Hold up just a minute. This is Chase and I'm with Aaron Strand and we've got a bonus episode coming your way off the heels of Jungle to Jungle. How do you think we did? Oh man, Jungle to Jungle was epic.  It was elite. Yeah, would you say it was one of the best movies you've ever seen? Elite film, elite podcast.

What more can you say?   If you want to hear that episode, you can go back and follow it on on YouTube. All major streaming platforms.  Today, , we're going to be talking Godzilla. Yes.   We first started talking about what movie we were going to do, I know you originally pinched Godzilla and I love that idea because I grew up a big Godzilla fan.

Yeah. And then we did 98 Godzilla, which I know is your favorite Godzilla, but, but, uh, I thought it was a good opportunity, , Godzilla spans 70 years now and it's incredible, right? Like that. It's still  going strong with minus one coming out I want to ask,  let's go back a little bit , tell me , how you came into a Godzilla fan.

Yeah, absolutely. , so how I came into it was my mom's side of the family. They all were big mystery science theater, 3000 fans. , I had an uncle who would like tape every episode of MST three K on VHS tapes and these VHS tapes would then be passed around the family. , like throughout the various households.

And so I would go spend the summer with my grandmother and somehow she ended up with some of these, , VHS tapes of comedy central episodes of MSD three K. And it was there that I first watched, , actually a camera film. I watched camera versus gauss. Oh, wow. And , I thought it was so Funny, I like, I thought it was just so ridiculous and I thought  the mystery science theater 3000 episode was hilarious.

And so then my aunt, , after I, you know, really fell in love with this tape, she was like, well, you got to see Godzilla versus Megalon, , mystery science theater 3000.  So then I watched that one. And at that point it was like, I was like this. I'm done. Like I, I'm, I am obsessed with this is all I want to watch from now on. 

And, , my grandmother, , was awesome in so many ways. And one of the awesome ways is that she would drag me to all these movies. Non blockbuster video stores, like independent video rental stores. She lived in Sarasota, Florida. So we'd go all over the greater Sarasota area. It was like movie gallery and like the Southeastern chains, right?

I have no idea. I don't remember at all. I was very young. , I'm like, I'm talking like, you know, I was five or six years old. Yeah.  And I started going through the Godzilla's and, , , I just fell in love and, , I don't, I mean, I can't explain it. You know, it's like one of those little childhood things.

 I obviously as a little kid, like I went through a dinosaur phase, I went through,  nature phase, but Godzilla sort of like took it to that next level and, , it just, Took over my whole life. I started like collecting little toys and this basically took over my childhood until I was like, maybe like 12 years old, 13 years old.

I was still collecting Godzilla stuff, comics  and toys. And I think if her parents, it was kind of,  it's probably like annoying and a little weird, but like on another way, it's like, well, we know what to get them for Christmas. Yeah. Shopping a lot easier. Yeah. I remember,  again, early to mid nineties, , my parents are university people.

So they had access to the internet before most people had internet in their homes. Oh wow. Long before we had it in our home. And so I remember going to their lab where I could hook up to the internet and I went to, , I believe it's called Barry's kingdom of Godzilla, Barry's palace of Godzilla. It's definitely Barry's something Godzilla, which was like a , very early internet webpage dedicated to Godzilla.

They had a little dancing Godzilla  graphics and they had information about all the films and they had a catalog of all the films, and I would just go to that web page to scroll and look at all the pages, and eventually there was like a message board function of other Godzilla nerds talking like showing pictures of their Godzilla collections and stuff like that, and yes, that's like that's also my like earliest internet memory is going to Barry's kingdom or palace of Godzilla, whatever, whatever it was called.

, it's so funny cause like I, I was so fascinated by, , your experience because the tapes you got from your grandmother ? , they weren't dubbed, right? No. , so it was kind of a mix. So there would be some dubbed, , because, , I don't know the releasing company.

I never have gone back and like read about Reddit, although I still have that many of my old VHS is,  , American releasing company had released all the dubbed versions. So those were widely available. In video store. So I've watched mostly dubbed. However, I will like, sometimes you would get a tape and it was just the subtitles  like I credit Godzilla with not only like introducing me to like subtitled films, like it acclimated me to foreign films.

