Gamera The Super Monster!!!!

Posted on February 8, 2017 by Kristoph Johannes

Gamera The Super Monster~ 1980, Noriaki Yuasa, Japan

Gamera The Super Monster was released in 1980; a full five years after Terror of Mechagodzilla, the final Showa era Godzilla film Toho ever released. Let that sink in; by 1980, EVEN TOHO had given up. Godzilla, for years a big green cash cow, had stopped bringing in enough money to warrant the production of additional films. That’s a pretty clear sign that the kaiju genre needed some time off, and yet, here we are, five full years late to the party with Gamera Part Eight, and it is the single most critically underfunded Gamera outing ever.

“Spare some change?”

Gamera The Super Monster takes the now well worn Daiei tradition of recycling old footage and runs with it to an unforgivable extreme. There is almost no original monster content in the entire film, and no original monsters. It’s basically a clip show, they’ve cannibalized footage from previous Gamera adventures and cobbled together a cheapo monster montage, with some bizarre and crummy original footage sandwiched between sequences in an attempt to hold some kind of narrative together. The story they bring us concerns a little boy (surprise!) with a Gamera fixation (I”m sure the feeling is mutual) who winds up in the middle of some sort of intergalactic turf war. Unable to combat the nefarious invaders on his own, our kiddo throws in with three alien ladies who occasionally wear spandex superhero outfits, complete with capes, and together they work to foil the attempted conquest of Earth by a hostile alien race, who fly around in a damn Star Destroyer. Yep. A Star Destroyer.

The original effects are worse than terrible, and even the classic monster footage had to have felt positively prehistoric to audiences in 1980. This is, in a lot of ways, the Godzilla’s Revenge of the Gamera franchise, a film which makes no claim to even trying to satisfy an adult audience, instead playing straight to children, and compensating for it’s flimsy narrative with wall to wall monster combat, mostly snatched from pre existing footage- however, where Godzilla’s Revenge was a midseries celebration of ongoing cannon meant to give kids what they really wanted, Gamera The Super Monster is a cut and dry cash in attempt by Daiei and financiers to milk what pennies still remained in Gamera’s dying husk once and for all. Gamera The Super Monster isn’t a sequel, it’s more like a liquidation sale.

That having been said, there are some important concessions that need to be made before tossing this stinker out with yesterday’s ham; we are NOT the target audience for Gamera The Super Monster. This is, first and foremost, a children’s film, and it was a children’s film made for kids who probably couldn’t have just streamed Gamera’s entire catalog off of youtube illegally anytime they wanted. It’s possible that for the children of 1980’s Japan, this movie freaking kicked ass. Gamera The Super Monster plays like a greatest hits album for kids who don’t have easy access to these films in their own right. It’s all the monsters you love, and only the good parts. Then, holding the whole thing together, you get space ladies in capes flying around. Honestly, you could do a lot worse! I actually think in some weird way Gamera The Super Monster is a better kid’s film than Godzilla’s Revenge, it’s so much less bleak and depressing, our lead kid is nowhere near as annoying, and the non-monster sequences are anything but drab. Putting yourself in the shoes of a kid who had little to no access to home video, but who loved Gamera, you can probably see how a matinee showing of Gamera The Super Monster could rock your socks off like a mutha fucker.

So, through the eyes of the adult, we have the most lamentable flop in Gamera’s tragic career. For children, we have a shitty story (But who cares?) a spaceship right out of Star Wars, the MOST monsters ever in a Gamera film, and Japanese space ladies, complete with special powers which require choreographed arm movements to activate, like all Japanese people love. I am bound by honor to grade this film academically, but it’s worth an asterisk in the record books that this piece of garbage might be a masterpiece if you’re under 11 years old.

Gamera Vs Jiger!

Posted on December 9, 2016 by Kristoph Johannes

Gamera Vs. Jiger ~ 1970, Noriaki Yuasa, Japan

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Worry not, ravenous Kaiju philes, Japan’s second most popular gigantic reptilian monster hero is back after like, several months, with a brand new beast busting blockbuster! Yes, Gamera is back, but does he have moves like Jiger? The answer is no, no he does not- nobody does, because like all of Gamera’s foes, Jiger is nonsense incarnate. This is basically a win, though, because after studying how freaking bizarre Gamera’s rogue gallery has been up to this point, it would be truly jarring to see him on screen with anything that made sense.

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Pictured: Nonsense.

THE PLOT~ The people of Earth are throwing a World Expo (basically a mixture of the World’s Fair and Disney’s Epcot Center) in Japan to celebrate peace and unity for all of mankind. First on their list of preparations? Actively disgracing precious African cultural sites for their own amusement and giving zero fuck’s about it. Peace and unity for the win! You see, there’s this giant, ancient stone monolith embedded in the Earth somewhere in Africa called The Devil’s Whistle. This is one impressive whistle, so the world expo people are like “hey… We kinda want that. That thing is neat.” Next thing you know, they got a horrified African dignitary is in their offices, pleading with them to let the whistle stay where it is. He makes an impassioned, reasonable, case for the whistle staying put, and in actuality, he has basic human decency on his side, and Japan is in the wrong to remove the whistle, which is plain to see. Unfortunately, he’s also black, so Japan doesn’t fucking care. They take the whistle anyway, and wouldn’t you know it, that turns out to be a bad idea. You see, apparently the whistle wasn’t for decoration, it also functioned as a means of imprisoning Jiger, an ancient, weird dinosaur thing. Now that the whistle is gone, Jiger is fucking shit up, and things look bleak for humanity.

tumblr_nopo0kkkyv1qgckmbo1_500 Until Gamera shows up. I shouldn’t really have to drag you through the plot here, if you’ve seen one, you’ve kinda seen ’em all, but I’ll sum up the particulars. Apparently, Jiger is vulnerable to sound, and is also a female, so that’s fun. She uses her weird rocket horns to lay her monster eggs inside Gamera’s freaking heart, which basically puts him into a near death, unresponsive state for a large chunk of the film. In hopes of rescuing everybody’s favorite whirling turtle beast, two young boys called Hiroshi and Tommy, hijack a submarine (this feels familiar) and pilot it into the open mouth of the now catatonic Gamera on a mission to reach his heart. When Hiroshi and Tommy discover a baby Jiger living tucked away inside Gamera’s freaking guts, they damn kill it, with a Walky talky. Now THAT is awesome. I wanted walky talkies super bad when I was a kid, and I was totally unaware that they could be used to murder monsters. Walky talkies just keep getting better and better! There’s also a point at which Gamera rams telephone poles into his ear canals to block out the noise of some Anti-Jiger Noise weapons the Japanese cooked up, and I greatly enjoy that, too.

