Speaking as the creator of the Skyrim dragons (I modeled and textured all the dragons in the base game), I definitely wanted Paarthurnax to appear kind and elderly. And I made the Giants look like my father, so that players would not want to attack them!
You did such a masterful craft with Paarthurnax , I never once dared to kill him in my several playthroughs. While I just admired Giants, seeing them tending their Mamoths was just majestic. But what made me evade picking up a fight with giants was how prone they were to turn my Dragonborn into a Starborn by launching me to the skies at astronomical speed.
"Since childhood I've been faithful to monsters. I've been saved and absolved by them because monsters are the patron saints of our blissful imperfections." -Guillermo del Toro
that line from paarthunax: "what is better to be born good, or to overcome your evil nature through great effort?" that sounds... rather self reflective of ourselves as well as "the monster"
I just wanna add one thing about Godzilla I’ve always had empathy for Goji due to one guidebook I found on the 1954 movie Godzilla was with his family chilling doing normal stuff until a hydrogen bomb dropped on their whereabouts wiping out everyone but Godzilla. It’s presumed he’s the one of the last of his kind. In the depiction we could clearly see Godzilla having smoother skin implying that Godzilla was burnt and poisoned by the radiation the bomb emitted. Godzilla’s scales were designed to look like the burnt skin of Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors. Godzilla in many ways was the victim.
“Godzilla in many ways was the victim” Uh, no lmao instead of “being” the victim like you say, he instead makes others into the victims, since throughout the film all you see is nothing but the destruction to which our boy is very much the cause of, and that’s implying we take the time of out of our day to read a book explaining in elaborate detail as to why and how we could care for something of which has killed thousands if not millions? Such is as to why Godzilla is an allegory for the atomic bomb, no? Edit: People are STILL getting offended by my comment? Big LOL! Oh, and yeah, to all those unfortunate enough to support the mere existence that is the “monsterverse”. (Considering that seems to be what HALF of these comments are talking about for some reason, as if such even merely relates to the 50s movie or even to that of Minus One or OR even to Shin-Godzilla.) Lemme put it in nice and simple terms that’ll help you folks to understand me best, ahem! Bright seizure-inducing colors and loud obnoxious noises good, well-written subtly and clever nuance bad. All it takes it jangling some keys in front of your faces to make the “monsterverse” films seem even remotely competent and “deep” despite being as about as deep in it’s “lore” as the WWE. After all, why else do you think the Avatar movies are even popular in the first place?
@@justaguyonyoutube4592he is the original victim though, if humans left him alone and didn’t hurt him he could have lived in peace and never killed any humans. he is so aggressive and angry because he is in constant agony caused by humans…
Japanese Officials: “Godzilla has torn through so many cities, what kind of terrible thoughts would drive a creature to do such a thing?” Shin Godzilla’s Thoughts: “ow ow ow ow”
what I adore about the scene in HttYD when Hiccup finds a helpless Night Fury, he originally was going to kill it and bring it back to the village, but then, he saw this wasn't a mindless monster like he's been told, but a terrified animal acting on its nature, and thus he has empathy for this beast and lets it free. when he starts bonding with Toothless, he realises that the dragons really weren't the demons he was told they were "everything we knew about you guys, was wrong"
I’ve always described shin as a scared child lashing out at the world around him. His rampage is not born of malice like 54’ or gmk’s Godzillas, but because he doesn’t know what to do. “Why does everything hurt? How do I make it stop hurting? Why can’t I make it stop hurting?! PLEASE MAKE IT STOP HURTING!”
In its/his/her/their song, one of the singing voices mournfully sings about how tragic its/her existence is, and the other sings in encouragement, willing them to fight back.
This just becomes way more poignant when you remember how humans rose to the top of the food chain. Humanity's ancestors basically started out as the very bottom. From tiny mammals scurrying in the shadows of the dinosaurs, or primitive hominids barely scraping by against canids and feline predators, our ancestors must have perceived almost everything around them as monsters. Then we learned spears and fire, and it quickly spiraled into a massive spread of misaimed vengeance as humans dominated the land... only too much. Obviously, the story of humans technologically progressing isn't this simple and straightforward. The video DOES mention cave paintings having a reverence to dangerous wildlife, after all. But I still can't help but look at many predators - wolves, sharks, crocodiles, birds of prey - being mercilessly hunted to near-extinction or even total extinction because they were viewed as threats, even though our guns and traps can easily outmatch their fangs and claws. Very few large animals pose any threat to large portions of human life, yet people still have a hard time with intuitively accepting that wolves and sharks are actually relatively harmless. It's as if the human race hasn't yet realized that all of the so-called "monsters" that our ancestors faced have already been destroyed and surpassed by our technology. The only monsters left are the ones that people turn each other into. Really, it's almost like humanity's spread and advancement is one gigantic "Reverse-Uno" against nature that has been taken WAY too far.
@@mrreyes5004 Too far? So what, we should all retreat to our natural ways of life, living in caves with fur pelts and dying by 50? In fact, that would be the picture of unnatural activity. Life is a disease - in fact, bacteria are the most primal form of life. They have no desire other than to spread their DNA. Life is a series of proteins engineered to replicate itself through generating a body and interacting with the physical world. That is the purpose of all life - to spread uncontained. Humans are just the most successful at that paradigm. We are not separate from nature. We are as much a part of the animal kingdom as wolves or snakes, deer or mice. Nature is a brutal, Darwinian struggle for survival. And we won.
@@mrreyes5004let’s be real bro. Nature contains animals, plants and water and such resources crafted and nurtured by and from nature. But humans don’t exactly fit in that category of “natural”. We are not natural, we’re the real monsters, especially if we’re afraid. A person can change so much from dealing with serious problems like loss of a loved person or losing an important something to them. Vengeance is terrifying because it starts out of nowhere. People are always concerned with “security” when anybody could probably walk in to a weapon factory or even work in such places and just goes mad or something. The danger of humanity is that our intelligence allows us to cover ourselves to a certain degree and the people who become our targets immediately fear us or hate us. Or they just die. And I’m not even going to say a thing about wars.
@@purgatory6103 No we’re not, we’re not ‘monsters’ as you describe, we’re an incredibly unique outlier in the realm of nature, nature forming us in just the right ways to allow to absolutely transform the world around us, and put all other forms of life at our total mercy. We’re not ‘monsters’, we’re a miracle of nature and I’ll tell you what we’ve done that’s unique to us. We won.
Alan Menken, when writing for Disney's adaptation of The Hunchback of Notre Dame wrote the line "What makes a monster and what makes a man?" and that is one of the rawest writing prompts I've ever heard, and because of it, this topic is one of my absolute favourites.
“Monsters are tragic beings. They are born too tall, too strong, too heavy… They are not evil by choice. That is their tragedy.” That quote gave me chills.
much like people who are both to be psychopaths, pedophiles, born into this absurd world, confused as to what even is happening, confused about what existence as they are aware of is, and get completely stomped on by other life forms that look just like them, all the others have given them are hatred and violence, and all they receive is but even more confusion
“Have you ever sympathized with a monster?” Quite literally my entire career in veterinary medicine and conservation can be traced back to godzilla 1998 among other things. Where I saw not a monster being slain, but a grieving mother attempting to avenge her children. It’s affected how I treat and connect with non human animals ever since.
nice thought, although in reality the term "grieving mother" is 65% accurate because "zilla" was a "mammo" (Italian for a father who plays the maternal role). and then he had not chosen that fate, because of those radiations he had become what he was (like Frankenstein's creature and many others).
I have always felt bad for the "monsters". As a kid I was all like "...so, we killed the giant animal that lived far away from society and disturbed no one for no real reason other than some idiots went to its territory and got killed?"
You know, a "monster, "I always feel bad for in settings? Giant's. Usually, they're sentient, and they have intelligence. But these people are almost always on the outskirts, living in harsh lands, lacking in technology compared to the more common small folk. Often, they are rare, quite literally people pushed out. It's one thing to treat animal-like creatures like the monsters above. It's different to treat essentially an entire culture or group of huge, powerful people as that.
Even from a very young age, I've always felt for the monster, even the less sympathetic ones. There's something disturbing about celebrating the destruction of something unique or otherworldly, no matter how terrifying or dangerous it may be.
in the case of a attacking monster its moreso "it cant hurt us anymore" instead of "yay its dead" although the ones where they just kill the monster for being different is evil
King Kong 2005 hits harder with the scene of a cave showing many giant ape skulls. Kong was the last of his kind, and he was just unceremoniously gunned down like a household pest after unwillingly being dragged into the city.
as someone with autism and various other "other"-ing things, I always saw myself as the monster. I see a beast that's being attacked for existing and go "oh, like me!". you don't have to have fangs and claws and scales to be seen as something worthy of being slain, even if you've done absolutely nothing wrong. i can't imagine NOT seeing myself in the beasts and monsters of stories.
@@BurningGGaming I'm more likely to root for Mothra or Gamera, the only Godzillas I really cheer for are MV and Showa and sometimes Heisei towards the end of his series, and I just feel bad for Shin. I don't really cheer for Goji otherwise.
"people take one look at me and go 'ahh help run, a big stupid ugly ogre,' they judge me before they even know me. that's why im better off alone"- shrek
I've always felt terrible for giants, ogres, and trolls in fantasy settings. They are sentient in the vast majority of cases, and they live on the edges, in mountains, in caves, in the far north, away from most of the better lands to live in. Most smaller species build cities and towns not built for them. Nearly everything they make is not built for them. The world is not built for them. Usually, they end up living without much in the way of shelter or technology that might help them out. It just feels...kinda cruel?
Koda from brother bear as they explore a cave painting. "Those monsters are real scary. " (Kenai looks to the bear as the monster before Koda finishes his statement) "Especially with their sticks." Forcing Kenai to see the man with the spear as the monster, not the bear. One of the most beautiful and yet, saddening moments in the movie for me. Showing just how often the real "monster" is often the man.
In the movie, early, Kenai attempt to kill Koda's mom (unaware at this moment that she have a son, a cub) because she unvolontary kill her older brother. In revenge. While she didn't actually kill or provoked the snowfall that killed his brother. Its his brother that kill himself because it's him which provoke the snowfall in order to get rid of Kida's mom because she was just to attack his two younger brothers (including Kenai). So everything is due to a great quiproquo. (And things are quite difficult to explain here and here). But in defense of Kenai, he actually did nothing wrong to be punished at the end. When seeking for Koda's mom because she eat fishes Kenai should have kept for the tribe, it's Koda's mom who attack him first, which created the sequence where Kenai older brother die by a snowfall he himself created in order to save his two younger brothers. Koda's mom survived the snowfall and go. Kenai maybe go near her by him, but he didn't attack first and was in self-defense. Sure, after it, Kenai decide to seek again for her to kill her, and it's him who attack her first (or he again is surprise another time by her, didn't see the movie since a time), but what matter is that Kenai technically kill her on purpose. And that Koda's mom who actually die by herself by empaling entirely herself like an complete idiot on Kenai's spear the latter rise up suddenly to protect himself (he did not actively throw it at her, which in this case would not be legit self-defense). So, Kenai maybe seek by two time Koda's mom, but each time, he actually get attacked first by her, and he killed her by accident while he was overpassed by her (she's a big powerfull muscular grizzly bear and him a typical human with a very basic spear, how a one to one fight with such fighters cannot result with the bear dominated the fight ? At one moment, the human involved no more care about winning upon him, just to survived the fight at this point). So, the fact Kenai end up being transformed into a bear is kind of underserved despite the appearances. During the movie, it could have being reveal that instead to be transformed in punition to have killed the bear, Kenai was in reality transformed to care about her son Koda. For me, it better and made more senses.
It really hurts me how good the bones of brother bear was, and how badly it fell from what it could be with all the bad comedy shoved in. Like I'm fine if you have it as a favorite movie as a kid, but the good parts of the movie makes it on a level with Atlantis the lost empire. It could have easily been one of the coolest movies, but they put too many silly jokes in it and it's just another forgotten kids movie
That movie is so underrated and deserves more respect for the different view it offered and the ending it chose, sure it has it's weak points but in all I found ti to be a good movie.
@@dudotolivier6363Kenai killed her on purpose, and the cause of Kodas mom’s death was strictly Kenai’s fault, who could’ve turned back at any point instead of seeking mindless revenge against an animal.
@@AtomikVomit Yes, and nope. He did indeed seek her two times on purposes (by throwing her small rocks at her the first time, and by following her the second time to be cornered the second time) and to made her attack him. But during the second fight, it still her which empale herself like an idiot on Kenai's spear that the latter have just suddenly rise up in self-defense right after retrieving it after losing it. So, he didn't killed her truly volontary as he wanted/imagined. If he managed to throw at her his spear to her and that this shot killed her on the moment and made her falling dead, here whithout any problems since it not defense in any way possible. It's Kenai's entire fault. But that not what happen in the movie.
Shin Goji’s theme was probably the best thing about the movie. The first time we get to hear what the monster’s brain is saying versus what his heart is saying.
Favorite semi quote from a children's book. A Japanese retelling of little red riding hood... "A special thanks to wolves...for lending us their noble name, to embody our dark nature..."
What really gets me sometimes with monsters is their imminent demise is often destroying a unique creature that will be gone forever, while often the humans are just mindlessly spreading and coming into contact with the monster as an inevitable part of their spreading. Ghibli really, really leans into this in some of his stuff where it's really the humans who are the monsters.
Your point on sympathetic monsters in video games reminded me of a mechanic in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom that’s legitimately sad. In the game, you will sometimes come across a large group of pig-like creatures called bokoblins being led by a far larger and smarter boss who will direct the smaller monsters in battle. However, if you manage to kill the boss from a distance without killing any of it's minions beforehand, the smaller bokos will actually start crying, implying that they are sympathetic creatures.
i kinda hate tears of the kingdom now cuz it has all these details like this but never does anything with them and just has you merrily exterminating the bokos with groups of human npcs with zero subtext. it gives you this narrative indigestion that never gets resolved. ganondorf is classed under "monsters" in the compendium. but who was he before he started that war?
@@very_not_emo He was a covetous and cruel man who wanted to world to bow before his feet. He fits the definition of monster better than most of the beasts he commands.
This is why kilton Is my favorite character in that game, he doesnt see the monsters for the mindless killing machines they were but as the evolved and facinating creatures they became after their purpose was fullfiled
@very_not_emo idk he killed the queen, and when what was basically her adoptive daughter was crying over her courpse, he laughed Even before be got the power of the demon king calamity era gannondorf was always a vile person who took pride and joy in the suffering he caused
Man shin Godzilla makes us Godzilla fans sad. He was such a misunderstood creature only trying to adapt to the world he was born into. Not only was he in constant pain during his evolution, but also in deep sadness. The real monster was us. Neglecting him and treating him as this, living, breathing doomsday device. RIP shin Godzilla.
Shin Godzilla never actually died at the end of the film. The creature only wanted to seek safety from all of the horrendous suffering inflicted on it by its own biology desperate to survive. At the end of the film, it’s shown to have not died, but in a “hibernation” state where parts of it began evolving into humanoid hive minds.
Those people he killed could have had full, human lives. I see their tragedy’s, but I can’t feel bad. It’s very nihilistic how it’s always, “Humans are the real villains” and never, “That evil bastard Godzilla needs to die” Aside from GMK and Minus one.