It acclimated me to work. Independent video stores. It acclimated me to weird cult sections of video stores and basically like all of my movie,  not just love, but like, you know, the comfort with like cinema culture, which especially like at that time could be very sort of exclusionary and sort of like, you're not cool enough to like be here.

I think a lot of  the comfort in those spaces came from this  early love of Godzilla films before I even knew what a movie snob was. Yeah.  I felt that too,  when we were talking about it, because  my experience is a little different.  Because I watched them on monster vision basically late at night like and I can't remember I think it was like on TNT or Something like that  my memory escapes me because I was in like second grade Yeah, so it's you know, I don't remember everything.

I don't even remember which ones I watched the most, you know I just caught him as they came on And I had a TV in my bedroom and like, it was supposed to be in bed by like nine monster vision started late at night. I don't know if you remember. And it was Saturday and  I grew up, it was party time, it was party time for second grade chase to watch, , old Godzilla movies.

And they were dubbed and to the same experience, like I thought they were hilarious, but like also super entertaining, you know? And I just remember,  I remember being captivated by  the kaiju battles and I remember being captivated by this world that godzilla lived in,  because I grew up in small town, America, , in Japan, it just feels it, which it is, but it felt even further away than it does now.

So it felt like this whole nother world that I was being opened up to. And even the filmmaking aspect of it,  like how they were able to film that then and just make it feel like a big scale. Yeah. I always  Associated godzilla with like a theme park.

Yeah, right like it feels like  it shouldn't  exist, but it's fun  it's grandeur. It's exploration. It's adventure and it just feels like anything's possible Yeah, and  that's kind of how I grew up with it ,  did you pick up early on like The meaning and the metaphors behind Godzilla.

Was that something that came later on? , I guess  what does Godzilla mean to you as a filmmaker now? Yeah. I mean, it's such a weird, that's such a weird question. Cause  my artistic ambitions, like do not align with Godzilla in any way, shape or form.

, but I think that Godzilla, I agree with you. , I think theme park is the perfect description, and I would completely agree with that. ,  But yeah, I think pretty early on and probably like when I the first time I watched Godzilla versus the smog monster, like versus hetero  and with its like very sort of overt allusions to pollution and you know, being the social issue, that's really when it like started to become a cipher.

, as like a way  of looking at that culture again, even though it's a culture that's  So foreign,, being Japanese, but then even that is like sort of weird too, because it's like at that point in time, Japan was so heavily influenced by the United States and particularly in the fifties and sixties when Japan still had an American occupation government.

 So you end up with all this weird American trickle down into Japanese culture. So there's like also something even like it's very foreign and yet it's also very relatable, , which is, you know, really interesting. And to a kid who doesn't understand any of that context, it kind of grounds you in the story.

, I think also. The first time I watched, , the first Godzilla, I saw the American cut with Raymond Burr, like Godzilla, King of the Monsters  which I thought was good and I watched it a lot. But I think the first time I watched like the straight Japanese version, the nineteen fifty four Godzilla, you know, that's when things really started to click.

And, , I saw it as a metaphor for the atomic bombs  and this like threat to humanity and. How dark Godzilla could get, , that was also like right around the same time that , the end of the,  , Hinsei era, Godzilla films, Godzilla versus destroyer,   came out, which also has this very dark sort of underbelly compared to the other, , films of that time, like Godzilla versus space Godzilla, which is like pure, pure, Ridiculous.

Yeah. Um so  picking up some on some of those darker threads.  Opened up possibilities again. Like I don't what does it mean to me to be a filmmaker sort of weird because it's like It doesn't really mean that much to me in my like average Life as a filmmaker today and yet at the same time like it means everything like I owe my whole cinephilia to godzilla that and that's why I asked that question because I feel the same way like I feel like i'm like Oh, i'm not making a godzilla movie.

I'm not making a kaiju movie, but at the same time you're using like the metaphorical trances that they do and you're also using  I don't know like I guess You To me  it was always About creating a world in any film that we do. We're telling a story. We're creating a world and godzilla created a world that You know exist in reality But doesn't at the same time and  that balanced line was always something that people I think are sometimes Chasing in a film like  even the most like grounded and based reality film still has that How do you create fiction and nonfiction at the same time?