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It’s hard to say if Gamera Vs Jiger is an improvement over the big guy’s last few tumblr_nopsuxyr2n1qgckmbo1_400 adventures or not. Gamera Vs. Guiron strayed a little far from the formula and felt scaled down from earlier outings, and Gamera Vs Viras upped the ante on how much it was willing to pander to children while also filling out it’s run time with an inexcusably generous use of recycled footage. Gamera Vs. Jiger doesn’t repeat any of those mistakes, except for some mild child pandering, and it feels much closer to Gamera Vs Gyaos than we’ve seen in some time, so that’s all good. It doesn’t stack up well against the second and third Gamera films when quality is concerned, though. By this point, Gamera felt cheap and uninspired. Gamera Vs Jiger is okay if you’re happy with more of the same, but just don’t expect it to knock your socks off. I hate to say it, but Gamera’s once promising uphill trend was a long forgotten thing by this point in his franchise. He’s just phoning it in.

Worth bringing up, Gamera is well known for his bizarre and suspiciously unconditional love of children…

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…

…But Tommy and Hiroshi are looking a little old in this one. They’re in the early stages of puberty, and these poor bastards have no idea that they’re just probably just one awkward year away from Gamera suddenly giving zero shits about them. Yeah, you just stole a mini-sub and sailed it into the tusked maw of a radioactive guardian monster to save his life, but he’s “friend to all children,” not “pal to all tweens.” Pretty soon, he’s just gonna stop taking your calls. Go ask Corey Feldman, he’s been there.

C+

GAMERA VS. GUIRON!!!

Posted on November 11, 2016 by Kristoph Johannes

Gamera Vs. Guiron – 1969, Noriaka Yuasa, Japan

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By its very nature, the Gamera franchise seems to invite a comparison to the work of his most noteworthy big, green rival, Godzilla. Gamera only exists as an attempt by Daiei to siphon off some of that big lizard money in the first place, and it would be nearly impossible not to at least think of the single most important, influential, and popular giant monster franchise of all time when evaluating a competing super beast, but then, Gamera continues to mirror Godzilla periodically throughout his adventures, as well. Or perhaps they’re both just responding to other ongoing cultural phenomena. Hard to say. In any case, this is Gamera’s fifth film… released in 1969, the same year All Monsters Attack came out, which sucked like crazy. So, damn,,, I guess in terms of 1969 kaiju films, Gamera is the reigning champ. At last!

THE PLOT~ Two mischievous boys (heard that one before) steal away on a mysterious UFO, which then flies them, autopilot style, to it’s mysterious and far away planet. Gamera spots the kids on the way out, and follows them, because little boys are apparently his number one priority. I hope no kids on Earth need Gamera’s help for the next day or two, because he’s way out of his jurisdiction this time, like when Joe Don Baker went to Malta in Final Justice. (Joe Don Baker reference- I can now die happy.)

Anyway, the planet they wind up on is all tubes and nonsense, it sort of looks like what you’d get if Chucky Cheese designed an alien planet. I would, in no way, be surprised if every hour on the hour Guiron wiggled out to play a pizza themed cover version of ‘Dancin’ in the Streets’, but I digress. This Dr. Suess land of moon craters and goof tubes is basically deserted due to an ecological disaster the aliens caused, which, in turn, created a race of Gyaos monsters, who annihilated all life and who still continue to tear shit up hard. Two (TWO) alien women somehow survived the subsequent mass extinction of their species, and they now control a giant monster called Guiron, which they use to protect their dome and tube style future city from the friggin’ Gyaoses. At first they act super cool to our wayward Earth boys, but we soon learn they plan to fucking eat their brains and then conquer Earth, for more delicious brains. Yep!

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So, anyhow, Gamera shows up, him and Guiron throw down, and the day is saved. Our alien chicks are killed, our humans boys are returned to Earth, and the sun sets on yet another monster filled day in 1960’s Japan.

It’s actually a lot better than the preceding Gamera film, but it’s not going to rival Gamera Vs Barugon, or Gamera Vs Gyaos, at this point the reining Gamera champs. Like Gamera Vs Viras, this film is without question very, very youth oriented, “friend to all children” being a title Gamera eagerly accepted years before Godzilla sort of reluctantly gave up his days of menacing and killing people to follow suit with categorically kid-friendly adventures exclusively. Gamera does rip of Big Bad GZ, but there are times when this imitation looks a little more mutual than people would like to admit.

We should also talk about Guiron. I like him… But… Well, there’s just no nice way to say this, his face is a damn sword. Straight up. That’s really the first and last page of the Book of Guiron, his damn face is a sword.

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Ol’ Sword Face, I call him.

Which is kind of cool. Gamera, being a turtle, is, essentially, a shield with limbs and a head, so just as he is inherently defense oriented, Guiron is a weapon with feet, making him outwardly offensive in nature. He also can fire shurikens out of the side of his head, and remains, without question, easily the least weird monster in the entire Daiei Gamera franchise. Also, when he kills things, he will often decapitate his enemies through the power of headbanging, which is extremely metal.

It’s actually quite likely that Guiron is the single most formidable foe Gamera has faced yet. Before this, it would be, without question, Gyaos, but as I mentioned earlier, Guiron kills like, four Gyaoses everyday, that’s like, his afternoon routine. He slices of their wings, crawls up to their imobilized, shgrieking bodies, and then headbangs his sword face into them, first decapitating, and then slicing the rest of the Gyaos into rounded sections like a giant sausage. In the end, Gamera DOES make sure Guiron is super, super dead, but he’s not able to do it on his own, he requires the aid of powerful, explosive rockets to really get the job done. In fact, in this entry, Gamera isn’t much of an able combatant at all, he’s much more adept at turtle gymnastics that the art of ferocious, monster combat. Perhaps this is a symptom of his evolution towards giant, smiling, tusk faced Happy-Meal Toy and away from nightmarish terror of Japan? Seems plausible.

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Pictured: Turtle Gymnastics.

This shits goofy, no question, but Gamera has never managed to avoid being goofy, not in the Showa era, at least. If you like Gamera, you know this, and that shouldn’t slow you down. It’s also commendable (I guess) that Daiei has began to use extra terrestrials for it’s villains, just like Toho did with it’s Godzilla franchise, but has managed to come up with two different stories in order to accommodate them, a feat which Toho was never able to achieve after decades of just copying and pasting the same Alien Invasion script over and over and over.

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The Gamera franchise appears to have peaked with Gamera Vs Gyaos, and what we see with this film is a pretty shallow, straightforward, children’s science fiction movie, with a few giant monsters. These movies are fun enough, if that’s what you’re into, but our big, frumpy turtle guardian is straight up phoning it in about now.

Gamera VS. Space Monster Viras!!!!

Posted on September 8, 2016 by Kristoph Johannes

Gamera Vs Space Monster Viras (AKA Destroy All Planets) – 1968, Noriaki Yuasa

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GAMERA?! More like SCAMera!

