While promotion for Godzilla: King of the Monsters is doing plenty to get filmgoers pumped – most notably with that pretty spectacular trailer that popped up over the weekend – there’s no doubt that the atomic-breathed beast’s old-school Japanese flicks will always hold a special place in the hearts of many fans.
If you’re one of these kaiju nostalgists then you’ll probably want to check out this fan-made trailer for the upcoming monster movie, which takes clips from the official preview but gives them a retro makeover, complete with Japanese dubbing that recalls the big lizard and co.’s early films under Toho Studios.
The video even takes audio from the trailer for Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster, the 1964 movie that first introduced the titular creature to the world, as well as featuring Godzilla’s old frenemies Mothra and Rodan. From its grainy visuals to its charmingly old-fashioned sound effects, you tell that quite a bit of care and affection was put into this thing.
Incidentally, there’s a certain irony to this Japanese redubbing job, seeing how much of the Western world was first introduced to the Big G via the 1956 film Godzilla, King of the Monsters!, a heavily edited and highly profitable “Americanization” of the original 1954 Godzilla that dubbed over the Japanese dialogue with English and inserted an American star into the mix.
Since then, Hollywood has transitioned from heavy re-edits of the Japanese series to producing their own original takes on the property, and while the results have so far ranged from divisive (the 2014 Godzilla) to almost universally rejected (the 1998 version), it really looks like New Line are aiming to give the people what they want with this next attempt.
We’ll see if the studio can make good on the hype for a big budgeted update of Toho’s classic colossal smackdowns when Godzilla: King of the Monsters stomps into cinemas on May 31st, 2019.
