I, Saturnine

Misery has blackened the sun.

[justiceleague]

Gotham City in Batman (1989)

[spacehunter-m]

[astoundingbeyondbelief]

Well, Criterion did it. They gathered up the 15 Showa Godzilla films whose U.S. rights had been scattered for decades and brought them together for a big ol’ box set. And – as is the case when every kaiju home video release is announced – the warring in message boards and comment sections has already begun over the specifics of that set.

The Showa Godzilla films were dubbed into English a total of 19 times. “Due to  the parameters of [Criterion’s] licensing agreement with Toho,” only 8 of those dubs are included in this set. It is a massive omission and a baffling one. Most of these missing dubs have already been released on DVD and/or Blu-ray. Three of them are among the international export dubs Toho commissioned themselves! Godzilla fans who dive into the minutia of these releases have come to expect seemingly random restrictions on content from Toho, but they’ve surely topped themselves this time, and to one of the companies most likely to finally do these dubs justice. It’s ironic that at the same time that Tsuburaya is making its biggest move ever to bring Ultraman to the United States, Toho seems to be doing its best to erase Godzilla’s rich history in this country.

News of the video quality is also dismaying. Aside from Godzilla, Criterion will be using Toho’s subpar HD transfers from 2008, even though Sony produced superior versions of five of the films some 15 years ago. Toho also failed to provide their recent 4K transfer of King Kong vs. Godzilla, which is by far the best the film has ever looked.

But this set will do a lot of good for English-speaking Godzilla fans. All but two of the Showa Godzilla films are out of print in the U.S. right now; as expensive as this set is, new fans would find buying all the previous releases secondhand to weigh even heavier on their wallets. Godzilla Raids Again; Mothra vs. Godzilla; Ghidorah, the Three Headed Monster; Invasion of Astro-Monster; Son of Godzilla; All Monsters Attack; Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla; and Terror of Mechagodzilla are coming to English-friendly Blu-ray for the first time. Interviews with the people who worked on these films will be translated for the first time, and it sounds like Criterion is also including the 1986 Toho Unused Effects tape, or something similar. All of the films will have new English subtitles, rendering the shoddy translations and dubtitles of other companies obsolete. And best of all, the Japanese version of King Kong vs. Godzilla will finally be (officially) available in English, until now the only holdout in the entire series.

By the way, the set comes out at the end of October, and Barnes & Noble has a tendency to take 50% off Criterion releases in November… 

[thecollectibles]

Art by Julien Delval

[kyodaikino]

And here it is folks! I’m not totally out of the woods on the copyright front, but the video is viewable now. Watch it while it’s up!

[astoundingbeyondbelief]

Here are the Criterion Godzilla memes I made for my G-Fest panel with @kyodaikino. Their master plan to make half the money in our wallets disappear is almost complete! Probably!

[astoundingbeyondbelief]

I’m realizing I haven’t posted a lot about Criterion on this site recently, so here’s a full recap of what we know:

Criterion issued Godzilla (1954) on DVD and Blu-ray in 2012, in what is widely considered the best home video release of a Godzilla film ever.

Janus Films, Criterion’s longtime business partner, brought Rodan, The War of the Gargantuas, and all but four of the Showa Godzilla films to the streaming services STARZ and FilmStruck in 2017. The later has since been replaced with The Criterion Channel, but retains all the Toho titles.

At the time, Criterion told fans who emailed them that “we hope to release them on Blu-ray and DVD at some point but they aren’t yet on the schedule.”

This year, revival screenings of Showa Godzilla films began crediting Janus as a distributor. This is how we learned they had acquired Godzilla vs. Gigan and Godzilla vs. Hedorah, two of the three G-films that Kraken Releasing used to have. Presumably, they also now have the third: Ebirah, Horror of the Deep. That leaves only King Kong vs. Godzilla, owned by Universal, who has sublicensed films to Janus/Criterion many times in the past.

Criterion designer/art director Eric Skillman contacted several comic book artists on Twitter about an upcoming project in May, then made several Tweets suggesting it was Godzilla-related.

Ed Godziszewski and/or Steve Ryfle stated at their Bringing Godzilla Down to Size panel at G-Fest that Criterion would be making a Godzilla announcement this week. (Disclaimer: I was not there.)

An unnamed source at the G-Fest afterparty provided further information, suggesting that fans would be less than pleased with the dubs absent from the impending box set, specifying Gigantis the Fire Monster. (Disclaimer: I was not here either.)

Criterion numbers all of their releases, and one of the films or sets they announce this month will be #1000.

Criterion typically announces new releases on the 15th of each month. This time they missed the date, then stated on the 16th that they would be announcing them on the 17th. Yesterday they postponed it again to today – the first day of San Diego Comic Con, where Toho is debuting a Godzilla booth.

August Ragone also teased a Godzilla announcement from Criterion this morning.

It looks like our wait is about to be over.

[spacehunter-m]

[70sscifiart]

Bob Eggleton

[gebo4482]

Godzilla: King of the Monsters by Stephen Zavala / Xu Tianhua / Mauricio Ruiz

[reactionfaces]

[percy-son-of-sally-jackson]

Recipe for Ghidorah:

• 1/3rd babey

• 2/3rds bastard

[shitpostbot5k]

[ben237]

saraba, tomoyo

[raffleupagus]

Godzilla movies are good actually

[prison-mikes-bandana]

How Godzilla King of the Monsters should’ve ended!!!!

[raffleupagus]

I think KOTM is the first movie ever where Rodan’s name is actually pronounced “RODAN” in the original dialogue, rather than “Radon.”

I saw a couple Japanese twitter users confused about it and then I finally put it together.

[bloodiltempered]

Re-watching Monster Zero not long ago and for some reason I never noticed Nick Adams call him “Radon”, while all the other dubbed actors say “Rodan” and I put it together that that’s probably what he was told to say, or heard pronounced on set etc...