Godzilla: Final Wars poster & wallpaper

Akira Takarada, Chihiro Otsuka, Don Frye

The 28th installment in the ever-popular Japanese series is an ambitious affair, boasting 10 famous monsters, a very large budget, and talented director Ryuhei Kitamura. Sometime in the indefinite fut...( read more  read more... )ure, the world's major cities are suddenly attacked by 10 monsters at once; panic reigns until Earth is visited by benign aliens who put an end to the monster plague. On the verge of signing a peace treaty, the aliens and the humans have forgotten Godzilla, who sleeps under the ice of Antarctica.

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70% liked it

8,295 ratings

Critics

50% liked it

8 critics

PG, 2 hrs. 5 min.

Directed by: Ryuhei Kitamura

Release Date: November 29, 2004

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DVD Release Date: December 13, 2005

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Stats: 705 reviews

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Flixster Reviews (705)

  • shootmybaby
    September 5, 2008
    shootmybaby
    a true tribute to 50 years of giant lizards stomping the hell out of tokyo!
    some people don't see the point in films like this, where CGI is replaced by a guy in a giant lizard suit... these people need to understand that they're taking it too seriously. it's pure excitement, an...( read more)d if you want something beleiveable stay away from science fiction in general.

    also a very important film because it shows how crap GINO really is, the fight lasts about 30 seconds! i felt it was truly a statement to how godzilla is a japanese franchise and naturally the japanese can pull it off the best
  • kenstachnik
    April 7, 2008
    kenstachnik
    Man in Suit! MAN IN SUIT!!!!!!!!
  • flynnparadox
    January 7, 2008
    flynnparadox
    Big, mindless, overwrought, fun, much-too-long celebration of Godzilla's fiftieth birthday. Most of your favorites are here (except many of them have only a scene or two.) I said that the film is too long and, indeed, it is. Perhaps if there were less human fights and more mon...( read more)ster fights, this wouldn't have been as much of problem. No matter, what is onscreen works most of the time and, I must admit, I had a smile on my face through most of the running time. Check it out if you're a Big G fan...
  • ceWEBrity
    July 8, 2007
    ceWEBrity
    I went to go see this at Sacramento's Trash Film Orgy and, well, it was trash. This is a huge budget for a Japanese movie (20 million dollars) but pocket change for American studios, and the discrepancy shows. A lot of the special effects are riotously cheap by our standards. Of ...( read more)course, Final Wars has a lot more to worry about than cheap special effects, such as the acting, the nonexistant plot, the derivative visuals (count the sci-fi references!) and the occasional dry spots. Seeing all the monsters is cool, but loses its novelty pretty quickly.

    Still, when you've got a theater full of people yelling jokes and everyone's cheering at the film's little goofs - the audience went wild when one character told another character to "Jerk it harder!" - it becomes impossible not to appreciate its campiness. I suggest you come into it with the same attitude and you'll probably find it a lot more enjoyable.

    Heh. "Come into it."
  • Beefy
    May 13, 2007
    Beefy
    Oh man, it's like a Godzilla movie on crack, or after eating pure sugar for nine hours!
  • Jokercourtney20
    October 30, 2009
    Jokercourtney20
    godzilla: final wars
  • superspecialawesome
    October 12, 2009
    superspecialawesome
    :D GOZILLA! I've always wanted to watch one. It wasn't too bad.
  • CHILIcheeseDONUTSwithTUNAonTOP
    September 6, 2009
    CHILIcheeseDONUTSwithTUNAonTOP
    The greatest Godzilla film I have yet seen. Over-the-top wackiness as aliens now control all the monsters of earth except for Godzilla. Godzilla is culled into defending earth from these aliens and thoroughly dispatches his challengers. Some scenes are from past films, but most i...( read more)s brand new. So much Japanese craziness makes this a buyer!
  • jfvirey
    August 5, 2009
    jfvirey
    Kaiju - or Japanese giant monster - movies are a genre I would very much like to love and explore further, but it seems that since I saw and enjoyed the Gamera trilogy, I haven't really been able to determine where to turn next, and have more or less given up on the genre. If I w...( read more)atched "Godzilla: Final Wars", it was because of my interest in Ryûhei Kitamura's camerawork (recently aroused by "The Midnight Meat Train" and already dampened by "Sky High".)

