NY Times: "Rubber-suit Monsters Fade. Tiny Tokyos Relax"

Above, the statue of Godzilla at Toho Studios.  Photo by Armand Vaquer.

The New York Times, of all places, has an interesting article, "Rubber-suit Monsters Fade. Tiny Tokyos Relax."

The article discusses the dying art of rubber-suited monsters and miniatures and replacement by computer-generated monsters.

The article reads in part:

For decades, Japanese studios dazzled, terrified and tickled global audiences with monster movies and television shows featuring actors in rubber suits laying waste to scaled-down Tokyos, or dueling atop miniaturized Mt. Fujis. The genre, known here as “tokusatsu,” or “special filming,” helped take the Japanese film industry global by creating such fabled creatures as Godzilla and Mothra, pioneering the way for other fantasy genres like animé. 

But now, in an era when lifelike digital effects have made the use of small models and suited actors look quaint and kitschy, tokusatsu is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. The last Godzilla movie shot in this style, the aptly named “Godzilla Final Wars,” was released almost a decade ago, after a half-century span during which the creature appeared in 28 films, sometimes every year. 

The article includes quotes from special-effects wizard Shinji Higuchi and our favorite Godzilla suit-actor, Haruo Nakajima.

To read the article, go here.