Godzilla Vs Destroyah

Posted on March 5, 2015 by Kristoph Johannes

Godzilla Vs. Destroyah –1995, Takao Okawara – Japan

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When Toho revived the Godzilla in 1984, they brought us a new era with shinier, more plastic looking monsters, who relied largely on laser based combat, as well as numerous psychics, soldiers, and also the single worst time travel movie of all time, Godzilla Vs. King Ghidorah. Now, after seven films in eleven years, Toho wraps up the Heisei series with Godzilla Vs. Destroyah, and really, I’m kind of glad it’s over.

THE PLOT~ After Godzilla turns up in Hong Kong with some sort of crazy, fiery lizard rash, G-Force’s top minds conclude that Godzilla’s monster guts are reaching superheated levels, due to some sort of radioactive meltdown in his dragon belly. Apparently, Godzilla’s rumbly tum-tum will soon reach an unsustainable temperature, which will trigger an explosion large enough to annihilate the entire planet, which is clearly not a win/win scenario for him, or for us humans. Immediately, Japan busts out some Freeze ray technology they’ve been working on, and it’s actually more effective than you might think.

GODZILLA-VS-DESTOROYAH-1995

Meanwhile, some wayward Japanese scientist is sniffin’ around the old Oxygen Destroyer technology, which was the device they used to kill the original Godzilla in ’54, before it’s formula was lost with the death of it’s creator. As is the case 100% of the time that scientists try to do anything, this experimentation inadvertently resurrects and mutates a prehistoric monster, and the next thing you know, weird, bug like creatures are scurrying all over Tokyo killing the hell out of everyone. Science.

These monsters are basically just Toho ripping off the creatures from Aliens, right down to their extendable mini-mouth tongues, and we even get some soliders equiped with Ripley-esque flamethrowers running around trying to combat these creepy crawlies, so clearly, it’s uninspired, cut and dry plagiarism yet again from the Heisei series, which has become alarmingly routine lately. Honestly, it doesn’t help this movie’s case- Godzilla should be above shamelessly xeroxing other intellectual properties in this way, so for shame, Toho. Cut it the fuck out.

Anyhow, all these beasties merge together to create one giant, kaiju sized bug monster, which, apparently, is Destroyah, a creature which was absolutely named by Sylvester Stallone, without question. Confronted with this horrible crab/bug/dino looking abomination, Japan thinks; “Hey, this thing is a product of the original Oxygen Destroyer, right? Maybe it can solve our other giant monster related problem, if you know what I mean.” So, that brilliant idea is what we decide to go with, and in order to stage this confrontation, Godzilla Jr, now himself quite giant, is used as bait, since Miki (yep, she’s in this one too) has a special psychic connection to him and can kinda guide which way she wants him to go.

Miki totally dotes on Godzilla Jr as though he were a damned Labrador or something, but with some coaxing she is convinced to help direct GJ into the city, where he will most likely be slaughtered by a nightmarish insect monster before her very eyes. Godzilla Jr Shows up, probably thinking “Where are my human friends? I love humans!” and then he is immediately beaten to within an inch of his life by Destroyah, until Poppa G drops in, and shit goes to 11.

In the end, Godzilla defeats Destroyah, but not without going critical and literally melting like a giant, radioactive candle; however, the Earth is somehow spared from total destruction due to G-Force’s freeze lasers, or something. I’m not actually sure how these guys manage save the Earth, but they do somehow. I think maybe the idea is that the radiation that would have killed us got sponged up by Junior, which in turn transformed him into a full fledged Godzilla, but honestly, this bit is a little unclear for me.

Other things happen in the movie, there are multiple characters and subplots, but mostly these are just an attempt to further connect this film with the original ’54 Gojira, in hopes that our new movie will somehow seem more credible as a result of that connection, but honestly, who gives a shit? No one, that’s who. This movie is a little thin, like Jared from Subway, but it is fairly climactic, so I’ll give it that. Godzilla certainly looks formidable in his weird meltdown condition, and Godzilla VS Destroyah does feel tense and dramatic at times, but the movie remains burdened by problems typical to all Heisei era films; they just aren’t as fun, or as high quality as their Showa predecessors. In the end, Godzilla Vs Destroyah comes out somewhere in the middle of the list, if we were to rate the Heisei era films from best to worst, but on average, just about any Showa movie is head and shoulders above the films belonging to this second era. Onward; to the next book of the Godzilla trilogy; the Millennium Series.

C-

Godzilla Vs Spacegodzilla

Posted on March 5, 2015 by Kristoph Johannes

Godzilla VS Spacegodzilla – 1994, Kensho Yamashita – Japan

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(ACTUAL CONVERSATION RECORDED INSIDE THE OFFICES OF TOHO)

“Dude…We’ve had Godzilla fight like… lots of stuff already.”
“Yeah, I know….”
“… What if we just had him fight… like… another Godzilla?”
“…You mean, like, Mechagodzilla?”
“…Yeah.”
“Uhhhhh…. I dunno, man. We just did that…”
“Okay, okay, not like, a Mecha one… What about, like… Like….Ummmmmm….. Oh, how ‘bout like, a space one?!”
“……..A spacegodzila?”
“…Yeah!”
“…Can it have like… A shit load of crystals all over it?”
“Hell yeah, it can.”
“….Okay. Sure, we can do that.”

AND…. it was underwhelming. Spacegodzilla, the character, is face-palmingly over the top. If you wanted an illustrative comparison between the shift in how the original Godzilla was designed in 1954, and the school of thought informing the creation of Spacegodzilla 40 years later, I offer forth this comparison; Consider that the original Godzilla from Gojira is like Japanese Kabuki theater; Strange, grim, and haunting, yet somehow beautiful and understated. Now, in terms of the energy that went into the conceptual design behind Spacegodzilla, on the other hand, consider every track ever recorded by the band Dragonforce playing simultaneously at a volume that would guarantee hearing loss. That’s what it would be like. Have you seen those crystal poking out of his damn sholders? Freaking ridiculous. And while we’re making comparisons, if you were looking for an appropriate forerunner for this film from the Showa era, Godzilla Vs Spacegodzilla is both the Godzilla Vs Gigan, and the Godzilla Vs Megalon of the Heisei series. That’s not great, guys. And you’re about to know it.

THE PLOT~ Japan has two plans now; and they’re gonna try them both. We’ve got Project T, and Project M. Breakin’ it down:

PROJECT T- Remember Mikki, the psychic girl who has been in every damn one of these movies but hasn’t really contributed in any solid way whatsoever? Well, they want to lodge a damn satelite dish in Godzilla’s neck and see if she can hijack his brain. Spoiler alert; She can’t.

PROJECT M– Remember how we just did the whole Mechagodzilla thing, and it failed? Well, how about sinking another couple billion tax yen into a second giant, metal robot to fight Godzilla? “Thought you’d never ask,” Says G-Force. What we end up with is Moguera, and yes, it’s another giant, vaugley monster shaped robot, but Moguera is different. What’s strange about Mogera is that he sort of seems like whoever designed him had weird priorities. Like, yeah, he’s got some weaponary on him, but he really seems like he was intended for 50% monster combat and 50% digging hella tunnels. I’m not sure why he would ever need to dig hella tunnels, but hey, who knows? Maybe if they had outfitted Mechagodzilla with the ability to just burrow like a mother fucker we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now. And anyway, Moguera represents progress, because it’s a sign that G-Force is finally starting to understand that you don’t necessarily have to design your weapon to look exactly like your target for it to be effective. I mean, a gun isn’t shaped like a human, but it sure can put one down real good. Just food for thought, G-Force.

Anyway.

So, in hopes of getting things under control and eliminating the need to deploy an enormous mechanized war machine on a highly populated city, Project T kicks off their Godzilla brain hijacking mission first by sending a small group of G-Force personnel off to Birth Island, where Godzilla kinda sorta lives. Among this group we have:

Miki – Who cares? (Actually, Miki sucks a lot less in this movie than she does in any other Heisei film.)
Shinjo and Sato – Two knucklehead soldiers who are sorta like the Merry and Pippin of the Godzilla cannon. These two are actually kinda fun, and I like them quite a bit.
Dr. Gondo – This lady is the sister of Lieutenant Goro Gondo, who got Godzilla’d to death back in Return of Godzilla. Naturally, she hates Big Green, and she wants his scaly ass six feet under… Or, I guess, six miles under?
Other people– who cares?