Just when Daiei was doing so well with it’s Gamera franchise, it farts out this bellow average embarrassment, a lousy Gamera Part IV which relies heavily on recycled footage from previous Gamera films to fatten up it’s run-time. This is done so extensively that it’s really hard not to think of Gamera Vs Viras as a bit of a rip off, Which is a shame because he was just starting to win me over like only a mammoth, city demolishing turtle beast from Atlantis can. What am I supposed to do now?!

THE PLOT~ The movie opens with a super bizarre looking alien craft cruising up on Earth, looking to get in on some of that sweet, interplanetary-conquest action, but then the aliens see Gamera zooming around in space and completely freak the fuck out. Gamera kills them all, because apparently that’s his thing now, but not before the aliens manage send a distress signal back to planet dumb ass stressing the importance of Gamera awareness. Good looking out, you stupid, alien buttholes.

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Meanwhile, in Japan, we meet our main characters, Jim and Masao, two young boys who are members of the Japanese wing of the Boy Scouts… Did you even know they had friggin’ Boy Scouts in Japan? They totally do, and they seem to be way cooler than the American Boy Scouts, because they’ve got chicks, for one, and also they chill with Gamera and work to repel alien invasions, so you can take your Pinewood Derby and shove it up your ass, America. Japan does the Boyscouts right. Anyway, upon meeting our two mischievous preteens, they waste no time in getting into some seriously ridiculous hi-jinks; first, they sabotage a small submarine within ten minutes of their introduction. Next, they’re partying with Gamera less than thirty minutes into the picture, and finally, towards the end of the movie, they manage to sabotage` the alien spacecraft and save the day, which is a crucial moment in the defense of Earth. Long story short, Moonrise Kingdom has nothing on these intrepid junior outdoorsmen, they deserve hella merit badges for this shit.

But earlier in the movie, before Jim and Masao save the world, the alien conqueror people do indeed send a second spaceship to Earth after Gamera chows down on the first one. This time the galactic interlopers get right down to the task of figuring out just who this Gamera chap is, anyway, and after some investigation, they see what’s going on here; Gamera is mighty, but he does have one weakness; “his pronounced and unconditional love of children.” Naturally, they deploy Chris Hansen of Dateline NBC immediately.

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Hey, Gamera, why don’t you have a seat over there?

Also, though, they kidnap Jim and Masao, and keep them prisoner aboard their craft as a bargaining chip in case the United Nations thinks they can get away with nuking the weird series of striped orbs they dare to call a spaceship.

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Behold; a spacecraft which can share the frame with a gigantic, jet propelled turtle monster and still manage to be the most ridiculous thing visible.

Finally, just for good measure, they use their far out space Martian technology to brainwash Gamera and send him on a smashing spree. This chunk of the film is especially compromised by Daiei’s cheapskate-stock-footage recycling scheme, as we are made to trudge through a replay of the first three movies for what must be at least twenty minutes, and I would call that totally unacceptable. Some of this reused footage is BLACK AND FUCKING WHITE, because it comes from Gamera’s first movie, and that’s just embarrassing. Have you no shame, Daiei?!? What were you damn thinking!? It’s also badly distracting to see actor Kojiro Hongo, who in this movie plays a Scoutmaster to Jim and Masao, clearly visible playing different characters in this older footage, and I would say that this shameful fumble hurts the film nearly as badly as the sudden and unexplained disappearance of all color from the universe. Daiei- you suck for what you have done here.

In the end, the boy’s fuck up the surprisingly easy to sabotage spaceship and all the aliens reveal their true form- weird, pointy squid monsters, which is a lot better than the disguises they were using- human bodies with black smocks, grey chino pants, a beret, sneakers and one of those white collars they give you when you get a haircut. These aliens shop at Goodwill. Anyway, they look almost as ridiculous in their squid form, which is something like what you would get if a squid mated with a Leatherman Multi-Tool.

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The math is solid.

Regardless, these loser squid beasts from space all Voltron together into one giant stupid squid monster, and then proceed to battle and gruesomely impale poor Gamera, who somehow survives this seemingly mortal wound, and in return, murders them all. And that’s the movie.

It’s okay at best. Kinda fun, but the radically pronounced kid-centric vibe isn’t doing the MV5BMTM5NjkyNzYyMF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwOTYyMzAyMQ@@._V1_SY317_CR5,0,214,317_AL_
movie any favors, and the excessive use of stock footage alone disqualifies it from anything above a ‘C’ grade. Gamera VS. Space Monster Viras is something Daiei should have been ashamed of, especially given the gradual upward climb good ol’ Gamera had been experiencing before this dud. To be frank, I’m angry about it. He deserved better, and it’s crazy to think that the same studio that gave us Daimaijin is even capable of stooping to this shameful low.

If we wanted to defend Gamera Vs Viras, it might be worth mentioning that this could, MAYBE, be Daiei’s answer to Godzilla’s Revenge, a Toho produced movie that was also much more kid friendly, and which also made extensive use of stock footage… but let’s be honest, that feels more like a cop-out than a justification. Godzilla’s Revenge was more forthcoming about it’s previously seen footage, and since we don’t even know if those monsters are “real” within that film’s individual universe, the dreams sequences in which they are seen could all just be cobbled together memories of past Toho films the main character enjoyed. More importantly, they don’t interrupt color footage with black and white footage and then try to sell it to you as a new event, so Gamera Vs. Viras is a shame any way you slice it.

C-

Gamera Vs Gyaos!!!

Posted on August 25, 2016 by Kristoph Johannes

Gamera Vs Gyaos – 1967, Noriaki Yuasa, Japan

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Daiei continues the slow, lumbering turtle March into the realm of ever-improved sequels with Gamera’s third outing, the fun, yet two-thirds insane Gamera Vs Gyaos. At this stage in the game, Daiei had indeed succeeded in steadily improving their product and tightening the quality gap that separated their Brand X monsters from the “designer jeans” beasts of Toho’s Godzilla-Verse, but they’re also starting to out themselves as being batshit wacky in the process. I don’t really regard that as being a problem, but it’s for sure worth discussing.

THE PLOT~ Tension is high. The residents of a rural, Japanese mountain village have blocked the construction of a proposed super-highway that would lead right through the heart of the pristine forest they call home. The construction can’t continue until these people all agree to sell, so the big muckymucks back in the city tell their head foreman to really put the pressure on these guys to force a deal, but nobody is budging. We come to learn that this is because a respected elder in the village has organized this standoff deliberately, not because these people want to stay in their village, but because they all see this as an opportunity to get super rich, and they believe that the longer they hold out, the more crazy yen they stand to receive from the increasingly desperate land developers. It’s funny how sometimes life can throw you curveballs… One day, you’re leading your friends and neighbors in a crusade to get rich quick, and the next, your Grandson is riding through the sky on the back of a giant turtle, and a three hundred foot tall vampire monster is barking death rays at fighter jets in your back yard. You just never know how life is going to play out, so it’s important to keep your shit straight while you can, I guess.
Anyway, that’s what happens, a volcanic eruption (that old chestnut) opens an ancient cavern in the side of the mountain, from whence Gyaos emerges, a huge, weirdly plane shaped bat type monster who eats humans and causes crazy damage. Luckily, by this point Gamera has apparently totally reformed and is now our big, green homie, so things sort of work out for the best in the end.