As a child I always found myself rooting for dragons and monsters, and thinking about how barbaric the humans’ actions in the stories usually were. Glad to see I wasn’t alone
I imagine that's because we didn't write them to be monsters. A monster is something violent, if not explicitly malicious. A monster is a beast, a predator if it's cunning, that goes out of its way to invade places it does not belong. A monster is cruel, envious, greedy, violent, proud, and undeterrable. A monster knows no fear and cannot be reasoned or bargained with. A monster is arrogant of its strength and believes itself beyond the reach of death itself. A monster will demand all of creation bow before it, for it has no equal. Come to think of it, only a handful of people fit this description. Certainly not any animals. Only the worst of _our_ kind can truly be monsterous.
@@NitroNinja324 To be honest I think some whales are probably monsters. They are surely smart enough to understand the difference between good and evil. So with that in mind, there's surely whales which also veer into the side of evil, whatever "evil" is to them. After all, it's a known fact that some pods of certain dolphins such as orcas are friendly toward other creatures, while others are highly aggressive. Some orcas swim with pods of other whale species, and others will brutally dismember them for fun.
@catpoke9557 Intelligence gives you the ability to discern kindness and cruelty. While kindness can become more deliberate, cruelty can equally become more poignant.
I wish you would have noted some of Star Trek’s own “sympathy for the monster” moments rather than just noting Spock as an example of a trustworthy alien! One of the best is the Original Series episode “Devil in the Dark”. The crew investigates a strange monster killing miners only to discover via Spock’s telepathic abilities that it is a grieving, injured mother trying to protect her remaining offspring. It’s an incredibly powerful episode and has always been one of my favorites.
The crystalline entity episodes of TNG are a great tragic story. It's a giant organism that fed off the living creatures on federation planets, but Picard recognizes it as a creature that's just living its life. He has a line about how we don't think a whale eating krill is evil, it's just feeding.
"Inhuman appearance does not means inhuman nature" A thought about that, do we have the monopoly of righteous behaviour? We classify good actions with terms related to our own nature because we don't know the perspective of other species?
Regarding monsters having monsters of their own, one very interesting thing the first Legendary Godzilla (2014) did with its antagonist monsters is portray them as pretty realistic animals simply going through their nesting behaviour. They're never portrayed as deliberately evil towards humans. They're simply creatures out of time, out of place, that cannot live in the modern world without unwittingly bringing armaggedon onto humans. The film even includes an unexpectedly sweet scene where the pair of monsters reunite and do a little display of affection together, as birds do during the nesting season. There's just... something so sweet and tragic about it, even though the film firmly shows they have to be put down because of the destruction they are bringing.
and then there's Ghidorah who just wants to see the world burn. did kinda feel a bit bad for the left head tho, he was just a curious little lad who wanted to lick everything unfamiliar pfff 😂
@@ruffruggednraw Well yeah but the Skullcrawlers are just animals too- not their fault they're an invasive species with hyperactive metabolisms leading them to consume everything in sight.
The MUTOs are some of my favorite kaiju of all time, both for their astounding creature design and for their story, and how the two mesh together. You look at this thing and you can be scared of it, but they also look like a natural animal that could feasibly exist in some long-forgotten ecosystem.
@@dracodracarys2339To be fair, even Ghidorah has his own sympathetic qualities. It's never explicitly said, but it is still implied that Ghidorah is trying to conquer Earth because he has nowhere else to go. He's an alien from space, but then why doesn't he just leave back to his home planet? Maybe because he doesn't have one, not anymore. Ghidorah doesn't terraform the planet because it's fun, it's because he wants to finally have a feeling of being home. And it just so happens that this terraforming of his would be lethal for 99% of living beings.
I was disappointed that you didn't mention How To Train Your Dragon. Berk has a society of hardened vikings who see dragons as mindless monsters, but Hiccup when able to kill a helpless dragon, chooses to save Toothless. Hiccup had empathy. He could see the fear in Toothless.
For a contrasting perspective, the Monsters franchise is more-so the opposite. It is been revealed since the very beginning that they are falsely taught that humans, especially, children are “extremely toxic”-only meant to harvest their “scream energy”. Yet Sully manages to break the chain upon discovering Boo, implying that not all humans are as “toxic” as they believed to be.
@@weirdcherrytasteyuckIt's not dumbed down. It has a story of it's own so the empathy of the "monsters" dragons here in this case are not as showed or high lighted why? Because it has a different story line. HTYD 1 can be as deep as the stories here, but not in the way CA is trying to convey for the "pure" or "scary" monsters here. IT'S NOT DUMBED DOWN!! JUST NOT AS SHOWN OR HIGHLIGHTED!! UGH. It has the same philosophical value CA has been trying to convey in!!! Empathy for the pain or suffering they face as being unusual and out of the norm for the world we "Created"/"Ruled" >:((
The Godzilla segment needs its own video, and with an addition of Godzilla: Minus One. Because holy SHIT that movie was powerful. Sympathy for the Monster might as well have been the filmmaker's motto.
Bioshock does this trope SO well that it’s stuck with me for my whole life. Killing a horde of mindless zombies is one thing, but killing a scared once-person desperately trying to communicate with you but who is unable to comprehend their surroundings as they are is another entirely. I still remember the feeling of hiding from a Splicer and hearing them break down in tears, begging me to come out and sobbing for his mom. I had to take a long moment to process that.
I think Mimikyu from Pokemon does this well. To me at least. Its an eldritch horror that knows its effect on the human mind, so it works tirelessly to maintain its Pikachu disguise in order to feel love. Really makes you feel for the poor thing.
I've watched so many monster movies where I had a single takeaway. "If they'd left this creature alone, literally none of the terrible things in this movie would have happened."
The monster that did it for me was Vicar Amelia from Bloodborne. When we see her she is in a cathedral, on her knees before an alter, praying while clutching a pendant to her chest. She knows what is about to happen, she is trying everything she has ever known to prevent herself from transforming but it is not enough. She transforms, it is a very rapid, visceral, and excruciating transformation told by her agonizing screams. When the transformation is over she is something else in both mind and body. No longer is she a human at heart but a beast, a beast that is now far too big to escape the cathedral, a beast that is both confused and in great pain from her rapid transformation. Worst yet… She is terrified. She realizes. She is now trapped in a room with You a Hunter. During the boss fight she never roars, she screams. She thrashes about while still clutching her pendant. She does not know what the pendant is but it is comforting to her previous human form. She’s a confused and scared newborn animal in a violent world who awakens to see herself forever trapped in a lair with another beast (you) whose soul purpose is to kill her.
Ive never looked at it that way. Bloodborne is my favourite game ever, and it has been since i played it in 2018 but you just gave me another reason to love it and hate it at the same time
Vicar Amelia is also MAJESTIC compared to the Cleric beast, or the vast majority of the other bosses in a way that just makes the WHOLE thing feel like a Princess Mononoke level war crime against a "beast" that frankly doesn't deserve to die. . .
Oh man... Much like Ludwig in the DLC. I remember feeling so bad for him after the fight :/ When you talk to him a second time (wearing certain armor sets), there will be dialogue where he asks "Are my church hunters the honorable spartans I hoped they would be?". You can either tell him a comforting lie 'Yes', or a horribly unpleasant truth 'No', since the hunters over the years had become blood-drunk*. Telling him no, he says "Oh my... just as I feared. Then a beast-possessed degenerate was I, as my detractors made eminently clear.." he rabidly neighs and whinnies as he then succumbs to beasthood then says "Does the nightmare never end?!". Interacting with him furthermore will just play dialogue bits of him making crazed beast noises. Telling him yes, he says "Ahh good, that is a relief. To know I did not suffer such denigration for nothing. Thank you kindly. Now, I may sleep in peace. Even in this darkest of nights, I see... The moonlight." Then he goes to sleep, peacefully. Further interacting with him will just play play sounds of him snoring and sleeping. Also that 2nd phase theme for Ludwig is godly. Btw if there's anyone that's reading this that still hasn't bought the Bloodborne DLC, go buy it! Go go go! Edit: woops, missed a few words
Funny. The one that did it for me was Orphan of Kos. It was just a newborn who doesn't know of anything and the few moments where it looks off in the distance is still etched in my mind. It just felt wrong fighting a newborn who is thrashing you with a placenta
As a member of more than one minority group frequently portrayed as monsters myself, this has always rung true for me. And I want to say that there are very few things as exhausting as constantly having to wonder whether you're in danger of being attacked for simply existing, or seeing people like you verbally degraded and blamed for all kinds of societal woes, or hearing and seeing calls for your death. Especially when they're based on misinformation that you can't even begin to correct because the people who think that way will never listen to you. You've already been discredited in their eyes; they see you as inherently monstrous, and therefore they can ignore anything you say and continue to further dehumanize you.
I've always really loved Tom Baker's run in Dr. Who because whenever he would enter a room with some kind of horrible beast he would smile, wave, and say "Hello!". Baker himself said he started this because even though it looks horrifying to us, that might be how perfectly normal people look wherever it comes from.
I was really disheartened today when I had a discussion with people about whether or not, they considered Frankenstein’s creature a human and I was the only person who very immediately and adamantly said “yes.” The point is that he becomes more human than the man who created him. Victor Frankenstein - the modern Prometheus - loses all of his humanity, but his monster is what gains it. So it’s nice to find a video like this where other people have sympathy for him and all the other great monsters that represent marginalized minorities like Godzilla and King Kong, and The Gill-Man. :)
@@reallycantthinkofausername487 I think the original commenter just wanted to convey that Godzilla is a monster who can be interpreted as being "oppressed or attacked for being born too different", like the other monsters. Don't take it too literally -- Godzilla doesn't actually represent a minority. Maybe it'd be more factually accurate to say that Godzilla (at least in Japan) represents Hiroshima but that's not really important for this kind of interpretation lol
I was recently at an art museum that where I saw a painting of St. George and the Dragon. And I laughed because the dragon looked so silly and actually adorable. I'm guessing it was actually made small and non-threatening so that the painter could show the might of St. George. But it kind of made St. George look like the bad guy. I do love How to Train Your Dragon, so maybe that colored my perspective. Also, I would play the game Rampage, in which you play as a monster.
Well, not quite. I think I know the painting you're talking about. That small dragon was likely one of the earliest paintings about that story, and thus the most accurate. Back then, humans didn't get very big - George was probably about 5' 4." The "dragon" in question was probably some species of monitor lizard, which could exceed 6 ft in length when they got lucky. It likely was an intimidating creature for George to fight, but in reality it was just a lizard minding its own business.
Bokoblins from Zelda Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom come to mind for me. While they are evil beings summoned by Gannon’s power to do his bidding, after the great battle years ago many Bokoblins and their cousin Moblins set up little camps and living spaces for them selves. While they’re said to be aggressive to trespassers if you watch them from afar or hide amongst their colony members with a disguise, you learn they’re little goblin pig men who hunt game for food, share meals around the fire, and dance together happily. Their original purpose was warfare but when their job was done they just started living by them selves. Any basic mob enemy in a videogame who secretly dances when alone is always something I feel a little bad about harming.
@@typowynieogarwhy do so few characters have sympathy for the hilluchurls? I'm know the majority dont know that they're actually cursed humans, but I mean that none Express sorrow remorse or a sense of longing for a situation where we dont have to fight them all the time :( I only think this because one of the commision quests show it's possible to communicate them, albeit primitively
Omg I thought of them too. They love yummy foods. U can even put on monster masks and go say hi. And when u do, they’re a really jolly lively folk. They dance with u, follow u around, and eat foods, expressing gratitude
When you see a perceived "enemy" doing something you yourself enjoy, it connects in a very special way. That's how empathy is born, and it's so curious how it seems to happen more often on games, movies and books rather than in real life.
I am genuinely a bit shocked that Undertale, being an rpg setup dungeon crawler where you can choose to spare all of monsterkind, kill them all and become a monster yourself, and all sorts of options in between, was not mentioned in the video game section
As a neurodivergent person the more I learn about monster like Frankenstein, Vampires, and so on. The more aware of how discriminatory these descriptions are. - "He needs exact permission to do this. He dislikes bright lights." (Vampire) - And then there are stories of the large and slow minded monsters that emphasize negative stereotypes of large autistic individuals, shunned from learning and deemed to slow to learn in the first place. Examples are Frankenstein like in your video, Werewolves, and Giants. What you have created here brings me hope. Sincerely, A happy watcher.
One of my all time favorite videogame monsters is Trico from The Last Guardian. The game begins with illustrations of recognizable animals, then shows an image of Trico's species, as if saying "this is just an animal after all, even if it is a strange one". Then when your character awakes, they awake next to Trico, a giant creature who's incredibly intimidating and chained up. When they first awake, they attack you, and it makes you think "they're a monster that's chained up for a reason, they're violent". But after being offered kindness, food, and removing the spears in it's back, it shows endless loyalty to your character. Despite being a huge and wreckless force. (SPOILERS) Later on, it's revealed Trico's species was being mind controlled by a dark force to do bad things, and so when the villagers see the creatures, they associate them with evil and immediately go on the attack. Without realizing that the creatures have no control over what they are doing, and are being punished for it.
Haven’t heard about that game in a while. Never thought of it that way because I was pretty young when I played it. But you are totally correct. I felt pity for that dragon and loved him from the start. Thanks for reminding me, will definitely play this one again!
And it's kind of awful how it ends with all the wild tricos just...dying en masse. It wasn't their fault, they were brainwashed. Like the black trico who fights yours ends up just being confused and afraid once its mask is broken off.
@@dracodracarys2339 yes, but luckily at the end there are baby Tricos shown, implying the creatures haven't totally died off and are possibly able to repopulate!
One of my favourite characters in fiction is Korabas, the otatarel dragon from Steven Erikson's malazan book of the fallen. A colossal dragon who's corpse was reanimated creating a being that was an essential part of the series's magic system, at the cost that she becomes the eye of abnegation. The point where the stillness of matter becomes absolute, destroying any and everything in range. She's chained for millennia, then released by a mad god to break the system by which humanity could use magic. Pursued by the rest of her species there are two passages from her point of view that are heartbreaking to read, a being that seeks only to create, something. Anything.
As a hardcore Godzilla fan, I'm so happy to see him get some sympathy. Giant monsters like Godzilla are always portrayed as the bad guys, and it always makes me happy to see my boy goji get the sympathy he deserves!
I cried when they killed Godzilla in the 1998 movie. He was essentially just a lost, scared animal, and they brutally killed him while he was ensnared on a bridge by pummeling him with missiles. I know it had to happen, but it still makes me sad.
Ppl say this movie doesn't deserve to stand on the same pedestal as other Godzilla stuff. I genuinely thing that ppl should step off their high horse and enjoy it for how genious it was.
I feel bad for one particular monster in mythology, Medusa. She wasn’t born a Gorgon, she was a human maiden who worshiped Athena, but due to Poseidon assaulting her within Athena’s own temple the goddess misunderstood their actions and punished Medusa unjustly.
Love that you included imagery of Medusa in the beginning. Because depending on what story you subscribe to, medusa was a victim from the very beginning, being taken advantage of by a god, the goddess she devoted her life to cursing her to be a monster, and when she lives in isolation away from people, she’s constantly attacked and just them looking at her kills them. She can’t help it and even if she could it’s self defense. And then finally she’s killed by someone seeking power and her head is used as a trophy. She’s a victim every step of the way.
I do love how Godzilla unintentionally became so beloved instead of feared. Also goes to show just how devastating nuclear power in the wrong hands can be; that even a titanic force of destruction is nothing more than the victim of pointless atomic destruction.
