{"id":2545,"date":"2015-03-05T07:26:59","date_gmt":"2015-03-05T07:26:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fantasticcrapcomics.com\/?p=2545"},"modified":"2015-03-05T06:57:41","modified_gmt":"2015-03-05T06:57:41","slug":"godzilla-vs-mothra-aka-godzilla-and-mothra-the-battle-for-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fantasticcrapcomics.com\/?p=2545","title":{"rendered":"Godzilla Vs Mothra AKA Godzilla and Mothra: The Battle For Earth!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Godzilla Vs Mothra AKA Godzilla and Mothra: The Battle For Earth<\/a>–\u00a0<\/strong>1992, Takao Okawara – Japan<\/p>\n

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So… If “MOTHra” is a MOTH… Then “BATtra” is a bat?<\/p>\n

Nope! Battra is also a damn moth. Sorry, suckers. That would have been cool, though.<\/p>\n

Anyway…<\/p>\n

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

Godzilla VS Mothra<\/em> 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\u2019s 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 \u201cthe bad guy,\u201d and represents science, hubris, and the tragically\u00a0meddlesome 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\u2019s hard to imagine the same Futurist attitude seen in Son Of Godzilla <\/em><\/strong><\/a>or Destroy All Monsters<\/em><\/strong><\/a> belonging to the same franchise as GVM<\/em>; 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<\/em> is more meaningful now than it ever was.<\/p>\n

\"Gvm\"<\/p>\n

THE PLOT-<\/strong> Meet Taukya Fujita- the Japanese Indianna Jones! As a rugged, \u201cDevil May Care\u201d tomb raider\/scoundrel, Takuya\u2019s adventurer\u2019s spirit gives him the wherewithal to survive inhospitable jungles and dodge ancient booby traps, as well as child support payments! That\u2019s 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\u2019s 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<\/strong>, who fans of the Showa Godzilla films<\/strong> 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\u2019s a \u201cput all your eggs in one basket and then ship that basket to a dangerous island\u201d strategy. SPEAKING OF EGGS; that\u2019s what they discover on infant island, Mothra\u2019s egg. It seems that a recent meteorite impact along a fault line in the ocean triggered landslides and Earthquakes which had uncovered Mothra\u2019s egg, as well as the egg of Battra<\/strong>; 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.<\/p>\n

The tiny ladies tell us a little bit more about the situation at hand. Apparently, they are called \u201cCosmos,\u201d and are actually ancient creatures from space. Sounds about right. Also, the Earth is hurting and we\u2019re mean to it or whatever. Whatever, Cosmos- Hey, you guys, I know; let\u2019s yank this giant egg out the Earth and see if we can make money off it somehow! So, that\u2019s what they do.<\/p>\n

Mothra\u2019s egg never makes it to Japan, however. That same meteorite that shook up Infant Island also woke up and pissed off Godzilla, and he\u2019s 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\u2019s life, and after some weird, tender kaiju moth exchanges which we can\u00a0never hope to understand and probably wouldn\u2019t want to if we could, Battra and Mothra reconcile, accepting one another\u2019s role as being crucial to the survival of the Earth. They then team up and kick Godzilla\u2019s 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<\/em>, mankind pledges to be less of a shit head in our role as stewards of our planet. I\u2019m sure that lasted like, a week, then we steam rolled Tibet to make way for a parking structure.<\/p>\n

So, the central metaphor for Godzilla VS Mothra<\/em> 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\u2019m going to list this.<\/p>\n

THE GOOD<\/strong><\/p>\n