When our rag tag team of G-Force bozos hits the beach on Birth Island, they encounter it’s two full time residents. They are:

Little Godzilla– “Baby” has grown up a little, which oddly enough has made him look drastically more infantile. Whatever, it’s an improvement, when he first appeared in Godzilla Vs Mechagodzilla II, he looked both stupid, and hideous. This redesign has him looking a little bit more like the baby from the Dinosaurs sitcom, but also a little more like Minilla, which I think is a plus, somehow. That being said, he still looks cartoonish, and not very believable. Really, Toho did a better job pulling off Minillia way back in Son Of Godzilla, and in general the special effects in Godzilla Vs Spacegodzilla feel shabby as shit.

Major Yuki– This character is the real star of Godzilla Vs Spacegodzilla in my mind. Yuki is a grizzled, angry old bad ass/maverick who has been camped out on Birth Island with the intent of murdering Godzilla single handedly, because Godzilla killed his best friend, the previously mentioned Lieutenant Gondo. Damn, Gondo was apparently just the wrong dude for Godzilla to kill, I guess.

Anyway, the failure of Project T (Yeah, it fails) really just serves to bring this group of people closer together, and they form our core characters throughout the rest of the movie.

Actually, it’s maybe worth mentioning that when our team gets to Birth Island, there are also these giant, moving, jagged crystal protrusions that shoot green lightning into the sky in the middle of the island, but none of our characters really seem to think they’re anything special. I would have been alarmed, but I guess what do I know? Except that I was right, these would have been worth investigating, because pretty soon Spacegodzilla turns up and this formation is apparently his space dragon landing pad. Birth Island really isn’t big enough to support two skyscraper sized battle-monsters, so pretty much immediately Godzilla comes face to face with Spacegodzilla, and he does not fare well in the confrontation- it ends with Spacegodzilla depositing Little Godzilla inside one of his weird, crystal chambers, which seems like a bad thing since Godzilla definitely did not want him to do that. These two are now enemies.

So, just what in the fuck is Spacegodzilla? Well, I’ll tell you; he is, theoretically, some sort of weird, galactic anomaly formed from wayward Godzilla DNA carried into space via Mothra or Biolante (Even though Biolante never happened at this point, as it was undone in the events depicted in the utterly stupid Godzilla Vs King Ghidorah) which mixed with like, space gasses, or crystals, or slime, or something. Some kind of space stuff. So, he’s genetically similar to Godzilla, but spacier. This is bad for our decidedly less-spacey Earth Godzilla, who ends up slugging it out with Spacegodzilla again on mainland Japan. Godzilla may not have stood a chance against his interplanetary sibling, but luckily control of Mogera had at this point been handed over to Shinjo, Sato and Yuki, and the three manage to work with Godzilla to kick the shit out of Spacegodzilla until he freaking dies. Awesome, actually. I can’t believe how cool Moguera ends up being in this movie, and it even gets to dig some tunnels, which is useful to our team, believe it or not.

So, what’s good, and what’s bad? This movie has a healthy portion of both, so we need to sift through it before he iron out an assessment.

THE GOOD:

Moguera! More accuratley, Shinjo, Sato, and Yuki, the three soliders tasked with the job of piloting Moguera in his attack on Spacegodzilla. When Mechagodzilla frumped on out to throw-down on Big G in Godzilla Vs Mechagodzilla II, it had several pilots, and we only really knew and gave a shit about one of them. Hell, even he wasn’t that likable, to be honest. This time around, we keep our crew small, and we’ve already spent a bit of time getting to know each of them before they suit up and hop behind the wheel, so in this way the fate of Moguera feels like something we’re much more invested in. And Moguera doesn’t come out unscathed, this confrontation feels desperate and dirty in a way that I haven’t seen done this effectively since Destroy All Monsters, and we actually care about the outcome.

Also remarkable is how much better Miki is in this film than she has ever been before. She plays into the plot in a way that doesn’t feel nearly as unnecessary or tacked on as it has in the past, plus she ends up with an emotional investment in another human character, and contributes to the outcome of events in a way that felt warranted, and valuable. So, that’s one out of six, Miki… Still a failing grade… But this is your movie.

The bad, on the other hand, mostly comes down to production value… And it’s sort of a long list. Here we go.

THE BAD:

Number one; Spacegodzilla… You suck. Spacegodzilla is both super, super over the top, and surprisingly boring. It’s like the whole “X-TREME!” thing from the tail end of the 90’s, just being “X-TREME” really isn’t enough, you also have to not suck ass. That’s the lesson of Spacegodzilla, who feels neither original, nor well developed enough to hold our interest. The one hope you have of giving a shit is if you somehow have a weird, psychological malfunction that makes you just fucking gaga for Space Crystals, because that’s one thing Spacegodzilla does do, he brings the Space Crystals like no one else. Beyond that, this is a snooze fest- population: Spacegodzilla. You’re garbage,

Secondly, the effects…. Holy shit, they’re terrible. This movie feels cheapier, shoddier, and more like an episode of Power Rangers than any Godzilla movie ever before or since. This really is the relative low water mark for special effects in a Godzilla movie. Firstly, the composite shots- wow. Maybe the technology just wasn’t there in the 90’s, but these stand out as being fails unworthy of the franchise, without question. Next, all of the outer space sequences in this film are unforgivably hokey and dated. Spacegodzilla’s assault on the Nasa spacestation, and Moguera’s subsequent outer space battle with Spacegodzilla are both embarrassing and look like they belong in the non-theater sequences of Mystery Science Theater 3000– the black sheet background with dangling planets and monsters on strings just can’t be pardoned. This is an example of an effect that has been obsolete since the 70’s, and I can’t wrap my mind around the fact that we see them here in a film from the 90’s. It’s just pitiful how badly these sequences were done, given the quality we expect from Toho at this point.

And it’s far from isolated just to those sequences, all of Godzilla Vs Spacegodzilla is just sorta shitty looking all over. This film is so much closer to a 1960’s B-movie than any ACTUAL Toho 1960’s B-movie ever was, and it doesn’t feel like this was done deliberately at all, there is an element of crappiness that just permeates this film’s production value completely and cheapens it beyond redemption, which is a total shame, because Godzilla deserves better.

That being said, there is one arena where this film shines, and that is in it’s tail puppetry. Godzilla’s tail is like, freaking miles long, and it wiggles about like a live trout, stranded on a rock. Toho did not let the quality of their tail puppetry droop with the rest of the production value, and it has to be acknowledged, they are the absolute unrivaled masters of tail puppetry on this planet. All hail the true Tail Puppetmasters.

So, GvSG sucks in all the areas you’d expect it to excel, but somehow manages to kind of break even in the least predictable way; by giving us human characters we like and care about, including one who has been around a while now without much to show for it before this film (that would be Miki, of course.) Additionally, Moguera, who sucked like crazy in The Mysterians, is kinda cool in this, so Godzilla Vs Spacegodzilla is a real curveball. In the end, it’s still one more nail in the coffin for the underperforming Heisei series, which honestly, I wanted to enjoy a lot more than I do.

C-

Godzilla VS Mechagodzilla II!!!!

Posted on March 5, 2015 by Kristoph Johannes

Godzilla VS Mechagodzilla II ~ 1993, Takao Okawara – Japan

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Slumping in a mere 19 years after the original Godzilla Vs Mechagodzilla, to which this film is actually not a sequel, Godzilla Vs Mechagodzilla II is, more than anything else, a sad, sobering declaration to Kaiju fans everywhere that the Heisei series actually just isn’t going to recaprture that old Showa magic after all. At least, not on a regular basis. The best thing Godzilla Vs Mechagodzilla II has going for it is that it features popular characters, like Rodan and Mechagodzilla, but they aren’t necessarily handled that well by the film.