The film’s moral is all about greed- as in, don’t be greedy, dude, but it also views the natural world as a cut and dry commodity and states that the deliberate burning of old growth timber is an issue only because that wood is worth money, so Gamera Vs Gyaos isn’t really going to teach you too many lessons you actually want to learn. It’s mostly just fun because it’s full of big, stupid looking monsters who really fuck each other up.

It’s pretty good, though. If you’re into these films, this one is going to give you what you want and expect from the Gamera series, and in greater quantities than the prior two films (Although I did dig Barugon.) The budget also looks stepped up again, but the single biggest change you’ll feel with Gamera Vs Gyaos is how vivid the color pallete is. This movie is very artistic and playful with the colors used, the art department appears to have been tasked with producing props and set dressing which would jazz up the film’s visuals considerably, and they absolutely have; Gamera’s old rival Godzilla wouldn’t be featured in a film which got this ambitious with color until Godzilla Vs Megalon, and even then, the colors that movie used were more basic primaries and much less inventive or stylish. Honestly, there are frames of this film that look like a fucking Wes Anderson movie, and that’s a kaiju first.

Screen Shot 2015-02-23 at 1.59.43 PM If Steve Zissou were piloting that, who would be surprised?

The topic I most feel needs to be addressed, however, is Gyaos; how weird he is, how everything about this whole series now seems very weird in retrospect, and how Daiei must be run by complete and utter madmen. Let’s sit down and talk about this.

So, it’s now painfully, glaringly obvious that Daiei fills their movies up with really, really weird monsters. I feel like I should have noticed this before. They seem to just invent new, bizarre, and totally unrelated abilities for their kaiju on a whim, and the results are really, really strange. Barugon was weird, I’m realizing. He had purple blood. He sprayed frosty gas out of a long tongue, blasted murder rainbows out of his back, and he dissolved in water… Gamera just straight up eats fire- that’s like a treat to him! Now, Gyaos pops in, and he’s plenty weird, too. Gyaos spits powerful death rays, drinks human blood, can regrow severed limbs like it’s no big thang, and sprays yellow powder out of his nipples, which extinguish flames instantly- yet he cannot rotate his head left or right, and is alergic to sunlight. Oh, yeah, and the reason he can’t turn his head is because he has two throats. Yeah, so Gyaos is a garbled Chimera of a creature worthy of Dr. Seues’ darkest nightmares, is pretty much what I’m getting at, and the same nonchalant insanity that created him rears it’s head over and over again throughout this film. At one point, the Japanese Powers-That-Be honestly think that the best plan they have for killing the Gyaos is by getting it really, really dizzy. They set up a fountain that dispenses artificial human blood on a rotating platform, crank up the juice, and prey like hell that he fucking dies somehow. It doesn’t work, of course, probably because that plan sounds like it was conceived by a nine year old, but they try, and we watch them do it. Of course, when they come up with an idea that actually does work, and it literally IS conceived by a nine year old, so I guess whatever. The point is that this movie is pretty much bonkers, and after seeing it, you start to realize just exactly how wacky this whole Gamera thing has been from day one. I now feel somehow uneasy about the time I have spent with Gamera… Like the sensation one must feel when they’ve just dropped off a hitchhiker with whom they’ve enjoyed a long chat, only to then turn on the radio and hear a news bulletin about a dangerous, escaped mental patient matching the hitchhikers description…

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I guess maybe there were a few warning signs…

Anyway… Moving on.

As I mentioned before, this movie also further establishes Gamera as a friendly guardian to all mankind, so it comes across as more kid friendly than it’s predecessors, but there’s actually sort of a lot of monster blood in this. None of it is red, though, which seems to mater. Gamera’s blood is green and Gyaos’ is purple, so maybe that didn’t seem like actual gore in the eyes of our distant ancestors, but there’s no buts about it, these monsters are gounging and tearing at each other pretty agressivley. Honestly, that’s not gonna hurt a kid, they need to be exposed to this sort of thing sooner or later. Let your kids watch turtles getting death ray blasted at home, or some other kid is just going to show them at school, and there it’ll be out of context.

Anyway. This is another good one, and so far, these movies are getting better and better,

B+

Gamera VS Barugon!

Posted on August 11, 2016 by Kristoph Johannes

Gamera Vs Barugon – 1966, Shigeo Tanaka, Japan

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I love this big, lumpy, turtle shaped idiot.

Gamera’s big debut was a little rough. It was enjoyable, yes, but in today’s world, Gamera The Giant Monster just isn’t a movie that anyone needs to see unless they’re already way into kaiju cinema. It fell a little flat, and for the most part, looked more at home amongst American B-movies of the 1960’s than alongside the higher quality Japanese monster movies it wanted to imitate. All that shit is over now, though, because Gamera Vs Barugon is the huge, lumbering bumble forward in quality we want it to be. This freakin’ movie is absolutely worthy competition for Toho, and in fact, it leaves some of their lesser “name brand” Kaiju in the dust. (Suck it, Varan!)

THE PLOT- After an adventure to smuggle a priceless Opal out of the jungles of New Guinea backfires, Barugon, who is in no way a rip off of Toho monsters Anguirus or Baragon (he totally is) is unleashed on Japan, and he’s eager to hit them with a blast of irrational, crazed lizard fury the likes of which they’ve not known for several weeks. And he might have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for that meddling Gamera, who is back on Earth after our efforts to kill/launch him into space proved to be a failure. The two big bad beasties slug it out, in keeping with tradition, and in the end, it’s giant reptile VS giant reptile in a heated, knock down, drag out lizard war for the ages. Why don’t people just move away from Japan at this point? No excuse is a good enough reason to stay put with this crap going on.

The first thing you need to know about Gamera Vs Barugon is that Gamera is barely even in it. Actually, that’s the movie’s greatest flaw, no where near enough screen time for the headlining act; our gluttonous tortoise beast shows up, is prompty frozen solid by Barugon’s icey gas spray (quit laughing), and then he’s out of the picture for 90% of the runtime. It’s just Japan versus Barugon until the eleventh hour, when a freshly thawed Gamera whirls into frame to beat Barugon’s ass, and then the credits roll. This is not an ideal situation given that this is Gamera’s sophomore outing, but since the burden of carrying this picture is all on Barugon, we should probably talk about him a little bit.