Its worse than you think- sif isnt fighting to protect artorias's grave from you. Hes fighting to protect you from following artorias into the abyss and suffering the same fate of his master
Monsterous figures are so deeply linked with empathy in my mind. They're always the tragic character, human or not, espacially in horror movies who don't stick to cliches. Godzilla's death in "godzilla vs destoroyah" and the musical theme associated with it is the only piece of media i know which automatically mekes me cry.
I remember playing Shadow of the Colossus and my dad telling me that when you finish a colossus you couldn't help but feel sorry for them. You were forced to kill them just to save one soul and all it ended with was your demise. I admire the colossi, they have an OD beauty to them.
I knew someone would bring this up and I'm glad you did. That game isn't really at all about 'monsters bad and need to die cuz bad' but rather 'Will you trade the lives of these creatures for the life of your loved one?"
Great video! Frankenstein is my favorite book of all time (which sadly never gets a good adaptation) and the quotes “I was benevolent and good, misery made me a fiend” and “I aught to be thy Adam; but I am rather the fallen angel” demonstrates that the people’s perception of him is what makes him monsterous and the creature longs for companionship and love. Also in the hunchback of Norte Dame musical the narrator sings “what makes a monster and what makes a man” in the first song of the musical which I just think fits so well with these sympathetic monster stories
I find it rather interesting how you used B-roll from the Last of Us as an example of zombies being sympathetic because, while not stated outright, cursory knowledge of cordyceps reveals their hosts are almost certainly suffering and simply unable to express it. Cordyceps puppet the muscles of their hosts rather than influencing their minds, thus rendering them prisoners in bodies controlled by a foreign agent whose influence they're physically incapable of resisting.
I agree. In episode 3 of the HBO show, Ellie encounters a stalker stuck under rubble. From the way it was looking at Ellie, I got the feeling that the person that was still inside was silently begging to be put out of their misery. Also, in the games the runners always twitch and cry when not in combat, which leads me to believe that the people still inside try to regain control but can't.
It's not exactly unstated. More like it isn't stated as fact. In the first game (not sure about in the show) there's a character who mentions a rumor that the clickers are all conscious and unable to control their actions.
In Finland, we have a pop culture monster of our own, which almost every kid growing up has had they're own visceral, scary and eye opening confrontation with. She's a creature called "Mörkö" (lit. monster; boogieman), from the Moomin series written by the Finnish author Tove Jansson. In the story that most kids have seen, she starts out as a scary monster that turns the ground icy as it drifts towards you, but later turns out to be a lonely misunderstood creature seeking warmth, comfort and love. I can still remember my own reaction to that scene as a kid, going from scared to curious to empathetic, and it's stayed with me ever since, as it has with many Finns around my age. It's a good reminder for us to look inward when we feel fear towards something unknown, and try to understand our initial reactions. Thank you for making this video, reminding me of this little special bit of my own childhood.
Reminds me of the book, The Dragon Champion, the story is the typical, knight slaying the evil dragons, but told from the perspective of the dragon, it managed to made the knight look like such a scary threatening monster while making the dragon so very human.
do you mean the novel by E.E. Knight?? That entire series is SO good, and it was so refreshing to see not just one novel, but an entire 6 novel saga, from the perspective of the other side. One of my favorite series of all time!
I just finished Knight's Age of Fire series recently. His depiction of dragons and reasons for their different stereotypical habits are such an interesting, unique take. I found the ending to be a bit weak, but the journey was astounding.
"Monsters are tragic beings. They are born too tall, too strong, too heavy. They are not evil by choice. That is their tragedy." - Ishiro Honda, the director of Gojira (1954)
Yes, he says that while contradicting his own statement by having the big lizard destroy almost all of Japan, and for basically no reason either than that of making Godzilla known as a villain rather than having to be shoehorned into becoming a hero, let alone an “anti-hero” despite the damage and death he causes.
@@justaguyonyoutube4592 That reason being Godzilla was literally a metaphor for nuclear war, he’s been mad into a protecter while still maintaining his roots, just cut a bit short.
@@paleospino4956 Lmao didn’t you get big mad for correcting you in one of your cringe-inducing debates? You ain’t going nowhere boy, I’m taking you into the bushes.
I have always sympathised with the monster. A monster is just someone that's hurt. Society sees a suffering being and thinks "It must die", and celebrates atop its corpse. I see myself in that. I see myself in monsters, far, far more than in people. And so to me, the story of a monster's death is a tragedy.
l feel the same so often. My personal favorite monster is Godzilla, as his existence is generally framed as something overwhelmingly strong and beyond our full comprehension such as Legendary Godzilla is or a pained beast that never needed to exist, as Shin Godzilla was. I especially resonate with Legendary Godzilla though, as he just kind of exists and that to humanity warrants the battering he gets by the gunfire, missiles and oxygen destroyers people throw at him. They hatch eggs of dangerous parasites he needs to stop, they release age-old aliens that try to terraform the planet which he needs to stop, and then after all that they try to make a mech to kill him and take his role! And in spite of all this, he never just gets fed-up and tries to nuke all of humanity, which, being king of the monsters, he definitely could do as of the end of his second film in the Monsterverse. In this sense, who is the real monster? That's also why I loved Nimona so much! The movie reframes the blame from monsters and outsiders of the kingdom to the system that the kingdom runs on. I don't wanna spoil too much in case someone hasn't seen it but I think you will really like it!
I'm shocked you didn't talk about monsters in monster hunter. Constantly going out into nature to dispatch of giant beasts who are just defending themselves and their territory. As they get to low health, some of them even cower and run or try to use attacks that they can no longer use in a last ditch effort to scare you away.
To be fair, they are bad example because they are mostly just big animals, rather than especially monstrous. Aside from things like Fatalis, which are less about defending themselves and more about annihilating humanity.
From what I recall, the hunters actually hunt monsters as a conservation effort, culling the dangerous ones so that the ecosystem can stay balanced, which is why they're so focused in the elder dragons, as they are unnatural creatures. I think the older games even have mentions of a guild that hunts poachers.
@@cienkitv2854yep there's a lot of fluff dialog about keeping the balance, hunters do all types of things like tranq and tag monsters, reroute monsters that have roamed to close to settlements, and even help stop invasive species from threatening ecosystems. There's a lot that goes into the the world building for the hunters guild, it just wouldn't be as exciting to do those things so gameplay wise it's all about hunting and capturing.
The most sympathy I've had for a monster was with Zilla, you know, the poor mutant iguana who was lured in with fish, and then got attacked, It brought me to tears when all its babies got slaughtered. Eventually they defeated Zilla by trapping it in the bridge and shooting a bunch of missiles at it
Yeah. IDK why people hated it so much, I think Zilla's design was pretty cool, I mean, sure it was different and not as mighty as the Goji we all know, but it had it's owj goodies that made it stand out, plus the series that came out after the movie it's hella underrated.
@@Vexx2006yea, its a great design for a monster. Just not a great design for Godzilla. If you removed the spikes would you even know it's supposed to be him?
@@Vexx2006 Because Emmerich did everything in his power to character assassinate Godzilla to the fans. He made Godzilla vulnerable to conventional firearms, always ran away from an encounter instead of actively/passively engaging in combat, and removed his atomic breath (you know, the main signature attack that Godzilla is essentially known for). Also by removing Godzilla's dinosaur inspiration appearance for something more "realistic and animal like", you essentially destroy the core foundation and basis of what Godzilla is. Godzilla is not meant to be something natural on Earth. Godzilla is a reminder of mankind's arrogance to harness nuclear power and playing as God by trying to defy the natural order and mother nature itself. Emmerich did not want to create an American interpretation of Godzilla. He said in many interviews that he wanted his own monster. He only accepted the project because Sony was willing to fork over 250 Million USD to get him to make the film (mind you the last time an American Godzilla movie was brought to Hollywood, the initial cost of 50 Million USD was seen as absurd). When Emmerich read the prototype script from the initial pitch, he scoffed at it saying, "It just two giant monsters beating the living shit out of each other for the last 25-30 minutes. Who even makes movies like this?" Emmerich is hated by every Godzilla fan for a very good reason and I'm glad that he upset that Legendary's Godzilla is a far better Godzilla in design and character to his garbage. Tristar's Godzilla has more relations to Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park and it no coincidence that Emmerich's film blatantly copies a lot of things from Jurassic Park too. I don't hate the design tbh, I think on it own, it can be a very good monster design. I grew up watching the cartoon sequel and I love it. It just the big issue of the fact that it slapped with Godzilla's name. I used to be many who called it GINO and refused to remember it for anything else but that but I've slowly moved on and accepted Zilla for what it is. Hate the creator, not the monster itself.
Shin Godzilla is my favorite of all the Godzilla movies exactly for the reasons you very eloquently explained. Also, it's downright surreal in it's depiction and I love the idea that Godzilla morphs into progressively more advanced forms in response to his environment.
The cruelty against fictional monsters is still reflective of our real life. According to how we treat wildlife and disabled people (who are the muses to our monsters), the answer is we would deliberately make our architecture and lifestyle inaccessible to them. Even if our stereotypical understanding of a monster does exist, I still don’t think humanity would coexist with them considering we don’t even do that with the relatively peaceful creatures we do have on earth. If a monster did enter a city, I doubt it’d mindlessly walk through our buildings. It still has to protect itself after all, it’d just be helpless and stuck.
What are you babbling on about? We don’t coexist with peaceful animals and our architecture is hostile to disabled people? Are you aware that efficiency is the name of the game? It’s more in the nature that we were hunted ourselves. Prey to many of the blueprints to monsters we see in fiction. Fictional monsters remind us of a time when we weren’t world conquering. Nothing more than trying to survive.
11:30 To anyone who hasn’t seen it, Shin Godzilla is a masterclass in eldritch horror and political satire. It is also handles horror incredibly well, opting to use tragedy instead of violence and tension. It very much deserves its spot in the video as on multiple rewatches, it becomes apparent how much agony Godzilla is in. I strongly urge watching it.
There's a scene in Godzilla Versus Destoroyah where Godzilla has a moment with its son who was killed in battle. It's an intimate and touching scene in an otherwise played straight Kaiju movie. Honestly, I love it. It has never failed to make me tear up a bit.
To invoke Dark Knight quotes here is a bit of a meme, but "You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain" makes sense to come from Nietzsche-ian roots.
@@thisgoddamusernamestoodamnlong fart the old blood. That usually works for me...tho, I don't think you're supposed to fart blood *per se* -- be it new or old -- but, I'm just another stranger on the internet
as a young kid, the first How to train a dragon film had a huge influence over me. one of the first pieces of media that I felt imparted a lesson on me that really stuck in my mind, of how many monsters, and even people, are creatures that have emotional and empathetic sides that can be sympathised with, only obscured by how and when they can display it.
Lately I've been more into the Godzilla movies, so obviously the thumbnail is what pulled me in to watch this video in the first place. A "fun" fact: In the scene where Shin Godzilla uses his/her atomic breath and destroys the city he/she is basically just vomiting out the radiation, since he/she is just in constant agony and pain from the constant evolution. Also, Shin Godzilla's roars are said to be cries of pain.
I can only imagine the shock that kids in Japan must've felt growing up with Godzilla as a hero in the 70's only to see his dark and serious reboot in the mid-80's. Gojira 1984 (a.k.a. Godzilla 1985 in the U.S.) let kids know the days of Godzilla being a good guy were over.
As an autistic person, I've always gotten along better with animals than people, and I've always found stories about animals (Be they real animals or dragons and monsters and kaiju) more interesting than stories about humans. I too always felt bad for the dragon in the story of St. George. I also always liked stories where humanity learns to coexist with the monsters (HTTYD, the MonsterVerse). The kaiju genre in general has a massive surplus of neurodiverse fans (In part because of the aforementioned love of animals, the fact that neurodivergence is frequently made out to be 'monstrous', adding another layer of sympathy, and the fact that giant monsters are really cool). Personally, my autism means I have a hard time thinking about things from other people's perspectives, meaning I sometimes am mistaken as selfish, arrogant, or rude, because I literally have a harder time perspective-taking due to my brain chemistry (Note I said empathizing, not sympathizing. I am very capable of sympathy and compassion). I also have a harder time controlling my impulses and emotions, meaning that I lash out verbally and sometimes physically when I'm scared, stressed, or angry. I also stim in a very distracting way, I like to run, pace, and skip a lot, especially when I'm excited or thinking hard about something. Several times, I've run into people, and one time I accidentally knocked down a little kid because I didn't look where I was going. So, out of all kaiju, one I have a massive soft spot for is Rodan. Rodan isn't usually _that_ aggressive towards humans unless they shoot first, most of the damage he causes is simply from the downdrafts of his wings as he flies around. He's usually portrayed as hyperactive and hot-blooded, and sometimes even selfish and arrogant, but, like Godzilla, he did become heroic in the movies of the late Showa Era. (I typed this comment while wearing a shirt with him on it, lmao). So yeah. I also feel really bad for the Pacific Rim kaiju (Otachi is one of my favorites overall), because they're literally alien bioweapons- they aren't evil, they're being mind-controlled by their creators. They're living things that are denied true life, being created only to kill, and they die horrible deaths, and I feel so bad for them, even as I'm cheering for humanity to triumph. Because the Pacific Rim kaiju are hurricanes. That's their allegory. And hurricanes aren't evil. Climate change (in this case the kaijus' makers), the thing making the hurricanes bigger and stronger, is the evil. So yeah. I also really like Gamera, because you could interpret him as neurodivergent as well, within the standards of kaiju: In his stories, all other kaiju are evil, being apathetic towards or actively out to harm humanity- the way a lot of neurotypical people are with animals. Gamera, by contrast, is loving towards and protective of us- the way a lot of neurodivergent people are toward animals. But I also just like him, lol, he's a big sweet turble who's about the power of hope and the good in humanity. Can't recommend his Heisei Era movies enough. I also like Mothra because who doesn't, and I use my fanfics about her to vent my feelings about climate change and humanity's relations with nature. Anyway, I did not proofread this, and this is literally me just spewing thoughts into the text box and hitting the post button, hope ya'll have a really good day. /gen
I am autistic too, I also feel more empathy with animals than humans. And also found animal stories far more interesting than human ones as well monster stories.