THE PLOT- Kazuma is just a good old fashioned guy who loves Pteredactyals and insubordination. He joins on with the United Nations new Anti-Godzilla task force, and imediatley disobeys pretty much every order he is ever given. As a result, he’s promoted about 50% of the time.

This new International Anti-Monster Defense League has a cool weapon they’re super proud of; Mechagodzilla, which in this continuity has been built out of pieces from the now apparently dead Mecha-Ghidorah, whom I hope you don’t remember from Godzilla Vs King Ghidorah, which was for sure the dumbest time travel movie I’ve ever seen. Anyway, after ripping the useful pieces off of Ghidorah’s worthless corpse and clumping them together, our guys were able to reverse engineer themselves a big, Godzilla shaped killing machine, and they aparently had enough left over to also build the Garuda, a little Snowspeeder type craft, to assist in monster blasting. The Garuda can also Voltron onto Mechagodzillas back, adding to it’s altready bountiful fire power. As for why it was important for this flying fortress/weapon of mass destruction be actually shaped like Godzilla, I couldn’t say.

So, while investigating a desolate island which had been ravaged by nuclear testing, a team of Japanese scientists discover a giant, still intact egg, alongside another already hatched egg, the occupant of which turns out to be Rodan, the awesome, giant, and horribly under-used pterosaur from numerous Showa films. Just when the gang is really getting freaked out by one giant monster, Godzilla shows up to beat the hell out of Rodan. “Oh, no, two?!” The team takes this opportunity to bounce, still intact egg in tow, and they return to Japan. Kazuma, himself a big pterosaur enthusiast (how is anyone a pterosaur enthusiast?) with no qualms about abandoning his post to go gawk at an egg, abandons his post to go gawk at the egg, where he meets the egg’s current steward, Asuza, a female scientist who would serve as Kazuma’s romantic interest throughout the rest of the film. (Fun fact; the romantic subplot in this movie sucks so hard.) When the egg hatches, they discover that instead of another pterosaur like Rodan, this hatchling appears to be a baby Godzillasaurus, whom they prompty name Baby. Baby also really sucks; he looks cartoonish and stupid.

Decapi

So, basically from here, it’s all about Baby. Baby sends some pshycic mindlink distress signals out to Papa G, and also Rodan, because aparently, since his egg spent some real quality nest time next to Rodan’s, Baby’s psychic mind link can also log onto Rodan’s brain/wifi network, or however that works.The two come running to the rescue, which means city stomping. Humans get pissed.

Speaking of psychic mumbo jumbo, Miki is back. I’ve really disregarded so far that she’s a reoccurring character throughout the Heisei series… And that’s because I don’t particularly like her. But, she is here.

Anyway. So, it’s Godzilla and Rodan versus Mechagodzilla and Garuda, and that’s about it. In reality, it feels a little lackluster. Most of the combat is laser based, and sometimes it’s quite extreme just how much blasting is going on.

The monsters look okay, but as with the last few Heisei films, they looks plastic, too hard and shiny, and their movements don’t look natural enough. Of all the monsters in this movie, however, Baby looks the worst, and that’s because Baby looks unforgivably bad.

For me, this one came in significantly short of what I would like to have seen. Thus far, Heisei isn’t really pulling it off.

C-

Godzilla Vs Mothra AKA Godzilla and Mothra: The Battle For Earth!

Posted on March 5, 2015 by Kristoph Johannes

Godzilla Vs Mothra AKA Godzilla and Mothra: The Battle For Earth– 1992, Takao Okawara – Japan

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So… If “MOTHra” is a MOTH… Then “BATtra” is a bat?

Nope! Battra is also a damn moth. Sorry, suckers. That would have been cool, though.

Anyway…

After the painfully convoluted Godzilla VS King Ghidorah, a time travel movie that doesn’t understand time travel, we have Godzilla VS Mothra– a much more streamlined, point A to point B story, with no time travel and no frumpy ginger androids. Hooray!

Godzilla VS Mothra is another environmental fable style Godzilla flick, and this time they really play up the spiritual aspects of Mothra that have been touched on and/or implied in past movies. In this film, Mothra’s role has been redefined as a quasi ethereal guardian monster, one of the tools the Earth uses to maintain balance. Mothra and Co. become representations of Nature, and are presented as above our subjective concepts of morality, instead serving as mechanisms for a more universal, inarguable form of natural justice. As such, even when they make the hard choices that seem difficult to we feeble humans, they are still framed as being “The good guys,” because that’s just how it has to be. Therefore, Godzilla, by default, slides into his role as “the bad guy,” and represents science, hubris, and the tragically meddlesome nature of the human race. It’s sort of funny, at this point in the franchise, Toho has really turned on science in general. It’s hard to imagine the same Futurist attitude seen in Son Of Godzilla or Destroy All Monsters belonging to the same franchise as GVM; and by this point the series appears to advocate an almost neopaganist return to nature and spiritualism, something eerily in step with the Neopaganist movement in Europe at that time. Those same sentiments exist today, so if anything Godzilla VS Mothra is more meaningful now than it ever was.

Gvm

THE PLOT- Meet Taukya Fujita- the Japanese Indianna Jones! As a rugged, “Devil May Care” tomb raider/scoundrel, Takuya’s adventurer’s spirit gives him the wherewithal to survive inhospitable jungles and dodge ancient booby traps, as well as child support payments! That’s right, Takuya has totally and completely skipped out on raising his daughter, a fact brought to our attention when he is sprung out of jail by his babymomma Masako, as well as by a sniveling, spineless yes-man called Kenji. The two represent some giant Japanese land developing corporation, and they need Takuya’s help investigating an island owned by their employers. Although Masako resents Takuya for his failures as a parent, she knows him to be a capable jungle adventurer, and she bites the bullet and puts her feelings aside for the near-term. Taykua, however, is predictably scoundrel-like in his behavior, yet he eventually agrees to help, and so the three set out to Infant Island, who fans of the Showa Godzilla films will remember as the island where Mothra lives. I think the plan was that both parents should leave for this dangerous island, so that that way if anything happened, their child would be left orphaned. It’s a “put all your eggs in one basket and then ship that basket to a dangerous island” strategy. SPEAKING OF EGGS; that’s what they discover on infant island, Mothra’s egg. It seems that a recent meteorite impact along a fault line in the ocean triggered landslides and Earthquakes which had uncovered Mothra’s egg, as well as the egg of Battra; an evil, spikier, cooler moth monster. Although Infant Island is uninhabited (or is it?), ancient cave paintings are discovered by our team, and from these they learn about Mothra and Battra, two sides of the same monster coin, destined to bring balance to the force, or the Earth, or whatever. They also encounter the two tiny women of Infant Island, Mothra staples from past Toho films.

The tiny ladies tell us a little bit more about the situation at hand. Apparently, they are called “Cosmos,” and are actually ancient creatures from space. Sounds about right. Also, the Earth is hurting and we’re mean to it or whatever. Whatever, Cosmos- Hey, you guys, I know; let’s yank this giant egg out the Earth and see if we can make money off it somehow! So, that’s what they do.

Mothra’s egg never makes it to Japan, however. That same meteorite that shook up Infant Island also woke up and pissed off Godzilla, and he’s eager to let everyone know how giant and angry he is. From here, we have a three way monster confrontation stretched out over the rest of the film. Battra shows up, and he/she/it is pretty darn cool. Initially, Mothra and Battra are at each others throats, until Godzilla intervenes and appears poised to slay Battra. Mothra saves Battra’s life, and after some weird, tender kaiju moth exchanges which we can never hope to understand and probably wouldn’t want to if we could, Battra and Mothra reconcile, accepting one another’s role as being crucial to the survival of the Earth. They then team up and kick Godzilla’s ass. This metaphor is repeated, and solidified, through the reconciliation of Takuya and Masako, who patch things up and accept that their duties as parents to their daughter supersede their own selfish ambitions. Following this metaphor through to finish, this makes the daughter a representation of the Earth, and at the end of Godzilla Versus Mothra, mankind pledges to be less of a shit head in our role as stewards of our planet. I’m sure that lasted like, a week, then we steam rolled Tibet to make way for a parking structure.

