful” and it immediately backfires in their face or in KOTM where the eco-terrorists unwittingly release an invasive species that ends up causing mass loss of life, threatening the ecosystem and the glassing of Boston. Humanity’s hubris in meddling in the affairs of things they have no business meddling in and creating grave unforeseen consequences has been a major theme in the monsterverse, and it is consistent with the entirety of the franchise.
@@unnaturalhistorychannel the response to an overly generous position isn't to take unequally uncharitable one, but i get it. mankind bad
note on godzilla. he was made an avatar of the natural world or rather a 'protector of earth' in the 60s. its his second most common theme. it is not an American invention.
17:40
"Peaceful life on Skull Island"
When has Skull Island ever been depicted as peaceful?
If your king then it’s pretty peaceful if your not then…
Vermithrax Pejorative is still my favorit dragons, with the dragons from Reign of Fire bein close second.
Also Dalek appreciation !
I like monsters the different designs around the centuries that make them like an interesting characters.
Glad to see more people viewing Vermathrax being the best thing to come to dragon designs
I honestly like when speed of a zombie is based on how long they have been infected: fast when fresh and still quite complite and slow when they are rotting away and there is not much left of brain or muscle
The best climate change based Kaiju would probably be best as a faustian bargain. Some kind of ancient creature is found, it's exploited for a valuable resource, and then unleashes its Pandora's box.
Atlantis is actually a solid comparison. We're abusing our power source, so we're going to end up underwater.
I’m 99% sure this will be happening in Godzilla x kong with shimu
Agree with all the kaiju stuff except for what you said about Godzilla 2014. I don’t think climate change plays much into the theme of the film at all. The way I see it, G14 is almost more similar thematically to Jurassic Park. The idea of “humanity is not as mighty as it thinks it is” is woven into every aspect of G14, and I think the theme of mankind’s hubris is what permeates the whole film. We as humans believe that we are at the top of the food chain, but all of that comes crumbling down when Godzilla and the MUTOs appear. It’s no coincidence that our greatest weapon (nuclear bombs) are little more than food to these creatures. The military throws everything they have at the kaiju and they never really effect their actions in any way. Audiences complained that Ford Brody was a boring main character that never accomplished anything but that’s the whole point. Humanity is weak and helpless in comparison to the gods we have accidentally reawakened. I think of it as a more broad reinterpretation of the theme of G54. G54 comments on nuclear weapons and war while G14 comments on humanity as a whole.
The rest of the Monsterverse doesn’t really follow this unfortunately. I think that if Gareth Edwards stayed on to direct Godzilla 2 these themes would have become more prominent.
It’s interesting thinking on this how little monster hunter has had to change monster designs since the ps2 era, at most the series bulked up a few monsters or muted a few color palettes as the series slowly shifted from the more stylized graphics to more realistic graphics we have now and have never done something like say turn ratholos purple to make things stay interesting, animations def have changed as in second era Rathian shared an animation set with yian kutku of all monsters. Makes me wonder if this is a testament to how good the designs in monster hunter are or a testament to how stubborn the monster hunter team is with their design philosophy
I’m pretty sure they did make a purple Ratholos once, multiple different colored ones in fact
@@ghostshrimp5006 man imagine if they made a blue one then
Seriously though I’m talking about the main Rath and not a subspecies
@@waywardwriterryu7185 Fair enough, but yeah monster hunters been pretty good at keeping their monsters consistent
Kinda disagree, I see that over the generation MH's design philosophy has shifted and can be quite inconsistent.
MH1 mons all have concept of depicting them as animals that exist in part of the ecosystem so it tried to approach the concept semi-realistically, but overused the same wyvern with 2 legs and 2 large wings body plan, even for monsters that don't fly much or at all and have no realistic reason to have such massive organs dedicated to flight(Plesioth, Cephalos, Khezu, Diablos, Gravios).
MH3 then comes and try to rectify this by having several monsters that are obvious counterparts to MH1 monsters but with different body plans, as if to correct that mistake of having made everything wyvern-shaped.(Plesioth initially replaced by the various Leviathans, Cephalos replaced by Delex, Khezu replaced by Giginox, Diablos replaced by Barroth, Gravios replaced by Uragaan)
But ever since MH2 we also had Rajang, which was where we started to see occasionally more of the so called "anime weeb monsters" over the following generations like Zinogre, Brachydios, Gore Magala, Astalos etc where their design philosophy is now less to be an animal that's part of the ecosystem but more of cool for the sake of looking cool, believability be damned.
