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Ever since I was a very young boy, Godzilla has been my absolute favorite. My favorite character, my favorite movies, etc. The love, the blood, the sweat, and the tears that were made to create each movie are on full display. They are films with timeless messages, and limitless imagination, and whose effects are an art form. It's a series that has a lot of personal and emotional value to me, so I hold all of these movies in high regard. Each film has a special place in my heart, even if they are flawed...
HOWEVER
I have never liked Godzilla Raids Again. It is an absolute slog to get through. The structure is odd, you can't go five minutes without the movie padding out the runtime with unnecessary shots, elongated takes, and superfluous plot points. But despite all of these, every time I watched it, I could see that somewhere in there was a solid monster movie. Not a masterpiece or hidden gem, but the type of movie you would watch on TV at 2 in the morning and think "That wasn't too bad." When it's over. I looked and looked for a fan edit, but could find none. So I decided to do it myself.
My main goal with this edit was to turn a 2/10 movie into a 5/10 movie. Streamline it, tighten the pacing, and fix a few technical issues that it had.
Also, as much as I would have loved to share the trials and tribulations of making my first fan edit, I did not learn about this website until a majority of it was complete. As of the posting of this thread, it is fully completed. (Funnily enough, it was finished on Godzilla Day.)
My Goals:
- Cut out the filler to give the film a better flow.
- Improve the monster scenes by slowing down the footage. Giving them the sense of weight they were originally intended to have.
- Fix a few technical errors.
- Get rid of those damn prisoners.
Changes:
- Janus Films logo removed
- Trimmed the shot of Tsukioka looking for Kobayashi.
- Tsukioka now only flies around the island once instead of twice.
- Changed the order of the reaction shots.
- Added the sound of Godzilla's footsteps so that the characters are reacting to an actual sound now.
- Slowed down the footage of Godzilla and Anguirus. (Minus them falling into the water.)
- Removed the showing of footage from the previous film. The dialogue still flows perfectly.
- Removed references to the prisoners.
- Cut the second instance of soldiers being relieved.
- Cut out the prisoner subplot entirely.
- Re-edited the refinery explosion scene in a way that doesn't involve the prisoners.
- Godzilla notices a straggler (that was flying backward in the original cut) which fires at him.
- Godzilla retaliates and the plane crashes into the refinery.
- Cut to Kobayashi and Tsukioka arriving to imply the crash without showing it.
- Re-edited the reaction to only have one establishing shot instead of two.- Added missing explosion sound effects.
- Restructured the military fight. added sound effects to certain shots to maintain continuity.- Cut the fishery president looking back into his binoculars at Anguirus.
- Slowed down a majority of the monster footage.
- Added an explosion sound effect that was absent.
- Cut a second establishing shot of the harbor being on fire.
- Added ambient monster noises to the human scene.
- Added a Godzilla roar.
- Changed the pacing of the fishery explosion. It cuts to the president's reaction quicker.
- Added an Anguirus roar.
-Removed any cutaways to the prisoners.
- Cut a few shots of Godzilla fighting Anguirus.
- Added missing Anguirus roars.
- Interspliced original footage with slowed footage.
- Cut a shot of Osaka Castle crumbling.
- Fixed film alignment issue of Osaka Castle beginning to crumble.
- Removed some shots of the burning city.
- Kobayashi is now the first character we see in the Hokkaido office. The interaction between two characters has been cut out.
- Cut out a few shots of boats.
- Cut the scene with the two hostesses and the drinking song.
- Cut exterior shot of plane and Tsukioka's second reaction to Godzilla.
- Replaced the original aerial shot of Godzilla with a repurposed shot from later.
- Cut all references to the fire fence and the navy.
- There is no longer a naval component, all shots of boats and naval soldiers have been removed.
- Replaced all the planes with the ones used in the actual final fight.
- Reworked the overhead shot of Godzilla. Edited it to make it look like he noticed the plane over his shoulder.
- Added a missing roar.
- Replaced the third aerial shot of Godzilla repurposing a previous shot.
- Tweaked bombing footage to use the planes from the original cut's last fight.
- Added missing roars.
-Reworked the final fight.
- Rather than the jets needing to return and the navy holding Godzilla in place until they return, the scene has been changed to make Kobayashi's death more meaningful.
- The jet's missiles don't work on Godzilla, Kobayashi sacrifices himself, and it's at this moment that our heroes know how to defeat Godzilla.
- The sequence has been incredibly streamlined. (A lot less shots of exploding mountaintops.)
- Some shots from the cut naval sequence are repurposed to better convey Godzilla getting buried under ice.
- Missing roars have been added in places.
- A few cockpit shots have been cut to give the illusion that Tsukioka is still in the backseat of the plane.
- Yamaji reporting Kobayashi's death is moved to be the second to last scene of the movie, giving it a more somber ending.That's a lot of changes! I feel like these tweaks turn Godzilla Raids Again into a far more watchable movie. One that is more direct, succinct, and concise.
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