Firstly, I want to address the elephant in the room; This dopey ass lizard creature is undeniably a straight up rip off. The whole “BARAGON/BARUGON” thing is, for sure, pretty dammed hard to dispute.

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This is BarUgon (Daiei).

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And this is BarAgon (Toho).

BarAgon, who, as you can see, looks quite a lot like our boy BarUgon, made his debut appearance in Toho’s Frankenstein Conquers the World one year prior to the release of this film, so trying to argue that there wasn’t any sort of plagiarism here would be a lot like when Vanilla Ice tried to say he didn’t rip off Under Pressure. That argument would just be embarrassing, and Daiei would be better off just admitting to the theft and taking their lumps. The weird thing is, however, that aside from the name, Barugon actually has more in common with Anguirus, than he does with Baragon. Check out the facts; Anguirus is, yet again, another four legged, gigantic lizard monster who had a horn on his Schnozz and spikes on his back. In addition, Anguirus and Barugon both first appear in the second installment of their respective franchises (Barugon here in Gamera Vs Barugon and Anguirus in Godzilla Raids Again, Toho’s second Godzilla film), and both films feature dramatic monster battles that take place in Osaka, Japan, right outside the famous Osaka Castle. I even think Barugon looks a bit more like Anguirus, right down to a mutual lack of floppy ears. Have a look:

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They could be brothers.

In summation, yeah, Barugon is a damn rip off.

All that being said, I hated this freakin’ guy before I even started watching this movie. How could I not, given that he was little more than a shameful xerox of Baragon, who had long since warmed my heart with his floppy ears and hilarious antics. I knew from photographs I had seen that Barugon didn’t even have ears, so he was indeed on my shit list right out of the gate; but imagine my surprise when he won me over more or less immediately! Barugon is actually a really well done monster, the suit looks like garbage, of course, but Daiei managed to squeeze more personality into him than Toho did with either of Anguirus or Baragon in their respective debut films. This big, scaly dofus does some really great stuff that I’ve never seen a giant monster do before; firstly, he’s the only Kaiju I’ve ever seen sit down in the middle of a decimated city and take a nap. Barugon totally does that. After smashing up Osaka, he thinks “That was good. This place is mine now. Think I’ll take a snooze.” Awesome. Then, when Gamera shows up, our boy Barry hunkers down behinds some trees with just his eyes poking up, as if to get a feel for the situation before figuring out how he wants to react to the appearance of this potential foe. The decision he reaches is that it’s time to throw down, and so after a brief confrontation, Barugon blasts Gamera with his ice spray and freezes him solid, at which point he prods Gamera’s big, frozen head with his horn, as if to make sure his opponent is really down for the count. These are all small things, but they make an amazing difference in selling this ludicrous looking puppet as a living creature, and I came out of this fairly impressed by the attention Daiei put into the subtleties of Barugon’s personality. That, more than anything else, excuses his plagiarized monster lineage, and so B-Boy get’s a pass from me, ultimately.

There are also other ways in which Gamera Vs Barugon succeeds where many films in this sub-genre continue to fail. The best thing the movie does is that it gives us interesting human characters and a story which would still be fun, even if it didn’t have a single giant monster in it. That’s huge. The bungled Opal smuggling sequence is great, it’s fun and exciting, and combines elements of gangster cinema and jungle adventure films, which is an odd mix, but which pays off in spades. Our two most important humans in the picture are, Onodera, who is a ridiculously over the top douche bag and also our villain, and Keisuke, who is our protagonist. This whole “Retrieve a giant opal” thing is clearly a shady, under the table type of operation, and actually I’m not sure why that is. It seems like you should be legally allowed to be a treasure hunter and bring a rad ass opal back from the jungle if you want to, but we get the message that this was evidently a very illegal thing that they are doing, and that actually works to the films advantage in a very clear and tangible way. Keisuke inherits a sort of ambiguous morality through his association with these shady dealings, and that makes him a more interesting character than we’re used to seeing in this films. It also gives us Onodera, who again, he’s a fucker. Let’s talk about him.

Onodera has a rap sheet longer than Barugon’s retractable lizard tongue. It’s freaking crazy how much of a dick head this guy is. Firstly, he allows one of his gem heist conspirators to suffer a fatal scorpion sting, so as to ensure that Onodera receives a bigger cut of the take. Then, when his Keisuke fails to die from natural Jungle related risks, Onodera grenades the cave shut in an attempt to rub him out, too. The final conspirator is Keisuke’s disabled brother, who hid the opal in that scorpion infested cave during the war in the first place. Onodera pays a visit to this disabled war veteran and kicks the hell out of him and his wife, before leaving them both trapped in a house directly in the path of Barugon’s incoming stomp fest. They both die. The real coup de gras comes later, though, at the end of Act II. At that point, every single attempt to lay the smack down upon Barugon had been an abject failure, and things look grim. A new plan is formulated, which, at this point, looks to be literally the only chance mankind has at defeating Barugon and saving Japan. This last ditch plan involves the use of a giant, fantastically valuable diamond, which must be loaded into a cool light projector thing, and used to lure Barugon into the water, which he is allergic to, if I didn’t mention that before. “Diamond, you say?!” Says Onodera, who immediately jumps into action, zooms up alongside the vessel carrying a small number of brave men literally in the process of attempting to save the world, only to open fire on them and steal this diamond, which, one final time I want to stress this; is, as far as anyone knows, the only thing that can save the entire human race. Where does he think he’s going to spend the money when the entire planet is destroyed?! Also I want to remind you that Barugon only exists because Onodera is a douche bag in the first place. It takes an extreme, flamboyant kind of shit head to rob people who are actively working to save the world from a cataclysm that was your own doing to begin with, but Onodera is that flamboyant shit head, and they really don’t get any shittier. It’s impressive.

If we’re talking about what’s wrong with Gamera Vs Barugon, again I would call out it’s shocking lack of Gamera to be it’s most damaging fault. For most of the picture, he’s frozen, face down, in Osaka. If he’s not frozen, he’s either on screen fighting Barugon (this happens twice, the first time leading up to his freezing, and the second time resulting in Barugon’s demise,) or he’s off attacking Hydroelectric dams and other such installations so that he can gobble up all the delicious energy they produce in order to satiate his gluttonous Turtle hunger, and that’s almost all off camera. Anyway you slice it, Gam-Gams needs more screen time, and Daei should have known that.

But that is the worst thing about this movie. It certainly looks lower budget than Toho’s pictures, but that’s pretty much not a problem. As I’ve said in my review of Gamera’s first movie, his frumpy inadequacies are more endearing than anything else, since the very act of watching a Gamera movie is tantamount to rooting for the underdog anyhow. In no small way I would say that Gamera Vs Barugon is a classic of 1960’s Kaiju that doesn’t need to feel all that inferior to what Godzilla was up to at that time.

