Godzilla’s greatest rival rises
As a lifelong fan of King Ghidorah, Yamazaki says he was excited to bring his own iteration of the classic kaiju into the sequel. For the sequence where Ghidorah awakens, attacks, and then mutates into King Ghidorah in Matsumoto City, the priority was to show the damage this kaiju can wreak on humanity, but also contrast it to Japan’s prior experience with Godzilla.
Takashi Yamazaki: [Godzilla The Ride: Great Clash] was actually the first time we were able to work with King Ghidorah, and there was trial and error on a lot of different shots and shot compositions. I was able to give a lot more human perspective in Godzilla Minus Zero and be a lot more immersive with shots and camera compositions. For example, Ghidorah has a very long neck. Often when we think of humans and kaiju, the scale is just too big to imagine. Usually, we have to put the camera on the ground and tilt it up to show the immense scale, or vice versa. And the humans just look really, really tiny. In [Matsumoto], because Ghidorah has a very long neck, it places its neck on the ground so it’s almost on a human level. Ghidorah is probably one of the only kaiju who can do that. When I saw that shot initially, it gave me goosebumps because here we are, humans and Ghidorah, almost going eye-to-eye. It really shows the fear of what that kaiju can embody.
Tatsuji Nojima: Differentiating between King Ghidorah and Ghidorah was one of the components that we paid attention to, but also its gravity beam. The fact that it was blue contrasts with Ghidorah’s image of this golden, divine creature. A priority that we had was to make it as cool as possible, setting aside whether or not it’s an extension of the history of Ghidorah, or if it matches color-wise. Looking at what we had on screen with this golden creature emitting a blue beam, I don’t think it was a weird mismatch by any stretch of the imagination, and it did end up looking quite cool.
For the destruction beam, of course, the original destruction beams were done by hand in past movies where Ghidorah makes an appearance. We wanted to retain that charm, but within CG and animation. Normally, we would probably keyframe fewer frames and then let the software interpolate the animation in between. Instead, we keyframed a lot more frames to give it the similar feel to historical Ghidorah movies. The same goes for the lightning effects. I did a lot of research watching YouTube videos of lightning on high-speed cameras, to see how lightning behaves when it strikes. What I noticed is that after the light strikes, there are particles that it leaves behind. I wanted to recreate that to give everything Ghidorah is doing a sense of reality, even if it’s subconscious and the audience doesn’t realize why we added those particles.
Natsuko Inoue: With regards to King Ghidorah’s roar, this is something that director Yamazaki and I talked at length about. With Godzilla, we are very heavily drawing samples from the 1954 roar, and we also wanted to include elements of King Ghidorah’s original roar as well. But in fleshing out the sound design, the first image that I saw that really drove forward the sound design was when the three-headed King Ghidorah first lands in Matsumoto on top of the castle. When I saw this and the movement of the neck, it looked to me as though the three heads were in harmony and they were singing. The core concept I arrived at for Ghidorah’s roar is that it sings fear.
I sampled a bunch of different animal sounds that we went out to record. But for the more emotional parts, and the melody and the harmony, I actually recorded human voices so they’ve also been included as an element of Ghidorah’s roar. Once I established a sound design that I liked, then we took the original King Ghidorah roar and mixed that in. It was going back and forth with Yamazaki, trying to find the right cocktail of all of these different elements.
Hisafumi Takeuchi: [The floating houses] scene was in the original screenplay, and we had some discussions about whether or not to include it in the final film as we were shooting. In the end, we did because it was important for us to represent how kaiju and human drama interact with each other. Often when we’re dealing with massive spectacle films like this and we’re showing huge destruction on the screen, the human side of this dynamic tends to be an afterthought. But it was important that the spectacle of the kaiju and the human drama, and how this affects the individual, weren’t disconnected.
The mother with the baby and the floating house that Shikishima flies by and witnesses, it was very important for us to elevate that link between the two and make sure people were feeling something. For the mother, we cast a very famous anime voiceover artist and it was important because the voice is such an important part of that. As a professional who works solely with her voice, she was able to sell this terror to audiences.
