Am I going to combine this with the Showa Era into one big list?
Yeah…I don’t think so. Separate shall they be forever and anon!
The Heisei Era felt like an edgier version of the Showa Era. The Millennium Era went even edgier by its ending but has the added interest of being largely disconnected from each other, even the canon resetting with every film. The Reiwa Era is brand new, includes three movies (one of which was originally designed to be a TV series and became a trilogy), and is too early to say much of anything about as a movement of Godzilla films.
And that’s actually what I think these eras should be called: movements. The eras are supposedly tied to the Imperial Eras of Japan, but the first movie of the Heisei Era came up during the Showa Era, there is no Millennium Era in the Imperial Calendar, and the first movie of the Reiwa Era actually came out during the Heisei Era. The eras are actually reflective of different overarching aesthetic and narrative choices that define them, not the Imperial calendar. But that’s a categorization question, and I generally don’t like those.
That being said, it seems obvious that the Reiwa Era is the best at taking things seriously (though, I’m excluding the animated trilogy from that thinking, barely considering them Godzilla movies at all). The Heisei Era tended to have very overstuffed scripts. The Millennium Era was the most lost for an identity and most obviously mimicked Hollywood blockbusters. Overall, though, I think that if I were to choose only one era to ever revisit, it would be the Showa Era. My favorite Godzilla film is in the Millennium Era, but the evenness of tone, consistency of canon, and better ability to manage silliness makes the Showa Era a more fun overall package.
Still, while I was a bit more down on all three eras on average, especially the work by Kazuki Omori (an opinion I seem to hold at odds with the rest of Godzilla fandom, which is fine, they like him more than I do), it was a largely amusing time at the movies. Lots of smashy-smashy to be had. That’s always the good part.
The ranked reviews will kick off here tomorrow night!
Originally published here.
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English (US) · 