Movies You Already Should've Seen: GODZILLA VS. MOTHRA

Alright, this isn't exactly a movie you already should've seen unless you're a Godzilla fan. Luckily I am. Golem though is too pragmatic to waste his time on such "hullabaloo". Be sure to check out our primer on the franchise.

GODZILLA VS. MOTHRA (1992)
AKA: Godzilla and Mothra: The Battle for Earth
Directed by: Takao Okawara
Written by: Kazuki Ohmori

GODZILLA VS. MOTHRA in one sentence:
Yourself: The poster's cool I guess.

Here's a story about me and GODZILLA VS. MOTHRA:
Yourself: Since first being exposed to the series almost exactly two years ago, this is my 12th Godzilla, 5th Heisei. I rank the original MOTHRA VS. GODZILLA highly for being so gung-ho weird, but I've never been big on Mothra as an idea.

Get the plot bitching out of your system:
Yourself: The story goes that after the grim scifi of VS. BIOLLANTE failed to score at the box office, Toho Studios lost faith in the series and rerouted toward nostalgia. In addition to a broader tone, that meant reviving old monsters. You could argue either way for this as a creative decision (I'm okay with it on an occasional basis), but it wasn't one, so it doesn't matter. Mothra and the gang had to come back for the movies to be made. By comparison to the insane time-travel abomination that is the interceding VS. KING GHIDORAH, VS. MOTHRA's premise as a semi-remake of 1964's MOTHRA VS. GODZILLA seems downright agreeable. But it is all handled with the careless aplomb of the Heisei writers, whom I imagine providing one line descriptions of each scene and letting the director randomly select a location and actor to provide that exposition.

Both the 1964 story and this one hinge on convincing a dogmatic protector of the earth that humanity is on its side. In the original that guardian was Mothra, provided a human avatar in the Infant Islanders. To win over Mothra, the protagonists had to travel to Infant Island to face the tribe, in the process owning their past abuse of technology and pledging reconciliation. I thought that was pretty phony, but it's fucking Shakespeare compared to GODZILLA VS. MOTHRA's handling of the same idea. This time Battra is the angry spirit and Mothra humanity's advocate, which incidentally leaves no reason for Godzilla or the Infant Islanders to be in the film (unsurprisingly only the latter were cut). Inspired by some really pitiful begging and the shameless plea of a child, Mothra sways Battra by moth-talking to it. For way longer than I need to see two puppets hover face-to-face accompanied by nonsense Foley.

The real-estate developer subplot is back too, likewise managing to be more banal than its inspiration. Last time the developers monopolized the Mothra egg for a tourist attraction, endangering civilians and preventing scientific research. It was also presumably their digging that awakened Godzilla. They eventually stole the Minimoth Girls, impeding the heroes' ability to make amends with the Infant Islanders. This time the developers are the ones who send the protagonist to find the Mothra egg, but Mothra is good, so whatever. Again they steal the Minimoth Girls (to use them as a tourist attraction), but this is resolved when the one guy feels bad about it and gives them back. What an awesome subplot. I did find it funny that they make the girls live in a dollhouse, though even that is delivered poorly (why spoil the joke by having a character say it before showing it?).

The aesthetic is basically:
Yourself: Lazy is a word that comes to mind. Most of the first 20 minutes are set in the wilds of Infant Island. The greenery is nice and I would've bought that they were in the jungle were the whole thing not over so quickly. There are some ancient ruins that look claustrophobic in the sense of a crawlspace, decorated with more dirt and cobwebs than authentic stone and carving. Ignoring that this is all straight out of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (see that weird thing I discussed re: GvB, GvKG, and GvD), it's a novel enough setting for monster battles. I'd like to see Godzilla mow down the rainforest (actually they basically did that in Skies of Arcadia!).

Unfortunately the only monster we get on the island is Mothra's giant egg, then it's back to boring light-grey Tokyo that I've seen a million times. I said this in regards to GODZILLA X MECHAGODZILLA and it once again applies here: broad daylight and miniatures do not mix. Worm-Mothra is as awful a costume as it's ever been, but its rigid plasticity is at its worst during daytime shooting that casts the sets like Mr. Roger's Neighborhood.

Performances to speak of?
Yourself: I sat looking at the ceiling for a good 90 seconds before I decided the most honest thing to write would be I sat looking at the ceiling for a good 90 seconds trying to remember a single performance. And I literally just finished watching the movie a half hour ago. There's not even anyone with a dumb gimmick like eating eggs, and by the time the 'main' character stopped wearing a Rambo headband there were actually a couple scenes in which I did not recognize him.