I am not autistic but found your statement here enjoyable to read as a perspective that is apart from my own. Personally I am very empathetic and have great sympathy for others with their hurts, I became a healer over 10 years ago and feel all the hurts people may have, physical and mental, a person can hide very little from me. I recently found out I am also referred to as a sigma male, which also gives a very analytic view of situations and people. But I do have one issue, which is known as aphantasia, its where your mind is totally blank and no imagery can be created within the mind. All these together give me a very clear vision of the present moment and the outside world. I also used to have a very busy mind where I could not go more than a few seconds without thought comingbin to the mind, the time I became a healer was when I learned to control the thoughts, simply I learned that I was not the thoughts and they were simply a tool I can use that were out of control. Once I learned this I not only have a clear mind but is also blank and and very emotionally aware of my own emotions but also every other person's. The reason I say all this, apart from your spewing of thoughts in a comment as inspiration but also I think there will be something for you here. Over the years I have learned that society has become so harsh with nature being a victim to it like us, there are very little birds, bugs and animals for us to enjoy and experience that as people we are searching for distraction from this. I feel the distractions you have picked are the better choice if I'm honest, those stories can contain inspiration and creativity of imagery and story which is not bad, you are enjoying something that was created with a purpose to tell a story and be enjoyed. But in society today so many choose other distractions that bring them no joy, no way to be creative or simply enjoy a story. The world around us all is bringing such distress and misery for many, and I see it in the faces of people and feel their pains like it's my own. I am someone that talks with many strangers now as it's far easier to help them, but not always and gas to be done carefully, to see the issues that plague them is one thing, but to mention it in an attempt to have them see it is another. People lash out and thrash, and snarl like a dog when faced with the truth, not an exaggeration. The biggest issue we have today is there is very few ways to achieve self worth and fulfilment from anything we do, even if you do a job that would give them, a monetary gain for those actions is given, it takes much of the real reward away. Our hands are often tied by the system of that's not your job let them do it, your not a scientist, your not a doctor, meaning no opinions of scientific or medical value is even considered as its not your job. It's a system of know your role and stay in your lane, meaning no growth or expansion is available. People feel trapped and isolated, and are only given algorithmic paths to walk upon or games that are either numbing and repetitive or filled with monetary hurdles or vast time constraints that make it a job or a heavy monetary burden, all these produce fear or take away the real enjoyment from the activity. There there are people that have found the best way to feel something is to create bad feeling in others as a way to feel something for themselves. Life has become very difficult for many and the route issue is money and those that wish to manipulate others and systems to gain more of it. I say all this as having less empathy for others could be seen as a negative, but after reading all this pain you could be experiencing from others, it becomes a way to dull those incoming pains that would just bring more pain to yourself. I feel its your bodies way of protecting you. So I would say live your life and enjoy yourself as you can give a little enjoyment to those of us that can feel it, you maybe the only person someone meets that week that is happy. Is that a gift or a burden, and is empathy a gift or a burden. It depends on the situation and I would say while the world is bad its a gift, but if we can make the world a better place it would be a burden to not feel the joy of others, I do feel your body would not feel the need to keep protecting you from it so if you saw it as a burden it would be released. If we can strive for true self worth and fulfilment and have no limitations of our experience, then I believe we could all enjoy this world together. Also not proof read, and spewed out just for you and others that may have the patience to read our comments. Much love to you! All of you!
i was about to comment something similar, i'm autistic too and i have always preferred stories about animals or monsters or other non-humans over stories about humans. i especially like it when the characters themselves are the creatures, like in Wings of Fire where the characters are dragons. i find stories about just humans to be rather boring, perhaps because i feel i can relate more to creatures like dragons than to humans, or maybe just because i like animals.
A well written "monster" is the one you can understand in their struggle and brings a better perpective into the troubles of others. A badly written monster is the one who just wants to see everything burn but have literally no reason why they want to do it. I'm not saying that every monster has to be a "literally me" character, but they at least have to be fleshed out enough to not feel cheap.
not true at all just because a monster is portrayed as inherently evil and seeking chaos and destruction doesn't mean its bad or poorly written it just means its a different interpretation of the subject. Sometimes people want to write a story of overcoming a great evil and often times the story they write is really good it doesn't mean its "Poorly written" because the monster is a thoughtless being seeking carnage. Both can coexist at the same time and have their roles in media just because one is more complex doesn't mean the other is poorly written it just means that a different story and perspective is being told.
@@trollwar3256 Yep. Sometimes you just want a monster to be just that, a MONSTER. Something that knowingly serves evil or who needs to hurt or destroy others (and feels no guilt or regret about it) in order to achieve its goals or even to just exist. Heck, something that downright enjoys killing or harming others. Or all three. If they can make it so you fear the monster ALL THE BETTER. Nothing wrong with sympathetic monsters: I've enjoyed plenty of games and movies where things weren't all black and white and where at least some of your foes were sympathetic or at least redeemable, even the nonhuman ones. But even then, the monsters had to be dangerous, had to be or seem bad, had to have a scary element. But I also have plenty of games and other entertainment where the baddie is really bad and, esp if they look invulnerable, act cruel or haughty (or both) I just love to see them lose.
Alright I get it my take is bad. I just think that it heavily depends on the writter if the thing that is playing the monster role is entertaining/interesting or not.
I disagree, "evil" forces of nature characters like the joker or a monster like a demonic spirit, should exist and can be good characters Not everything needs to have a tragic backstory, to me that's what feels cheap. For example in demon slayer, basically every villain has a to have a tragic backstory and that's what makes them all incredibly one dimensional and boring. The least boring one was douma, a demon who didn't have a reason to be evil, he just did it because he wanted to.
Another great example of this is how in Godzilla 2014 the female mutos eggs that she had just laid and her whole purpose at the time is to protect those eggs were burned by the US military and you can hear the sadness in her cry. Or atleast how much sadness a giant bug can have.
The way this video and so many of the comments are making me cry.. growing up as an autistic kid I just, always found animals to be much more... understandable. They didn't have weird societal rules and in fact a lot in media were a victim of these rules they don't have any reason to know or understand. Animals and animalistic monsters don't know they're "invading" human territory... they're just trying to survive.
There is a game called "The last Guardian" and this game is so heartbreaking. It's about a young boy and a monster with wings that become friends, and the game is so well made and the ending is so sad too. This game is an example of what is "sympathy for a monster".
Amazing video. And that's why the xenomorph from Alien is considered "the perfect organism". There's no ambiguity of his nature: it's a monster. "Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility." (...) "unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality."
@@Yesthatduckthe queen was dominant in the hive mind and exercised control over the warriors and drones. The entire purpose of the eggs was to infect animals (humans) for incubation. She wasn’t looking to peacefully cohabitate.
@lillimichaels2431 LOL The Queen's job is to sit and make eggs. Of course she doesn't attack. Queens are telepathic, basically controlling the hive. @wedge_one I really liked the journey we are shown in Alien: Resurrection. Our former hero is reborn, but now she is the monster. ( I kind of loved this version of Ripley best. I wish we could have seen more of her traveling the human universe.) The alien queen is part of the hero. The final boss is mentally the hero's child. It cries when its mother kills him.
@@Yesthatduck she did try to sneakily open the egg to attack ripley, ripley wouldnt have to burn the eggs if queen didnt do that you can see ripley is just warning the queen with fire and try to back away, but one egg opens and ripley is giving a look like "really?" to the queen and then burns the eggs
I absoloutely adored this video. As an author who loves writing monsters that you can sympathize with, it hits the hammer on the nail of how much nuance they can hold. This is so well made and all of the examples are so neat, thank you so much. It's really well done.
One of my favorite “sympathetic monster” encounters was hunting the Bigfoots (Bigfeet?) in Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare. After killing all but one you find that they beasts are actually sympathetic creatures who eat berries and nuts, not babies as the scared locals claim. After the last Sasquatch tells you he’s the last he falls to the ground crying and begging for death. His plea of, “make it stop,” always gives me chills.
When I was younger I always said that the dragons in fairy tales weren’t monsters because they never attacked first they left the people alone until after many people tried to kill them and even then they generally only attacked in self defense
That's not true at all, whenever a knight, hero or Saint was sent to slay a dragon it was either because it would destroy villages and poison crops, or ruled over the area like a tyrant demanding treasure and human sacrifices. Dragons were embodiments of evil and greed in mythology, they were very rarely just minding their own business when slain.
@@PyritePlays8431 Yes but even in fairy tales, it's usually the case that the dragon has either kidnapped the princess, stolen the kings treasure, or is just a general terror to the land and has some reward for its head. The fact that knights waited until they were asleep or drunk or just minding their own business to kill them doesn't mean the dragons were innocent, it's a common tactic to hunting predators.
Biollante from the Godzilla films is also a sympathetic monster . She is a woman trapped in a monster's body, created due her father being unable by cope with his daughter's death. In his desperate attempts to bring her back, he instead created a horrific prison in which she suffered.
I think Shin Godzilla was kind of a victim in the movie, he was just some little ancient sea creature doing their thing and then fed on radiation and turn into a giant Kaiju that every second of it just existing feels immense pain, and you can't blame him for just running around like crazy if I were in that situation, I would also act all erratic and crazy too.
always loved dragons, and boy I was overjoyed when I first saw them portrayed as incredibly wise creatures to me they are the ultimate lifeform even if just fictional
Speaking of Godzilla i think a mention should be given to the '98 version too. I always felt so much sympathy for him/her, especially towards the end of the movie
I'm so glad im not the only one to feel this way, when I was a kid whenever I would see any monster from fillms/ shows I watched being killed or harmed ( even if their portrayed as evil ) I always felt bad instead of feeling a sense of victory for the main character(s), but I knew that I WASNT supposed to feel sympathy of the monster, I had always wondered why I felt this way all the way up into even now. this video really helps me open my eyes and see im not the only one to feel this way!
"Have you ever sympathized with a monster?" Yes, without a second thought, it's not only cuz they look cool or remind me of a pet/animal. It's because I see more in them, sometimes even more than in humans it's facing. And it's not humanity I see, it's something I can feel, I can almost touch, something which isn't evil for fun, good for the sake of duty, it's... natural. It's true and doesn't lie, just reacts and tries to survive is just used or misunderstood.
The saddest part about Sif from Dark Souls is that she starts limping and her attacks become sloppy when she hits a very low HP. She usually just needs one hit to finish her off when this happens, but it makes you not wanna do it
This was actually the first Japanese-made Godzilla movie I’ve ever watched, and even without much background, I could feel just how much of a return to the original spirit and tone of Gojira as a monster was being crafted. Harrowing, upsetting, and complex, especially when you’re willing to empathize with the lived experience of a creature in overwhelming pain.
19:53 The most heart-wrenching thing about Sif is that the fight gets easier throughout the battle. His movements become slower, he starts to limp, and eventually he starts to hobble on three legs as if one of them is broken. By the end he can barely swing the sword, but he still goes on. Defending his owner's grave to his last breath.
Just after talking about the monster creature in super mario galaxy, you said that it hurts to think that these are intelligent living beings. Rain world handles this idea really well, because you know that none of these creatures are really going out of their way to kill you. The lizards are just looking for food, and if they have some, they won't abandon it to chase after you. The scavengers are a really good example of this. They have their own expressions and signals they use for rudimentary communication with the player, and the personality values that the game uses are really apparent with them. There's a reputation system with them. For one of the campaigns, they always hate you, and you always have to kill them.
A creature that made me feel for it was Chotic Gore Magala. Especially with that rise opening, narrating the monsters thoughts of 'I am a failure. I am an abomination.' a creature that exists in a form it should never have (its metamorphosis failed and has features of both adult Shagaru Magala, and juvenile Gore Magala), and makes me feel its suffering. The player must 'hunt' this creature so they may either slay or capture it, but I always choose to slay it over extending its suffering.
Makes me wonder what could constitute as “disturbing” its transformation. What could stop its transformation and turn it into a creature that’s entire existence is agony. The guild hunts them down as a mercy for the poor Magala
Speaking as the creator of the Skyrim dragons (I modeled and textured all the dragons in the base game), I definitely wanted Paarthurnax to appear kind and elderly. And I made the Giants look like my father, so that players would not want to attack them!
Holy shit that’s awesome, Paarthunax is so cool
"so that players would not attack them" oh dear what have I done
It worked! In all of my playthroughs, I could never kill him. Not once. Giants, on the other hand...
You did such a masterful craft with Paarthurnax , I never once dared to kill him in my several playthroughs. While I just admired Giants, seeing them tending their Mamoths was just majestic.
But what made me evade picking up a fight with giants was how prone they were to turn my Dragonborn into a Starborn by launching me to the skies at astronomical speed.
I always felt bad whenever I had to attack giants, they really are just chilling doing there own thing till you come and mess with them
"Since childhood I've been faithful to monsters. I've been saved and absolved by them because monsters are the patron saints of our blissful imperfections."
-Guillermo del Toro
Best director ever
You gotta love del Toro. The man just has so much passion.
Toro needs to find God
“I also want to make them fight giant anime robots just for the hell of it.”
@@FatherMcKenzie66 pretty sure he's familiar with several
that line from paarthunax: "what is better to be born good, or to overcome your evil nature through great effort?"
that sounds... rather self reflective of ourselves as well as "the monster"
I just wanna add one thing about Godzilla
I’ve always had empathy for Goji due to one guidebook I found on the 1954 movie
Godzilla was with his family chilling doing normal stuff until a hydrogen bomb dropped on their whereabouts wiping out everyone but Godzilla. It’s presumed he’s the one of the last of his kind. In the depiction we could clearly see Godzilla having smoother skin implying that Godzilla was burnt and poisoned by the radiation the bomb emitted. Godzilla’s scales were designed to look like the burnt skin of Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors. Godzilla in many ways was the victim.
The "antwalking alligator people"? Interesting.
Name of the book? This is very interesting
now consider the fact that H@m@s might be the monster
“Godzilla in many ways was the victim”
Uh, no lmao instead of “being” the victim like you say, he instead makes others into the victims, since throughout the film all you see is nothing but the destruction to which our boy is very much the cause of, and that’s implying we take the time of out of our day to read a book explaining in elaborate detail as to why and how we could care for something of which has killed thousands if not millions?
Such is as to why Godzilla is an allegory for the atomic bomb, no?
Edit:
People are STILL getting offended by my comment?
Big LOL!
Oh, and yeah, to all those unfortunate enough to support the mere existence that is the “monsterverse”. (Considering that seems to be what HALF of these comments are talking about for some reason, as if such even merely relates to the 50s movie or even to that of Minus One or OR even to Shin-Godzilla.)
Lemme put it in nice and simple terms that’ll help you folks to understand me best, ahem!
Bright seizure-inducing colors and loud obnoxious noises good, well-written subtly and clever nuance bad.
All it takes it jangling some keys in front of your faces to make the “monsterverse” films seem even remotely competent and “deep” despite being as about as deep in it’s “lore” as the WWE.
After all, why else do you think the Avatar movies are even popular in the first place?
@@justaguyonyoutube4592he is the original victim though, if humans left him alone and didn’t hurt him he could have lived in peace and never killed any humans. he is so aggressive and angry because he is in constant agony caused by humans…
Japanese Officials: “Godzilla has torn through so many cities, what kind of terrible thoughts would drive a creature to do such a thing?”
Shin Godzilla’s Thoughts: “ow ow ow ow”
Also
Shin Godzilla: I USED TO BE A F###ING GOLDFISH.
@@trackmastertheman7801not quite. Shin goji was a frilled shark
@@poorlydigitallydrawngigachad but a fish nonetheless, that's why he has fish eyes and can't blink.
@@trackmastertheman7801yes, but you called him a goldfish, a goldfish and a frilled shark are two very different things
Shin godzilla: AAAAAHHHHHHH-
what I adore about the scene in HttYD when Hiccup finds a helpless Night Fury, he originally was going to kill it and bring it back to the village, but then, he saw this wasn't a mindless monster like he's been told, but a terrified animal acting on its nature, and thus he has empathy for this beast and lets it free.
when he starts bonding with Toothless, he realises that the dragons really weren't the demons he was told they were
"everything we knew about you guys, was wrong"
YES I love that line >:]
In the book, he and all the other boys his age stole dragon babies
I’ve always described shin as a scared child lashing out at the world around him. His rampage is not born of malice like 54’ or gmk’s Godzillas, but because he doesn’t know what to do. “Why does everything hurt? How do I make it stop hurting? Why can’t I make it stop hurting?! PLEASE MAKE IT STOP HURTING!”
In its/his/her/their song, one of the singing voices mournfully sings about how tragic its/her existence is, and the other sings in encouragement, willing them to fight back.
bro is scared to misgender godzilla
@@theojaggi3963
@@theojaggi3963 godzilla has no gender.
