Tag: The Monster Island Film Vault

I still can’t believe that I don’t remember meeting GMan at the Monsterland Tavern when he visited. I’m starting to think the barkeep mixed some Faro Island red berry juice into my Jack Daniels. I especially would’ve remembered the emergency evacuation switch only launching the walls and ceiling and not the whole building. That was a fun recovery mission. The damn thing flew all the way back to the Japanese mainland and landed on a beach. Thankfully, it was closed due to COVID-19, so no one got hurt.

Regardless, I have my notes to get into for episode 19 on Gorath:

• Yes, Ryo Ikedbe died in 2010.
• It’s “Kimura” not “Kimaira,” Jack.
• Near as I can tell, it was Honda who decided to change Moguera into a robot in The Mysterians.
• You said “Kimura” when you meant “Shimura,” Nathan. But considering how similar their names are—Takashi Shimura vs. Takeshi Kimura—that’s understandable.
• Confirm with Danny that “Maguma” wasn’t in Ultra Q originally.
• Yes. I like Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla. Fight me!

Now for Nathan’s leftover notes, which I must include to fulfill my contractual obligations:

• Starts with two women stripping to go swimming before being interrupted by rocket launch. I don’t remember if we see them again.
• Gorath is a rogue star with 6,000 Earth’s mass but is ¾ the size. Very dense. For perspective, the Sun has 330,000 times Earth’s mass and is 109 times the diameter. (You’ve made this NASA engineer happy. –Jimmy)
• Explore Gorath like Columbus, huh? (Before or after his statue is torn down? –Jimmy)
• Does gravity increase exactly in relation to mass? (Indeed, it does. Read about it here. –Jimmy)
• Jun Tazaki is the captain of the JX-1. He says he’d tell his men if they were going to die to reassure them—then tells them they can’t escape a few minutes later. (Reminds me of my first training mission. It was a lot like the Kobayashi Maru. –Jimmy)
• Would it be in poor taste for them to yell, “Banzai!” just before dying? (Not in Japan. But that might be why it was cut in the U.S. release. –Jimmy)
• The zero G scene is pretty good.
• A light, even comical scene in a Kimura script?! What?! For some reason, I feel like it belongs in M*A*S*H*. No subtitles for the song for some reason. It’s a singing joyride. Yet more evidence that Honda secretly wanted to direct a musical. Composed by Kan Ishi.
• Over 11.8 billion yen invested in JX-1. (Chump change compared to the Gohten! –Jimmy)
• Other ships are being built in other countries, but they say Japan’s ship is putting them to shame. Nationalistic? (Nope. Patriotic. –Jimmy)
• Hey, it’s Dr. Who in the bar! (Let’s hope not. I’m not giving him his “Robot Kong” back! –Jimmy)
• The wide shot of the ship fleet looks like models on a board.
• The music during the construction scene almost sounds like Ifukube. The models look cool, though.
• They have a 13^th floor! (Good thing I’m not superstitious. –Jimmy)
• The power core looks like the TNG warp core! (I know, right! –Jimmy)
• The evacuation scene actually reminded me of G2014.
• UN Gorath Countermeasures Center. They have a lot of countermeasures centers in the Heisei era.
• They send Shimura to South Pole but won’t tell him why. Probably because Maguma looks stupid.
• The composite shot with Maguma looks good.
• I thought Tsuburaya didn’t want blood in his film? Maguma’s death is gory.
• And staring at Gorath on a TV screen cures amnesia. Huh? (Yeah, I got nothing on this. –Jimmy)
• They celebrate saving Earth at the end despite the fact it only cost the Moon and billions in damages. (Still better than being dead. –Jimmy)
• Science and scientists are credited with saving the world. Another thematic statement.
• They do at least talk about putting the Earth back in its orbit. (Which is good, because, well, I haven’t the time to list all the dire consequences of moving it. –Jimmy)

LeMay

• Maguma was to come back for DAM but didn’t.
• Kenji Sahara had a broken leg during production, but Honda insisted he be in the film.
• Had more time and money given to it than other tokusatsu films.

Galbraith IV

• Former military pilot turned sci-fi author Jojiro Okami’s story was the inspiration for this. As was Battle in Outer Space, The Mysterians, and Dogora.

Honda Biography

• Released just six months after the USSR launched the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin. Embodies Honda’s twin ideals of international cooperation and science above politics.
• It was made at the height of the space race. It borrows the plot of When Worlds Collide by Gorge Pal. Honda shows science being pursued ethically and positively, unlike in his previous sci-fi films.
• Endo possibly takes a shot at Pal’s film: “Mankind [used to be] separated into white, black, and yellow races before the United Nations. Trust, honor, and cooperation were qualities that brought us together.”
• “The common folk cannot be at the forefront of big problems, but there are so many of them…so, those scenes create depth for the story. These are the types of people that I want in my films. This is the very foundation of my films.” –Honda
• There’s no panic because Honda thought that wouldn’t seem real.
• Honda regretted letting the walrus Magma be added to the film. “That was definitely the human weakness of Ishiro Honda. That idea came from above. They make more profit with monsters [in the movie]. I think that left a scar on the film.” It was originally scripted as a “dinosaur-like creature,” but Honda didn’t want to remind audiences of Godzilla.
• Ryfle and Godizewski argue that the controversial US-Japan alliance casts a shadow on the film. The “futuristic” 1980s Japan looks like post-Occupation Japan of 1961. Japan and America are above reproach, while fictional nations like Crenion and the USSO offer mild dissent before acquiescing. Japanese scientists are more advanced.

