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Late Arrival: When You Finally Get Around to Seeing Your Name in the End Credits 5 Years After the Film’s Release
See, what had happened was…
Okay, I have no idea what happened. And after spending an embarrassing amount of time thinking about it, I’m still pretty perplexed. The only thing that I managed to come up with was the disturbing fact that I couldn’t come up with any legit excuses at all for what had happened.
And now, using some vintage lines from the Eddie Murphy classic The Golden Child, I must confess that… “I’m ashamed of myself,” and “I should be purged. I should be flogged. I shouldn’t walk among good people. I’m a swine, a wretch. I don’t deserve to live like others.”
A tad melodramatic maybe, but recalling that hilariously-delivered dialog has helped me to laugh at myself and the sheer absurdity of it all.
I just don’t understand what happened. How had I never managed to sit down to watch The Great Buddha Arrival (2018) until now?
Have I been a serial victim of alien abduction? Was I hospitalized and induced into a coma — multiple times? Have I been suffering recurring bouts of amnesia? Experiencing dissociative identity disorder? Drugged, spirited away into a witness protection program, and lost touch with my former reality?
What the hell have I been doing?
Fan service
I’d love to be able to just blame it on the life-upending madness of the COVID-19 outbreak, but the pandemic struck the planet in March 2020. The Great Buddha Arrival, an independent kaiju film from Japan, made its North American premiere in Chicago at G-Fest XXVI in July of the previous year.
kaiju / ˈkījo͞o / (noun) a giant monster of a type featured in Japanese fantasy and science fiction movies and television programs.
Bear in mind, I was born and raised and currently live in Chicago. Like any kaiju film aficionado worth their (ahem) very sizable VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray collection, I was in attendance at G-Fan Magazine’s kaiju-centric…