And from a sound perspective, it was important to truly represent that terror. You want to look away from the screen because of what you imagine these characters are feeling in that moment, but I wanted it to feel very real. Whether it was that child or that mother, or any of the other characters who are levitating, we recorded each individual person and they’re all used in the final mix. Ultimately, we recorded 50 different people having some kind of comment or reaction to what was happening around them.
Godzilla attacks New York City
In the second act, Professor Kanji Murakami’s (Min Tanaka) imagined revenge scenario against the United States is envisioned as a hydrogen-bomb-like Godzilla attacking New York City.
Kazuaki Kishida: There was a lot of trial and error around how far we wanted to push this particular scene, and we did some experimentation in terms of the degrees of visual expression that we felt would be appropriate, especially because it was such a sensitive scene. We had to identify what was important to express here and what sort of themes we wanted to convey in ultimately drawing that line. With Godzilla being an allegory for war and nuclear power, it was important that we actually looked it in the eye and figured out what it means to use it. It wasn’t so much about using a nuclear warhead as it was about if something were to go off in a large metropolitan area, what that would look like on the ground level? That was the ultimate goal.
Yamazaki: Murakami as a character embodies a lot of emotion and rage that the Japanese felt post-war. It was a heavy load for him to carry, but watching how his character changes throughout the movie is one of the most interesting themes we see. That was an area I thought we should dig deeper [into] because the story that resulted from that was what you saw in the film. Especially because there’s hints towards Hiroshima, I knew we had to handle this with a lot of care and respect. Given the gravity of what happened in Hiroshima, the tone of the story itself became very heavy as a result.
Ginza revisited
In the final act, Godzilla is lured back to Ginza to, hopefully, obliterate King Ghidorah and save Japan from more destruction. Kenji Noda (Hidetaka Yoshioka) and his Large-Scale Disaster Response team station themselves on the roof of a previously damaged building and try to deploy traps to assist Godzilla, with less than effective results.
Kishida: When you look at kaiju films that have more than one kaiju, the humans often become spectators. We wanted to feel like the human drama and the kaiju battles were woven together from the same fabric. We thought about the human drama and how human actions alter what the kaiju do, and vice versa. Watching what happens on the kaiju level will then alter the behavior and actions of the humans. It was almost like an architectural challenge when trying to build the structure of the screenplay with Yamazaki. Spending time there definitely helped us scale the project up.
Takeuchi: I agree. The human characters we see running around on the ground help with that sense of immersion and desperation. One of the key elements to execute that was the wind. We brought this giant fan on set and would blast certain scenes and people with the wind to sell this tension. During that sequence, the actors are performing with a lot of wind in their faces, which of course is a lot of noise. Mixing it later on, dropping some of the noise and then increasing it again is how we were able to retain that experience and make sure that all the actors’ passionate and energetic performances would retain that emotion visually and sonically.
Inoue: In the sequence leading up to Noda’s death, we pulled way back on the music. In fact, we took it out and it almost gave it a documentary feel. It was important that the sound effects take center stage with the dialogue. We did several passes on this and that tension leading up to the explosion. It was a lot of trial and error before capturing the right emotional response we’re hoping the audience would have. The scene takes place outside and Noda is actually farther from the camera, but I wanted the sound to feel very, very close. That was one scene that took a lot of effort, but the ultimate experience really came together.
Takeuchi: One of the most important things for me was that the audience would never be disengaged from what’s happening on the screen, so it was important to create this spatial experience that would engulf and envelop the audience. I paid attention to the distance between where the audience was sitting and Godzilla, making sure that that distance was expressed through sound. There are moments where we’re right up against Godzilla and want that impact, and other moments where it was more of a surrounding type of sensation, so that was kept in mind while mixing the audio.
Yamazaki: Thinking about a single kaiju destroying a city is one thing, but when there are two kaiju destroying a city, the destruction doesn’t increase linearly. It’s more exponential. There’s a diminishing returns effect on the amount of additional work it takes to achieve that type of visual expression versus one kaiju. It’s not double. I would say it’s four or eight times the amount of work. But that was a challenge we decided not to run away from, because I wanted to see it. The team wanted to see what it would look like if we were able to pull it off.
