How Rodan's Awakening Is The Peak Of Kaiju Cinema In Godzilla: King Of The Monsters

I've heard people say Monarch was incompetent in leading Rodan to Ghidorah with the town in between them. Did Monarch know Rodan would fly real low and level the town below? No, they did not. That's on Rodan.

Honestly, all four of the major Kaiju’s “Awakenings” are amazing. Mothra emerging from her cocoon makes her feel like an angelic deity, Gidorah’s emergence makes him feel even larger than it is, Godzilla arriving to fight Gidorah is just awesome, and you explained why Rodan’s awakening is so amazing. While the movie isn’t as great as it could be, but it has exactly what it needs to be good. Amazing moments with giant monsters.

One of the things I always liked about Rodan's scene here is that he's *smart*. He's tactical, he takes on the jets not by flailing around and shrieking at them, but by grabbing them, crushing them, and positioning himself to knock all of them out of the sky at once. Not with a big mega-attack like Ghidorah later on, but with a planned attack. And then when he fights Ghidorah, and later Godzilla, he's smart enough to not just fight until he's killed, he can stop, admit defeat, and pledge allegiance to the alpha. Even Kong struggles with that one.

It just sucks that we had so little screen time for Rodan (and all the other monsters). But Rodan's awakening is easily the second best scene in the movie beside the final battle.

The shot of Ghidora on top of the volcano with the cross in the foreground as he spreads his wings and lets out that unsettling roar might be the most unnerving shot I’ve seen in a while

Rodan is genuinely terrifying in this scene. He feels nothing like a monster he feels like watching a natural disaster. The people are helpless, an entire city is decimated just for being in the wake of this massive creature. Him coming out of the lava, cloaked in fire and brimstone, and his bird of prey like appearance makes him look like a menacing god, and then the chase with the pilots is unbelievably intense as Rodan is seemingly unmatchable in the air, only for that to be subverted by Ghidorah defeating him with ease, which adds to further hype up his main antagonism. This culminates in Rodan bowing before Ghidorah, who awakens the titans with a haunting keen, set to a dread inducing score that swells to a climax with what I'd say is the best single shot in kaiju cinema, Ghidorah's silhouette on the volcano backdropped to a cross, cementing Ghidorah's devil motif

I really agreed on this, Rodan’s first appearance still gives me chills to this day, appreciated Dougherty on giving us one of the best fights in the MonsterVerse, I loved G:KOTM and as my personal favorite movie of the MonsterVerse, I don’t care what anyone says about it.

Man I hope they do more with Rodan in the future. I really like the monsterverse incarnation, personally

I know he was always one of the classics, but Rodan never really interested me that much as a monster. But I will give him this. His entire introductory sequence and chase in KOTM was one of the real highlights of the film for me 😊

This entire movie's sense of scale was impeccable, immaculate. The Titans all feel HUGE and unstoppable.

I think Megamind summed it up pretty well about what a "villain" needs, and it always starts with the introduction.

I’d argue that minus one’s boat chase scene is also one of the greatest kaiju sequences ever

I think the initial reveal of Godzilla in the 2014 movie was good too. There was such an intense buildup to it. Then the one jet exploding setting off another to yet another and as the audience is caught up watching these domino fireballs. Godzillas foot suddenly enters the field of vision and grabs the audience. Then you get a brief glimpse of his dorsal plates as the helicopter almost crashed into him. Then the reveal of his upper body and face. Looking incredible and pissed off. Capped off at the end of the sequence with his iconic roar. Pure magic.

Dougherty definitely did the best job as an American director adapting Godzilla so far. The Rodan sequence is the best of the monsterverse and probably one of the best kaiju sequences of all time. Its does everything right and I still watch this scene on YouTube regularly. If we had spent more time in the town with the people it could have worked as its own movie

Looking back, this sequence along with Meltdown Godzilla and Ghidorah's Awakening are the probably why I went to see this film 3 times (a personal first at the time) in Theaters, it was so incredible to see this on the big screen that I got addicted.

I loved how alien Ghidorah was. On the surface he seemed like a regular kaiju, but his Otherness is shown in how the O2 bomb doesn't hurt him, likely because he *doesn't breathe oxygen*, his somewhat unnatural or law defying movements, and how he's based on a dragon, whereas pretty much every other kaiju is based on an actual Earth creature.

Rodans opening scene brought his relative power to other kaiju as a formidable force. During the movie fight sequence at night it was good to see him provide support to a fight again, just not as an earth defender. I hope to see him again in the fight for the hollow earth core. the shockwaves on both surfaces of the interior a likely event.

Something I love is how rodan's entrance shows power scaling. So we all know volcanos are very destructive and anyone near it's path needs to evacuate but to rodan it is nothing ontop of them causing the volcano eruption. Then it simply gliding destroys the town in a few seconds, not it flapping it's wings, not any of the fire on the wings, no just gliding off the volcano caused that much damage. Then the fight against the pilots give us a idea of how it fights, it will spin and use it's wings as well as it's talons. So already rodan is a major threat to humanity and this was the scariest they been. But rodan has nothing compared to godzilla and Ghidorah. Ghidorah not only has strong wind destruction from flying but also can cause hurricanes, it has lightning beams it shoots and it got 3 long and viscous heads it will use. So having the rodan scene lead into the Ghidorah fight works really well to show how apocalyptic Ghidorah is. Because rodan is basically a traveling super volcano that destroys anything in it's path within seconds but that is nothing compared to the destruction Ghidorah can cause. I'm really glad they didn't give rodan some heat beam or fire breath because it would have lessened this imo.

Rodan is so underrated needs more scene time!!

This is 100% in my top 5 Kaiju monent in any Godzilla movie. It makes my boy Rodan seemnlike a major threat. Plus, look, Rodan seen Ghidorah and did not back away. He wanted all that smoke and was ready to throw down. Dud he get beat fast? Yeah, but still, he went in ready to go... Plus he just woke up, dude was still a little sleepy