The most recent trailer for Michael Dougherty’s Godzilla: King of the Monsters is a slam-bang, world-shattering battle for global supremacy between four massive titans (and probably a few other giant monsters to boot), but it of course won’t be the first time Godzilla will square off against Mothra, Rodan, and Ghidorah. They’ve been at each other’s behemoth throats in one form or another since Mothra vs. Godzilla in 1964. YouTuber GORIZARD pays homage with a brilliant shot-for-shot remake of the latest trailer, using only shots from classic Toho movies.
Using the audio from the modern trailer, the video duplicates it beat-for-beat with clips from the Godzilla franchise movies produced during the ShÅwa period, and most of them during the heyday of the mid-’60s, which gave us titles like Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster, Destroy All Monsters, Ebirah, Horror of the Deep and All Monsters Attack. It’s pretty impressive how well the shots work, one-to-one. Rodan’s flying over terrified villagers works in every iteration, it seems. And King Ghidorah’s first appearance is given an even more ethereal quality in the original footage. Luckily, Godzilla and Mothra look ready to fight for the sake of humanity.
The Toho monster movies are some of the most fun spectacle pictures ever produced, and clearly have become a hallmark of Japanese cinema, the popular cinema peer of Kurosawa or Ozu. While most of the films except the first Godzilla went for bright fun action rather than doom and gloom, King of the Monsters looks to give us lots of big (literally) set pieces and a genuinely apocalyptic air, perfect for a 2018 audiences. We can’t wait to see which king comes out ahead.
Godzilla: King of the Monsters hits theaters May 31, 2019.
Image: Toho
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Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Twitter!