Yeah, it's a great point. I think  You know ishiro honda who's? It's the director of the first Godzilla and then many of the early sequels. And then he kind of went away and he came back and, , this is a guy that trained side by side with Kurosawa. And then after he stopped making Godzilla movies, he became Kurosawa's like right hand man for all those late era Kurosawa masterpieces of Kagamusha and Ron dreams that he worked with him right up to the end.

,  Honda is like no joke as a filmmaker. Like that guy knew what he was doing and that guy knew how to balance these incredible elements of grounded reality and fantasy. And he had a great sense of play in, , in straddling them. And, , it's cool to fall in love with something as a kid with a sort of childhood fandom infatuation that is able to keep growing and transforming as an adult.

And  I try not to be too nerdy about it. Like I don't have my Godzilla collection, like at my house for you. Yeah.  , but I still really appreciate it.  When I need to chill out and like kind of turn my brain off, ,  when I don't really want to like work for a movie, like I just put on Godzilla to this day.

Like I relax with Godzilla. It's I wouldn't call it like it's not like every week or even every month, but probably like six or seven times a year. Yeah. I agree. , it's comfort food, right? Godzilla is like always like kind of comfort food.  . Why do you think that Godzilla has lasted 70 years? Because for me, it's interesting. Cause my dad talked about these movies, you know, and he, you know, grew up in the 60s, 70s.

So he grew up kind of watching the early Godzillas and he talked about And then now he showed them to me. And now I'm seeing this next generation watching Godzilla.  With this generation, they're able to go to HBO max and pull all of them. They didn't have to go to the VHS store or stay up past their bedtime, but 70 years and we're still doing the Godzilla thing.

What, why has it stood the test of time?  , man, I mean, it's a great question. I think other than like us to talk about it incessantly on the one, on the one hand, Godzilla is this incredible metaphor,   he serves whatever the society needs from him at the time. , of course we have all of like the kitschy kind of like father figure Godzilla stuff from the sixties, but, , this idea of sort of a larger than life threat to humanity , or potential like savior or helper to humanity, it taps into these sort of like, you know, very eternal mythical structures, , and Godzilla as this,  weird creature born of an atomic weapon is an incredibly modern.

Take on that, but I would say that, , I think those types of stories are pretty much always going to play as long as humans are around, but I honestly like would also just give credit to, , Toho as a studio, , it's kind of like celebrating Disney.

It's like, , they do a lot of dumb stuff, a lot of mistake, , a lot of stuff that you can criticize them for.  But at the end of the day, like they keep green lighting these films, , they've protected the copyright, they've protected the character.

, obviously they've allowed America to like have their cracks at Godzilla, which I think, you know, generally suck. But, , I think they're able to capitalize on that a little bit. And at the end of the day, like Toho keeps. Making more Godzilla's like  there is an institutional willingness to like keep going for Godzilla  that not a lot of entertainment companies have  And like they keep going for Godzilla and like in new and inventive ways, you know They don't like  they have resisted  Like many of the pitfalls that we are currently watching with, like the American IP machine that just like drives the same beats into the ground.

And like I, I often wonder, like, am I a hypocrite? Because like  I really hate American IP. I really don't like marvel films. I don't like, I don't like comic book films. I don't like superhero films. I don't like any of this whole, like reheated burrito IP world that we live in. , whereas Godzilla is like the OG IP, like I keep coming back for more.

So like, am I just. Am I a hypocrite? I don't know, maybe. , but I think . They keep pushing for fresh new things about Godzilla.  I absolutely love shin Godzilla shin. Godzilla is my personal favorite. It's I put it would put it number two after the original Godzilla, as far as like all the Godzilla movies ever made, because just what a clever, inventive, brilliant, like new take on Godzilla.

, and while Godzilla minus one, wasn't my favorite of the.  Many many Godzilla films. I also like really respect that like they you know They keep trying new stuff and like digging deeper into the story They're not afraid of like messing with the lore like the continuity of the universe, you know It's like no,  they just reboot it at will like  they don't care They just want to they want to keep telling stories that are relevant and that resonate with people and I think there's something really Admirable about that.