@@theojaggi3963 godzilla has no gender.
@@KingDrakoTyrell I think you mean Godzilla is the gender he identifies as lol
""Monster" is a relative term. To a canary, a cat is a monster. We're just so used to being the cat."
- Dr. Henry Wu
This just becomes way more poignant when you remember how humans rose to the top of the food chain. Humanity's ancestors basically started out as the very bottom. From tiny mammals scurrying in the shadows of the dinosaurs, or primitive hominids barely scraping by against canids and feline predators, our ancestors must have perceived almost everything around them as monsters. Then we learned spears and fire, and it quickly spiraled into a massive spread of misaimed vengeance as humans dominated the land... only too much.
Obviously, the story of humans technologically progressing isn't this simple and straightforward. The video DOES mention cave paintings having a reverence to dangerous wildlife, after all. But I still can't help but look at many predators - wolves, sharks, crocodiles, birds of prey - being mercilessly hunted to near-extinction or even total extinction because they were viewed as threats, even though our guns and traps can easily outmatch their fangs and claws. Very few large animals pose any threat to large portions of human life, yet people still have a hard time with intuitively accepting that wolves and sharks are actually relatively harmless. It's as if the human race hasn't yet realized that all of the so-called "monsters" that our ancestors faced have already been destroyed and surpassed by our technology. The only monsters left are the ones that people turn each other into.
Really, it's almost like humanity's spread and advancement is one gigantic "Reverse-Uno" against nature that has been taken WAY too far.
preach brother@@mrreyes5004
@@mrreyes5004 Too far? So what, we should all retreat to our natural ways of life, living in caves with fur pelts and dying by 50? In fact, that would be the picture of unnatural activity. Life is a disease - in fact, bacteria are the most primal form of life. They have no desire other than to spread their DNA. Life is a series of proteins engineered to replicate itself through generating a body and interacting with the physical world. That is the purpose of all life - to spread uncontained. Humans are just the most successful at that paradigm. We are not separate from nature. We are as much a part of the animal kingdom as wolves or snakes, deer or mice. Nature is a brutal, Darwinian struggle for survival. And we won.
@@mrreyes5004let’s be real bro. Nature contains animals, plants and water and such resources crafted and nurtured by and from nature. But humans don’t exactly fit in that category of “natural”. We are not natural, we’re the real monsters, especially if we’re afraid. A person can change so much from dealing with serious problems like loss of a loved person or losing an important something to them. Vengeance is terrifying because it starts out of nowhere.
People are always concerned with “security” when anybody could probably walk in to a weapon factory or even work in such places and just goes mad or something. The danger of humanity is that our intelligence allows us to cover ourselves to a certain degree and the people who become our targets immediately fear us or hate us. Or they just die. And I’m not even going to say a thing about wars.
@@purgatory6103 No we’re not, we’re not ‘monsters’ as you describe, we’re an incredibly unique outlier in the realm of nature, nature forming us in just the right ways to allow to absolutely transform the world around us, and put all other forms of life at our total mercy. We’re not ‘monsters’, we’re a miracle of nature and I’ll tell you what we’ve done that’s unique to us. We won.
Alan Menken, when writing for Disney's adaptation of The Hunchback of Notre Dame wrote the line "What makes a monster and what makes a man?" and that is one of the rawest writing prompts I've ever heard, and because of it, this topic is one of my absolute favourites.
“Monsters are tragic beings. They are born too tall, too strong, too heavy… They are not evil by choice. That is their tragedy.”
That quote gave me chills.
much like people who are both to be psychopaths, pedophiles, born into this absurd world, confused as to what even is happening, confused about what existence as they are aware of is, and get completely stomped on by other life forms that look just like them, all the others have given them are hatred and violence, and all they receive is but even more confusion
same
racicim lore:
Some of us, must choose evil.
Both are truly a tragedy.
This just reminded me of Frankenstein's monster, the guy was just born then people wanted him dead because he was built different.
“Have you ever sympathized with a monster?” Quite literally my entire career in veterinary medicine and conservation can be traced back to godzilla 1998 among other things. Where I saw not a monster being slain, but a grieving mother attempting to avenge her children. It’s affected how I treat and connect with non human animals ever since.
nice thought, although in reality the term "grieving mother" is 65% accurate because "zilla" was a "mammo" (Italian for a father who plays the maternal role). and then he had not chosen that fate, because of those radiations he had become what he was (like Frankenstein's creature and many others).
That movie did not do justice to Godzilla. It did, however, do justice as a monster movie.
@@germanomagnoneCould be wrong, but I thought Godzilla reproduced asexually. So it is the birthgiver even if male.
Much like the Horta in the 1966 "Devil in the Dark".
@@anib8863 "Zilla" yes, Gojira just found a young
I have always felt bad for the "monsters". As a kid I was all like "...so, we killed the giant animal that lived far away from society and disturbed no one for no real reason other than some idiots went to its territory and got killed?"
You know, a "monster, "I always feel bad for in settings? Giant's. Usually, they're sentient, and they have intelligence. But these people are almost always on the outskirts, living in harsh lands, lacking in technology compared to the more common small folk. Often, they are rare, quite literally people pushed out. It's one thing to treat animal-like creatures like the monsters above. It's different to treat essentially an entire culture or group of huge, powerful people as that.
Even from a very young age, I've always felt for the monster, even the less sympathetic ones. There's something disturbing about celebrating the destruction of something unique or otherworldly, no matter how terrifying or dangerous it may be.
in the case of a attacking monster its moreso "it cant hurt us anymore" instead of "yay its dead" although the ones where they just kill the monster for being different is evil
Nah, there's something disturbing about you. 🤢
King Kong 2005 hits harder with the scene of a cave showing many giant ape skulls. Kong was the last of his kind, and he was just unceremoniously gunned down like a household pest after unwillingly being dragged into the city.
@@dracodracarys2339 humans ruined most of the natural order of the world that way.
as someone with autism and various other "other"-ing things, I always saw myself as the monster. I see a beast that's being attacked for existing and go "oh, like me!". you don't have to have fangs and claws and scales to be seen as something worthy of being slain, even if you've done absolutely nothing wrong. i can't imagine NOT seeing myself in the beasts and monsters of stories.
We always root for Godzilla.
Yeah!
I mean, who doesn't?
Thank you Gorosaurus, you truly live up to your chad status.
@@BurningGGaming I'm more likely to root for Mothra or Gamera, the only Godzillas I really cheer for are MV and Showa and sometimes Heisei towards the end of his series, and I just feel bad for Shin. I don't really cheer for Goji otherwise.
Cause it’s his movie 💪
"people take one look at me and go 'ahh help run, a big stupid ugly ogre,' they judge me before they even know me. that's why im better off alone"- shrek
I've always felt terrible for giants, ogres, and trolls in fantasy settings. They are sentient in the vast majority of cases, and they live on the edges, in mountains, in caves, in the far north, away from most of the better lands to live in. Most smaller species build cities and towns not built for them. Nearly everything they make is not built for them. The world is not built for them. Usually, they end up living without much in the way of shelter or technology that might help them out. It just feels...kinda cruel?
Koda from brother bear as they explore a cave painting. "Those monsters are real scary. " (Kenai looks to the bear as the monster before Koda finishes his statement) "Especially with their sticks." Forcing Kenai to see the man with the spear as the monster, not the bear. One of the most beautiful and yet, saddening moments in the movie for me. Showing just how often the real "monster" is often the man.
In the movie, early, Kenai attempt to kill Koda's mom (unaware at this moment that she have a son, a cub) because she unvolontary kill her older brother. In revenge. While she didn't actually kill or provoked the snowfall that killed his brother.
Its his brother that kill himself because it's him which provoke the snowfall in order to get rid of Kida's mom because she was just to attack his two younger brothers (including Kenai).
So everything is due to a great quiproquo. (And things are quite difficult to explain here and here).
But in defense of Kenai, he actually did nothing wrong to be punished at the end.
When seeking for Koda's mom because she eat fishes Kenai should have kept for the tribe, it's Koda's mom who attack him first, which created the sequence where Kenai older brother die by a snowfall he himself created in order to save his two younger brothers.
Koda's mom survived the snowfall and go.
Kenai maybe go near her by him, but he didn't attack first and was in self-defense.
Sure, after it, Kenai decide to seek again for her to kill her, and it's him who attack her first (or he again is surprise another time by her, didn't see the movie since a time), but what matter is that Kenai technically kill her on purpose.
And that Koda's mom who actually die by herself by empaling entirely herself like an complete idiot on Kenai's spear the latter rise up suddenly to protect himself (he did not actively throw it at her, which in this case would not be legit self-defense).
So, Kenai maybe seek by two time Koda's mom, but each time, he actually get attacked first by her, and he killed her by accident while he was overpassed by her (she's a big powerfull muscular grizzly bear and him a typical human with a very basic spear, how a one to one fight with such fighters cannot result with the bear dominated the fight ? At one moment, the human involved no more care about winning upon him, just to survived the fight at this point).
So, the fact Kenai end up being transformed into a bear is kind of underserved despite the appearances.
During the movie, it could have being reveal that instead to be transformed in punition to have killed the bear, Kenai was in reality transformed to care about her son Koda.
For me, it better and made more senses.
It really hurts me how good the bones of brother bear was, and how badly it fell from what it could be with all the bad comedy shoved in. Like I'm fine if you have it as a favorite movie as a kid, but the good parts of the movie makes it on a level with Atlantis the lost empire. It could have easily been one of the coolest movies, but they put too many silly jokes in it and it's just another forgotten kids movie
That movie is so underrated and deserves more respect for the different view it offered and the ending it chose, sure it has it's weak points but in all I found ti to be a good movie.
@@dudotolivier6363Kenai killed her on purpose, and the cause of Kodas mom’s death was strictly Kenai’s fault, who could’ve turned back at any point instead of seeking mindless revenge against an animal.
@@AtomikVomit Yes, and nope.
He did indeed seek her two times on purposes (by throwing her small rocks at her the first time, and by following her the second time to be cornered the second time) and to made her attack him.
But during the second fight, it still her which empale herself like an idiot on Kenai's spear that the latter have just suddenly rise up in self-defense right after retrieving it after losing it.
So, he didn't killed her truly volontary as he wanted/imagined.
If he managed to throw at her his spear to her and that this shot killed her on the moment and made her falling dead, here whithout any problems since it not defense in any way possible. It's Kenai's entire fault.
But that not what happen in the movie.
Shin Goji’s theme was probably the best thing about the movie. The first time we get to hear what the monster’s brain is saying versus what his heart is saying.
The scene of the atomic breath scene was actually very sad for me because of the music
something I wanna mention: while for the japanese it's played straight, it's essentially an inversion of the Ominous Latin trope for us westerners
@@rokkraljkolesa9317what do these words mean
@@jessebeegee you know how sometimes movies/games have ominous latin chanting/song lyrics?
Who Will Know is functionally the same if you're japanese
@@rokkraljkolesa9317 what is latin music do u mean like salsa
I'm glad I wasn't the only child who used to sympathise with the poor Dragons being slain in all the picture books.
Favorite semi quote from a children's book. A Japanese retelling of little red riding hood...
"A special thanks to wolves...for lending us their noble name, to embody our dark nature..."
I remember that one, 'Lon Po Po' by Ed Young, adapted from a Chinese version of the story
@@desulto yeah, loved the art in that one. Watercolor if I remember correctly.
And you're 100% correct. It was from a Chinese tale.
Even more poignant as both Japanese sub species of wolves are extinct due to humans
Thanks for all the empathy guys, I really feel heard today.
Hello there!
hi content creator @azfk
What u watch this
Ayyyyy!
lol bro is in the bottom
What really gets me sometimes with monsters is their imminent demise is often destroying a unique creature that will be gone forever, while often the humans are just mindlessly spreading and coming into contact with the monster as an inevitable part of their spreading. Ghibli really, really leans into this in some of his stuff where it's really the humans who are the monsters.
Your point on sympathetic monsters in video games reminded me of a mechanic in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom that’s legitimately sad. In the game, you will sometimes come across a large group of pig-like creatures called bokoblins being led by a far larger and smarter boss who will direct the smaller monsters in battle. However, if you manage to kill the boss from a distance without killing any of it's minions beforehand, the smaller bokos will actually start crying, implying that they are sympathetic creatures.
i kinda hate tears of the kingdom now cuz it has all these details like this but never does anything with them and just has you merrily exterminating the bokos with groups of human npcs with zero subtext. it gives you this narrative indigestion that never gets resolved. ganondorf is classed under "monsters" in the compendium. but who was he before he started that war?
@@very_not_emo He was a covetous and cruel man who wanted to world to bow before his feet. He fits the definition of monster better than most of the beasts he commands.
This is why kilton Is my favorite character in that game, he doesnt see the monsters for the mindless killing machines they were but as the evolved and facinating creatures they became after their purpose was fullfiled
@@NitroNinja324 It depends on the iteration. He’s a bit more sympathetic in some, and a genuinely despicable person in others.
@very_not_emo idk he killed the queen, and when what was basically her adoptive daughter was crying over her courpse, he laughed
Even before be got the power of the demon king calamity era gannondorf was always a vile person who took pride and joy in the suffering he caused
Man shin Godzilla makes us Godzilla fans sad. He was such a misunderstood creature only trying to adapt to the world he was born into. Not only was he in constant pain during his evolution, but also in deep sadness. The real monster was us. Neglecting him and treating him as this, living, breathing doomsday device. RIP shin Godzilla.
“Man is more frightening than Gojira”-an actual quote from the movie
Shin Godzilla never actually died at the end of the film. The creature only wanted to seek safety from all of the horrendous suffering inflicted on it by its own biology desperate to survive. At the end of the film, it’s shown to have not died, but in a “hibernation” state where parts of it began evolving into humanoid hive minds.
@@asleepyb0i400 he died though. He was basically frozen alive WHILE he was in an evolving/hibernation like state.
Tbf he was a living breathing doomsday device
Those people he killed could have had full, human lives. I see their tragedy’s, but I can’t feel bad. It’s very nihilistic how it’s always, “Humans are the real villains” and never, “That evil bastard Godzilla needs to die”
Aside from GMK and Minus one.
“What is better? To be born good or to overcome your evil nature through great effort?”
Ha! I started typing before you showed the cutscene ❤
As a child I always found myself rooting for dragons and monsters, and thinking about how barbaric the humans’ actions in the stories usually were. Glad to see I wasn’t alone
I imagine that's because we didn't write them to be monsters. A monster is something violent, if not explicitly malicious. A monster is a beast, a predator if it's cunning, that goes out of its way to invade places it does not belong. A monster is cruel, envious, greedy, violent, proud, and undeterrable. A monster knows no fear and cannot be reasoned or bargained with. A monster is arrogant of its strength and believes itself beyond the reach of death itself. A monster will demand all of creation bow before it, for it has no equal.
Come to think of it, only a handful of people fit this description. Certainly not any animals. Only the worst of _our_ kind can truly be monsterous.
@@NitroNinja324 To be honest I think some whales are probably monsters. They are surely smart enough to understand the difference between good and evil. So with that in mind, there's surely whales which also veer into the side of evil, whatever "evil" is to them. After all, it's a known fact that some pods of certain dolphins such as orcas are friendly toward other creatures, while others are highly aggressive. Some orcas swim with pods of other whale species, and others will brutally dismember them for fun.