And that's not even counting Elder Dragons, which kinda just throw out the attempt to even be scientific and are just straight up magic.
Then in the following gens, when the decision that goes into the monster roster became picking past fan-favorites, so now the design philosophy can be all over the place. Rise certainly is a game where the monsters have the most varying body plans, but at the same time both from having its roster being made of previous gen mons, while its own new monsters are explicitly stated to be themed after yokais instead of real animals, the design philosophy can feel like it's a mess.
I am so glad someone is acknowledging the existence of Vermithrax and how she is the standard by which ALL dragons have been compared ever since. I love her. She was the first film dragon I fell in love with. She was created in the 80s and her effects STILL look beautiful!
this video was very interesting and quite informative! as somebody who is rather unfamiliar with Dr. Who, it was intriguing to learn more about the path the franchise has taken. I also really enjoyed the dive into the mindsets which differentiates between fast and slow zombies.
that being said, i did have one gripe, which is that i feel like the 2014 Godzilla was a bit misread. I won’t stick up for KotM (despite my pfp being from it lol) but i feel like the two films were lumped together when, aside from being part of a shared cinematic universe, are quite contrasting.
i really wouldn’t say godzilla in the 2014 film was as much an allegory of climate change specifically, and more of the might of the natural world. i believe KotM was much more heavy handed with climate change. i think G14 leans more into the way in which godzilla is likened to a true force of nature. i feel like the movie moreso comments on how humans generally pollute and harm the environment, such as in the way we awaken the monsters he fights in the first place. nothing really struck me as being about climate change in particular.
additionally, i’d say the “atomic savior” theme is more prevalent in KotM than in G14. there’s certainly an argument to be made about how the 2014 film handles events related to atomic weapons and them potentially being in poor taste, but i feel like the ways the 2014 film labels Godzilla as a hero is more about the self-centered nature of humanity
otherwise though, i do certainly agree that a monster should step up to do a proper climate change allegory. The Host’s Gwoemul is close, but isn’t much of a kaiju depending on your definition. perhaps one will step up, in time. anywho, very good video, i learned quite a bit!
Movie monsters aren’t generally my forte, but I did love hearing about how influential Vermithrax Pejorative was in modern dragon media. What a sick design and name. Can’t tell who the next 2 monsters are…maybe small monsters? Konchu andddd Hornetaur?? But even they have their little trills so idk!
I really have to say you stay unparalleled when it comes do monster discussion.
You never fail to deliver some insightful commentary. I especially love seeing some Doctor who reboot love. That was a core part of my childhood and it was damn scary.
i can agree with the Godzilla bit, it's kind of hard to keep his theme when he keeps changing every 2 years, like what the hell was Earth? what in the ACTUAL hell was Singular point?
Godzilla works best when he represents destruction through nuclear war, not some sort of immortal god like being who exists in every time line all at once and is only able to be killed if you kill him in all time lines at once
I know it's unintentional, but I love the accidental desk noises, it feels like im back in school again! 😊
People always go on and on about "No hexapods!" as rules for realistic dragons. I'd know, I used to be one of those people. But there is a possible way to have a tetrapod dragon with arms, legs, and wings: rather than the wings developing out of an entirely new set of limbs (assumedly with their own limb girdle), why not have it be that the arm essentially bifurcated itself, with the wing actually developing out of a highly derived set of fingers that essentially separated themselves from the rest of the hand? It'd probably still have to be a wyvern ancestrally, with this being the result of something like Legiana's slotted wings being taken to a distant extreme (and with the rest of the bifurcated arm returning to a more generalised form), but it's probably not outright impossible. I personally imagine it'd require some pretty ridiculous musculature to make something like this work, but it doesn't seem anywhere near unrealistic.
I could see it, but in order for that to look like anything other than a wyvern with a gnarly hand its going to end up with six limbs. And if its not detached from the forelimb its just going to look like something is wrong with it.
it would be welsh, and you believe it afterwards is how it works.
Another possible way is that the direct ancestor of all land vertebrates really did originally have six limbs but lost one set like how snakes lost there limbs sometimes to the point of not seeing any remaining vestigial bone. It could be dragons through a mutation got it back unlike other vertebrates.