I am Transcribed I loved minus one. I had a just a phenomenal time with it I have seen a shin godzilla and it like it's back and forth for me on which one I find better  and I think that's  a great place to be right instead of being like which one's worse or yeah Totally which one do I hate? At least like, and I actually, well, actually, and to be fair, that's how I feel about all the new millennium Godzilla films, which are all trash.

And I had told myself, I was like, we were not going to go there with that one,    it kind of plays into the last question too. Like where, I mean, we're still reinventing Godzilla for a new generation and people are still seeing the Kong got a Kong X or. God kong v godzilla, whatever they're doing.

No, yeah, but it's still getting you know It's still getting heads in the theaters. It's still getting people to see it You know, I I liken it to that side of it's the marvel universe of godzilla films and deserves to be burnt and buried underground but They're still entertaining and  i'm glad that we're still getting the stuff like minus one  but I do want to ask too  if I was a new Godzilla fan, right?

If you just met me off the street and you're, and I was like, Hey man, I was thinking about like pretend I'm at one of your shows. Like I'm going to, I'm one of the people that come out of the woodwork and I'm like, Hey Aaron,  I was thinking about getting into Godzilla.  Can you, can you recommend me three Godzilla films to get started on other than the OG?

Cause I think the OG is what people are going to go for. , where would I start? Would you start me at Shingodzilla?  Uh, no, I don't think so. I wouldn't try. I don't try to push in Godzilla, like onto people, you know, I'm also like a big throw DVD copies.  I'm not like chucking them out of my car, pegging people in the head with those copies are expensive now.

Yeah. Well, and I also, I know a lot of people that like are pretty feel kind of blasé about shin Godzilla. , yeah. I don't know what it is about Shin Godzilla that I love so much. Um, gosh, okay. Uh, Godzilla movies that you should watch. That's not the original 1954 one. , I think, , Godzilla versus Mothra or like Godzilla versus the thing  is definitely like a peak of like the older, , the older films.

Right. And it's goofy with the, like singing Mothra twins and like introduces all sorts of like ridiculous kind of Godzilla stuff. , but it still takes itself like kind of seriously. , so I think that would probably be a good one. Okay. So we need, Because  we need to span decades. Yeah.

You know what I mean? Like, it's so long. Yeah. 3, seems very hard.  I was curious what you would go with. So Godzilla versus Martha. I think that was like 1962  or maybe 64. 60. 64 I think. Okay. So we're still sort of early sixties. I think you could go ahead and skip all the Godzilla of Minya like.

Baby Godzilla stuff. That's pretty, I don't think sun and Godzilla on the record. Son of Godzilla is trash, but I have a soft spot for that one. That was one. I saw a lot on monster vision. I can tell you that it's,  it's my jungle to jungle. 

I, um, I would, uh, yeah, I could also be swayed by, , Godzilla versus the Sea Monster or Ira Horror of the Deep, that was my soft spot like film, but I still think Godzilla versus Martha is like a better film. Yeah. And it, I mean,  Martha is yeah. A great, , great foil. Yeah. Uh, to Godzilla. Um, yeah.

Awesome, awesome battles there. Okay, so then we would go to the seventies where we get sort of like.  Oh man, we get Godzilla versus Mechagodzilla, Godzilla versus Gigan, something like that. Hold on, let me just like kind of like run through like what our options are. Uh, cause there's so many. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, cause there's a lot of like 70s stuff, but I think the 70s stuff like does start to get like a little repetitive. I do think you're on to something with Godzilla versus Mechagodzilla. They just showed it at , Plaza. , like I think it was for a silver screen spook show and I was at that showing and I was like, man, big screen.

, this was a great time. Like   in year 2024 when I saw it, I was like , this works. So I think, I think that would be one that I would put to the side.  Yeah. Of all the like seventies ones. I think that would probably be the way to go. We then, so it ends in 77 shower era.

Godzilla ends in seventy seven. I want to say yeah, and  then we get the eighty four like Godzilla, like reboot, bringing back Raymond Berg, like whole thing with the like the new animatronic face.  I haven't seen that movie in a really long time, so I can't really speak to it. I'll be honest with you, but then we go into .