@catpoke9557 Intelligence gives you the ability to discern kindness and cruelty. While kindness can become more deliberate, cruelty can equally become more poignant.
Heretic.
I wish you would have noted some of Star Trek’s own “sympathy for the monster” moments rather than just noting Spock as an example of a trustworthy alien! One of the best is the Original Series episode “Devil in the Dark”. The crew investigates a strange monster killing miners only to discover via Spock’s telepathic abilities that it is a grieving, injured mother trying to protect her remaining offspring. It’s an incredibly powerful episode and has always been one of my favorites.
Oh my god that was one of the first episodes my dad showed me to introduce me to Star Trek, and it is also one of my favourites!
@@xxxxx-iu4fw Yes!!!!!! It’s probably my favorite TOS episode. Although “Naked Time” is up there.
superb episode
That's one of my favorite episodes too!
The crystalline entity episodes of TNG are a great tragic story. It's a giant organism that fed off the living creatures on federation planets, but Picard recognizes it as a creature that's just living its life. He has a line about how we don't think a whale eating krill is evil, it's just feeding.
"Inhuman appearance does not means inhuman nature"
A thought about that, do we have the monopoly of righteous behaviour? We classify good actions with terms related to our own nature because we don't know the perspective of other species?
Regarding monsters having monsters of their own, one very interesting thing the first Legendary Godzilla (2014) did with its antagonist monsters is portray them as pretty realistic animals simply going through their nesting behaviour. They're never portrayed as deliberately evil towards humans. They're simply creatures out of time, out of place, that cannot live in the modern world without unwittingly bringing armaggedon onto humans.
The film even includes an unexpectedly sweet scene where the pair of monsters reunite and do a little display of affection together, as birds do during the nesting season. There's just... something so sweet and tragic about it, even though the film firmly shows they have to be put down because of the destruction they are bringing.
Basically the least evil monsterverse villains
and then there's Ghidorah who just wants to see the world burn.
did kinda feel a bit bad for the left head tho, he was just a curious little lad who wanted to lick everything unfamiliar pfff 😂
@@ruffruggednraw Well yeah but the Skullcrawlers are just animals too- not their fault they're an invasive species with hyperactive metabolisms leading them to consume everything in sight.
The MUTOs are some of my favorite kaiju of all time, both for their astounding creature design and for their story, and how the two mesh together. You look at this thing and you can be scared of it, but they also look like a natural animal that could feasibly exist in some long-forgotten ecosystem.
@@dracodracarys2339To be fair, even Ghidorah has his own sympathetic qualities. It's never explicitly said, but it is still implied that Ghidorah is trying to conquer Earth because he has nowhere else to go. He's an alien from space, but then why doesn't he just leave back to his home planet? Maybe because he doesn't have one, not anymore. Ghidorah doesn't terraform the planet because it's fun, it's because he wants to finally have a feeling of being home. And it just so happens that this terraforming of his would be lethal for 99% of living beings.
I was disappointed that you didn't mention How To Train Your Dragon. Berk has a society of hardened vikings who see dragons as mindless monsters, but Hiccup when able to kill a helpless dragon, chooses to save Toothless. Hiccup had empathy. He could see the fear in Toothless.
For a contrasting perspective, the Monsters franchise is more-so the opposite. It is been revealed since the very beginning that they are falsely taught that humans, especially, children are “extremely toxic”-only meant to harvest their “scream energy”. Yet Sully manages to break the chain upon discovering Boo, implying that not all humans are as “toxic” as they believed to be.
Yeah.... real shame!
cuz How To Train Your Dragon was dumb down version of these movies he mentioned duh
I love those movies🥲 Hold a special place in my heart
@@weirdcherrytasteyuckIt's not dumbed down. It has a story of it's own so the empathy of the "monsters" dragons here in this case are not as showed or high lighted why? Because it has a different story line. HTYD 1 can be as deep as the stories here, but not in the way CA is trying to convey for the "pure" or "scary" monsters here.
IT'S NOT DUMBED DOWN!! JUST NOT AS SHOWN OR HIGHLIGHTED!! UGH.
It has the same philosophical value CA has been trying to convey in!!! Empathy for the pain or suffering they face as being unusual and out of the norm for the world we "Created"/"Ruled" >:((
The Godzilla segment needs its own video, and with an addition of Godzilla: Minus One. Because holy SHIT that movie was powerful. Sympathy for the Monster might as well have been the filmmaker's motto.
Bioshock does this trope SO well that it’s stuck with me for my whole life. Killing a horde of mindless zombies is one thing, but killing a scared once-person desperately trying to communicate with you but who is unable to comprehend their surroundings as they are is another entirely. I still remember the feeling of hiding from a Splicer and hearing them break down in tears, begging me to come out and sobbing for his mom. I had to take a long moment to process that.
I think Mimikyu from Pokemon does this well. To me at least. Its an eldritch horror that knows its effect on the human mind, so it works tirelessly to maintain its Pikachu disguise in order to feel love.
Really makes you feel for the poor thing.
The Pokémon got me in my feels so much when I was younger that now I have a plush of him. My favorite Pokémon even though I don’t play anymore
He's one of my favorites!
"Should we find any unknown animals, have pity on them all, for it is we who are the real monsters."
- Bernard Heuvelmans
I've watched so many monster movies where I had a single takeaway. "If they'd left this creature alone, literally none of the terrible things in this movie would have happened."
The monster that did it for me was Vicar Amelia from Bloodborne.
When we see her she is in a cathedral, on her knees before an alter, praying while clutching a pendant to her chest. She knows what is about to happen, she is trying everything she has ever known to prevent herself from transforming but it is not enough.
She transforms, it is a very rapid, visceral, and excruciating transformation told by her agonizing screams. When the transformation is over she is something else in both mind and body.
No longer is she a human at heart but a beast, a beast that is now far too big to escape the cathedral, a beast that is both confused and in great pain from her rapid transformation. Worst yet…
She is terrified. She realizes. She is now trapped in a room with You a Hunter.
During the boss fight she never roars, she screams. She thrashes about while still clutching her pendant. She does not know what the pendant is but it is comforting to her previous human form.
She’s a confused and scared newborn animal in a violent world who awakens to see herself forever trapped in a lair with another beast (you) whose soul purpose is to kill her.
Ive never looked at it that way. Bloodborne is my favourite game ever, and it has been since i played it in 2018 but you just gave me another reason to love it and hate it at the same time
Vicar Amelia is also MAJESTIC compared to the Cleric beast, or the vast majority of the other bosses in a way that just makes the WHOLE thing feel like a Princess Mononoke level war crime against a "beast" that frankly doesn't deserve to die. . .
@@KS-bo5bg oh my God Yes! Majestic is the only word I can use to describe her!
Oh man... Much like Ludwig in the DLC. I remember feeling so bad for him after the fight :/
When you talk to him a second time (wearing certain armor sets), there will be dialogue where he asks "Are my church hunters the honorable spartans I hoped they would be?". You can either tell him a comforting lie 'Yes', or a horribly unpleasant truth 'No', since the hunters over the years had become blood-drunk*.
Telling him no, he says "Oh my... just as I feared. Then a beast-possessed degenerate was I, as my detractors made eminently clear.." he rabidly neighs and whinnies as he then succumbs to beasthood then says "Does the nightmare never end?!". Interacting with him furthermore will just play dialogue bits of him making crazed beast noises.
Telling him yes, he says "Ahh good, that is a relief. To know I did not suffer such denigration for nothing. Thank you kindly. Now, I may sleep in peace. Even in this darkest of nights, I see... The moonlight." Then he goes to sleep, peacefully. Further interacting with him will just play play sounds of him snoring and sleeping.
Also that 2nd phase theme for Ludwig is godly.
Btw if there's anyone that's reading this that still hasn't bought the Bloodborne DLC, go buy it! Go go go!
Edit: woops, missed a few words
Funny. The one that did it for me was Orphan of Kos. It was just a newborn who doesn't know of anything and the few moments where it looks off in the distance is still etched in my mind. It just felt wrong fighting a newborn who is thrashing you with a placenta
As a member of more than one minority group frequently portrayed as monsters myself, this has always rung true for me. And I want to say that there are very few things as exhausting as constantly having to wonder whether you're in danger of being attacked for simply existing, or seeing people like you verbally degraded and blamed for all kinds of societal woes, or hearing and seeing calls for your death. Especially when they're based on misinformation that you can't even begin to correct because the people who think that way will never listen to you. You've already been discredited in their eyes; they see you as inherently monstrous, and therefore they can ignore anything you say and continue to further dehumanize you.
i feel this so deeply
I've always really loved Tom Baker's run in Dr. Who because whenever he would enter a room with some kind of horrible beast he would smile, wave, and say "Hello!". Baker himself said he started this because even though it looks horrifying to us, that might be how perfectly normal people look wherever it comes from.
I was really disheartened today when I had a discussion with people about whether or not, they considered Frankenstein’s creature a human and I was the only person who very immediately and adamantly said “yes.”
The point is that he becomes more human than the man who created him. Victor Frankenstein - the modern Prometheus - loses all of his humanity, but his monster is what gains it.
So it’s nice to find a video like this where other people have sympathy for him and all the other great monsters that represent marginalized minorities like Godzilla and King Kong, and The Gill-Man. :)
that's why I call him Frankenstein. I always felt like he deserved the name.
I wouldn't say he's human, more like he's humans
@@thisgoddamusernamestoodamnlong
V Rising named the monster "Adam" and I think it fits perfectly.
Wait, what minority does Godzilla represent? Mutants?
@@reallycantthinkofausername487 I think the original commenter just wanted to convey that Godzilla is a monster who can be interpreted as being "oppressed or attacked for being born too different", like the other monsters.
Don't take it too literally -- Godzilla doesn't actually represent a minority. Maybe it'd be more factually accurate to say that Godzilla (at least in Japan) represents Hiroshima but that's not really important for this kind of interpretation lol
I was recently at an art museum that where I saw a painting of St. George and the Dragon. And I laughed because the dragon looked so silly and actually adorable. I'm guessing it was actually made small and non-threatening so that the painter could show the might of St. George. But it kind of made St. George look like the bad guy. I do love How to Train Your Dragon, so maybe that colored my perspective. Also, I would play the game Rampage, in which you play as a monster.
Well, not quite. I think I know the painting you're talking about. That small dragon was likely one of the earliest paintings about that story, and thus the most accurate. Back then, humans didn't get very big - George was probably about 5' 4." The "dragon" in question was probably some species of monitor lizard, which could exceed 6 ft in length when they got lucky. It likely was an intimidating creature for George to fight, but in reality it was just a lizard minding its own business.
Bokoblins from Zelda Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom come to mind for me. While they are evil beings summoned by Gannon’s power to do his bidding, after the great battle years ago many Bokoblins and their cousin Moblins set up little camps and living spaces for them selves. While they’re said to be aggressive to trespassers if you watch them from afar or hide amongst their colony members with a disguise, you learn they’re little goblin pig men who hunt game for food, share meals around the fire, and dance together happily. Their original purpose was warfare but when their job was done they just started living by them selves. Any basic mob enemy in a videogame who secretly dances when alone is always something I feel a little bad about harming.
Hilichurls in genshin impact also aren't evil by nature (fucked up curse happening there). Though they now resemble monsters, they were people once
@@typowynieogarwhy do so few characters have sympathy for the hilluchurls? I'm know the majority dont know that they're actually cursed humans, but I mean that none Express sorrow remorse or a sense of longing for a situation where we dont have to fight them all the time :(
I only think this because one of the commision quests show it's possible to communicate them, albeit primitively
@@mentlegen3887 1% of the time - they may be doing absolutely nothing harmful, 99% of the time they are near other dangerous as fuck things
Omg I thought of them too. They love yummy foods. U can even put on monster masks and go say hi. And when u do, they’re a really jolly lively folk. They dance with u, follow u around, and eat foods, expressing gratitude
When you see a perceived "enemy" doing something you yourself enjoy, it connects in a very special way. That's how empathy is born, and it's so curious how it seems to happen more often on games, movies and books rather than in real life.
I am genuinely a bit shocked that Undertale, being an rpg setup dungeon crawler where you can choose to spare all of monsterkind, kill them all and become a monster yourself, and all sorts of options in between, was not mentioned in the video game section
I was totally expecting it to come up. But perhaps that would’ve been too obvious.
As a neurodivergent person the more I learn about monster like Frankenstein, Vampires, and so on. The more aware of how discriminatory these descriptions are.
- "He needs exact permission to do this. He dislikes bright lights." (Vampire) -
And then there are stories of the large and slow minded monsters that emphasize negative stereotypes of large autistic individuals, shunned from learning and deemed to slow to learn in the first place. Examples are Frankenstein like in your video, Werewolves, and Giants.
What you have created here brings me hope.
Sincerely,
A happy watcher.
One of my all time favorite videogame monsters is Trico from The Last Guardian. The game begins with illustrations of recognizable animals, then shows an image of Trico's species, as if saying "this is just an animal after all, even if it is a strange one". Then when your character awakes, they awake next to Trico, a giant creature who's incredibly intimidating and chained up. When they first awake, they attack you, and it makes you think "they're a monster that's chained up for a reason, they're violent". But after being offered kindness, food, and removing the spears in it's back, it shows endless loyalty to your character.
Despite being a huge and wreckless force.
(SPOILERS)
Later on, it's revealed Trico's species was being mind controlled by a dark force to do bad things, and so when the villagers see the creatures, they associate them with evil and immediately go on the attack. Without realizing that the creatures have no control over what they are doing, and are being punished for it.
That was an awesome game!
Haven’t heard about that game in a while. Never thought of it that way because I was pretty young when I played it. But you are totally correct. I felt pity for that dragon and loved him from the start. Thanks for reminding me, will definitely play this one again!
And it's kind of awful how it ends with all the wild tricos just...dying en masse. It wasn't their fault, they were brainwashed. Like the black trico who fights yours ends up just being confused and afraid once its mask is broken off.
@@dracodracarys2339 yes, but luckily at the end there are baby Tricos shown, implying the creatures haven't totally died off and are possibly able to repopulate!
One of my favourite characters in fiction is Korabas, the otatarel dragon from Steven Erikson's malazan book of the fallen. A colossal dragon who's corpse was reanimated creating a being that was an essential part of the series's magic system, at the cost that she becomes the eye of abnegation. The point where the stillness of matter becomes absolute, destroying any and everything in range.
She's chained for millennia, then released by a mad god to break the system by which humanity could use magic.
Pursued by the rest of her species there are two passages from her point of view that are heartbreaking to read, a being that seeks only to create, something. Anything.
As a hardcore Godzilla fan, I'm so happy to see him get some sympathy. Giant monsters like Godzilla are always portrayed as the bad guys, and it always makes me happy to see my boy goji get the sympathy he deserves!
*Gojira
This is quite easily becoming one of my favorite channels on UA-cam. I can't stop bingeing these videos.
I cried when they killed Godzilla in the 1998 movie. He was essentially just a lost, scared animal, and they brutally killed him while he was ensnared on a bridge by pummeling him with missiles. I know it had to happen, but it still makes me sad.
thats one of the things I admired about this particular godzilla movie
Ppl say this movie doesn't deserve to stand on the same pedestal as other Godzilla stuff.
I genuinely thing that ppl should step off their high horse and enjoy it for how genious it was.
@@alexs5814Nothing genius about that goofy movie made by a ego director
@@alexs5814 it’s good as a movie, not very good as a godzilla movie.