That being the case, let's just use this segment to talk about monsters. Battra is a good idea. I always wondered what would happen if the second Mothra larva in MOTHRA VS. hadn't been killed, and this is clearly riffing on that. The Minimoth Girls are twins after all; duality is in some way inherent to this character. Unfortunately, that means Battra fails what I have just this second dubbed "the profile test" - that to be sufficiently memorable, a monster should be distinguishable by its general shape, i.e. its profile. Rodan has bat wings. Ghidorah has three heads. Anguirus is a ball of spikes. Hell, even the MUTOs provide a distinctly insectoid silhouette. The shitty forgettable monsters are the ones that look like a human in a Halloween costume, e.g. Megalon or King Caesar. Likewise, Battra is just a black Mothra with spikes. It is too different to cruise by on the strength of Mothra's design but too similar to pass the profile test. The resultant spiky alien caterpillar is a contrived creation that echoes the conceptual drought of monster-of-the-week shows like Ultraman or Super Sentai. Or Pokemon. Or late-'60s Godzilla.

Also, I don't really like Mothra to start with. The worm form is so fucking sluggish and the imago is mostly an amalgam of magic powers making lemonade from the fact that a moth can't do much other than hover and glide (particularly considering the limitations of giant puppet wings). The new 'reflector spores' are actually kinda neat, although possibly just because I recognize the attack from PS2's Save the Earth. The main problem is that there's not much Godzilla can do with Mothra. He can't grapple it, he can't throw it, he can hardly bite it or slap it with his tail, so it's mostly just lazer breath. And while the Heisei lazer breath is typically its best special effect, eventually it does get old.

A really cool shot or scene:
Yourself: We get two new takes on the kaiju duel here. Introducing two airborne monsters opens the opportunity for a fully aerial battle, and thankfully the film takes it. (I have to assume this happened at some point in the Showa years with Mothra, Ghidorah, and Rodan floating around, but I have not seen it). At a basic level it's scripted like a dogfight, with the monsters speeding after each other firing off lasers and fighting for position. There are even some overhead shots showing the city underneath, enforcing the sense of enormity that could be lost in shooting directly against the sky. I'd say it doesn't go on for long, but it goes on for plenty long. The other battles are just so distended that this one feels short by comparison.

Better still, there's a sea floor battle between Godzilla and Worm-Battra. It is definitely one of the coolest fights of the series, at least in concept. Worm-Battra doesn't do much but shoot lightning, but the whole thing is quickly edited and shot at weird angles, suggesting the disorienting darkness of the ocean. The bluish murk has just the opposite effect from daylight on the miniatures - for a moment they were believably obscured. Just don't ask me how Godzilla is suddenly kilometers under the surface (deep enough to fall into the Earth's mantle) after two seconds earlier he was standing waist deep swatting battleships.

What does it all really mean?
Yourself:

Note to future self on watching GOJIRA TAI MOSURA:
Yourself: When we started this feature, I told Golem I'd like to keep these reviews positive, forgoing the process of weighing good vs. bad to instead focus on aspects that might pique a reader's interest. Since he's not here I'll cut straight to it: this is not a movie anyone should see.

Come back next week to find out if Greg and Greg finally get around to finishing COMING TO AMERICA.

Other movies you already should've seen:
DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944)
GHOSTBUSTERS (1984)
GREMLINS (1984)
TERMINATOR (1984)
RETURN TO OZ (1985)
DICK TRACY (1990)
THE MATRIX (1999)

Working on concept drinks for Arnold movie night

I have become locally known for my high-concept theme-mixology (see: Frankenshot, 2008; Holy Diver, 2010), but I'm currently a bit stumped. I'm trying to get something going for my upcoming "Arnold Schwarzenegger Movie Night" (open invitation, business casual attire expected) and can't quite pin down what makes the original Man of Steel tick, in drink form. To give you an example of my typical conceits, here's the recipe for my latest creation (it got rave reviews in local bartending publications):

The Godzilla Bomb

-1 half can Sapporo or Asahi if you're out

-1 oz sake

-2 drops green food coloring

Drip the food coloring into the bottom of a shot glass. Pour in the oz of sake - it will mix on its own and turn a very dark green. Pour the beer into a regular beer glass. Drop the sake shot into the beer and immediately chug.

