... uh, th- th- their terror didn't get me until, until I sort of had experienced jet fighters at high speed, and then was like, "Oh, wait a minute, this would be terrifying for a lot of the audience."

audience."I think the two things that really stand out about this movie, particularly when I first saw it when I was young, but I did re-watch it here, um, the scene where we have the first injured person who's taken in by the stretcher, because it's kind of a gruesome scene.

Like, he's cut up and he's being washed, and you almost don't know if he's dead or not.

It's like, "Is this about to be an autopsy?" Like, that w- that kinda stuck out, even as an adult.

I was like, "This is kind of a gruesome scene." And then I know for me, I just subconsciously, I just was intertextually going to them, you know, with the Meganurons and the way the creatures were moving.

I was like, "Oh, I'm, I'm getting the ants from them.

I'm getting the carpenter ants." So as a fun adult film nerd to watch again because you really see how Toho and Honda are putting all these, like, elements together to make this great creature feature.

Um, they, it, it's just such a product of its time in that sense.

each can take one and roll one and go down.

So as we pick and roll the die, we will go ahead and provide a little bit of context, and then we can have our panelists go ahead and start a discussion to figure out before we ultimately vote as a panel.

And then we'll also open it up to the audience as well, because, I mean, you guys as opinions are just as important out of this, okay? I think we can get started.

We know what we're First and foremost, I would like to thank one of our sponsors, and that is the Pillow Arts Alliance of Bloomington, Indiana, for helping all of us get here and put on this presentation.

So, they've also been a great sponsor of our event in Bloomington, Indiana, as well.

So, a round of applause.

Thank you.

we'll talk about it.

Block two.

Good job.

So central to my research question when I went ahead and I pitched this idea to a very traditional art history discipline board that I wanted to do this film as my masters, was to really examine the hard question of how did Godzilla become King of the Monsters? So much of our scholarship examines the what and the end product.

But so much of this subject construction is an active subject-making process that you have the audience immersed and engaged with repeatedly to reconnect in to make this felted.

And the thing about this is, this is all an invisible post-film edit.

This is a thing that, as an audience, you're not going to see because the point is you don't because it works effectively.

You're engaged in a immersive film.

there.

Well, they s- they've been selling out, and, uh, didn't I see that you sold out last year?

We did.

Uh, honestly, that was so surreal.

You know, my first year doing this, it really started on a whim.

Like, it was really a fever dream because it just happened so randomly.

Uh, one of my teachers, I was in her Japanese genre cinema class, and she just mentioned, like, "I would love to get Godzilla in the theater," and it was like a light bulb moment.

And then I just started, like, emailing venues around me to see if somebody would do Godzilla.

... as well as understanding comics specifically

For those of, for those of us listening who, who aren't familiar with Ed's work, could you speak about why that's such a big deal?

Well, Ed m- with his other his- other historian, Steve Ryfle, who only wasn't able to come because of a last minute issue.

He was on the bill.

We were gonna have both.But then something happened.

So we, we only- But we also have a, I mean, it's just amazing, but he is a Japanese film expert.

He has been going to Japan since the '70s to go work in Toho, and he was the author of the Ishiro Honda biography.

He is, he's the man in this scenario.

Yeah