Nojima: We rendered a 360-degree rotatable background [of Ginza] in a 3D environment that all of our artists used as a shared resource for the different shots. It was extremely helpful, but when kaiju entered the picture, we couldn’t use that anymore. We had to take each kaiju shot, cut by cut, and add VFX that way. When doing that, each artist who takes on a different kaiju shot has their own idea of what the best lighting and the coolest effects would be. As the compositor trying to bring it all together, I’m getting all kinds of different design language and lighting language, so it was definitely tricky to unify the look. We didn’t really lock in the look until the very end of post-production. But it was extremely helpful to get a sense of what director Yamazaki liked and didn’t like in terms of the nuance, the lighting, the tone, the vibe. It might seem inefficient, but this was actually the shortest possible way to get from point A to point B.
Inoue: A big difference between Minus One and Minus Zero is the amount of damage Godzilla takes. I wanted to change the texture of its roar to match the different circumstances and what’s being done to Godzilla in any scene. This also overlaps with the sense of scale and the size that we’re trying to sell audiences on. For me, the sense of scale was done through the degrees of pain that we feel through Godzilla. There are moments where its fins are being bitten and ripped off, so [we’re] making sure that there’s a fleshy texture to that. Likewise when Godzilla has his arm ripped off, in the sound design, we want to feel that these are giant creatures that are really going at each other.
Nojima: The scene where Godzilla is attacked by the Nippon Theater building is a throwback to the first Minus where Godzilla is the one to smash the theater building. Yamazaki really wanted to add to the effect of when a fighter jet travels at a certain speed and they break the sound barrier—there’s what’s called a vapor cone of particles and materials that create this cone effect. Yamazaki wanted this cone effect on the theater building. Of course, we’re thinking, “Oh my gosh, how fast is this theater building being hurled at Godzilla?” But taking all of that into consideration and then seeing it in IMAX, it almost feels as though you, as a member of the audience, are being punched by this giant building. There’s a certain sense of irony that Godzilla smashed it first and now it’s being smashed by it in the second film. Going from that to his levitation and the drop, there’s mixed feelings of, “Oh my gosh, so much is happening. But Godzilla, come on, get up!”
Kishida: I also want to point out that Godzilla’s size hasn’t changed, or at least its height. It’s still 50.1 meters. But the fact that you’re feeling like the scale has increased is a testament to the VFX and the sound design. If anything, Godzilla actually got a little skinnier from Godzilla Minus One, because we needed Godzilla to be a little more agile in its fight with King Ghidorah.
Yamazaki: There were a lot of different Ghidorah variants that we experimented with in terms of sizes and design. We had to play around with size to make sure that it felt threatening and terrifying enough, but also could reasonably engage in a fight with Godzilla and not look out of proportion. Depending on the needs of the composition, we use the appropriately-sized Ghidorah to make sure that that drama and tension is captured.
Ueki: The scene where the folks from Toyo Balloon are running around on the ground embodies one of the core concepts that we had for the Minus franchise, which is that we’re trying to bring humans and kaiju as close as physically possible to instill that terror in the audience. It was tough to shoot it because we were working with a space of about 60 feet by 27 feet. In Ginza, we had asphalt, but they were running quite a long time, so we couldn’t do that in a single pass because we’d run out of set. So, we made this bowed, L-shaped path to use within this space and then shot it twice, connecting the two shots to make a very long running sequence. It was a very tough shot to compose from start to to finish, but the four people on the VFX team who were on it did a great job.
Kishida: In Godzilla Minus One, Godzilla’s model, especially around the tail, the fin is very small. I thought, “There’s something we can do here, like we could use this to hook something.” That’s where the idea of [Godzilla] hooking Ghidorah’s neck came to be. Then we started adding to that idea with, what if we make that one fin shine and glow, then we can use it almost as an axe? We wanted to add new combat techniques that these kaijus are using against each other, and we also wanted to show the evolution of Godzilla from Minus One to Minus Zero. Then there is the regeneration aspect, where its arm is regenerating, and finally, we end with [Ghidorah’s] giant roar at Godzilla after it had already unleashed its heat ray in the previous scene. We see Godzilla charred and burning, so this one sequence packs in a lot of what makes the Minus franchise unique.
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