Abrams released his first big “mystery box” blockbuster, Cloverfield, less than a decade after a transformative national tragedy. The kaiju concept has appeared in locations as far-flung as Denmark and genres as unexpected as the indie dramedy, and we’ve rounded up 12 non-Toho kaiju movies that stand on their own merits. in the film’s credits-you can’t copyright the overall concept of a giant monster with destruction on its mind. But while Toho arguably still dominates the kaiju market-all of the new creatures featured in Godzilla: King Of The Monsters are Toho creations, and the company is billed alongside Warner Bros. Toho created, and owns the rights to, dozens of giant movie monsters, from Godzilla himself to more obscure kaiju like Ebirah, an 164-foot-tall space shrimp. rex.ĭefining the kaiju becomes even more important when we step outside of the cinematic world of original kaiju powerhouse Toho, the Japanese film studio that unleashed Ishiro Honda’s Godzilla onto the world in 1954. (Is King Kong a kaiju? While Legendary’s new MonsterVerse thinks so, we’ll leave it to you, our readers, to debate that question in the comments.) Stomping on a major metropolitan area or two is a must, and the creature must be a work of pure imagination-or a ripoff of another original creature concept-rather than a mythological creature like a dragon or a real-life monster like the T. They must be gigantic, of course, and preferably either reptilian or insectile in nature, though there’s some room for flexibility on that point. A kaiju is a bit like obscenity: hard to define, but you know it when you see it.
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