So, the central metaphor for Godzilla VS Mothra is fairly well pronounced, and the composition is solid. Beyond this, we have a mixed bag of ups and downs, but over all the film is pretty good. I think I’m going to list this.

THE GOOD

Battra is a cool, interesting new character. He might seem more original than he actually is, given that he’s just an evil Mothra doppelgänger, but he still feels like an expansion of the Mothra universe, and not just a retred.
Our human characters are enjoyable, especially Takuya.
The more spiritual/cosmic angle on Mothra feels appropriate, and it solidifies Mothra as being distinct and unique next to her kaiju colleagues.
This is the first time Mothra looked like she could actually put up a decent fight against Godzilla.

THE BAD

The monsters don’t really look very good. Godzilla’s once rubbery hyde now looks too shiny and plastic, as do the other monsters. They look more like something your kid would play on in a McDonald’s Playplace, and their motions look jerky and robotic.
The movie could stand to have a little more monster action.

Over all, a pretty good entry for the Heisei series.

B+

Godzilla VS King Ghidorah!!!

Posted on March 5, 2015 by Kristoph Johannes

Godzilla VS King Ghidorah ~ 1991, Kazuki Ohmori – Japan

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Dammit, Toho. This one may take a little while.

So, right off the bat, let’s try to soften the blow with some good news; Godzilla VS King Ghidorah looks great. The monster suits, Godzilla especially, are lookin’ top tier. Also, there is some excellent monster photography, including a few Godzilla shots which are frame worthy. Now. Time to drop the hammer.

Godzilla VS King Ghidorah is stupid. REALLY, REALLY, REALLY stupid. The plot starts off passable, albeit teeth gnashingly recycled, and then degenerates into utter illogical garbage. Beyond being super convoluted, the real death blow to Godzilla VS King Ghidorah’s integrity is that it centers around time travel, but was written by someone with a staggeringly poor understanding of what time travel actually was. Someone who, had they watched Back To The Future, would not in a million years ever be able to figure out what the fuck was going on. Let’s hop down a line for emphasis here:

THIS IS THE WORST TIME TRAVEL MOVIE I HAVE EVER SEEN.

We’ll get to why in a little bit, but first, let’s delve into the terrible, terrible plot.

THE TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE PLOT- Japan; circa 1991- Godzilla hasn’t been seen for a while. That’s always a bad sign, if he isn’t already stomping you to death, it’s because he’s working out so he can stomp you extra hard tomorrow. Japan, of course, is stressed out about this. Suddenly, wow, would ya look at that, it’s a UFO! I sure hope this isn’t like every other time we’ve had UFOs show up, where it starts out with them being nice and saying they’ve come to help us, but then later we learn it was all a ruse and in fact they have some giant monster related scheme to kill us all. Oh, thank goodness, the people inside the UFO are really nice and say they’ve come to help us. I bet this isn’t going to be like the two hundred and thirty eight previous examples of this happening in a Godzilla movie (It’s exactly like all those other times. Rehash time, everybody).

So, the people in the UFO are (get ready for this) NOT aliens, they’re apparently humans from the distant future! They’ve brought one Japanese girl, the rest of them are all frump faced, red haired white people with giant foreheads/receding hairlines and zero screen charisma whatsoever. Japan just RAIDED the bottom of the Hollywood barrel to recruit as many Caucasians as possible, and you’re going to feel all the money they saved via the power of horrible acting. But I digress; All these future folks tell us that in the future, ain’t no Japan no mo’, on account of Godzilla stomping the shit out of it so many times. So, they’ve come to save it. How? Why, by going back in time again! They just stopped off to pick up a few people. Who are they picking up and why? Well….

THE WHO
1. Kenichiro– A writer of non-fiction books about strange phenomena. At the time of this film he has just uncovered information regarding the origin of Godzilla and is in the process of writing a book about it. The people from the future have his book, and they know 100% of the information he could tell them already. FACT: There is absolutely no reason for them to need to stop and pick him up, and he contributes nothing to their mission. He is brought along for absolutely no practical reason whatsoever, and it benefits the aliens in absolutely no way. He’s the main character.
2. Miki– An employee of some Japanese Paranormal society. Her contributions to this mission also add up to an intense lack of anything whatsoever. She also does nothing. There was no reason for her to come.
3. Professor Mazaki– A dinosaur expert. Guess what? He does nothing for this mission, either.

THE WHY
1. No reason at all.

Here’s the mission: Apparently Godzilla was not always the towering, unkillable champion of city smashing and monster throw-downs that we now know him to be. No, he started his life as a fairly ordinary dinosaur which had somehow managed to survive extinction and used to live on an island in the South Pacific. Why, pre-radiation Godzilla even fought for the Japanese in WWII! It wasn’t until later on that atomic testing had exposed Dino Godzilla to fallout, thereby transforming him into a damn giant monster. The future people’s plan to save Japan involves traveling back in time to that island right smack dab in the middle of WWII (Good news; more bad lines and horrible acting from white people in abundance here) and remove the dino from the island before his radiation exposure. Accompanying our 90’s era Japanese people are:

Some Japanese girl from the future named Emmie– The one future dweller we ever see who isn’t a balding, frump faced ginger.
M-11– an android, the ultimate balding, frump faced ginger, and the single worst character in anything, ever. I hate him.
Dorats – three suspiciously Ghidorah-like, biologically crafted super pets from the future. Why are we bringing those? Uuuuhhhhhh…..

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Those are the damn Dorats.

So, when they find Godzillasaurus, he’s basically dying on a beach. He’s mortally wounded. They could just kill his ass, but that’d be a dick move, so instead they teleport him to the bottom of the Bering Sea, which sounds like it would also kill him, but as this movie teaches us, there is no better, or more safe, place for a wounded person to just lay for hundreds of years without food or oxygen than the bottom of the ocean, it’s like hitting the pause button, you can stay there Indefinitely and just relax. So, they do this. Success! Next they return home, only to find that, oh hell, now instead of Godzilla, the f’ing Dorats have been mutated into Ghidorah, and now we got him rippin’ our shit up. Even worse, evidently this was the future people’s plan all along, they wanted to remove Godzilla from the equation so that Ghidorah could destroy Japan, not save it.

So, for a little bit, that’s a big issue, until the Japanese conclude that their only option is to take a nuclear submarine down into the Bering Sea to atomic blast that somehow not dead dinosaur who has been laying down there mortally wounded on the ocean floor for fifty years and create a brand new Godzilla, which could fight Ghidorah for them. They head down there in their submarine, but in a major act of “Well what do ya know, that’s a coincidence!” There just so happens to have already been a major nuclear incident right at that very spot in the Bering Sea years ago, so when they get there, there already is a Godzilla, fully formed and waiting. Yep. Out of the whole ocean, that’s where the spill was. Terrible, terrible writing. Just unthinkably bad.

So, Godzilla shows up, there’s a big fight, he kills Ghidorah by tearing off one of it’s heads and chucking him the ocean, and then he kills the future people. But then- oh no! We have Godzilla to worry about now! What are we gonna do? Oh, I know, let’s go into the future(?) and get Ghidorah from the bottom of the ocean, make him a cyborg, bring him back, and then kill Godzilla with our new even more dangerous, mechanized monster who we just tried to resuscitate Godzilla to defeat mere hours ago! And THAT’S WHAT THEY DO. WHAT?! This is, in effect, robbing Peter to pay Paul, only to be like “Oh, no, but how to we pay Peter? Oh, wait, I know, we’ll rob Paul!”

So, this is terminally convoluted in a way that is staggering and incredible, but that’s nothing compared to the glaring time travel issues which plague this turkey. Basically, after our heroes go back in time to stop Godzilla’s origin and remove him from history forever, making it so that he NEVER EXISTED in the first place, they return home, and everyone still knows about Godzilla.