A very deep thoughtful reflection on the nature of monsters
Been meaning to ask this for a while but is there any reason goats will sometimes just freeze when frightened?
Goats are panicky. In the wild it triggers flight, to avoid predation.
Thousands of years of breeding for traits other than survival, has retarded their instincts. Now they tend to freeze when they panic instead of immediately running away.
And I would be willing to bet a substantial amount of money that fainting goats exist because people thought it was funny.
That's a selective breeding thing if it's the fainting ones you're referring to. Other than that, some ungulates will do this as freezing means you're less likely to be seen or heard.
@@unnaturalhistorychannel oh I see thank you, I’ve seen a ton of videos of goats getting scared on farms and just freezing up and falling over and I thought it was really bizarre
@@mr.rathalos1155 yeah "fainting" is technically a genetic seizure disorder; freeze as a fear response exists, because in most cases being still in quiet means you don't get eaten, but the full collapse seen in that goat breed is a neurological disorder.
“Someone has to get Godzilla right at some point soon, surely.”
Buddy, do I have news for you
I’ve seen it 😅
(And loved it)
The first Dalek episode is what really got me hooked after the rather goofy start. Then they just got cute and non-threatening again.
Pejorative is such a metal surname.
I think a more recent influential dragon is the Game of Thrones dragon design in general. Though, it seems to mostly just get visually ripped off, and hasn't particularly added anything that vermithrax didn't add 30 years prior.
Smaug in the Hobbit live action even seemed heavily inspired by Vermithrax.
I guess if something is done that well, it takes a while to top it.
Though the "two chemicals sprayed to make fire" from Reign of Fire has remained extremely influential.
Great video!
I didn't expect to see the Daleks in this video and yeah, it's kinda sad how after the cult of skaro story, they went downhill to goofy levels, sometimes i think they forgot some of the addtitions they gave to the daleks at the start of the revival (like the casing exterior being a trap if you touch it).
These monster changes (especially the daleks) reminds me of War of the worlds and the many designs the martians and their tripod fighting machines got through the years since the H.G wells book (1953 movie, jeff wayne's musical version, 2005 movie, Goliath, etc...)
Like their origins in 2005 where instead of a cylinder coming from Mars, they already had their tripods buried in earth long time ago and the martians looking more like the tripod machines they used.
Then there's the 1953 version, where the fighting machines are more like a manta ray looking, the magnetic shield addition which could ignore any damage even atomic bombs (and later versions like the 2005 uses this),the martians being smaller than the bear-sized from the novel and how they have no use for the humans unlike other medias where the martians would use humans to fertilize the area with "red weed"
One thing almost all adapatations share in common is the ending, having the bacteria killing the martians.
The shield in war of the worlds had mixed opinions, in my case honestly, it doesn't bother me that much, i understand the reason they had that, "because modern weapons could probably destroy them easily" but making them invincible 24/7 wasn't a good idea, part of the reason why i liked the original book and jeff wayne's adaptation is because there were moments where it gives u a little bit of hope when they take down a tripod (like in thunderchild) but they adapt and learn from those moments,there's this PC game from jeff wayne's adaptation cutscene where they show the martians first attack being a failure and how they have to think of a more secure strategy to attack. The 2005 showed some tripods being taken down but the first one was because of a single grenade inside (kinda goofy) and the second one because of the bacteria, I still enjoyed most adaptations so far.
there's also a part of H.G wells book comparing the martian invasion with extermination of the people in tasmania by the european immigrants and how the martians emphazises the human aspects like the head and arms.
Now that i think about it, both daleks and martians share some elements in common since they see other species as inferior, the ray beam weapons they had, the species inside and the later appareances which would use the magnetic shield.
Part of me speculates that the rise of zombie films set in the UK stems from the Mad Cow Disease incident in the 90s and the fear that it generated in that part of the world.
UHC is the one nerdlord to rule them all. Only he can describe in crystal clear detail why your all powerful dragon is an inbred, why anti predator defences are a thing, why spikes are stupid on top order carnivores and why Magnamalp is a Deviant Art OC. Having a proper education also helps too.
Glad I got to see you clarify with "Dalek" as it's also my favorite of those early 9th Doctor era.
Yeah it was a fun time before they went "full Borg" and became jokes
I’m a little surprised that Smaug wasn’t given much attention or discussion during the otherwise excellent section on Vermithrax Perjorative and dragons as a whole.
