As it turns out, director Kitamura wrote the film with Frye in mind as he was a fan of his matches. Now, some of you may have noticed that in that list of names is a UFC Hall of Famer. The core human cast is made up of Masahiro Matsuoka, Rei Kikukawa, Kazuki Kitamura, and Don Frye.

The film features some interesting cast choices, both Human and Monster. It’s not just the runtime either, as the film is host to a large collection of monsters from the series, many of whom haven’t been seen for about 30 years! Director Ryuhei Kitamura signed on to direct as he wasn’t happy with some of the series releases since the late 60’s, and compared this film to that of a musician’s “best of” album, featuring many of the things he liked from the past to create this entry. Most of the films in the series have a running length of about an hour and a half, whereas this one is at least two hours long. The era had it’s highs, but also it’s lows, and in an attempt to create new interest in the franchise Toho put Godzilla on a 10 year hiatus following on from the release of Final Wars.įrom possibly knowing about the upcoming fate of the series, or wanting to have a big celebration for it’s length, Final Wars is a massive film. which was a direct sequel to the previous years release Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla. The only film not to take this approach was Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S. No understanding as to why this approach was taken given that each film was released one year after the previous entry. They were all anthology titles, and direct sequels to the original 1954 film. The films were produced in a bizarre fashion in that five of the six films were standalone titles with no references made to the previous film’s release. The Millennium series of Godzilla films had its ups and downs from its beginning in 1999 with Godzilla 2000. It was also the last produced Godzilla film until the release of the 2014 American Reboot.

Final Wars was the last Godzilla film to be produced by Toho until the release of Shin Godzilla in 2016. Released in 2004, and directed by Ryuhei Kitamura Godzilla: Final Wars is the 29th Godzilla film which also happens to mark the 50th anniversary of the series, with the first film being released in 1954.

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