, the he say era, which is, , now we get like Godzilla's now, like a bad guy. Again,  he's gone the full gamut from family friendly to now he's a bad guy. , but  he's like a bad guy, but that like kind of helps you sometimes it's, he's more complex, which is like, it answers your, uh, like what you were talking about earlier.

He kind of became what society need him. He started as a A villain, then he becomes an anti hero right, which is what Toho, I think classifies. Godzilla is is like kind of the anti hero and he becomes full blown superhero. Yeah,  he swings his son around by his tail. Oh, my God. Um, and then he's kind of goes back to the villain mode.

Yeah, but God, I'm like wondering and as I'm saying this out loud, because I was not prepared for this question, I'm like as I'm talking it out loud, I'm like I think I'm also like being too serious. Like I'm missing the kitschy  like absurdity that makes Godzilla so fun, which is like why Godzilla versus Megalon was like for me, such a great first Godzilla to watch because you get so much.

It's so full of dumb shit, like that movie is so stupid, but so, but so fun. The dubs in those movies to make it so much better. Horrible dub everything about that movie doesn't make sense. It's about this like weird gay scientist couple who are raising a boy  and then, but then the. But then totally unrelated, Japanese people are now like, no, Americans are testing nuclear weapons and they disturb white people that live at the center of the earth called sea topia, who releases a monster named Megalon.

And they, I mean, and  the gay scientist couple, like invent a robot that fly.  That movie is bonkers and it makes absolutely no sense. And like, But that is also like what makes godzilla so fun, right and it's super bright and funny and it has songs. I mean the jet jaguar song is a banger.

 So you know, like actually i'm going to reverse course. Okay, godzilla versus mother number one godzilla versus megalon   if you want to get into godzilla, you got to go to  The kitschy top of the mountain all the way down to the base of the core. Yeah, you gotta, yeah, you gotta slurp up that syrupy sweet candy that's come dripping out of , the Godzilla bag.

And it may taste like candy corn, but , some people like that. , I was going to say  For me I would throw in destroy all monsters there, but like yeah destroy all monsters And I know that's  like a cop out because a lot of people throw that one out there but  for me as a kid that was like a You're seeing a little bit of everything.

Yeah. I mean, you're seeing all the monsters. , biggest monster fight ever filmed.  If you don't like seeing that, then you're just not going to be on the Godzilla train. I will say though, and I kind of came to this realization, even as a kid destroy all monsters, giant monster fight.

Not a great movie like it's not very interesting of a film. It's a very mid. Yeah, Godzilla film  it's great to see all the monsters in one go if you are limited on time, but you know Yeah, yeah, it's just like you get you get your fill and you can go on   that that one's always nostalgic and it's a fun background movie Destroy all monsters is, which I don't know if this is the question we're talking about.

You know,  what are you Ted Sarandos at Netflix? We're trying to second screen my Godzilla time, bro. It's HBO max now.  Yeah, just max. And, and I know I would never put final wars on there. Oh God,  dude. New millennium. Let's just yeah. New millennium is very bad. Yeah. Unfortunately. Yeah.

They tried. They failed. It's just bad. But they came back with shin, which is, and the, and Godzilla minus one. And so like, you know, like they corrected the ship. Thank God. Um, okay. So we've got Mothra.  I'm keeping , Megalon. I agree. I, I think you made the point. So then I would, I do feel like you should do some he say era, , from the nineties or late eighties. 

So that's when you'd get like, okay, Godzilla versus Biollante, Godzilla versus King Ghidorah, Godzilla versus , Mecha Godzilla to, ,  Godzilla versus space Godzilla and Godzilla versus destroy. Uh, yeah,   Assuming you've seen the first one because that was not like that was not an option.

I think I might go for Godzilla versus destroyer. It really takes the whole series up to these like operatic levels. Like it's kind of emotional and I haven't seen that movie in so long either. Like I probably need it. We probably need to just like Dust off some of these and like go through them again and then re answer this question in a year and see what we come.

Yeah.  , I do have a, I have a wild take about the original Godzilla and I never have a place to get it off my chest. Here you go. You were right. So yeah, yeah. So everyone's waited with bated breath right now. What's he going to say?   All right. . So here's my theory. Okay. There is a feminist reading of the original Godzilla film.