Hedorah and destroyah are perfect monsters for climate change and apocalyptic destruction of the biosphere. But they never really got anything after their respective movies.
That could also work for Bagan (if he ever appears in anything). Since other than being some Ghidorah-level threat, he’s pretty much a blank slate.
I love this topic, so glad to see you talk about it.
You should do a video focusing on Evolution (2001) and its subsequent cartoon. It's definitely up your alley
I must salute the very solid try for the MONSTERVERSE (Mostly 2014 & KOTM in my opinion) to offer an interesting adaptation, giving a renewal to the character while (sorta) keeping his dephts,theme & allegory BUT still providing excellent spectacle with the stupid, yet extremely fun Kaiju-Battles and the amazing cinematography.
Dunno taking most of godzillas nuclear allegory and punishment for man kinda arrogance thing is kinda bad imo
@@Oinker-Sploinker I wouldn't say bad just different, i prefer having a slightly less relevant Goji rather than the exact same as the OG
Saw when it Dragonslayer came out..Now,after all of these years,the dragon still comes to mind is.impressive,very on a big screen,the dragon and fire breath
Bro, I've never even heard of Dragonslayer before. But you saying that Vermithrax after having lost all her chicks became the mother of all modern dragons, made me feel.
really interesting video concept, well executed and well performed, you've got a new subscriber
Next video: 2 monsters, no roar.
Crabs?
Bulldrome and Poogie?
Felyne and Melynx?
Egg delivery quests and magically appearing boulders?
I love your videos so much. Thank you for all the videos you make!
I can’t wait for Godzilla minus one, I think the fact that it is exactly post war could help refocus the intention of his character.
100% sure the main thing people will be focussing on will be powerscaling him with monster verse Godzilla
@@Oinker-Sploinker oh for sure.
Wait, you aren't going to talk about godzilla again?
I likely will!
This is a fantastic video. I don't agree with some of it but that's the beauty of monsters. They're the products of imagination, cherished and feared. 🙂
in fairness, it is cool when 2 monsters hit each other. Though yes, i do prefer the originals theming, and its a better film. Mothra vs climate change could work, insect decline and all that
id be really scared if a rolling trash bin can fly, shoot lasers and says "EXTERMINATE" and is virtually indestructible
I think the 70y of big monsters punching each other post-orig Godzilla suggests that they do in fact have thematic resonance - childhood vs adulthood (lots of Godzilla movies, including King of the Monsters), globalization vs nationalism vs individualism (Pacific Rim), id vs society (Colossal) (I think... I should probably watch that), animals-as-friends vs animals-as-resource (Rampage) all jump to mind.
You just need something that is not only big and disruptive like climate change but also mercurial and uncontrollable (unlike climate change and nuclear escalation, for now, knock on wood). I think there could be a good AI-kaiju, a billionaire-kaiju, an imperialism-kaiju, a gun violence-kaiju. Or what about a monster that attacks religious and culturally significant places as metaphor for secularization? Even just doing climate change but making it about localized natural disasters instead of nebulous global trends would solve some of the problem, imho.
A great video, and over something I never really thought about. I personally enjoy the monsterverse Godzilla films, but it does lack the amazing message that 54 goji provided
That was amazing. Not only one of the best informed Godzilla discussions I've seen, but you also got me interested in watching Doctor Who.
Vermithrax was done by one of my biggest heroes, phil tippet. Also i will likely take inspiration from vermithrax when doing the dragons for my project, depending on what i make them
i would love to see more like this in the future
Man, the realization that there is no popular monster directly associated with climate change is surprising. They tried with Godzilla, but failed, because Godzilla by his nature will always be moreso about nuclear weaponry, to the point that it’s literally one of his main attack powers. King Kong comes closer, but I find Kong and Skull Island are more about our relationship with nature and wild animals, and how we tend to abuse or treat wildlife and the greater ecosystem at large, which is close but not quite it. There isn’t really a monster specifically about how humanity is destroying the natural world in its entirety while governments and corporations tiptoe around the actual issue which is corporate overproduction and the need to produce more capital. it’s like the perfect starting point for a giant Kaiju and yet it’s never really been done.