    Kitamura, apparently, can make very good movies if given a strong script and cast. But here, we have a story that tries to do to many things at the same time, models impersonating completely hollow characters and very silly dialogue ("Why didn't you kill me?" "Because you're my friend"; oh, so THAT's what friends are for.) Moreover, the film has a very cringeworthy subplot involving a baby kaiju that looks like a chubby Ninja Turtle, and quite a few inconsistencies (for instance: if Godzilla destroys everything in his wake, why drag him through the Earth's most populated areas? Just for the sake of seeing him pulverise famous landmarks like the Sydney opera?)

    In its attempt to recap 50 years of Godzilla mythology in two hours, the film also cheapens Godzilla's opponents, because since he has to defeat them all in about an hour (he's awakened roughly at midpoint), the fights have to be rather brief, which makes one wonder why it took so many movies for Godzilla to vanquish all these monsters when he can do so in the wink of an eye (or has he just had a good recuperative sleep?)

    Like other films by Kitamura, this one also suffers from sensory overload. The techno beat of Keith Emerson's music is almost relentless, and it seems the film is attempting to look like its own trailer, except two hours of trailer-like editing is a bit hard on the nerves.

    This said, I quite enjoyed the monster fights, or matches, ranging from duelling energy beams to wrestling and even a football match involving Angiras as a spiky ball (!) I know these were only men in suits crushing models, but I have deep respect for this art form, and prefer this to C.G.I. The design for the various creatures was particularly impressive too. I quite empathised with Godzilla, whose expressions sometimes reminded me of my cat, and I found the first Gigan awesome (yes, not only are there about twelve kaijus unleashed upon the Earth, but some of them come in different versions.)

    One problem of that kind of movie is that the human "characters" tend to be reduced to the role of mere spectators, watching the film just like us. To avoid that, the screenwriters (all four of them) developed a whole story involving mutants, mystical twin sisters on an island and body-snatcher inspired dopplegangers. I didn't care much about that part of the film, but I guess you had to give those humans something to do (although this needn't have involved ripping off The Matrix.)

    My biggest surprise about the film was that I had already seen it, and remembered it quite well, though I have no recollection of ever renting it, as I must have done within the last five years. So this makes it both my first and fourth Kitamura film.
  • davefilkins
    July 9, 2009
    davefilkins
    An absolutely fantastic romp for those who are able and willing to suspend their disbelief for two hours and just take the plunge and enjoy the ride... like me.

    I really enjoyed the symbolic gesture of having the "man-in-a-suit" Godzilla toss aside the computer generated Zilla ...( read more)from the US's failed hijack of the Godzilla saga (1998 Tristar Godzilla movie starring Matthew Broderick) like yesterday's trash. Special effects and star-power will never substitute for heart, soul, passion, and a childlike sense of wonder. The 1998 Godzilla had none of the above. Final Wars contains oodles of all three.

    This piece is meant to pay homage to the masters of the original series (Tsubaraya, Ifukube, you know the rest) and even includes numerous former daikaiju stars, including the great Kenji Sahara, who has been in more Godzilla films (including both the very first "Gojira" and the most recent "Final Wars") than any other actor.

    The human drama was cheesy and the fight scenes were obviously influenced heavily by the outrageously overrated "Matrix" saga.

    The cityscapes were expertly crafted and the effects were brilliant. These were also some of the best monster suits I've ever seen.

    While far from my favorite daikaiju film (which is more likely to be either Gojira, Rodan, Matango, Rodan, Godzilla GMK, or Mothra vs. Godzilla), this film succeeds at marking the 50th anniversary of the giant monster with the most screen time of any other. The question is... is this the end of Godzilla's career? ...or is it just the beginning?

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Critic Reviews

August 5, 2005
Ty Burr, Boston Globe

This 28th entry in Toho Studio's series about the fire-breathing big fella is campily engaging for a while, but at two hours-plus you may come out feeling captivated dead. full review

View more Godzilla: Final Wars reviews at RottenTomatoes.com

Comments

  • colezilla
    April 26, 2008
    colezilla
    An amazing movie...GODZILLA RULES!!!!
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