B+

GAMERA!

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Gamera (AKA Daikaijû Gamera, Gammera the Invincible) -1965, Noriaki Yuasa

Gamera is the monster for people who like ugly Christmas trees.

Seriously, look at him. He’s freaking ridiculous.

Conceived at a time when giant monsters were all the rage, Gamera was Japanese film studio Daiei’s cunning imitation of that other popular, giant, Japanese reptile you may have heard of, and while he was never really able to escape the stigma of being an off-brand imitation of the true monster king, he did enjoy a long career in cinema, and earn many fans in his own right. Today we see Gamera not as a heated rival to Godzilla, but more as a lovable, frumpy underdog, humble, and charmingly inferior.

I’m sure you can see what I mean.

His undeniable shittiness is, unquestionably, part of Gamera’s lasting appeal. I’ve been a Gamera fan since childhood, and there’s just something so gloriously “underground,” or “alternative” about him. While his movies share many qualities with Toho’s monster films, there’s something else at play here here, and you can feel that there’s a different hand behind the design of the Daiei universe, which gives it this exciting “other” feel. This bizarre, equally fun world is absolutely ripe for exploration for anyone who loves the Toho Godzilla movies, and Gamera, eternal hardworking underdog of the giant monster lexicon, is charming, in part because of his numerous flaws. Honestly, it’s true, Gamera looks like garbage in the most endearing way possible, he’s like a big, loveable piece of trash. His torso is two thousand feet wide and six inches deep, and his belly is crosshatched in perfect squares giving him the appearance of a bunch of garbage smooshing out from between two giant, green Eggo waffles. That’s his look; the “Garbage sandwich on Green Eggo Bread.”

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Gamera, also called Gammera The Invincible, is the 1965 debut of this fire eating, shell-clad super beast, and while it’s a far cry from the legitimate artistic slam dunk that was Gojira in 1954, it’s a pretty enjoyable monster movie all the same.

THE PLOT- When a long-range bomber carrying nuclear warheads is shot down over the Arctic, the ensuing explosion frees Gamera, a giant, prehistoric turtle monster, from his ancient state of hibernation beneath the ice.

There is some confusion over exactly how malicious Gamera is. He’s certainly destructive, but is this because he is genuinley an asshole, or is it just really hard not to smash buildings when you’re two hundred feet tall? I’m under six feet, and I totally break stuff sometimes, accidents do happen, friends. In this film, Gamera doesn’t even really seem to want to attack people, so much as their structures, which he might not even understand aren’t meant for smashing. His main interest seems to be food, which is nothing new from the animal kingdom, but Gamera eats energy, be it in the form of electricity, radiation, or even just plain old fire. This has him attacking various power plants in this movie, but can we really fault him for that? That’s like the damn Food Court for Gamera, and anyway, he’s been frozen for like, a million years, that’s a real long time to be hungry. If you hadn’t eaten in millions of years you’d probably act like a serious dick too. I get grumpy around eleven and stay that way till after lunch, so I’m not about to judge Gams.

Early in the movie we meet a young boy named Toshio, a reclusive, antisocial little kid who doesn’t hang out with other children because he’s too interested in chilling with his pet turtle, Peewee. Fearing that Toshio may wind up with underdeveloped social skills, his father does what any loving parent would do, and that is to demand that Toshio discard the one and only thing in the entire world that he truly loves, and that he do it immediately, without taking the time to mentally prepare for the emotional trauma that this might cause. Toshio is given no choice in the matter, and so he reluctantly trudges out into the darkness to set Peewee free, but it is here, against the backdrop of the night sky, that he encounters friggin’ Gamera, who is just chillin’ along the shore. The townsfolk panic and things get a little rocky for a minute or two, but in all the commotion Toshio is actually saved from what would have been a fatal fall by the jagged claw of this mighty creature, much to his delight. Given that Toshio already had an unhealthy fixation with turtles before this happened, this was about the last experience in the world you would ever want him to have, because following this incident he loses his mind completely, and becomes convinced that Peewee has actually transformed into Gamera. This is the genesis of what would later on in the series become a Hallmark of Gamera’s legacy; his suspicious connection to children.

So, Toshio is henceforth convinced that Gamera is just a big ol’ scaley sweetheart, but his vouching for the big guy’s character doesn’t seem to do much in the way of preventing all world governments from collaborating with one another on numerous strategies to kill or otherwise dispose of this towering Tortuga. These plans include, nuclear weapons (aborted, thank goodness), frying him with a high voltage wires, freezing him, and finally launching him into space. Damn. This is actually one of the more optimistic messages in Gamera, he sort of steps in and gives humanity something to unite against, so in a way, in the Daiei universe, Gamera helps to heal the divide caused by the cold war. Too bad Earth wasn’t menaced by a giant turtle in real life, because this shit drug out for another few decades in our tragically Gamera-less reality.

Gamera is head and sholders above the average 1960’s Science Fiction B-movie, but that’s more of a critique of how terrible the average 1960’s B-movie really was than anything else. It’s still miles behind the pack when compared to Toho’s Godzilla output, particularly in the mid sixties when Toho had already had over a decade to refine their techniques. Gamera wouldn’t really hit his stride and start putting out real classics until a litte later, and this is certainly not his best adventure. Even so, it’s a humble beginning for a creature generally loved for having humble beginnings, so the shabbiness doesn’t much hurt the film, and by and large, Kaiju fans will like it one way or the other. Those who aren’t quite sold on the genre yet should hold off on this one, however.

The X From Outer Space!!!

Posted on June 18, 2015 by Kristoph Johannes

The X From Outer Space ~ 1967, Kazui Nihonmatsu, Japan

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In the 1960’s, the assorted motion picture studios of Japan had all come to see Toho’s Godzilla as a big, green, lumbering money factory, just ripe for exploitation, and they all knew that if they wanted a slice of that kaiju pie, they needed to rip him off, pronto, before the heat died down. Suddenly, everybody in town had some giant, crappy monster they just had to cram down people’s throats, and the race to hop on Godzilla’s coattails had begun. First, there was Daiei, and their substantially less popular yet still kinda popular turtle monster Gamera. Then, there was Nikkatsu, who gave us Gappa, just one of the modern cinema’s many creatures who found themselves overshadowed by their own rad theme song. Then, in 1967, Shochiku, gave the world Guilala, star of the Science Fiction/monster outing The X From Outer Space. Wanna make a Kaiju film? Come up with a funny name beginning with the letter ‘G.’ You are now 80% of the way there.