And unfortunately I’m willing to bet we won’t get one in a long while considering well I’d imagine corporations that own a property like Godzilla wouldn’t be as eager to jump on the “corpos are the only reason we’re not using solar/wind power already” crowd.🙃
Mothra (and Battra I guess) do it kinda well in the Heisei era
i think the reason for this is because it's just easier to represent climate change with weird supernatural phenomena than a physical being because as hard as it is to translate the "it will slowly affect and destroy across the entire world"to a creature,it's even more difficult to translate the "powerfull people across the world are feeding it knowing it will destroy us" part
You should make a sequel to this one with some other keystone monsters! I’d love to see you talk about the Martians from war of the worlds, if you’d consider them ‘monsters’, it’s especially interesting when you consider one of their best adaptations is from an album of all things!
I like that you also propose counterarguments to some of these changes, like the fast zombie and global warming kaiju, or talk about how hexapodical dragons still have a purpose as magical beings (or mutants) and quadrapodical dragons (wyverns) do as something that could conceivably exist.
On the Daleks, I do like their recent stories, at least more so than the Moffat era. Chibnal, say what you will about him, has mostly brought them back to their roots of being Mutant Space Nazis trying to conqeur the Universe while still keeping with their revival updates.
To kind of step off your point with a personal example:
I do freelance art and the werewolves that ripped their way out of their host flesh or had a wolf muzzle emerge from their mouth were the ones that really hit home for me. There's a panel from a Hellboy short story where a dude cuts himself in half from forehead to bellybutton and then rips his skin open to reveal a portal of darkness that the werewolf emerges from.
Something about not giving a shit about your human form and shredding it on the way out, or emerging in a unnatural direction from internal portals just stuck with me and i find myself leaning into those aspects and even exaggerating them to the point that the human skin may as well be wet paper that can be broken through at any point on the body and the werewolf form can emerge in bizarre ways like emerging fully formed vertically from an open horizontal stomach wound if the host was laying down.
Something about all of that stuff just rings notions in my head of things like: the werewolf is the true form, the human is a cheap and thin disguise, the level of control the werewolf has is not mindless, the entity emerges from somewhere both internal and oddly extradimensional as though summoned but always there.
You might like the skin wolves from Warhammer fantasy. So named because they end up with the tattered remains of their human skin draped around them.
@@ASpaceOstrich Oh damn, didn't know about that lil tidbit, and i love me some 40k and Fantasy :D gonna have to look into those bad boys. I'm assuming they're Norscans?
@@sickjoe9174 I think they're Norscans yeah.
Today I learned that 28 Days Later came out 2 years before Dawn of the Dead and DotD is what introduced runners to me. 28 Days Later scarred (as in scars) me with the aggressiveness, and WWZ with sprinters. Which is why I can't take TWD seriously. Slow and quiet is easier to manage.
20:35 from the trailers for Minus One it looks like they're modernizing the first Godzilla.
22:50 like... Hedora? The one literally invented for that?
Interesting take. I don’t completely agree with the kong or Godzilla part but it did get me thinking.
I consider that we have moved on to another era, successor to the realistic dragon. Nowadays, the intelligent but non-speaking dragon that is also a friend of humans is more common; Take the famous Toothless as an example. As for the zombies, we could say that they also had a change when it came to being represented as this consuming and brainless mass, since their first canonical appearance shown in Night of the Living Dead showed intelligent zombies, afraid of fire, who used tools and that they were both aggressive and mysterious. Something that today would be difficult to capture due to all the zombie media we consume. Not to mention Kong or Godzilla. The first would practically become a natural reserve of intense protection and illegal trafficking for its fauna, and the second seems to be returning to its roots, especially with Shin Godzilla and Minus One, without leaving the craziest and most confrontational side with King of the Monsters and Singular Point.
The Dalek guns are basically the concept of painful mortality made manifest.
I'm not sure it's ever clearly stated in any of the shows but my headcanon is they're an offshoot of the Daleks robust and workable transmat technology.
That is to say, they randomly distribute your insides in little chunks, probably while stimulating your nerves at the same time for added pain.
Great analysis! Really hope you go over Godzilla's incarnations through a natural lens someday
We’ve had the bronze dalek for 18 years, we need a new design. The new paradigm version was a start but by the time they truly looked good it was too late.
“There is currently no significant monster that symbolizes climate change.”
You just gonna diss Manbearpig like that?
SPOILERS for Horizon Zero Dawn below.