What happens here works on a lot of levels. The Japanese beer is a synecdoche for Japan and the green sake represents Godzilla (he is usually portrayed as green, but also a creation of Japan). The impact of the shot in the beer symbolizes the devastating effect Godzilla has on the nation of Japan. The cocktail works on a second level (most of mine do), as the green "bomb" is also a metaphor for the atomic bomb. The instantaneous spread of the green color to the entire drink when the "bomb" is "dropped" suggests the atomic fallout that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as Godzilla himself was originally conceived to represent. It's a drink that inspires philosophical contemplation, and that's what's important in mixology.

So my first idea for an Arnold drink is something like a Belgian Trippel (European + extra "strong" alcohol content) mixed with Muscle Milk (to build show muscles while you enjoy a beverage) served in a steel tumbler (Arnold only drinks from steel tumblers as his grip is so strong that he inadvertently crushes glasses). But who wants to buy a fifty pound can of Muscle Milk to make a dozen drinks for a party? It's just impractical.

I'll update you as soon as I have some better ideas. It'll come to me, I'm sure. It always does.

The anime hits the fan: 2002's Godzilla x Mechagodzilla

Maybe it's not the post you deserve, but it's the one this city needs right now. And that I had on standby.

Godzilla here again to bring you an update: the seal has been broken on the Millennium era. In and of itself, Godzilla x Mechagodzilla isn't worth breaking out into its own review, so, you know, sorry for doing this. I ain't the one makin' you read it. It's a derivative, cheap-looking, contrived piece of fluff whose only saving grace is an initially interesting concept and decent action pacing. Like most Godzillae, there is the seed of a good idea here, an intriguing enough concept to get you excited and ready for interesting developments which sadly makes the movie feel like an absolute sham when it fails to deliver on any of that promise after the build-up. I've said before that the only universal criterion I ask of any film is that it deliver on its own terms - fulfill its own promises. Godzilla x Mechagodzilla is a perfect example of a movie that fails in that regard. The initial concept, Cyborg Mechagodzilla, is a neat proposition. A neat proposition introduced but never explored in this movie, which chose instead to be a stupid boring anime about another stupid tough-as-nails sorta-teen hero with a chip on her shoulder.

I should clarify (and refer to the Godzilla Cheat Sheet for further clarity) that GxM is actually the fourth Millennium movie chronologically (and the fourth Mechagodzilla movie overall, not that that means anything - remember, no continuity), but I chose to start here for a few reasons: 

1.) it's a fan-favorite 

2.) it introduces fan-favorite Gundam-I-mean-kaiju Kiryu, the third incarnation of Mechagodzilla 

3.) no one likes the first two Millennium movies and the premise of the third is so goddamn weird (magic) that I couldn't bring myself to start there and 

4.) I jumped around in the Heisei and Showa eras as well and it was never a problem

Right to the heart of the artichoke. I don't know who's to blame for this film's plot, but yeah, it has a Bad Problem. The second act pulls such a ridiculous switcheroo that I don't even know how to evaluate it from beginning to end. Seems like it could've been the product of weird writing/filming/directing circumstances, where something was rescripted late-game. I don't want to believe the movie I saw was the product of artistic vision. Anyway, the nutshell:

Godzilla shows up again, for the "first time" (lol) since the original movie. Some military officer, Akane, accidentally gets a bunch of other military dudes killed while vainly trying to fight him off, but luckily Godzilla decides to go away anyway (I think that's what happens? he kinda just vanishes). Cue scientist. Scientist is working on cyborg trilobites, which is awfully convenient, because he can use the same technology and CGI Godzilla bones (which are on file at The Military) to make a cyborg Godzilla. Three years pass and Cyborg-Mechagodzilla (Kiryu) is born just in time for Godzilla to return. The fight begins, but FUCK! When Godzilla roars, the organic underpinnings of Kiryu respond! They're in looOOve! No, I'm not sure the world is ready for THAT movie. Hearing the roar reminds Kiryu of his Godzilla-instincts and sets him on an uncontrollable rampage of his own. Kiryu's batteries eventually die and the world is left to ask... what do we do? Our only weapon that can fight Godzilla can be turned against us and do even more damage than the monster. Do we stick with the Mechagodzillainitiative or abandon hope?

Minor nitpick as a series fan - Godzilla has never had less personality or presence than in GxM. The movie should've been called Mechagodzilla: also featuring Sleeping Grass

I'm on board up to that point. In fact, that's a decent plot and a pretty good second act crisis (the acting and action are another story, but I was at least wanting to know what would happen). We've got a super-weapon, but the super-weapon is inherently flawed in that humanity can't use it without having it turned against us. That's not just a nuclear weapons metaphor, it works as a metaphor for war as a whole. We get a few dialogue scenes with the underutilized Prime Minister and Philosophical Young Girl with Grass Friend characters, providing lip service (with all the subtlety one would expect from a movie using a giant cyborg to tackle the subject) to heady themes like the conflict between nature, nurture, birth, and purpose; the weighty decisions involved in taking risks to defend a people; the question of who is responsible for making those decisions.

