Final Wars is a really mixed bag. It's basically two movies with only one being a G flick. You have the big Godzilla movie and then the faux-Matrix movie. It's like far too wacky to be Heisei but too dark to be classic, and not divorced enough from previous movies to fit in with the self-contained 2000 movies.
For myself, I enjoyed the Godzilla stuff and the character of Captain Gordon. Some of the martial-arts stuff I dug but that's prolly more because I dig kung and wire-fu movies as well a henshin hero shows like Kamen Rider and the Super Sentai shows that get turned into Power Rangers. But overall Final Wars ..it's like it IS fun but I think Toho's beancounters prolly had too much imput on the actual script.
I have no idea what Toho is up to regarding anything most of the time. "Final Wars" was a send off of the big G for the next many years until they do some more. I've always found Goji's popularity to go in waves - but always there. Even here among the board, although we're all Supe's fans, the prospect of Goji elicited an interesting topic. Final Wars was as Julian stated, one big smash-bang slam fest that just rolled along. Still I had a blast watching it.
One of the oddities in Marvel comics is that, technically, Godzilla IS "canon."
Godzilla, I'd argue, is one of those side properties that very much belongs in the Marvel UnIverse.
This is probably food for another thread...
The fact that Atlas produced a plethora of giant monster menaces during the 50's is the key reason I'd agree on Goji being a member of the MU. But on the topic of "giant menaces", this is a developmental aspect of the days of Atlas I always wondered about, their beating the Comics Code Authority with tame "horror" stories and how Goji might have played a role in it. If I'm not mistaken, I think it was Goji that reinvigorated the whole "giant monster" genre with a nuclear or atomic "nature's response to man's damage"-type angle. (As opposed to the earlier silent films and "King Kong" which were of an explorer and huge forces that can't be tamed by man-type sub-genre.)
Were the Atlas monsters really Marvel's attempt to capatalize on the popular thing - e.g. Goji, or what? "Well, big monsters with a moral message won't offend the CCA?" What I come down to is Goji's wake created the kaiju/movie monster + radiation gimmick that spawned the Atlas monsters, which in turn spawned renewed interest in monsters as anti-heros in the flavor of Frankenstein's monster - to Hulk, and Thing, et al. I would say in a case like this, considering the giant monster thing was apparently Kirby's idea, that Kirby was a brilliant, brilliant man riding a wave that he saw coming.
By the way, that "caveman" monster Goji fought, that later turned up in the WCA was actually a Bigfoot. "Yetrigar" they shall call him.... (Neat Toho name.)