Here's an interesting monster and an altered depiction that I found quite fun. The killer AI. Skynet is basically the definitive example of the classic killer AI. Intelligent, knowledgable (often all knowing), malevolent. Deliberately wants to wipe out humanity for a reason, usually some larger philosophical reason, though not always. Usually involves the AI slipping the bonds of its programming and acting in ways it wasn't supposed to. The exact details change from depiction to depiction but the core idea of something intelligent and malevolent stays the same.
Now for the altered depiction. The FARO Plague from Horizon series. It's dumb, ignorant, and aside from one crucial bug, its doing exactly what its programmed to do. Its unclear whether the FARO plague even has the intelligence to understand that its wiping out humanity. I vaguely remember a log somewhere saying it started expediting certain environmentally damaging behaviours because it figured out that would kill us faster, but I'm not 100% on that. It never arrived at the decision to kill us through cold logic or philosophical belief. It never decided to kill us at all, it just does. It can't be reasoned with because it has no reasoning.
It's actions are not depicted as some inevitable consequence of AI. It's not malevolent because it can't feel anything, and not in a cold psychopathic way. Its dumb and unfeeling in the same way that an Amazon Alexa is dumb and unfeeling. Its basically an animal, and a particularly dumb animal at that. But because of the exact features it has been given and the hubris of its creator, it has the perfect combination of abilities to wipe out all life on Earth, which it proceeds to do.
It had no agenda. No goal it was working towards. The moment it finished wiping out humanity it shut down to preserve energy. Not out of some grand strategic plan but because in its exponential growth it had been running on emergency biomass fueled backup power for a year and it had just consumed all the remaining biomass. It was not smart enough to ration its resources, nor realise that it would effectively kill itself if it won.
The thing that triggered it to become the evil AI? A small bug that disabled its IFF system. The way it determines friend from foe. How it identifies its owners. A single group of these robots found themselves in a state where they recognised everything else as hostile and only itself as friendly. And due to its other features, namely the ability to reproduce, the ability to fuel itself through biomass consumption in emergencies, being nigh impossible to hack, and the ability to hack other robots. It was apocalyptic. It couldn't be stopped. Anything artificial sent to fight it would be hacked and added to the Swarm. It constantly created more of its own forces. And you couldn't cut it off from power sources because it was just consuming biomass for fuel instead. It could be hacked eventually, but the time it would take was longer than even the best case projections for how long the Swarm would take to wipe out all life on Earth.
I love this subversion. A killer AI thats literally too dumb to reason with is so much more threatening that something knowingly malevolent. Its basically a low tech iteration of the grey goo scenario of self replicating nanobots. And its a much more realistic threat than killer AI usually present. A bug and lack of forethought as to the consequences of a certain combination of features is a believable threat. People make that kind of mistake all the time. And it fits perfectly with the modern wave of what we call AI. In that its stupid and doesn't actually know what its doing. Just following patterns.
I have a crazy idea. If certain monsters (don't worry I'm excluding crazy monsters like fatalis, magnamalo, bracydios, etc.) were to coexist in our world, where would they live and when? For example I could see Banbaro living in my home country of modern day Canada. Another would be Nerscylla in the pre-dinosaur era. Don't get me wrong I'm sure there are reasons this is not going to work but I'm hoping you could indulge in the hypothesis.
I hope you see this, but I doubt you will. Would love to see a video about Bioluminescence(hope I spelled it right) it’s something I’ve never seen explained well, as it seems like purely a detriment to have although monsters look cool having it. Regardless, your content is great, keep up the good work.
The best way to do the hexopod dragons is to use Genetic engineering which is something I’m useing in DragoGen.
Have you heard of Michael Levin? He's a scientist working to study and control the electrical signals that direct an organism's growth. I think he's made six legged frogs. He says half of the letters he get call his work an abomination and half are from amputees offering to volunteer. He was in the New Yorker.
I have no idea why your comment made me think of this, but I'm now picturing a dragon that essentially has two spines. Something like the massive hump on a buffalo but its a second set of shoulders that the wings are sprouting from.
@@ASpaceOstrich
I Feel like with My Take on it it´s more of a 2nd chest shoulder at Front of the body,
i plan to make a VHS for DragoGen explaining these So Called Hexosauurs but just know they are very VERY likely Scansoriopterygids(Wyverns already are so why not?) and so far im currently going with the idea they might have changed up the coracoids a bit to act as a 2nd pair of shoulders
18:18 To be fair, it was actually quite hard to perform air to ground attack on small targets with Transonic and early supersonic jets due to issues such as clossure speed, this is part of the reason why dedicated COIN and CAS aircraft were designed and deployed (besides lower operating costs). It was only with the maturation of guided munitions when it become possible to perform pin-point accurancy strikes against such targets.