Now rolls in the Problem Train: at this moment of upheaval about halfway through, the movie about Cyborg Mechagodzilla ENDS. All of that dramatic and thematic material is neatly resolved, summarily terminated and replaced with a different movie. I don't even feel like I'm spoiling it for you to reveal that, when presented with the dilemma that Kiryu, the ultimate Godzilla-fighting weapon, cannot fight Godzilla because they are kin, the scientist says, "oh, then we'll just swap Kiryu's Godzilla-DNA with some other DNA and then he definitely won't revolt because he won't be Godzilla-like anymore". Which, of course, works perfectly. At which point it's impossible not to groan and ask to what fucking extent Kiryu is a cyborg if his DNA can just be "swapped", and, more importantly, why the fuck they bothered to use Godzilla-DNA in the first place. Oh, right - because the movie needed a second act crisis. This completely undercuts the Prime Minister's 'big moment' when he must decide whether to deploy Kiryu a second time to deal with Godzilla's return - of fucking course he will, they identified and fixed the problem 100%. This also totally undercuts the PYG w/ GF's sympathy for Kiryu's 'doubt' because apparently it was just a machine all along and didn't actually have any purpose but to kill Godzilla - the whole rebellion thing was just a glitch!

So since the primary conflict of the movie up to that point has now been resolved before the one hour mark, all we're left with is the story of Akane, the military girl pilot. She had some arc that I extremely didn't care about, like she had to learn to believe in herself or something (including a training montage), but that was stupid as shit. Yup, I watch Godzilla movies so I can see a bunch of unearned watered-down emotions C-plots with terrible acting. In the end it became a Die Hard situation where she just needed to do the most hardass thing in every situation possible and she was completely correct and invincible and action hero-y at every moment possible. She was Sylvester Stallone or Jet Li - or the Japanese equivalent, an unassuming 21-year-old girl. No more drama, no more high concept, and no interesting character to replace it. It worked OK from an action perspective, but let's not pretend that there was any possible climax to this movie that didn't have Godzilla fighting Kiryu, so whatever.

With two female main characters, gotta give props to the movie for passing the Bechdel test. That's not common for giant robot monster-fighting lazer movies. Let's see Pacific Rim do as much for feminism in 90 minutes.

An abundance of daytime shooting doesn't do anything for the effects, but it does give the film a more memorable look

The acting was pretty, uh, whatever. I thoroughly enjoyed Shin Takuma as the foppish romantic scientist and really wish he had gotten more screen time, as he was just about the only intentionally funny aspect of the movie that kept me entertained. Sadly, he was inextricably tied to that first-half cyborg plot that got dropped mid-act-two, so we lost the character and the performance entirely. Having a little kid main character is always a big risk, especially when you pair her with grass for a sidekick. Like in Godzilla vs. Hedorah, it makes a lot of scenes hard to take seriously. It's hard to criticize a little girl's acting - seems wiser just to ignore it - meaning I kinda wish the kids were just kept off-screen. "Good for her age" doesn't really equate to "makes me enjoy the movie".

Of all the aspects of Millenniumization, the special effects surprised me the most. In that they disappointed me the most. The miniatures in this movie are really miniature-looking. Greg L. mentioned that the look reminded him of (1989's) Robot Jox (reminder: GxM was made circa 2002). Mechagodzilla's rigid stance, sleek surfaces, and mechanical movements are naturally going to be harder to enliven than oraganic monsters, as even if the machine was huge, it would still look like an action figure. Still, he's got a great look and a lot of cool weaponry, and once the sun sets, the suit looks a lot better. But there's no excuse for Godzilla to be so stodgy - he's standing completely still in a number of scenes! The reluctance to animate Godzilla creates the impression that he's like... asleep for half of the movie. Or frozen. Or, you know, a model. And while we're on effects, god, did they really need to give us a Special Edition treatment of Godzilla's death from the original movie? That would've been Sny Snoodles embarrassing if the rest of the movie wasn't equally laughable. I mention the effects only because I came in expecting an upgrade from Heisei and found a movie that looks significantly worse than Godzilla vs. Destoroyah or even the far older Godzilla vs. Biollante.