And I know it's like, it's supposed to be about,  the dangers of nuclear weapons. But if you take the monster of Godzilla out, , it's essentially a love triangle film about this young woman, Emiko, and she's caught between really three men in her life. Her father, who's a paleontologist who sort of like helps identify Godzilla.

The like. Tortured Dr. Shirazawa who she's in love with, but like, who is weird and has an eye patch and he invents the oxygen destroyer. And then this Japanese soldier who's like, you know, her bow, who she's like betrothed to, even though she really loves Dr. Shirazawa.  And basically whenever the men in her life are telling her what to do and  she loses her autonomy.

This is when Godzilla attacks,  and it's as if she is like willing the monster to come forward and  unleash  this repressed feminine rage upon this, , patriarchal society.  And it happens like, Every time in the film. I also think that it is somewhat strange that Godzilla has this incredibly phallic tail.

flopping around. It's as if she is like, see a seizing, this like metaphorical phallic energy that is then like taking this revenge out on the men of Japan, , for oppressing her. That is,  that is, that is what they meant. Now, if they didn't, that is now written in history. That is a Godzilla's feminist. , listen,  this occurred to me, , rewatching the film, maybe like Like six, seven years ago.

And I can't get it out of my head. Every time I watch it now, it's like, and Miko is summoning the monster. Yeah. She has like  a telepathic  connection with Godzilla. , which is just very strange. I would have never.  I mean, like, uh, Bravo, man, that's like, like you, you heard it right here and hold up.

 I'm so glad we were able to give you the platform for that. Yes. Oh dude. My wife is so sick of me dropping, dropping that banger like about once a year. If I told you about the time that I really,  yeah, he's walking in like, Hey, I know you're taking care of our child.  Right now, but have I talked to you about Godzilla and his feminist ways?

Have I shared my feminist reading of Godzilla with you? Yes. A million times. Shut up.  Oh man. , so our final three, , where are we thinking?  Yeah. I think, so I think Godzilla versus Mothra, , Godzilla versus, , Megalon and Godzilla versus destroy.

Yeah. Okay. There you go. And  if you're listening and you're wondering about Godzilla.  We've got the perfect list for you. There's no need to google anything else Don't yeah anything with son of godzilla final wars or godzilla 2000 and for god's sakes No, 1998 godzilla.

You can listen to our episode on that and find out   did you get a chance to hear me and kyle and andrew get so mad about that one? Yes It is rage inducing. I haven't watched it. I haven't rewatched it in a long time. It's it gets worse every time I, and, and, and as I grow older and get more and more of a soft spot for Godzilla 98, just pisses me off more and more and more.

And so thank God for minus one. , any final thoughts on Godzilla? Any final wars for Godzilla? ,  I'm really excited that they're going to keep making them. , I'm going to keep. Go into the theater to watch them. And I am now old enough. I don't think I would have said this, you know,  ten years ago, whatever, but I'm old enough now to be like okay, like Godzilla is going to be in my life forever.

I'm going to be watching these movies, Mary, God, and that's and I'm proud of that, everyone should be so lucky to connect with a piece  of media, with a piece of story telling, with a piece of myth making modern myth making  in the ways that you know, I've That I have, I feel very grateful, , to have these movies in my life.

, and I hope that everyone has at least some piece of media that they get to connect to on this kind of meaningful way. Well said, , that is Aaron strand on Godzilla and the feminist movement that they created. Um,  Aaron, where can they listen to behind the slate and crash zoom? Yeah, you can check out behind the slate, , and crash zoom, , my two podcasts.

 Wherever you get your podcasts, you can follow us on Instagram. That's where we're primarily post at behind the slate pod. And, At crash zoom pod. , you can also follow us on Tik TOK at behind the slate, podding at crash zoom podcast. You can come out to our live shows that I do every other month at the plaza theater here in Atlanta, Georgia.

Which I'll be announcing on Instagram as we,  secure the films. So be sure to look out for that.

Yeah. Anyone in the Atlanta area, please check him out. The shows are great. Aaron, I appreciate you coming on. I'm appreciate. Finally finding somebody that we can talk Godzilla about.  Go listen to his podcast. Check out our jungle to jungle episode too. That was a lot of fun. , and from both of us, we'll catch you guys next time.

Thank you so much.