(OFC, Kong wouldn't be able to retaliate against a jet, so it would still remove a lot of tension from the final confrontation).
I think Godzilla just gets bigger because buildings get bigger.
They still gotta boost his height in every film though since most skyscrapers nowadays are well over 120m
Unnatural, i would love to see how woul you analyze the Godzillas, god i would love to see you analyze Shin and Minus One.
Please make more videos of this.
Vermithrax (in particular)... and "Dragonslayer" (in general) was my favourite S&S film of late 70s/early 80s👊🏾
I’d be interested in a dedicated video on the Godzilla franchise and your personal opinions on each of the eras and films. I can only imagine the hot takes haha
100% sure he loves showa, and the first 2 monster verse movies and maybe shin 🤔
On the topic of Godzilla what are your thoughts of Godzilla Minus One? and will you watch it?
I don't know if it's a monster per say, but MR X from Resident Evil 2 is one of my favourites in recent years
Incorrect about DW being cancelled in 1989 for being terrible in the end. It was actually doing decently and it was getting good again but the reason it got cancelled after Season 26 is more because the people in charge of the program outside of the DW crew wanted it gone and the only reason the show came back from its year long hiatus after Season 22 (It actually did good in the ratings contrary to popular belief) was because of the public backlash over the decision. They did whatever they could to damage it’s credibility by pitting it against Coronation Street.
Doctor Who actually flourished as an IP during the gap between 1989 to 2005. Comics, novels, merchandising, video releases, reruns and audio dramas. A lot of NuWho’s creators got their start from these with RTD especially.
Whatever you hear about 80’s Doctor Who today rather than actually watching it and reading the context on what went on behind the scenes, you’re hearing revisionist history on it because of hindsight. A lot of NuWho owes itself to late 80’s Who including having a Dalek levitate on-screen.
Also, you say Daleks are at their most interesting when they’re not acting like Daleks while stories like Power of the Daleks, Evil of the Daleks, Jubilee (Series 1 Dalek’s inspiration) and The Elite exists. The only reason they were seen as a joke back then was because of Destiny of the Daleks; making that stairs joke by a then cantankerous Tom Baker in 1979 and Douglas Adams had a hand in writing that despite the Terry Nation credit. Their 80’s stories went out of their way to make them credible threats again because of how badly Destiny treated them.
From the few clips I’ve seen of Classic Who, I definitely like 7 and his era.
I personally don't feel the Monsterverse Godzilla is too far off from being a good Nuclear allegory.
He's can be both a warning of irresponsible use of nuclear weapons and an example of learning to live with it. A force of nature that we should fear and respect, yet can be used for a better future for all.
Which is a lot more nuanced than a straight "Nuclear Stuff is Bad!" in my opinion.
Though a lot of it is sacrificed for on screen flashiness.
I do feel Godzilla is due for another update in a way, as nuclear power is likely our best shot at getting off fossil fuels. Depends if he represents nuclear power or weapons
@@unnaturalhistorychannel Well thats the double edged sword. It can be both as they go hand in hand.
Knowledge on how to produce nuclear fusion both weapons and power.
So you can have both in one monster, which is what I think they where trying to do in the movies. But Hollywood will be Hollywood, especially with cinematic universes.
Good video, but you were a little glib about Godzilla vs Kong being just "Two monsters fighting". It does have a grander meaning, it's a action comedy lampooning the japanese film industry's treatment of these monsters as spectacle fodder. That's partly why the fight isn't slow and grandiose, but instead just a wrestling brawl. It's meant to be kinda silly as the whole film is packed with silly jokes.
I think he’s more referring to the 2021 GvK. Because that is pretty much monster fights.
I have to disagree on the Godzilla section, in some parts. Minus One returning to post war Japan under similar context to the original film will likely work strongly-but Shin Godzilla does not. Shin's symbolism is so on the nose and politicized that it loses much of the attempted substance as just childish "they bad, us not bad, we fix goodly". It also makes the horrific mistake of stripping Godzilla of his character, something present since the first film. As a tragic being by birth, Godzilla has always had a sympathy towards him, which is why he originally became kinder over time. He developed as a character because audiences wanted him to win, the same applies to Rodan too. And this is why Mothra was made as a benevolent being. Shin doesn't work as a Godzilla movie, despite sprinkling bits of the radiation plague in itself.
