5 Things I Would Want to See In a New Gamera Film

 In a recent post, I said I wanted to see Gamera return, perhaps in the Monsterverse. But it would also be great for Gamera to come back and star in his own series of new films. So here are the top five things I would want to see in  new Gamera film(s).

5 - A Badass Design

The Gamera 3 design is the most badass looking kaiju ever. I want to see this type of look for him again. He looked pretty mean in Gamera vs. Barugon too. In Gamera the Brave he looked too soft and cute and cuddly.

4 - Underwater Battles

He's a turtle, there should be more battles in the water. I read that originally Kaneko envisioned an underwater fight for Gamera 3 but then it was changed to an air battle, but some of the scenes from the air fight against Iris could have worked very well underwater.

Gamera fought the shark kaiju Zigra underwater in the 70's but with modern technology I feel we could get a much better battle.

3 - Return of Old Kaiju

The return of old kaiju besides Gyaos. Gyaos is great but the character has already been given its due. It was the only kaiju to have more than one appearance in the Showa films (the snow Gyaos on planet Terra in Gamera vs. Guiron a.k.a. Attack of the Monsters) Gyaos was also featured in both Gamera 1 & 3 and even in the beginning of Gamera the Brave! It's time to let some other characters in on the action!

The Gamera films were off the wall and over the top, that's part of what I love so much about them, but unfortunately those sorts of films aren't commercially viable. So a kaiju like Guiron would be hard to fit in. That said, I think Barugon (not to be confused with Toho's Baragon) would be wonderful to see again. 

Gamera vs Barugon is my favorite Showa-era Gamera film. Barugon is a fantastic kaiju with great powers. So many kaiju breath fire or shoot fiery and electrical beams, but Barugon is unique because he has the power to freeze and Gamera being a reptile is vulnerable to the cold. That's one of the things the Gamera films did better, they made Gamera more vulnerable and it made things more tense.

2 - Good Characters

Likable characters are so fundamentally important to a movie. Unfortunately the kaiju genre often forgets this and even a lot of movies that have great monster action end up being very lacking in the human department. E.g. Godzilla: KOTM (2019) which is probably the main reason the film was a financial flop, despite having some first rate monster action.

The Heisei Gamera series of the 1990's absolutely excelled at this. The characters were interesting, highly likable, and they made you care and feel invested in the story instead of just waiting for the monster to show up like in say Godzilla (2014) or Shin Godzilla (2016) or even Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla (1994.)

The human drama was also interweaved with the monster drama. Through the magatama Asagi Kusanagi is connected to Gamera, feeling his pain and even bleeding when he bleeds. Ayana Hirasaka's motivation for revenge is directly linked to Gamera's actions. This is the kind of human characters and interaction that modern monster movies should take cues from and I believe the American Godzilla films would have done a lot better at the box office if they took a similar approach.

1 - Overarching Story

An overarching story. Character and plot are so important and the kaiju genre always neglects these things but they are the backbone of any story or movie whether it is about romance, comedy, or giant flying fire-breathing turtles that battle other giant monsters from Atlantis!

One of the many things that made the Heisei series so great was a continuous storyline and characters. I think that is probably the biggest failure of the Legendary Godzilla films and Monsterverse, they didn't do much of anything to tie the films together in a meaningful way. So a new Gamera film must draw inspiration from its 90's counterparts.

Image Sources: All photos captured by me from Gamera dvd's.