I've always sympathized with "monsters", especially learning of the origin of them
Oh yeah!
same
Same! I feel bad if I kill anything to be honest
good! that's a great mindset to have in this wacked world@@YukiTheCat15
I feel bad for one particular monster in mythology, Medusa. She wasn’t born a Gorgon, she was a human maiden who worshiped Athena, but due to Poseidon assaulting her within Athena’s own temple the goddess misunderstood their actions and punished Medusa unjustly.
Love that you included imagery of Medusa in the beginning. Because depending on what story you subscribe to, medusa was a victim from the very beginning, being taken advantage of by a god, the goddess she devoted her life to cursing her to be a monster, and when she lives in isolation away from people, she’s constantly attacked and just them looking at her kills them. She can’t help it and even if she could it’s self defense. And then finally she’s killed by someone seeking power and her head is used as a trophy. She’s a victim every step of the way.
Thank you. This was the comment i was searching for!!!
I do love how Godzilla unintentionally became so beloved instead of feared.
Also goes to show just how devastating nuclear power in the wrong hands can be; that even a titanic force of destruction is nothing more than the victim of pointless atomic destruction.
Its worse than you think- sif isnt fighting to protect artorias's grave from you. Hes fighting to protect you from following artorias into the abyss and suffering the same fate of his master
sif is a girl, not looking to argue just a common misconception
This confirms that dogs/canines are good bois and good girls
@@mistermidenightnope his Weiner literally flops all over the place and spews cream
Its never confirmed tho. Its just speculation bc of Sifs name being the name of a goddess.
"The more media I've seen where monsters suffer, the less monstrous they seem"
God damn poetic, love it.
Monsterous figures are so deeply linked with empathy in my mind. They're always the tragic character, human or not, espacially in horror movies who don't stick to cliches.
Godzilla's death in "godzilla vs destoroyah" and the musical theme associated with it is the only piece of media i know which automatically mekes me cry.
I remember playing Shadow of the Colossus and my dad telling me that when you finish a colossus you couldn't help but feel sorry for them. You were forced to kill them just to save one soul and all it ended with was your demise. I admire the colossi, they have an OD beauty to them.
I knew someone would bring this up and I'm glad you did. That game isn't really at all about 'monsters bad and need to die cuz bad' but rather 'Will you trade the lives of these creatures for the life of your loved one?"
Great video! Frankenstein is my favorite book of all time (which sadly never gets a good adaptation) and the quotes “I was benevolent and good, misery made me a fiend” and “I aught to be thy Adam; but I am rather the fallen angel” demonstrates that the people’s perception of him is what makes him monsterous and the creature longs for companionship and love. Also in the hunchback of Norte Dame musical the narrator sings “what makes a monster and what makes a man” in the first song of the musical which I just think fits so well with these sympathetic monster stories
I find it rather interesting how you used B-roll from the Last of Us as an example of zombies being sympathetic because, while not stated outright, cursory knowledge of cordyceps reveals their hosts are almost certainly suffering and simply unable to express it. Cordyceps puppet the muscles of their hosts rather than influencing their minds, thus rendering them prisoners in bodies controlled by a foreign agent whose influence they're physically incapable of resisting.
I agree.
In episode 3 of the HBO show, Ellie encounters a stalker stuck under rubble.
From the way it was looking at Ellie, I got the feeling that the person that was still inside was silently begging to be put out of their misery.
Also, in the games the runners always twitch and cry when not in combat, which leads me to believe that the people still inside try to regain control but can't.
well, not clickers. you're for sure dead after that.
@@TurokRevolution theres also at least one who’s attacking an uninfected npc and crying iirc so i definitely think the human is still in there
damn i think the twisted mind type transformed monsters are cool and kinda relatable but thats just horrifying
It's not exactly unstated. More like it isn't stated as fact. In the first game (not sure about in the show) there's a character who mentions a rumor that the clickers are all conscious and unable to control their actions.
In Finland, we have a pop culture monster of our own, which almost every kid growing up has had they're own visceral, scary and eye opening confrontation with. She's a creature called "Mörkö" (lit. monster; boogieman), from the Moomin series written by the Finnish author Tove Jansson. In the story that most kids have seen, she starts out as a scary monster that turns the ground icy as it drifts towards you, but later turns out to be a lonely misunderstood creature seeking warmth, comfort and love. I can still remember my own reaction to that scene as a kid, going from scared to curious to empathetic, and it's stayed with me ever since, as it has with many Finns around my age. It's a good reminder for us to look inward when we feel fear towards something unknown, and try to understand our initial reactions.
Thank you for making this video, reminding me of this little special bit of my own childhood.
Stumbled onto this channel by accident and God damn, it's good. Well edited, well researched, well put together. Nice work
Reminds me of the book, The Dragon Champion, the story is the typical, knight slaying the evil dragons, but told from the perspective of the dragon, it managed to made the knight look like such a scary threatening monster while making the dragon so very human.
do you mean the novel by E.E. Knight?? That entire series is SO good, and it was so refreshing to see not just one novel, but an entire 6 novel saga, from the perspective of the other side. One of my favorite series of all time!
@@artificiary_ yeah. That one exactly!
Thanks for the book recommendation
I just finished Knight's Age of Fire series recently.
His depiction of dragons and reasons for their different stereotypical habits are such an interesting, unique take.
I found the ending to be a bit weak, but the journey was astounding.
"Monsters are tragic beings. They are born too tall, too strong, too heavy. They are not evil by choice. That is their tragedy."
- Ishiro Honda, the director of Gojira (1954)
Yes, he says that while contradicting his own statement by having the big lizard destroy almost all of Japan, and for basically no reason either than that of making Godzilla known as a villain rather than having to be shoehorned into becoming a hero, let alone an “anti-hero” despite the damage and death he causes.
@@justaguyonyoutube4592 That reason being Godzilla was literally a metaphor for nuclear war, he’s been mad into a protecter while still maintaining his roots, just cut a bit short.
@@paleospino4956
Lmao didn’t you get big mad for correcting you in one of your cringe-inducing debates?
You ain’t going nowhere boy, I’m taking you into the bushes.
@@justaguyonyoutube4592 That wasn’t a debate brother, you took it too personally for whatever reason. And once again, I’m not even mad, lol.
@@justaguyonyoutube4592maybe because it was an anti nuclear warfare ad basically
Also for being affected by the atomic bomb
I have always sympathised with the monster. A monster is just someone that's hurt. Society sees a suffering being and thinks "It must die", and celebrates atop its corpse.
I see myself in that. I see myself in monsters, far, far more than in people. And so to me, the story of a monster's death is a tragedy.
Unfortunately I find myself in neither of them
l feel the same so often. My personal favorite monster is Godzilla, as his existence is generally framed as something overwhelmingly strong and beyond our full comprehension such as Legendary Godzilla is or a pained beast that never needed to exist, as Shin Godzilla was. I especially resonate with Legendary Godzilla though, as he just kind of exists and that to humanity warrants the battering he gets by the gunfire, missiles and oxygen destroyers people throw at him. They hatch eggs of dangerous parasites he needs to stop, they release age-old aliens that try to terraform the planet which he needs to stop, and then after all that they try to make a mech to kill him and take his role! And in spite of all this, he never just gets fed-up and tries to nuke all of humanity, which, being king of the monsters, he definitely could do as of the end of his second film in the Monsterverse. In this sense, who is the real monster?
That's also why I loved Nimona so much! The movie reframes the blame from monsters and outsiders of the kingdom to the system that the kingdom runs on. I don't wanna spoil too much in case someone hasn't seen it but I think you will really like it!
I'm shocked you didn't talk about monsters in monster hunter. Constantly going out into nature to dispatch of giant beasts who are just defending themselves and their territory. As they get to low health, some of them even cower and run or try to use attacks that they can no longer use in a last ditch effort to scare you away.
To be fair, they are bad example because they are mostly just big animals, rather than especially monstrous. Aside from things like Fatalis, which are less about defending themselves and more about annihilating humanity.
From what I recall, the hunters actually hunt monsters as a conservation effort, culling the dangerous ones so that the ecosystem can stay balanced, which is why they're so focused in the elder dragons, as they are unnatural creatures. I think the older games even have mentions of a guild that hunts poachers.
@@cienkitv2854yep there's a lot of fluff dialog about keeping the balance, hunters do all types of things like tranq and tag monsters, reroute monsters that have roamed to close to settlements, and even help stop invasive species from threatening ecosystems. There's a lot that goes into the the world building for the hunters guild, it just wouldn't be as exciting to do those things so gameplay wise it's all about hunting and capturing.
@@infinitezion2029 Really? I would love to play a game like that. The 4X games formula etc is really rung out.
@@cienkitv2854 Yeah, the ones you hunt are invasive, if I recall correctly
The most sympathy I've had for a monster was with Zilla, you know, the poor mutant iguana who was lured in with fish, and then got attacked, It brought me to tears when all its babies got slaughtered. Eventually they defeated Zilla by trapping it in the bridge and shooting a bunch of missiles at it
It also is more tragic when you know zilla is one of the most hated Godzilla kajiu too
Yeah. IDK why people hated it so much, I think Zilla's design was pretty cool, I mean, sure it was different and not as mighty as the Goji we all know, but it had it's owj goodies that made it stand out, plus the series that came out after the movie it's hella underrated.
At least it's surviving son's doing alright
@@Vexx2006yea, its a great design for a monster.
Just not a great design for Godzilla.
If you removed the spikes would you even know it's supposed to be him?
@@Vexx2006 Because Emmerich did everything in his power to character assassinate Godzilla to the fans. He made Godzilla vulnerable to conventional firearms, always ran away from an encounter instead of actively/passively engaging in combat, and removed his atomic breath (you know, the main signature attack that Godzilla is essentially known for). Also by removing Godzilla's dinosaur inspiration appearance for something more "realistic and animal like", you essentially destroy the core foundation and basis of what Godzilla is. Godzilla is not meant to be something natural on Earth. Godzilla is a reminder of mankind's arrogance to harness nuclear power and playing as God by trying to defy the natural order and mother nature itself.
Emmerich did not want to create an American interpretation of Godzilla. He said in many interviews that he wanted his own monster. He only accepted the project because Sony was willing to fork over 250 Million USD to get him to make the film (mind you the last time an American Godzilla movie was brought to Hollywood, the initial cost of 50 Million USD was seen as absurd). When Emmerich read the prototype script from the initial pitch, he scoffed at it saying, "It just two giant monsters beating the living shit out of each other for the last 25-30 minutes. Who even makes movies like this?" Emmerich is hated by every Godzilla fan for a very good reason and I'm glad that he upset that Legendary's Godzilla is a far better Godzilla in design and character to his garbage. Tristar's Godzilla has more relations to Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park and it no coincidence that Emmerich's film blatantly copies a lot of things from Jurassic Park too.
I don't hate the design tbh, I think on it own, it can be a very good monster design. I grew up watching the cartoon sequel and I love it. It just the big issue of the fact that it slapped with Godzilla's name. I used to be many who called it GINO and refused to remember it for anything else but that but I've slowly moved on and accepted Zilla for what it is. Hate the creator, not the monster itself.
Shin Godzilla is my favorite of all the Godzilla movies exactly for the reasons you very eloquently explained. Also, it's downright surreal in it's depiction and I love the idea that Godzilla morphs into progressively more advanced forms in response to his environment.
The cruelty against fictional monsters is still reflective of our real life. According to how we treat wildlife and disabled people (who are the muses to our monsters), the answer is we would deliberately make our architecture and lifestyle inaccessible to them.
Even if our stereotypical understanding of a monster does exist, I still don’t think humanity would coexist with them considering we don’t even do that with the relatively peaceful creatures we do have on earth. If a monster did enter a city, I doubt it’d mindlessly walk through our buildings. It still has to protect itself after all, it’d just be helpless and stuck.
What are you babbling on about? We don’t coexist with peaceful animals and our architecture is hostile to disabled people? Are you aware that efficiency is the name of the game?
It’s more in the nature that we were hunted ourselves. Prey to many of the blueprints to monsters we see in fiction. Fictional monsters remind us of a time when we weren’t world conquering. Nothing more than trying to survive.
11:30 To anyone who hasn’t seen it, Shin Godzilla is a masterclass in eldritch horror and political satire. It is also handles horror incredibly well, opting to use tragedy instead of violence and tension. It very much deserves its spot in the video as on multiple rewatches, it becomes apparent how much agony Godzilla is in. I strongly urge watching it.
Where can you watch it though?
@@TheCheeseMan69 pretty sure it’s on Crunchyroll. I have it on DVD
There's a scene in Godzilla Versus Destoroyah where Godzilla has a moment with its son who was killed in battle. It's an intimate and touching scene in an otherwise played straight Kaiju movie. Honestly, I love it. It has never failed to make me tear up a bit.
Nietzsche put it best when describing the outcome of attempting to 'slay a beast', as it were; "He who fights monsters risks becoming one themselves".
He probably said that while really high.
To invoke Dark Knight quotes here is a bit of a meme, but "You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain" makes sense to come from Nietzsche-ian roots.
Fear the old blood?
@@thisgoddamusernamestoodamnlong fart the old blood. That usually works for me...tho, I don't think you're supposed to fart blood *per se* -- be it new or old -- but, I'm just another stranger on the internet
@@RevelationsPrimo you hunters are strange ones indeed.
as a young kid, the first How to train a dragon film had a huge influence over me. one of the first pieces of media that I felt imparted a lesson on me that really stuck in my mind, of how many monsters, and even people, are creatures that have emotional and empathetic sides that can be sympathised with, only obscured by how and when they can display it.
Lately I've been more into the Godzilla movies, so obviously the thumbnail is what pulled me in to watch this video in the first place.
A "fun" fact: In the scene where Shin Godzilla uses his/her atomic breath and destroys the city he/she is basically just vomiting out the radiation, since he/she is just in constant agony and pain from the constant evolution.
Also, Shin Godzilla's roars are said to be cries of pain.
I can only imagine the shock that kids in Japan must've felt growing up with Godzilla as a hero in the 70's only to see his dark and serious reboot in the mid-80's. Gojira 1984 (a.k.a. Godzilla 1985 in the U.S.) let kids know the days of Godzilla being a good guy were over.
Only for the Godzilla (2014) to basically undo that.
I think the key factor is that monsters are always reflections of OUR fears, so as an extension, they're also always a reflection of ourselves.
Also as our fears change the scare factor of older monsters falls away until we are only left with the human parts
Aside from the vid being incredible, gotta say, respect for having +1000 empathy
As an autistic person, I've always gotten along better with animals than people, and I've always found stories about animals (Be they real animals or dragons and monsters and kaiju) more interesting than stories about humans. I too always felt bad for the dragon in the story of St. George. I also always liked stories where humanity learns to coexist with the monsters (HTTYD, the MonsterVerse). The kaiju genre in general has a massive surplus of neurodiverse fans (In part because of the aforementioned love of animals, the fact that neurodivergence is frequently made out to be 'monstrous', adding another layer of sympathy, and the fact that giant monsters are really cool).
Personally, my autism means I have a hard time thinking about things from other people's perspectives, meaning I sometimes am mistaken as selfish, arrogant, or rude, because I literally have a harder time perspective-taking due to my brain chemistry (Note I said empathizing, not sympathizing. I am very capable of sympathy and compassion). I also have a harder time controlling my impulses and emotions, meaning that I lash out verbally and sometimes physically when I'm scared, stressed, or angry. I also stim in a very distracting way, I like to run, pace, and skip a lot, especially when I'm excited or thinking hard about something. Several times, I've run into people, and one time I accidentally knocked down a little kid because I didn't look where I was going.