While the Monsterverse hasn't fully commit to one tone, or quality of writing, etc, it has stuck pretty solidly that Godzilla represents nature's wrath. Against invasive species/climate change/Satan aliens like Ghidorah, Godzilla does his best, but can't win alone, needing humans to give the win. Against mankind's ultimate weapon, something directly made to destroy him in Mechagodzilla, while he could've won on his own if he wasn't weakened-human impacts through manipulating Kong left him unable to really defend himself. It is a bit jarring on the surface that the nuclear monster is now being shown as more beneficial to the planet when he was originally the spawn of atomic tragedy, but attitudes towards nuclear power have changed as is. KoTM's, 2014 and GvK plots all mention the possibilities of radiation in the environment, with a Chernobyll like scenario being shown after the city battles. To me that's not ignorance, but these ideas are unlikely to be fully explored since GvK set a standard of more...Marvel film for the Monsterverse.
As for his change of size, you would be right for the 2014 era on, but Godzilla's changing size responded more to the sizes of cities and his character as need be. Bumped to 80 meters in the 80s cities, further powered up to 100 meters for the 90s and the more powerful nuclear weapons of the day. Shrunk back to the 50-60 meter scale for easier effects work.
'Shin Godzilla' can be a little on-the-nose in its commentary, but I don't see any "they bad, us good" statements besides maybe a generational divide. Yes, Godzilla is less "characterized" than in many other films; but I don't think 'Shin Godzilla''s story could work WITHOUT Godzilla. The Nuclear aspect of the story, direct and metaphorical, is critical to the plot, and Godzilla is THE monster of choice to present that conflict. Godzilla presents nuclear power (combined with the unpredictable forces of nature) at its most hazardous but also its great potential, as seen in the moments addressing the borderline miracle of science decoding Godzilla's genome could prove to be. It's a very poignant reimagining of the character; while I wouldn't want this specific design to be the norm going forward, in the specific space of 'Shin Godzilla', this characterization absolutely works, and it wouldn't have worked nearly as well with any other monster.
While the Monsterverse has struggled with its themes, especially in the last two films, I do think the series so far has - deliberately or accidentally - developed an interesting "conflict vs coexistence" sub-narrative. Through all four films, the inherent drive of conflict has been: "will humanity and monsters kill each other off, or can they share the planet"? To the film's credit, 'Godzilla vs Kong' actually presents a nice culmination of the opposing ideals, with Kong and Jia representing direct coexistence, and Mechagodzilla representing conflict evolved to outright usurpation, with the intent to replace the monsters entirely. Again, I don't know how thought-out that really was, but it's one angle that I think actually seems to really work.
Godzilla became kinder because more people liked monster mashing and rooting for Godzilla over his enemy monsters and it was more marketable not for any narrative reasons
@@Oinker-Sploinker This is literally wrong as proven by like 15 interviews. Godzilla was a bad guy in multiple monster mashes and they were huge hits. King Kong vs Godzilla is, adjusted for inflation, the by far most grossed Godzilla movie.
@@gurrenrodan3801 The old government is most certainly painted as a "them" versus the 'oddballs, outcasts, geeks' as the "us". Also a little of that towards the USA but less so than the older government. I disagree, by stripping Godzilla of so much that makes him Godzilla-you reduce him down to a disaster, in which case, why am I watching this film rather than a disaster film? Or another generic Kaiju who goes roar and smash? Godzilla more represents the tsunami and earthquake that hit Fukishima in Japan about a decade before, his radioactive origins and nature aren't really brought up much other than him having new isotopes (that conveniently have a SUPER short half life). Of course Godzilla has to be plot essential-it is his movie after all. But he is just that, a plot device. Without him the political messaging doesn't work so it feels forced.
I think it's deliberate, the coexistence point is driven home in 2019's film directly. I think there were more direct ideas for it given what I've read of GvK's novelization (Ren wanted MechaG to kill Godzilla directly for stealing his father from him, using the many people who have died in the monster king's fights as justification, Mark has conflicting feelings on Godzilla "going bad", for example) that were either cut cause of COVID or other reasons. I just wish they stuck to it, and it seems WB and Legendary learned the wrong lessons from the success of the crossover.