WHAT!?!??!?!

Yeah. People remember something that never existed. Remember how Kenichiro was writing a book on Godzilla before he went back and stopped Godzilla from ever having existed? Well, now when he returns home after his mission, in a world where Godzilla never existed, he has a voice-mail message on his answering machine about the Godzilla book he’s working on. When Godzilla DOES appear, people understand him to be “Even bigger than he was before.” WHEN before?! There isn’t supposed to have been a before anymore, you stupid assholes! How did this movie happen?!?! This is a world where THIS conversation could have taken place:

“Hey, man, you remember that horrible monster that used to kill everybody, but then we went back in time to stop him from being born so now he never existed and none of us should have ever heard of him?”
“Oh, you mean Godzilla?”
“Yeah!”
“Oh, yeah, man, I hate Godzilla. He killed my father!”
“Really!”
“Yeah!”
“Well… Is your father alive now, then?”
“No, man, Godzilla killed him.”
“Oh, wow. I bet you’re sure glad Godzilla never existed now, then, huh?”
“Yeah, I just wish he hadn’t ever existed ever before he killed my dad.”

Another thing about time travel, these future assholes control a time machine, so they should be able to go back in time again since they screwed up the first time and didn’t actually stop Godzilla from being born. But they don’t. They conclude that the second (Second, as in, in reference to the first time, which now never happened?) birth of Godzilla was “Unavoidable.” Really? What about if you went back in time to that beach and blew that damn dinosaur’s head off of his body and then threw his fucking corpse into the sun? He was already mortally wounded when you got there, if you just killed him, then: poof, no Godzilla! No? Totally unavoidable, huh?

Apparently, in GVKG anything similar to a dinosaur is essentially unkillable, which makes it weird to think about how they’re all extinct now.

Also, when Emmie goes into the future to dredge up a decapitated (one third decapitated? He’s got three heads, minus one, so how does that work?) Ghidorah who has literally been laying motionless on the bottom of the ocean for 200 years, missing body parts, but still somehow “not dead,” , she has traveled to a world where Japan was permanently destroyed by Godzilla in the 1990’s, there is no Japan, and no Japanese culture. She travels to retrieve Ghidorah in a small submarine co-piloted by a white man who is somewhat reluctant to help her, given that her goal is to save a long extinct culture which he deems to be entirely insignificant. As he does this, while talking to a Japanese girl, he is speaking to her IN JAPANESE. So…. Yeah…. Makes no sense.

Let’s move on. Let’s move on, in fact, to M11.

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M11 sucks so, so hard. He’s an android from the future, brought back to carry out the dastardly machinations of our villainous dickhead time travel guys. He has abilities far exceeding the capabilities of a normal human, including enhanced durability, super strength, and a form of travel best called the “Andro-Douche-Glide.” He’s also, in a movie where giant lizard monsters travel through time, the least realistic thing in the entire film. Why? Because WHY would ANYONE, while building an android, chose to build one as stupid looking as this chud? M11 is a frump faced ginger doofus with an average build, receding hairline and less screen-charisma than his co-stars who are actually, literally made out of rubber. It’s clear that Toho really scraped up the worst out-of-work actors Hollywood could spare for their white people in this movie, but M11 is their worst. He sucks so, so bad. He’s also nothing more than an excuse for Toho to rip off The Terminator like crazy, which is embarrassing and the furthest thing from cool.

Maybe the worst thing about Godzilla VS King Ghidorah is that they strayed so far from the source material that they’ve actually managed to lose the thesis statement, this movie doesn’t even seem to possess an awareness that nuclear warfare is a bad thing at all. At a few points throughout the film they almost seem to bemoan the lack of readily available nuclear weapons, and using these weapons weapons is treated as a possible solution to problems more than once throughout the film. That’s a pretty huge jump from the chilling tale of an atomic, city crushing bogeyman that we all loved back in ’54.

On second thought, though, that’s not the worst thing about the movie.

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Fuck you, M11.

NOTE: Now, while we’re wrapping up, I need to address something. As I have come to understand it, popular G-Fan consensus is that the time travel in this movie DOES make sense, in that the dinosaur they moved into the ocean was actually not the 1954 Godzilla at all, but in fact, the Heisei Godzilla, the creation of which they inadvertently caused themselves, thereby meaning that this film erases nothing, and that this is why everyone still knows about Godzilla when our time traveling nimrods return from their island hopping WWII adventure. Well, that’s a fun little theory, but I’m forced to disregard it, because it’s not expressed in this film at any point, meaning that that is fan speculation, and I don’t review speculation which does not exist in the actual film. Furthermore, that solution, while it does tidy up some loose ends, isn’t less stupid. That would just mean that everyone in the entire movie is a moron, and that’s why no one ever realizes that this time travel was ineffective, and this is never pointed out. No matter how hard we try to contort our perceptions of this film to desperately make it make sense, it doesn’t, not on the screen. Godzilla Vs King Ghidorah is horrible, it’s really, really stupid, it doesn’t make sense, and there is nothing any of us can do about that, no matter how much we wish it weren’t the case. Refusal to accept that is essentially a more mild form of the same phenomena that compels mentally ill people to keep the corpses of loved ones about the house in hopes of creating the illusion that they never died. This movie sucks ass. Let’s not live in denial. Move on.

Godzilla VS Biollante

Posted on March 5, 2015 by Kristoph Johannes

Godzilla VS Biollante ~ 1989, Kazuki Ohmori – Japan

Ah, 1989…. The year the Berlin Wall fell. The year Nintendo released the first model of it’s popular Gameboy system, and the year when Godzilla would face off against a gigantic plant monster, cloned from a fusion of his own cells, plant DNA, and the mysteriously captured soul of a dead Japanese woman. Ah, memories! Plus, Batman came out that year!

Yes, over thirty years had passed since Godzilla’s debut in 1954, and Big Green was now going strong in a rebooted franchise, called the ‘Heisei series” by film fans and the terminally nerdy. Godzilla VS Biolante is a direct sequel to Return of Godzilla/Godzilla 1985, and it’s pretty darn strong. Also, my BluRay informed me that this film was rated PG for “Traditional Godzilla violence,” so that’s a major victory, I feel.

THE PLOT~ Following Godzilla’s attack on Tokyo in Return of Godzilla, numerous little chunks of ‘Zilla flesh which had been blasted off of his leathery hide are found around the now desolated city. These chunks become highly prized because of their applications in science, and terrorism, and thus multiple nations and private entities enter into small scale violent conflicts to obtain them. As is always the case, one particular chunk of Godzilla cells finds it’s way into the hands of a weasely man in fingerless gloves, who returns them to his employer in the fictional Middle Eastern nation of Saradia. Saradia has ecological plans for the Godzilla cells, and hands them over to their go-to science man, the Japanese scientist Dr. Shiragami. However, before any sort of crazy biological nightmare can be crafted, the Saradian Institute of Technology is straight up bombed, Shirigami’s lab is destroyed, and his daughter Erika is killed. No big deal, though, cuz somehow he splices her DNA with some flowers. “That outta take care of it.”

So, fast forward a few years, Shirigami is living in Japan again with his flowers, which he believes have his daughters soul in them. Miki, a psychic from Japan’s “Mental Science Exploitation Center” (good name guys) is invited out to pow-wow with Shirigami’s garden, because she apparently can talk to plants really good. Whatever. Long story short, scientists uncover a new application for the Godzilla cells; theoretically, they can be used to genetically engineer a new form of bacteria which like to gobble up radiation, and that could help neutralize the threat of atomic warfare, as well as kill Godzilla himself, if he ever crawls out of that volcano you chucked him in back in the last movie. Again, numerous government and private entities enter into a deadly game of espionage and terrorism to obtain the known Godzilla cell samples, and eventually some find their way into Shirigami’s hands yet again. “I’m totally adding these to my flower/daughter,” he thinks. And he does. Oh my goodness, what do you know, giant Godzilla/plant monster is created. Dr. Shiragami, you have outdone yourself this time. Your efforts to save your daughter have transformed her tortured soul into a towering, hideous insult to God that must be killed. I expect you to toss that “World’s #1 Dad” mug right in the damn garbage, you twisted son of a bitch.