THE PLOT~ We Earthlings just can’t figure out why all of our astronauts keep dying on the way to Mars. Let’s look at what we DO know; we KNOW that they all report the same peculiar glitches in their onboard computer systems… We know that they all get straight up menaced by a mysterious UFO as they approach the Red Planet, and we also know that right after that, they die… But how?!? Huh! It’s a real head-scratcher… Oh well, no matter, because even if we can’t put two and two together, we damn sure can put together special mission AAB-Gamma; just another collection of doomed astronauts who we have decided to condemn to death in the cold, dark recesses of space. We’re geniuses!

doomed You’re all gonna die, you idiots!!!

From the get go, AAB-Gamma is plagued with ill omens and terrifying space disasters, they face everything from failing equipment, high levels of radiation, asteroid showers, punctures in the spacecrafts hull, mysterious illnesses, and, of course, that damn UFO I mentioned before. They eventually have to throw in the towel and admit defeat when this malicious alien spacecraft sprays the Astro-Boat down with some sort of weird, Martian spores, rendering the vessel totally immobile for some reason. They’re saved, shockingly enough, when they’re able to send out a distress signal, but not before collecting a sample of the alien spores from the outer hull of the ship, which they bring back to Earth for study. Guess what? Monster egg; that thing hatches overnight and right around the halfway mark, Guilala makes his big entrance. Within minutes of hatching, our boy Guilala grows to a standard Japanese monster height of 300 feet, and begins his stomping/smashing career. Naturally, all of our defenses fail to repel this abomination from space, and the crew of AAB-Gamma discovers that the only hope mankind has left is in it’s ability to synthesize a compound which can subdue Guilala, and this process can only be done in the absolute vacuum of space. So back they go, into space, to make some anti-monster goop.

Anyway.

It’s pretty middle of the road. By this point, essentially every Godzilla film featured aliens prominently, so in that way, The X From Outer Space effectively hops right into the swing of things with commendable ease, and our human characters are much more interesting than the interchangeable cyphers which populated Toho’s Godzilla-verse. There’s even a love triangle in this film! It’s poorly written, but it’s there! And that’s all good! It’s more than you usually get from Toho or Daiei’s human characters. Additionally, as I’ve said before, Guilala doesn’t even turn up until right around the halfway mark, and he’s really not in the film that much, when you step back and look at it. Believe it or not, that works out in the our favor, because what we end up with for the lion’s share of the run time is a delightfully adequate 1960’s space adventure, and honestly, that’s a lot more entertaining than all this giant monster business. We run into significant trouble when this movie expects us to give a shit about Guilala, or what he’s up to, and while these sequences are fairly well done from a technical perspective, they’re noticeably more boring than the work Toho and Daiei were doing at that time.

Guilala kind of sucks, too. He might have been fine as a secondary character, maybe teaming up with Gigan or something, but on his own, out in the spotlight, it’s pretty clear that he’s just not star material. First of all, he sort of looks like Big Bird.

x big bird com Image: Sesame Street's Big Bird It’s like I’m seein’ double!

This particular look works just fine on the mean streets of Sesame, but it’s hard to take a Kaiju seriously when you keep thinking “Hey, is that that dude who taught me to count?” Not good. Secondly, Guilala’s limbs are all swollen, puffy, and frilled, giving him the appearance of an alien Big Bird wearing Jerry’s pirate shirt from Seinfeld.

x pirate shirt com puffy_shirt_2964582k “I don’t wanna be a pirate!” – Guilala

That’s what you’re going to remember about this friggin’ monster, he looks like Big Bird, his name is way too difficult to pronounce, and Jerry Seinfeld’s freaking pirate shirt. I’m sorry, Guilala, but by the natural law of Survival of the Fittest, you must go, for you are not fit. Go and die.

And he did, pretty much. Guilala failed to win over the Japanese theater going public, and the next time anybody saw him was decades later in Monster X Strikes Back: Attack The G8 Summit, which was a damn comedy. The X From Outer Space isn’t terrible, it’s probably a decent way to spend your time if you’re a rabid, foaming-at-the-mouth kaijuphile, but truthfuly, it’s a lukewarm experience, and certainly not a highlight of the genre.

Godzilla (2014)!!!!

Posted on March 5, 2015 by Kristoph Johannes

Godzilla – 2014, Gareth Edwards – USA

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It’s been ten years since Godzilla has been in a movie, and sixteen years since he’s been in an American one. It’s weird, clearly America and Japan have a big time love affair with one another’s pop culture, but throughout history, anytime one of these two Nations attempts to remake the opposite’s intellectual property in their own image it has been a complete disaster, with the aforementioned Godzilla film from ’98 being an excellent example. We took something beautiful, and we gave the world shit. That crime can never be lived down… But, as always, no matter how heinous the sin, when there is money to be had, somebody will make a grab for it, and so with an insatiable desire for cash in their hearts, Warner Brothers and Legendary Pictures went ahead with yet another major American studio adaptation of one of Japan’s proudest cultural icons- Godzilla. The most memorable thing thing that came out of this was that we got to hear Japanese people fat shame Godzilla. It’s true, he had put on a few pounds.

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To be fair- he’s been asleep for a decade.

Frankly, this movie is not a masterpiece. I don’t think it was ever going to be, American mainstream movie-goers don’t have a lot in common with fans of Kaiju cinema, and any attempt to please both parties was always going to fail. Additionally, I can’t help but wonder if director Gareth Edwards was indeed the right man to helm this project. I’m not saying I don’t think he’s great, I loved Monsters, but I imagine that the real reason he was offered the job was because he had made a film “about giant monsters.” Honestly, to say that having directed Monsters makes you a logical choice to direct a Godzilla film is a dramatic oversimplification of both properties. But whatever, let’s jump into this.

First of all, movie goers were pretty much sold on this movie with the notion that Brian Cranston was gonna be the star. Naturally, this seemed like a good idea, Breaking Bad had been extremely popular, so people were for sure gonna want to see as much of that hot Cranston action as possible. I know I did! That’s exactly why it was pretty disappointing to actually watch the movie, because the moment the second act came around Cranston was freaking toes up, and it’s like Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty all over again. After that, we get conned off on our real central character, Ford, played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who is the son of the Cranston character. While Poppa Cranston was a scientist; Lil’ Ford is a solider, which is a problem. He’s not a solider like past characters in the Godzilla cannon have been soldiers, he doesn’t pilot Mechagodzilla or represent some anti-monster task force, instead Ford feels like his profession was chosen simply to make him the one constant in a long string of soulless action sequences, which are a non-negotiable pre-requisute for big budget American cinema. The best thing his solider status does for the film is that it gives us a character who is estranged from every person in his life, either emotionally, or simply because he jobs demands that he be far away from his family. This jaded, American veteran perspective is extremely valid, and it does represent a growing cross section of the country, but it’s not universal, and in the end, Ford is impossible for us to identify with in any realistic way because of how unfazed he is by everything that happens to him. There’s just not enough to the character, he has no depth, he’s just a cypher who hops from action scene to action scene without any substance to back up the explosions. Cranston, or even Ford’s wife (played by Elizabeth Olsen) would have been much better central characters.