So, out of all kaiju, one I have a massive soft spot for is Rodan. Rodan isn't usually _that_ aggressive towards humans unless they shoot first, most of the damage he causes is simply from the downdrafts of his wings as he flies around. He's usually portrayed as hyperactive and hot-blooded, and sometimes even selfish and arrogant, but, like Godzilla, he did become heroic in the movies of the late Showa Era. (I typed this comment while wearing a shirt with him on it, lmao).
So yeah.
I also feel really bad for the Pacific Rim kaiju (Otachi is one of my favorites overall), because they're literally alien bioweapons- they aren't evil, they're being mind-controlled by their creators. They're living things that are denied true life, being created only to kill, and they die horrible deaths, and I feel so bad for them, even as I'm cheering for humanity to triumph. Because the Pacific Rim kaiju are hurricanes. That's their allegory. And hurricanes aren't evil. Climate change (in this case the kaijus' makers), the thing making the hurricanes bigger and stronger, is the evil.
So yeah.
I also really like Gamera, because you could interpret him as neurodivergent as well, within the standards of kaiju: In his stories, all other kaiju are evil, being apathetic towards or actively out to harm humanity- the way a lot of neurotypical people are with animals. Gamera, by contrast, is loving towards and protective of us- the way a lot of neurodivergent people are toward animals. But I also just like him, lol, he's a big sweet turble who's about the power of hope and the good in humanity. Can't recommend his Heisei Era movies enough.
I also like Mothra because who doesn't, and I use my fanfics about her to vent my feelings about climate change and humanity's relations with nature.
Anyway, I did not proofread this, and this is literally me just spewing thoughts into the text box and hitting the post button, hope ya'll have a really good day. /gen
I am autistic too, I also feel more empathy with animals than humans. And also found animal stories far more interesting than human ones as well monster stories.
I am not autistic but found your statement here enjoyable to read as a perspective that is apart from my own.
Personally I am very empathetic and have great sympathy for others with their hurts, I became a healer over 10 years ago and feel all the hurts people may have, physical and mental, a person can hide very little from me.
I recently found out I am also referred to as a sigma male, which also gives a very analytic view of situations and people.
But I do have one issue, which is known as aphantasia, its where your mind is totally blank and no imagery can be created within the mind.
All these together give me a very clear vision of the present moment and the outside world.
I also used to have a very busy mind where I could not go more than a few seconds without thought comingbin to the mind, the time I became a healer was when I learned to control the thoughts, simply I learned that I was not the thoughts and they were simply a tool I can use that were out of control.
Once I learned this I not only have a clear mind but is also blank and and very emotionally aware of my own emotions but also every other person's.
The reason I say all this, apart from your spewing of thoughts in a comment as inspiration but also I think there will be something for you here.
Over the years I have learned that society has become so harsh with nature being a victim to it like us, there are very little birds, bugs and animals for us to enjoy and experience that as people we are searching for distraction from this.
I feel the distractions you have picked are the better choice if I'm honest, those stories can contain inspiration and creativity of imagery and story which is not bad, you are enjoying something that was created with a purpose to tell a story and be enjoyed.
But in society today so many choose other distractions that bring them no joy, no way to be creative or simply enjoy a story.
The world around us all is bringing such distress and misery for many, and I see it in the faces of people and feel their pains like it's my own.
I am someone that talks with many strangers now as it's far easier to help them, but not always and gas to be done carefully, to see the issues that plague them is one thing, but to mention it in an attempt to have them see it is another.
People lash out and thrash, and snarl like a dog when faced with the truth, not an exaggeration.
The biggest issue we have today is there is very few ways to achieve self worth and fulfilment from anything we do, even if you do a job that would give them, a monetary gain for those actions is given, it takes much of the real reward away.
Our hands are often tied by the system of that's not your job let them do it, your not a scientist, your not a doctor, meaning no opinions of scientific or medical value is even considered as its not your job.
It's a system of know your role and stay in your lane, meaning no growth or expansion is available.
People feel trapped and isolated, and are only given algorithmic paths to walk upon or games that are either numbing and repetitive or filled with monetary hurdles or vast time constraints that make it a job or a heavy monetary burden, all these produce fear or take away the real enjoyment from the activity.
There there are people that have found the best way to feel something is to create bad feeling in others as a way to feel something for themselves.
Life has become very difficult for many and the route issue is money and those that wish to manipulate others and systems to gain more of it.
I say all this as having less empathy for others could be seen as a negative, but after reading all this pain you could be experiencing from others, it becomes a way to dull those incoming pains that would just bring more pain to yourself.
I feel its your bodies way of protecting you.
So I would say live your life and enjoy yourself as you can give a little enjoyment to those of us that can feel it, you maybe the only person someone meets that week that is happy.
Is that a gift or a burden, and is empathy a gift or a burden.
It depends on the situation and I would say while the world is bad its a gift, but if we can make the world a better place it would be a burden to not feel the joy of others, I do feel your body would not feel the need to keep protecting you from it so if you saw it as a burden it would be released.
If we can strive for true self worth and fulfilment and have no limitations of our experience, then I believe we could all enjoy this world together.
Also not proof read, and spewed out just for you and others that may have the patience to read our comments.
Much love to you!
All of you!
mothra :3
I never realized that pacific rim was an allegory to hurricanes, but it makes sense.
i was about to comment something similar, i'm autistic too and i have always preferred stories about animals or monsters or other non-humans over stories about humans. i especially like it when the characters themselves are the creatures, like in Wings of Fire where the characters are dragons. i find stories about just humans to be rather boring, perhaps because i feel i can relate more to creatures like dragons than to humans, or maybe just because i like animals.
A well written "monster" is the one you can understand in their struggle and brings a better perpective into the troubles of others.
A badly written monster is the one who just wants to see everything burn but have literally no reason why they want to do it.
I'm not saying that every monster has to be a "literally me" character, but they at least have to be fleshed out enough to not feel cheap.
not true at all just because a monster is portrayed as inherently evil and seeking chaos and destruction doesn't mean its bad or poorly written it just means its a different interpretation of the subject. Sometimes people want to write a story of overcoming a great evil and often times the story they write is really good it doesn't mean its "Poorly written" because the monster is a thoughtless being seeking carnage. Both can coexist at the same time and have their roles in media just because one is more complex doesn't mean the other is poorly written it just means that a different story and perspective is being told.
@@trollwar3256 Yep. Sometimes you just want a monster to be just that, a MONSTER. Something that knowingly serves evil or who needs to hurt or destroy others (and feels no guilt or regret about it) in order to achieve its goals or even to just exist. Heck, something that downright enjoys killing or harming others. Or all three. If they can make it so you fear the monster ALL THE BETTER. Nothing wrong with sympathetic monsters: I've enjoyed plenty of games and movies where things weren't all black and white and where at least some of your foes were sympathetic or at least redeemable, even the nonhuman ones. But even then, the monsters had to be dangerous, had to be or seem bad, had to have a scary element. But I also have plenty of games and other entertainment where the baddie is really bad and, esp if they look invulnerable, act cruel or haughty (or both) I just love to see them lose.
Alright I get it my take is bad. I just think that it heavily depends on the writter if the thing that is playing the monster role is entertaining/interesting or not.
I disagree, "evil" forces of nature characters like the joker or a monster like a demonic spirit, should exist and can be good characters
Not everything needs to have a tragic backstory, to me that's what feels cheap. For example in demon slayer, basically every villain has a to have a tragic backstory and that's what makes them all incredibly one dimensional and boring. The least boring one was douma, a demon who didn't have a reason to be evil, he just did it because he wanted to.
Yeah. No. No one has to do what you say.
Another great example of this is how in Godzilla 2014 the female mutos eggs that she had just laid and her whole purpose at the time is to protect those eggs were burned by the US military and you can hear the sadness in her cry. Or atleast how much sadness a giant bug can have.
The way this video and so many of the comments are making me cry.. growing up as an autistic kid I just, always found animals to be much more... understandable. They didn't have weird societal rules and in fact a lot in media were a victim of these rules they don't have any reason to know or understand. Animals and animalistic monsters don't know they're "invading" human territory... they're just trying to survive.
👍
I bet $10 you read Dragonology as a kid
@@meeb_consumerthe way my eyes PEELT??? DRAGONOLOGY MENTIONED 🗣️🗣️🗣️
There is a game called "The last Guardian" and this game is so heartbreaking. It's about a young boy and a monster with wings that become friends, and the game is so well made and the ending is so sad too. This game is an example of what is "sympathy for a monster".
I really love the whole sympathetic monster trope
Seeing how Curious Archive has grown so much is honestly wonderful.
Amazing video. And that's why the xenomorph from Alien is considered "the perfect organism". There's no ambiguity of his nature: it's a monster. "Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility." (...) "unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality."
…And yet in the second movie the Queen wouldn’t have attacked had her eggs not been unreasonably destroyed. She only attacked when threatened.
@@Yesthatduckthe queen was dominant in the hive mind and exercised control over the warriors and drones. The entire purpose of the eggs was to infect animals (humans) for incubation. She wasn’t looking to peacefully cohabitate.
@lillimichaels2431 LOL The Queen's job is to sit and make eggs. Of course she doesn't attack. Queens are telepathic, basically controlling the hive.
@wedge_one I really liked the journey we are shown in Alien: Resurrection. Our former hero is reborn, but now she is the monster. ( I kind of loved this version of Ripley best. I wish we could have seen more of her traveling the human universe.) The alien queen is part of the hero. The final boss is mentally the hero's child. It cries when its mother kills him.
@@Yesthatduck she did try to sneakily open the egg to attack ripley, ripley wouldnt have to burn the eggs if queen didnt do that
you can see ripley is just warning the queen with fire and try to back away, but one egg opens and ripley is giving a look like "really?" to the queen and then burns the eggs
@@Badficwriter i only wish they picked less violent method of getting rid of it, it was painful to watch
I absoloutely adored this video. As an author who loves writing monsters that you can sympathize with, it hits the hammer on the nail of how much nuance they can hold. This is so well made and all of the examples are so neat, thank you so much. It's really well done.
As youngsters, we fear the monsters
As adults, we understand the monsters
And as elders, we don't see monsters anymore
I never feared the stereotypical monster.
Nah, that's not true. At least in western society, elderly people tend to be the most paranoid and quick to demonize what they don't understand.
Because there's only one monster left in old age. The only real monster there ever was.
One of my favorite “sympathetic monster” encounters was hunting the Bigfoots (Bigfeet?) in Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare. After killing all but one you find that they beasts are actually sympathetic creatures who eat berries and nuts, not babies as the scared locals claim. After the last Sasquatch tells you he’s the last he falls to the ground crying and begging for death. His plea of, “make it stop,” always gives me chills.
“To them, you’re the monster.”
That really hit close to home as a minority.
When I was younger I always said that the dragons in fairy tales weren’t monsters because they never attacked first they left the people alone until after many people tried to kill them and even then they generally only attacked in self defense
Smaug destroyed two entire kingdoms to get their gold. lol
That's not true at all, whenever a knight, hero or Saint was sent to slay a dragon it was either because it would destroy villages and poison crops, or ruled over the area like a tyrant demanding treasure and human sacrifices. Dragons were embodiments of evil and greed in mythology, they were very rarely just minding their own business when slain.
Well you obviously didn't read any classic dragon stories then.
I said fairy tale dragons. Dragons such as from Norse mythology like Fafnir are quite monstrous.
@@PyritePlays8431 Yes but even in fairy tales, it's usually the case that the dragon has either kidnapped the princess, stolen the kings treasure, or is just a general terror to the land and has some reward for its head. The fact that knights waited until they were asleep or drunk or just minding their own business to kill them doesn't mean the dragons were innocent, it's a common tactic to hunting predators.
Biollante from the Godzilla films is also a sympathetic monster . She is a woman trapped in a monster's body, created due her father being unable by cope with his daughter's death. In his desperate attempts to bring her back, he instead created a horrific prison in which she suffered.
You're channel is honestly one of my all time favorites, keep up the amazing work
I think Shin Godzilla was kind of a victim in the movie, he was just some little ancient sea creature doing their thing and then fed on radiation and turn into a giant Kaiju that every second of it just existing feels immense pain, and you can't blame him for just running around like crazy if I were in that situation, I would also act all erratic and crazy too.
always loved dragons, and boy I was overjoyed when I first saw them portrayed as incredibly wise creatures
to me they are the ultimate lifeform even if just fictional
Speaking of Godzilla i think a mention should be given to the '98 version too. I always felt so much sympathy for him/her, especially towards the end of the movie
I'm so glad im not the only one to feel this way, when I was a kid whenever I would see any monster from fillms/ shows I watched being killed or harmed ( even if their portrayed as evil ) I always felt bad instead of feeling a sense of victory for the main character(s), but I knew that I WASNT supposed to feel sympathy of the monster, I had always wondered why I felt this way all the way up into even now.
this video really helps me open my eyes and see im not the only one to feel this way!
"Have you ever sympathized with a monster?"
Yes, without a second thought, it's not only cuz they look cool or remind me of a pet/animal. It's because I see more in them, sometimes even more than in humans it's facing. And it's not humanity I see, it's something I can feel, I can almost touch, something which isn't evil for fun, good for the sake of duty, it's... natural. It's true and doesn't lie, just reacts and tries to survive is just used or misunderstood.
Monster Hunter does a really good job of making you sympathize with the monsters you need to hunt
The saddest part about Sif from Dark Souls is that she starts limping and her attacks become sloppy when she hits a very low HP. She usually just needs one hit to finish her off when this happens, but it makes you not wanna do it
This was actually the first Japanese-made Godzilla movie I’ve ever watched, and even without much background, I could feel just how much of a return to the original spirit and tone of Gojira as a monster was being crafted. Harrowing, upsetting, and complex, especially when you’re willing to empathize with the lived experience of a creature in overwhelming pain.
19:53 The most heart-wrenching thing about Sif is that the fight gets easier throughout the battle. His movements become slower, he starts to limp, and eventually he starts to hobble on three legs as if one of them is broken. By the end he can barely swing the sword, but he still goes on. Defending his owner's grave to his last breath.
Just after talking about the monster creature in super mario galaxy, you said that it hurts to think that these are intelligent living beings. Rain world handles this idea really well, because you know that none of these creatures are really going out of their way to kill you. The lizards are just looking for food, and if they have some, they won't abandon it to chase after you. The scavengers are a really good example of this. They have their own expressions and signals they use for rudimentary communication with the player, and the personality values that the game uses are really apparent with them. There's a reputation system with them. For one of the campaigns, they always hate you, and you always have to kill them.
A creature that made me feel for it was Chotic Gore Magala. Especially with that rise opening, narrating the monsters thoughts of 'I am a failure. I am an abomination.' a creature that exists in a form it should never have (its metamorphosis failed and has features of both adult Shagaru Magala, and juvenile Gore Magala), and makes me feel its suffering.
The player must 'hunt' this creature so they may either slay or capture it, but I always choose to slay it over extending its suffering.
Makes me wonder what could constitute as “disturbing” its transformation. What could stop its transformation and turn it into a creature that’s entire existence is agony. The guild hunts them down as a mercy for the poor Magala
I rarely take the time to write a compliment: Amazing video, I'm sharing it with a friend for how good it is!
I'm so glad this video exists because I was worried that there weren't very many people who felt very bad for the monsters in stories like I do.