The monster, called Biolante, mostly just hangs out in a lake until Godzilla comes and kicks it’s ass, causing it to turn into glowing spores and fly into space (For real, this is what happens.) Then, it’s up to Japan to defeat Godzilla, which they work really hard to do, but can’t seem to accomplish. Finally, Biolante Spore-Warps back down from space, now in an improved, less plant/more monster type shape, and beats on Godzilla real hard until he just can’t take it anymore, and then he hops back into the ocean.

In case watching giant, awesome monsters scrabbling to kill each other isn’t the reason you chose to watch a Godzilla movie, Toho has your back, and this battle is followed up by what we all have really been waiting for, two adult men in expensive suits fighting clumsily in the mud. Also, at the very end we see Biolante has transformed into a giant rose and is floating around in outer space. Whatever, that’s stupid as hell, but the movie is still pretty cool, and at least there aren’t any aliens in it.

It really is pretty good. The miniature sets are sub-par, but the monster effects are great. Biolante is an excellent monster, the design is very well done, reminding one of The Deadly Spawn more than a little, and the idea behind the creature makes her the most original monster Godzilla has faced since Hedorah, easily. In fact, Biolante opens up the door for the franchise to explore the moral implications of genetic tampering, which is an issue we couldn’t have adequately addressed in the Showa era, yet the theme seems to be very “at home” within the Godzilla metaphor. After all, he’s a damn mutated dinosaur, so in a way, the issue of biological experimentation has kinda piggy-backed it’s way through the franchise, waiting for science to catch up, so we could really get into the nitty gritty. It’s pretty great.

Also, the monster dental work in this movie is first rate. Those teeth look gross, and shiny, and also kinda real. Good job, monster-tooth technician, whoever you are.

B+

Return of Godzilla/Godzilla 1985!

Posted on March 5, 2015 by Kristoph Johannes

Return of Godzilla/Godzilla 1985 ~ 1984, Koji Hashimoto (Japan)/1985 R.J. Kizer (USA)

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After a nine year break, Toho returns with a full on reboot of the Godzilla franchise that ignores a whopping twenty years worth of movie continuity, which isn’t a problem, because ignoring continuity is something Toho has always been excellent at anyway. This time around, we acknowledge only 1954’s Gojira as cannon, and begin with a brand new storyline which would later become known as the Heisei series. Because we’ve taken thirty or so movies and completely thrown them in the trash, we’ve erased Godzilla’s transformation into the grumbling, heroic Guardian monster he had grown into in his later films, and so the monster we see now is again painted more as a horrible, planet-wide menace that must be destroyed. This movie is super, super grim, and when you look at our last dozen outings with Big G, this couldn’t be a more different experience. At the same time, however, because this is still an accurate continuation of the original Godzilla concept, and because previous films have also proven that there is enough room within the Godzilla format for more than one idea, this dramatic shift in tone does not make Return of Godzilla feel like an illegitimate sequel. It still works just fine.

THE PLOT~ Thirty years after the original Godzilla monster attacked Japan and was subsequently destroyed, a second, identical monster surfaces in the Pacific Ocean and starts smashing boasts and killing people. Japan becomes aware of the situation almost immediately, but chooses to suppress this information for fear of causing unnecessary panic amongst the already tense Global Political Stage. Soon, however, they have no choice, as Godzilla strikes down a Soviet Nuclear Submarine and causes a heated international incident. Assuming that only the United States could have been behind the attack on their submarine, the Soviet Union threatens to escalate this situation to full scale nuclear warfare, and Japan is forced to announce the existence of Godzilla as a means of diffusing the situation. This only brings Japan’s government new pressures from both the Americans and the Russians in regards to how to handle this big green bastard and his boat smashin’ ways, and everybody gets super stressed out. The rest of the picture balances Japan’s war with Godzilla and their deep seeded abhorrence of Nuclear weapons with cold war tensions and international bickering, making this film an effective means of addressing where the Nuclear Discussion had moved to in the mid 1980’s. That feels pretty appropriate, given Godzilla’s atomic bomb history, but we also see a lot of Godzilla thrashing about and being shot at, so don’t worry about spending too much time watching old dudes in suits yell at each other.

In terms of our human characters, we have several, but holy shit, who cares? They’re all fine, I guess, but we don’t really care about them all that much. Be honest, we almost never do.

I think Toho kind of assumed that since the later Godzilla films had become so popular with a younger audience, that these kids had now grown up, and were ready for a Godzilla film more their speed, and that’s fair enough. What Return/1985 does best is that it stays true to the concept behind the original Gojira film, while at the same time making it current to the early 80’s, and that’s cool. It’s all about nuclear war, how devastating it can be, what it means for humanity to now possesses this power, and above all, how we can work to avoid using nuclear weapons ever again. As I said before, I think this is a logical place for this franchise to go, and I think they’ve done it pretty well. The tense atmosphere of the Cold War is certainly captured effectively, and the seriousness with which nuclear warfare, and even Godzilla himself, are handled gives the movie a much less schlocky feel. I think it’s entertaining enough, even without another monster for Godzilla to wail on, but if I’m wrong on that, audiences won’t have long to wait for a return to the Monsters V. Monster format, cuz Godzilla Vs. Biolante is just around the corner.

GODZILLA 1985

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Like Gojira in 1954, Return of Godzilla was also re-edited for American audiences to include footage of white people, because no one knows what would happen if Americans had to watch a movie without white people in it, and for sure, nobody wants to find out. In the case of the original film, the American version became known as Godzilla: King of the Monsters, and in the case of Return of Godzilla, the American version is called Godzilla 1985. In both cases, the special Caucasian-ified American version features celebrated actor Raymond Burr as a journalist named Steve Martin, but to what degree this new footage is imposed on the original, and what effect that has on the film as a whole, could not be more different in Godzilla 1985 than it was in King of the Monsters. We do lose some of the nuclear paranoia, but we still fair MUCH better this time around.

While still a classic film, Godzilla: King of the Monsters was clearly inferior to it’s Japanese sibling, which already had excellent characters and compelling drama BEFORE we crammed in a bunch of white folks. In that case, the addition of Raymond Burr’s character only distanced the audience from the real story, and that softened the film’s impact a great deal. With Godzilla 1985, though, I don’t think this is the case at all. This time around we still spend ample time in Japan with our original characters, and their stories and relationships are not so badly cheated in the same way. Additionally, Raymond Burr adds a special connection to the first film, even if he wasn’t in Gojira we know he was in King of the Monsters, and his character is very well written and acted this time around. The best thing this Westernized version does, however, is that it expands Godzilla’s presence to a global level much better than the Japanese one does. In this version, the Americans learn about Godzilla much sooner, and we come to learn that they are every bit as stressed out about it as the Japanese are, which really elevates the tension. I may be committing some weird form of Godzilla treason here, but I actually like the American version better for exactly these reasons. And Burr is kicking out the Jams, too.

Regardless of which version you see, however, this is a nice entry in the series, and a great way to jumpstart a new slew of giant, monster clobbering adventures. Many of the effects have not held up well for their age, but they shouldn’t slow you down too much, it’s still plenty enjoyable for the seasoned Toho fan.

B-

Terror of Mechagodzilla!!!

Posted on March 5, 2015 by Kristoph Johannes

Terror of Mechagodzilla ~ 1975, Ishiro Honda – Japan

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After twenty-one years and fifteen movies, the original Godzilla franchise comes to an end with the solid, yet sadly anti-climactic Terror of Mechagodzilla. This is also the first Godzilla film Ishiro Honda has directed since 1969’s Godzilla’s Revenge, and it’s good to see him back for the finale. Honda pulls out all the stops this time around, embracing more dynamic quick cuts and dramatic camera angles, as well as some hip 70’s split screen techniques, all more typical of fellow Godzilla director Jun Fukuda’s work than of his own. It’s almost like he wanted one more opportunity to prove that he could beat these youngsters at their own game, and it does certainly level the playing field a bit. While Honda’s work is invaluable to the kaiju lexicon, his composition was always governed by more classic sensibilities. With Terror of Mechagodzilla we’ve got that masterful Honda style, but with a little of Fukuda’s zazz thrown in. That’s a strong mix, yo.