Also, anyone who compained that Gamera the Brave didn’t have enough monster content in it better never say a word in defense of this iteration of Godzilla; because guess who isn’t in this movie enough?

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This guy!

We spend way more time with the Mutos, Godzilla’s weird, common-law married monster opposition. I’m really not crazy about these monstersr, to me they really don’t feel at home in Godzilla’s universe. They look too… American? They look like the monster from Cloverfield, or maybe even something from Pacific Rim. They’re lacking some vague, indefinable quality that gave the old Godzilla gang it’s appeal, and I’m just not very taken with them. I also hate Godzilla’s portly, stub nosed redesign, but whatever, I guess.

The technical work done on Godzilla is predictably excellent, but only if what you’re looking for is a super slick, digital Hollywood production. This is the first and only Godzilla movie ever made with CG that doesn’t look like complete shit, so I guess that does count for something, but I was always more fond of the big, clunky suits and practical effects anyway. I would have been infinitley more excited if the Jim Henson Company had been brought on to make this the Citizen Kane of puppet and suitimation films, but that’s a personal thing, so you may not have similar reservations. This Godzilla is well shot, well edited, and all the acting is great, so I’d say that if we’re being objective, there really isn’t much in regards to the film’s technical execution that I would wag my eternally disaproving finger at.

I think that the only real way to look at this film objectively would require you to just ignore the sixty years of baggage attached to the Godzilla name completely, because truthfully, this is something new that just can’t be lumped in with what we’ve seen before. That’s good and bad, though; throwing out all that continuity might seem like it would take the pressure off, but in doing so we also get rid of every reason we have to love Godzilla, and that’s a crippling blow. The fact is, I really don’t think this movie could exist if it was a stand alone film, and if this thing wasn’t piggybacking on the nototriety of Godzilla’s proud past, we for sure wouldn’t have a sequel on the way like we do right now. I just don’t think it brings enough to the table, it isn’t the non-stop thrill ride America wants it to be, nor the introspective, character driven journey Edwards probably wanted to make, nor even the wall to wall Japanese monster extravaganza longtime kaiju fans want. If we’re being honest, I think Godzilla is smack dab in the middle of all of these ever so distant points, and unfortunately, in this game, sometimes when you only achieve 50% of A,B, and C, it sorta feels more like you didn’t achieve anything at all.

But it’s fine. Hell, Toho just announced that they’re working on a new Japanese made Godzilla franchise which will be entirely independent from what is going on in the Legendary series, so these American movies don’t really help or hurt Godzilla in any way. Besides, if Big Green survived what happened to him in ’98, he really is invincible.

C+

GODZILLA FINAL WARS

Posted on March 5, 2015 by Kristoph Johannes

GODZILLA: FINAL WARS ~ 2004, Ryuhei Kitamura – Japan

In 2004, Godzilla’s 50th anniversary, Toho released Godzilla: Final Wars. It was meant to be a finale of sorts, after which good old Godzilla would take some time to chill out. In an effort to celebrate the long running franchise, Final Wars works like a celebration of the entire cannon, and in a way, it’s almost a remake of every Godzilla movie simultaneously (mostly Destroy All Monsters), but it’s kind of a damn mess.

The plot is as follows: It is the future; blah blah blah who cares; the plot isn’t worth hashing out. Again, it’s that same old alien invasion story Toho has used over and over, but it’s really just a means to justify Godzilla fighting as many monsters as possible, and he really, really does. There are some dumb aliens in the mix, as well as a bunch of “mutants,” whom we’ll be talking about later.

It feels kinda disjointed and hurried. There is so much freaking homage in here that it almost just feels like watching a sitcom a clip show episode most of the time, which is not what you want from a glorious, 50th anniversary finale to your proudest franchise. The special effects suffer in the same way most modern Godzilla movies do- cheap, crappy CG and terrible composite effects, but the worst thing about the movie is the emphasis on its human, and “mutant” characters. We spend a lot of time with them… And that time is a grab bag, sometimes its good, sometimes its really, really terrible.

Let’s look at the good; basically, aside from all the rad monster stuff, the coolest part of the movie is this guy:

gfw76 Captain Gordon… He kinda looks like Stalin, mostly because they dress him exactly like Stalin for some reason… but he also kinda looks like Sgt. Slaughter, or a bad ass Mario, so that’s sort of a mixed message, but the fact remains that holy shit is he cool. Our lame ass mutant characters bust him out of military jail because they need his leadership to save the world. He’s really awesome, and he’s the captain of a sweet flying/submarine/drill type ship borrowed right out of Atragon, which is one of the better Showa era homages in the entire flick. That’s all good stuff…

…And then, on the other end of the spectrum, we have these guys….

gfw54 …“Mutants.” they suck so bad. These guys are part of the Earth anti-monster defense initiative or something. I have no idea in what way they’re better than normal people, but they’re supposed to be vaguely super human somehow, while remaining incredibly cliche and disinteresting. They’re like some profoundly lame Matrix/Ultraman combo deal, and they take up far too much screen time. I hate them a lot, for real, I’d have taken the G-Graspers over these idiots.

Also worth a mention, the big, stupid, Roland Emmerich version of Godzilla pops up in this movie, too. It tromps around and is promptly murdered by the real Godzilla, which takes less than a minute, and is a great thing that we all know needed to happen. I didn’t expect any sort of closure on that one, so this feels like a nice treat. Of course, I could have done without the unlistenable Sum 41 song that plays over the scene, but we have mute buttons, so it’s still good.

So, is it a good movie? Kinda. It’s probably going to make most Godzilla enthusiasts happy. I found myself enjoying the effort taken to pay respects to Godzilla’s older films, and all the monster fighting sequences are well done and entertaining. Also great; after relentlessly flip flopping on the Nature of Godzilla, I feel like this movie finds a good balance by casting him as humanity’s last ditch guardian by default, a looming threat that we all dread, but which is at the same time, our only hope for survival. I think this is a logical extension of the metaphor, given that GZ was originally meant to symbolize the horrors of atomic warfare. It’s a safe assumption that, if facing alien invasion, we might come to feel the same way about nuclear weapons that we do about Big Green in this film, so it feels appropriate that he has again found himself as a stand in for the bomb. Godzilla: Final Wars does a good job with that idea.

….BUT it isn’t a classic. As a finale, it feels appropriately epic, but we’ve traded a lot of character development for more for slick action sequences this time, and I’m never in favor of that. It’s simply too cluttered, and too all over the place, but if what you’re looking for is giant monsters fighting and little else, this for sure will give you what you want. I just think it would be wise to expect more from Godzilla, because his potential is enormous.

C-

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