The View From The Mountain

Warning, this review contains a mild spoiler Godzilla: King of the Monsters is a sequel to the 2014 Godzilla film that many people trashed because Godzilla wasn’t shown onscreen nearly enough in the film. Personally, while I understand the criticism, I still enjoyed the 2014 movie, which re-introduce the Big G to modern day audiences, and it was successful enough to start a whole new universe of film sequels that started with Kong: Skull Island . That universe-building continues with Godzilla: King of the Monsters , which is directed by Michael Dougherty, who also helmed the Halloween classic Trick R Treat . There are monsters galore in the new Godzilla , which heeded the complaints about the earlier film by showing all of them onscreen in their full glory. The most intimidating of these monsters--next to the Big G himself--is Monster Zero, a three-headed, winged beast that is also known as Gidorah. When he’s released from the antarctic ice beneath a secret base, Monster Zero imm...

I had this model kit of Mothra in his larva stage, and I was wondering just what the heck to do with it, when I recalled a scene where Larva Mothra was swimming in the ocean in one of the Godzilla films. I also had a model kit of a Coast Guard cutter, which could double as a US Navy destroyer, and bingo, I had a diorama. The "water" you see the models in is actually Flex paste from Woodland Scenics. I laid the paste down and placed the models within it. After it dried, I painted it a bluish ocean color. I then placed a layer of Water Effects (also from WS) over this, to give the "ocean" a nice watery sheen. This Navy ship has had many duties in its storied career, but none as strange as when it escorted Mothra across the ocean on a journey to join Godzilla in battle.

I took an old Godzilla model kit (the Playing Mantis re-release of the old Aurora kit), cut him in half, and placed him in this ocean diorama. The ship is a WW II transport vessel that I tweaked slightly to make it look more like a generic cargo ship. The ship was a cheap kit, the kind you can slap together in an afternoon. The "water" was a paste from Woodland Scenics called Flex Paste. After it dried, I painted it in the bluish colors of the ocean, and then covered this (after the paint dried, of course) with Water Effects, also from WS. This was a fun diorama for me to do, one that got started when I saw the trailer for the upcoming Godzilla: King of the Monsters film. You can buy this right here.

In over sixty years of his cinematic terrorizing of Japan, Godzilla has caused so much damage that the Japanese construction companies must love him, because he keeps them in constant work. The level of destruction that the Big G commits in Shin Godzilla , the latest Godzilla film from Toho, is also pretty impressive on a big monster movie scale. But that’s basically the only thing that has remained the same. Gone are the wonderfully kitschy elements that were found in abundance in the Godzilla films of the 1990s: the cute girls with psychic powers, sub plots involving the Yakuza and time travel, Baby Godzilla, and just about everything else that Toho threw in to make each Godzilla adventure a popcorn film classic (and I thoroughly enjoyed these films for what they were: fun flicks). But Shin Godzilla pretty much strips away the last sixty years of Godzilla mythology, making this a reboot of sorts. Godzilla first appears after inflicting damage on an underwater tunnel that runs acro...