Gojira

I mentioned in my review of Godzilla King of the Monsters that I was curious to see the original Japanese version of the movie. This was mostly because of how ridiculous Raymond Burr's inclusion in everything was. It was completely pointless and really just felt like they had to cater to the North American audience by narrating the entire fucking movie for us. 

So now I've seen the original Japanese version of the movie and well, it certainly does play better overall as a movie than the American one. It never feels as disjointed and the whole thing flows a lot better. There are also some added scenes here and there as the running time is approximately 15 minutes longer in this one.

Aside from the lack of narration and Raymond Burr, the movie is pretty much the same. It was actually a pretty short viewing experience for me because I ended up just fast-forwarding through all of the major sequences I had already seen, which was actually just about all of them in the end. There is more added to the backstory of Godzilla though, which I thought was pretty interesting. The rest of the movie is pretty much the same, including the attack and the ending, although the ending works better in this version too.

Overall the movie is still solid, but I would not call it a classic. It's still a little slow moving, maybe even more so here since the running time is a little longer. The attack sequence is cool and like I said before it's always satisfying watching a guy in a rubber suit smash toy cars and buildings. It's too bad it takes a little too long to get to the monster attack though. However this version of the movie is better than the American one, so if I had to pick one or the other, this is definitely the better of the two.

7/10