“Intergalactic star” (Wikipedia) (These are excerpts from that article. –Jimmy)

• “Another hypothesis, that is not mutually exclusive to the galactic collisions hypothesis, is that intergalactic stars were ejected from their galaxy of origin by a close encounter with the supermassive black hole in the galaxy center, should there be one. In such a scenario, it is likely that the intergalactic star(s) was originally part of a multiple star system where the other stars were pulled into the supermassive black hole and the soon-to-be intergalactic star was accelerated and ejected away at very high speeds. Such an event could theoretically accelerate a star to such high speeds that it becomes a hypervelocity star, thereby escaping the gravitational well of the entire galaxy.[6] In this respect, model calculations (from 1988) predicts the supermassive black hole in the center of our Milky Way galaxy to expel one star every 100,000 years on average.[7]”

 “Star unlike any found in the Milky Way appears to be an intergalactic intruder” by Michael Irving (Again, these are excerpts from the article. –Jimmy)

• “Astronomers have discovered a star in the Milky Way that doesn’t belong. Officially known as J1124+4535, the star has a chemical composition unlike any others ever observed in our home galaxy, suggesting it’s an intergalactic interloper that may have come from a dwarf galaxy that was swallowed up by the Milky Way.”
• “Through LAMOST observations and a follow-up using the Subaru Telescope in Japan, J1124 was found to have a relatively low amount of magnesium and high levels of europium. This particular chemical composition so far seems to be unique to this star, compared to the rest of the Milky Way.”
• “This kind of galactic merger happens all the time. The aftermaths of collisions between the Milky Way and smaller galaxies are visible all around us, and many more are predicted in the future – culminating in a spectacular merger between the Milky Way and Andromeda in about four billion years’ time.”
• “J1124+4535 isn’t the first intergalactic star to be discovered in our neck of the woods. Stars traveling at hypervelocity speeds have been found to be hurtling towards the Milky Way from other galaxies, with the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy that orbits our own, the most likely point of origin.”

“Lost in Space: Half of All Stars Are Rogues Between Galaxies” by Charles Q. Choi (Once again, these are excerpts from the article. –Jimmy)

• “As many as half of all stars in the universe lie in the vast gulfs of space between galaxies, an unexpected discovery made in a new study using NASA rockets. These stars could help solve mysteries regarding missing light and particles that theory had suggested should exist, scientists say.”
• “In the study, astronomers investigated the extragalactic background light, the sum of all light emitted by stars in the universe throughout history. Prior research had detected fluctuations in this light that did not appear to come from any known galaxies. Scientists had suggested these fluctuations might come from primordial galaxies, the very earliest galaxies, whose light has yet to be detected.”
• “Instead, this finding of bright, blue light unexpectedly reveals these fluctuations may come from something called ‘intrahalo light,’ which is created by stars flung into intergalactic space during titanic collisions and mergers of galaxies. The researchers found that there was as much light from these intergalactic stars as there was from stars located in galaxies.”

“HUBBLE FINDS INTERGALACTIC STARS” (For the last time, these are excerpts from the article. –Jimmy)

• “NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has found a long sought population of ‘stellar outcasts’ – stars tossed out of their home galaxy into the dark emptiness of intergalactic space. This is the first time stars have been found more than 300,000 light-years (three Milky Way diameters) from the nearest big galaxy.”
• “The isolated stars dwell in the Virgo cluster of galaxies, about 60 million light-years away. The results suggest this population of ‘lone stars’ (Haha! –Jimmy) accounts for 10 percent of the Virgo cluster’s mass, or 1 trillion Sun-like stars adrift among the 2,500 galaxies in Virgo.”
• “Intergalactic stars have been predicted to exist as a result of galaxy interactions and mergers early in a galaxy cluster’s history. These close encounters should have ripped stars out of their home galaxies and tossed them into intergalactic space, where they drift free of the gravitational influence of any single galaxy.”
• “The stars are bright red giants – stars late in their lives. Presumably there are many fainter stars – perhaps as many as 10 million – in the same field but are below Hubble’s sensitivity.”

I wish they’d spent more time discussing rogue stars, but we were pressed for time thanks to our contracts. Jack understood that. Perhaps in the future MIFV could do “redux” episodes as Nathan as suggested once or twice. Then I could go nuts researching rogue stars (again)!

In the meantime, our resident “Mothrian” Bex from Redeemed Otaku returned to finish up the “Summer of Mothra,” which you’ll hear next week. Let’s just say things got…Star Trek-ian. Then Nathan does a mini-analysis of Matango as the second episode in July.

Be there or be square!

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