The downside: It’s damn aliens again.

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THE PLOT~ After the destruction of Godzilla’s robot doppelgänger in Godzilla Vs Mechagodzilla, Japanese scientists travel to the supposed undersea wreckage site, in hopes of retrieving the pieces of said robot so that they can use them to do terrible, terrible things (I’m sure), but to their surprise, they instead find Titanosaurus, a huge, aquatic dinosaur, right where Mechagodzilla should be. Oh hell! Titanosaurus’ existence was theorized years ago by a prominent scientist named Dr. Shinji Mafune (played by franchise favorite Akihiko Hirata!), to which the scientific community responded “A dinosaur?! What are you, crazy? Get this guy out of here!” I don’t really understand anyone’s reaction to Titanosaurus in this movie, even the present day scientists act like the discovery of a living dinosaur is a huge deal, when Japan is decimated by warring dinosaurs like, twice a week at this point. Remember, guys? You see dinosaurs every day? You all probably know someone who has been killed by a dinosaur at this point? Why is one more dinosaur so damn mind blowing? Whatever, you guys. Anyway. We Earthlings would soon regret our treatment of Mafune, because after years in isolation and disgrace, this hombre has gone coo coo for cocoa puffs, big time. It’s so bad that he’s actually betrayed mankind and formed a partnership with dastardly space aliens, here to conquer the Earth and wipe out human civilization, so we really should have been nicer to him about his freaking dinosaur.

These aliens need Mafune, because his intellect is so substantial that even a race of beings who have mastered space travel think he’s pretty damn smart. Logically, however, they have to know that they can trust him, so as a means of further guaranteeing Mafune’s loyalty to their evil cause, these aliens use their far-out space-technology to revive his daughter Katsura after she is killed in a lab accident. Granted, she’s a damn cyborg now, but Mafune is good with this. He and the aliens then hatch a two-fold invasion plan; one; Mafune’s state of the art “animal controlling device” is rigged up and used to manipulate Titanosaurus into smashin’ shit and killin’ folks. Two; using technology based on Mafune’s designs, Mechagodzilla is repaired and deployed for a similar purpose. Without Mafune’s knowledge, however, the aliens bind Mafine’s robo-daughter to Mechagodzilla, meaning that if one of them dies, so does the other, just in case the good doctor should decide to flip flop back over to Team Earthling. Looks like Mafune’s really in it for the long haul now.

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Meanwhile, Interpol, aided by a marine biologist called Akira Ichinose, have been sniffin’ around Titanosaurus, as well as the missing Mechagodzilla pieces, and soon the two sides meet in a dance of espionage, gunfire, and shiny, spaceman costumes with stupid helmets. Ichinose develops romantic feelings for Katsura Mafune, unaware that she is 1; In league with would be Earth conquerors from space and 2; A damn cyborg. My favorite line in the movie comes toward the end, when Ichinose discovers the truth about Katusra, and tells her “Even if you are a cyborg, I love you.” We shouldn’t be surprised, this is a culture where grown men have developed committed, romantic relationships with body pillows. A cyborg is like a body pillow in many ways.

Also, Godzilla eventually shows up. He’s not in this thing enough. That’s a major beef for me.

It’s all a mixed bag, as always. While it’s impossible to ignore the significant updates Honda has made to his screen language repertoire, he doesn’t ever employ the use of these more jazzy techniques to the degree that Fukuda does, and they actually stand out more because they’re so isolated to key sequences, like when Titanosarus rises up out of the sea. Fukuda had also pushed the envelope in how violent the monster battles were allowed to get, which included the use blood effects, and that really heightened the drama, Those effect shots are largely absent from this entry (although Mecha-G’s revolving finger-rocket punches a hole in Godzilla’s chest at one point, and that’s pretty heavy). While I don’t want to say that blood is mandatory for Godzilla movies now or ever, it did help add a sense of desperation and risk to the conflicts when it was used well in the past, and it’s hard to step backwards from that without losing some of the momentum the audience has now come to expect.

One thing that Honda does do that surprised me more than a bit; Damn android nipples! While Katsura is being fiddled with and modified by our aliens, we get a weird, uncomfortable gander at her bare chest. Now, see here, Toho, we Westerners have demonized the hell out of that whole region of the female anatomy for centuries, so toss a blanket over her or something. Get back to widespread destruction and the death of human beings, what a woman has under her clothes is a most dark and sinful thing, and we want no part of your freaking space martian peep-show.

Also problematic; the aliens themselves. They don’t even appear to be the same aliens from the prior film, which would really have helped sugarcoat the situation. These aliens come from “Black hole third planet,” and are profoundly uninteresting. Past Godzilla films have done a much better job making their aliens distinct, as well as elevating the Earth Vs Aliens conflict to make it feel more global, and more dramatic. The best example of this was probably Destroy All Monsters, but the aliens in Terror of Mechagodzilla are maybe my least favorite of all the Showa E.T. Interlopers. Truly, they are nothing special, and when you do something over and over and over again for years and years, dammit, you need to make it special somehow.

A highlight I wanted to mention; Akihiko Hirata’s performance as Dr. Mafune. Firstly, he’s been with the franchise from the beginning, so it’s cool having him back in a prominent role as this series comes to a close. He also does a good job in this role even without acknowledging his position as an original cast member, and he’s likely to stand out as especially memorable even if this is the first Godzilla film you watch. He looks like a Japanese Einstein, and his portrayal of a brilliant mind driven to madness is enjoyably manic. While most of the cast is likable, he stands above the rest in Terror of Mechagodzilla as being a real asset.

Beyond it’s glaringly scant Godzilla and monster screen time, the film is pretty solid, but not perfect. Even excluding Gojira, Honda has shot much, much better Godzilla films before this one, And Terror Of Mechagodzilla doesn’t feel like a big enough deal. Past entries in the Showa cannon were made with the understanding that they would be the final Godzilla film, so they managed to go out with a bang in a way that Terror of Mechagodzilla doesn’t. It’s no kind of finale, and it doesn’t even feel deliberately open-ended, the film just ends, as its predecessors had done, and that was that. Given that this was the last time audiences would see Big G for a while, it would have been nice to enjoy a better send off, but I suppose we aren’t often given that luxury in life.

I’m getting all philosophic here!

Godzilla Vs Mechagodzilla!

Posted on March 5, 2015 by Kristoph Johannes

Godzilla Vs Mechagodzilla ~ 1974, Jun Fukuda – Japan

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It’s 1974, and Godzilla Vs Megalon is now a year behind us. Toho, no doubt still coping with the grief of knowing they had birthed Jet Jaguar into the world, decides to get right back on the horse and gives us some of that same old same old; Godzilla Vs Mechagodzilla; yet another movie that would pit Godzilla against a monster controlled by invaders from space. Returning director Jun Fukuda, who had salvaged past alien invader Godzilla films with his Zazzy directing, piles on the Zazz like a damn Zazz-machine, but at this point we’ve seen this exact plot so many times that keeping it zazzy is now easier said than done. I mean, they pile on that zazz, but right now, what we need is a new story. Not zazz.

…It’s still pretty fun, though.

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THE PLOT~ While exploring the Japanese Island of Okinawa, archeologists uncover a centuries old mural hidden in deep underground in an ancient cave system. This mural tells of a chilling prophecy, the exact wording escapes me, but essentially it boils down to this:

“A monster is gonna show up to kill everybody, but then more monsters are gonna show up, so it’ll all be cool.”

Everybody flips out when this is discovered, even though by my count that prophecy has already come true like, a million times. Whatever. They also find some Space Titanium in the cave, and some serious science shit goes down. How wild and advanced is the science in Godzilla Vs Mechagodzilla? Why, it’s so out there that the Subtitles can’t even keep up!

