The expression kaiju might not be familiar to most of you out there, so we will try to explain. Have you ever think about which country makes the best, and we mean THE BEST, monster flicks out there? If you have, and you do not know we will tell you – the king country of enormous monster movies is without a doubt Japan and the expression kaiju is basically a film genre that features giant monsters that usually attack major cities and engage the military and other monsters in battle.
The reason that we mention the kaiju is that Dwayne The Rock Johnson just paid homage to this genre with the Japanese trailer for Rampage, and explained the significance of this type of movies. On Tuesday we found out (thanks to Instagram) that The Rock greeted all of his Japanese fans and revealed that he was working overtime to release the Japan trailer for his latest movie Rampage. In the caption, he wrote, “KAIJU IS COMING!! In Japan they’re excited and bracing for our monster movie, #RAMPAGE.”
Dwayne continued by giving a lecture about the importance of kaiju movies, citing noteworthy entries like Mothra, King Kong, and the original 1954 Godzilla. He wrote “KAIJU meaning ‘strange beast’ is a very popular genre of Japanese film that features gigantic monsters tearing up cities and each other – GODZILLA, KING KONG, MOTHRA etc. Cool to see audiences around the getting hyped for our three gigantic mutated beasts. And for some reason they’re very angry and hungry.” Check out the trailer below.
If you could see, and more importantly, hear there is something familiar in the trailer and, all of you that are familiar with Japanese monster movie trailers, will instantly recognize a distinctly old school flavor and the narrator who yells with such gusto that brings our anticipation for this movie to the next level. The kaiju movies have been around for at least 50 years and it all begun with the original King Kong and popularized with Ishiro Honda’s Gojira. What is a bit strange is that just lately with Hollywood reboots like Godzilla, Kong: Skull Island, and Saban’s Power Rangers — along with original films like Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim the western audiences are getting better familiarized with the kaiju film genre.
In the end, to all that have missed this info, Rampage movie is starring Dwayne Johnson and is directed by Brad Peyton. This film is based on the series of arcade games where players take control of one of three giant monsters — Ralph the werewolf, Lizzy the lizard, and George the gorilla, and earn points based on the destruction they cause along the way. All of you who want to see this will be able on April 20th in theaters near you!