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The subtitles didn’t even want to try on that word!

Soon, Godzilla pops in for his daily raid. It’s assumed immediately that Big G is the monster spoken of in the aforementioned prophecy, but something isn’t adding up. This new Godzilla sounds sorta funny, he doesn’t have the all too familiar Skreeonk style roar the Japanese have come to recognize… His spines are also shinier, and his dragon breath has a vague space-alien type quality to it… Plus, when Anguirus shows up to spend some quality dino time with his best buddy, Godzilla brutally kicks the shit out of him, which is totally out of character (Godzilla Raids Again). What the hell is going on?

Godzilla-vs-Mechagodzilla-fight Holy smokes! Another Godzilla shows up! The Japanese people’s collective mind is blown. After a short throw down between the two warring twin Godzillas, we discover the truth, the first Godzilla was a mechanized imposter, a robotic replica of Godzilla, who was coated in a false skin, not unlike Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator, and also probably in real life. Of course, this robot Godzilla, forever known as Mechagodzilla, is part of an alien plot to conquer the Earth. The aliens involved are pretty lame. They’re shape shifting gorilla people.

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So, As part of the prophecy, King Caesar, the shaggy, lethargic guardian monster of Okinawa, is awoken, and he and Godzilla team up against Mechagodzilla. King Caesar is kind of cool, he’s a bipedal, somewhat humanoid dog/lion type creature, and I’ve never been secretive about my longstanding bias towards monsters with floppy ears. King Caesar makes Jet Jaguar look like a serious mountain of shit, but we don’t actually spend too much time with him, so he isn’t given much of an opportunity to shine. Additionally, his “guardian monster” status is slightly reminiscent of an underdeveloped Mothra, so what little we do get from him isn’t really breaking new ground. King Caesar is a bit of a missed opportunity.

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Anyway, Godzilla and King Caesar put the beat down on Mechagodzilla something fierce, and eventually Earth is saved yet again. The final battle is sorta bloody by Kaiju standards, which is pretty cool. On the profoundly lame and bizarre end of the spectrum, however, Godzilla’s premeditated scheme to take down Mechagodzilla involves him absorbing electricity during a lightning storm so that he can magnetize his body and temporarily(?) possess metal based super powers like Magneto. I don’t know if you were able to actually read that without hemorrhaging, but the same thing happens in Ernest Goes to Jail, so I want you to think about that long and hard before you go to sleep tonight.

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Really, the biggest thing this movie has going for it is that it introduced Mechagodzilla, a character who would become a favorite among Godzilla movie buffs. Aside from that, it’s really sort of a lesser entry in the series. The recycled plot is, by this point a pretty major problem to contend with, and nothing else brought to the table feels fresh enough to compensate. What’s here is pretty good, but honestly, not having it be aliens would have made a world of difference at this point. Really, anything else would be better.

We have one more Showa era Godzilla film left, and then Big Green takes a long break.

C+

Godzilla Vs. Megalon!

Posted on March 5, 2015 by Kristoph Johannes

Godzilla VS Megalon ~ 1974, Jun Fukuda – Japan

godzilla-vs-megalon-japanese-poster Even the poster is lame.

The trajectory of the Godzilla franchise has never been a straight line. Sometimes these movies are real home runs… Other times Jet Jaguar shows up. Now, I don’t want to blame everything on Jet Jaguar, but 100% of the movies he shows up in suck. Anyway, moving on; one year after Godzilla VS. Gigan, we have Godzilla VS Megalon, another kinda sorta almost recycled Godzilla film, which is still much better than the full on totally definitely recycled Godzilla films we often see. This time, the aliens who use a monster to destroy us aren’t aliens, they’re humans, from the Earth’s core… So, kinda sorta new, but not really. This movie is pretty mediocre, and that’s probably being generous…

Godzilla-Vs-Megalon-Poster THAT’S a poster.

THE PLOT~ The people of Earth have begun conducting all their nuclear bomb tests underground. They think this is totally no big deal, but unbeknownst to them, all these subterranean H-Bombs are really pissing off the people of Seatopia, a lost, Atlantis style civilization, which exists beneath the Earth’s crust. (Also, Seatopia looks like a “Ancient civilization” themed Las Vegas casino, and their leader is an aging swinger in a toga.) Seatopia has had enough of this surface people bullshit, so they launch their defender, Megalon, which is basically a giant humanoid cockroach with drill hands that can spit fire bombs. “That outta take care of it,” they think.

Meanwhile, up on the surface, we have our three human characters, Goro (Apparently before growing a pony tail and two extra arms) his constantly present, loyal, male companion Hiroshi (are these dudes a couple?) and their young child Rokuro, who they probably adopted together. When we meet these three, Goro and Hiroshi have brought Rokuro to a nearby lake for a nice afternoon of recreation, and Rokuro is out on the lake piloting what can only be called some sort of Aquatic Goof-Mobile.

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Just then, a fissure opens in the lake bed, creating a whirling maelstrom of danger and death. Perhaps this was caused by Seatopia, the subterranean bomb tests, or perhaps the lake was just tired of something so stupid looking as Rokuro’s Goof-Mobile splashing about on it’s surface and chose to commit suicide. Regardless, just when it looks like his goose is cooked, Rokuro is saved by Goro and Hiroshi, who employ the use of a Liferope Gun that they had with them. LIFEROPE GUN!? What kind of technology is Japan holding out on us? They gave us Playstation, but not the Liferope Gun? Bizarre. Not only that, but check it out, Hiroshi and Goro have also built a humanoid robot called Jet Jaguar, presumably for sexual purposes. Jet Jaguar attracts the attention of some secret agents from Seatopia who are concerned that the robot might thwart their Megalon related plans. They must not know that Jet Jaguar is totally lame. Anyway, there are some twists, some turns, Jet Jaguar is highjacked by these spies briefly, but then escapes their control and somehow gains sentience. He then zooms off to Monster Island to ask Godzilla for help clobbering Megalon, and Godzilla happily agrees because by this point he has completely turned the corner from menace to hero. Anticipating Godzilla’s involvement, Seatopia sends for Gigan’s help, because they apparently work with whatever cosmic temp agency manages him, but they couldn’t afford Ghidorah. Jet Jaguar grows to kaiju size (he can do that, I guess), and the four players beat the shit out of each other for the rest of the movie. It’s not that awesome…

Monster role call!

GODZILLA- Just a big ol’ softy. In this one, Godzilla’s head has been redesigned, his eyes are much larger, and more frontal, which gives him a more humanoid and friendly appearance. Godzilla also observes different human customs, such as the shaking of hands, and feeling insulted when Megalon taunts him with his weird monster butt-slap dance. Things were getting a little Gamera by this point.
JET JAGUAR– A giant piece of garbage.
MEGALON– A giant bug.
GIGAN- Hey! Gigan’s back!

So, yeah… The movie has like, several car chases in it, which is new. There’s also a lot more human on human violence, some of which is kind of goofy. The whole film is much more light and silly than recent entries, and this is the movie where Godzilla does his much despised flying missile kick, a fighting move so ridiculous it was immortalized in the opening of Mystery Science Theater 3000, a program designed to mock cinematic insolence. In fact, Godzilla VS Megalon, as a whole, was riffed left, right and center by MST3K in 1991.

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GvM is a lull, an awkward misstep between the introduction of the relevant and much loved Gigan in the previous film, and the introduction of the relevant and much loved Mecha Godzilla in the sequel the following year. It’s a fumble, but it’s not super terrible. Really, GvM isn’t much of anything.

C-

Fantastic Crap Comics

by Christopher Ochs

Godzilla Vs Destroyah

Godzilla Vs Spacegodzilla

Godzilla VS Mechagodzilla II!!!!

Godzilla Vs Mothra AKA Godzilla and Mothra: The Battle For Earth!

Godzilla VS King Ghidorah!!!

Godzilla VS Biollante

Return of Godzilla/Godzilla 1985!

Terror of Mechagodzilla!!!

Godzilla Vs Mechagodzilla!

Godzilla Vs. Megalon!