Godzilla x Mechagodzilla is watchable, and if you're an avid fan of mobile suits and giant monsters, you'll probably find something to like about it. But it certainly won't make any converts. The story is a complete letdown and the action has only a few brief highlights. I don't see myself watching it again and I hope to see some of these concepts properly explored in greater depth in the series' future. Maybe the direct sequel, Tokyo S.O.S. (also featuring Akane and Kiryu) will be a bit better. I'm not optimistic. If Godzilla '14 takes off at the box office, it probably won't be long before the new run takes on Mecha-G. Here's hoping. 

Mini Movie Mreviews: Godzilla lives on

Welcome to Mini Movie Mreviews, a feature where I take you through the movies I've watched in the last week or two. These reviews are geared toward those who HAVEN'T seen the film and just want to know if they should watch. I give my condensed recommendation in italics at the end of each review.

At the rate I'm moving through the Godzilla series, I think the MMM format is most appropriate. At this point I've seen eight of the movies, seven in the past two months....

If you're confused by any of the terminology in this post - and actually care - here's a Godzilla Cheat Sheet. 

Godzilla vs. Hedorah (1971) [English dub]
Freaky. At the height of Godzilla becoming a kids' series, vs. Hedorah throws us a foreboding psychedelic curve-ball twisting together nuclear holocaust, a living landfill, bad acid trips, and Godzilla himself drowning in sludge. The anti-pollution message is so heavy-handed that it wraps around to be oppressively horrifying - Hedorah is pollution incarnate, a mass of slime and sludge that rips from smokestacks like a bong and exhales gas so poisonous it burns the flesh from human bones. This movie doesn't pull any punches when it comes to human casualties; we see men and women - even an actual character - stripped to the bone by Hedorah's acidic fumes, and news reports actually give us a running death toll. Tens of thousands fall to Hedorah - to pollution - to industry - to the hubris of the human race. Hedorah is the folly of industry come back to haunt us, just as Godzilla was originally the folly of nuclear war incarnate. This time Hero-zilla takes on the role of the spirit of nature, first shown vainly trying to clean up Earth's desecrated oceans (though hilariously, Godzilla is valiantly burning the trash - what the hell man, are you trying to make things worse?). His adoring young fan Ken (our human protagonist) seems to be less an association of Godzilla with humanity and more of a call for the younger generation to abandon the old ways of polluting the environment to stand (with Godzilla) against industry.

What really sets vs. Hedorah apart is the trippy, frantic audio/visual style, inter-cutting soul music, funk, folk, acid rock, and eerie silence with scenes of carnage, dance clubs, blighted seas, hippy bonfires, monster battles, and even some freaky Ralph Bakshi-esque animations.

Like most Godzilla films I've enjoyed, this is unfortunately a great 60-minute movie in a 90-minute package, with too much pseudo-scientific exposition (I don't think Hedorah needed to originate in space) and a painfully drawn-out series of fake-out endings. The humans' electro-generator thing in particular could've been cut almost entirely; it was boring as shit to watch and took like fifteen minutes to setup.

Not particularly representative of the series, but a terrific and unique movie. A must-watch for fans of the G-man, psychedelia, or '70s eco-horror.

Godzilla (1984) [Japanese, subtitled]
So I've decided to watch the entire Heisei series, and right here is where it starts: the 1984 revival of the property from a decade-long hiatus. Godzilla '84 picks up right where Godzilla '54 left off, conveniently ignoring all the monster battles, smog monster battles, and illegitimate children that happened in between.

It's appropriate that this movie is so blandly titled, as it's perhaps the blandest series entry I've yet seen. It is boring as fucking fuck. If you happen to have seen any of the later Heisei movies and are expecting the same from this, you'll be sorely disappointed (as was I). This is essentially Showa-quality special effects and action with a slightly darker presentation surrounded by a bunch of half-plots about characters who get cursory 10-minute arcs before being discarded as the over-arching narrative sees fit.

I realize this series isn't really about the human characters and I've never expected much on that front - perhaps what bugs me about Godzilla ('84) is that it seems to think I will care about the various one-dimensional faces it introduces, from the boring reporter to the boring prime minister to the terrifyingly out-of-place comic relief drunk. They each get some time onscreen to have some kind of personal dilemma and theoretically a conflict, none of them are developed to any depth or resolved in any meaningful way - in fact they just eat up screen time without developing the plot or themes (lol) of the movie at all. If you only give me a few minutes with a character, I'm just not going to be able to get involved in their story, and I'm certainly not going to be able to unceremoniously switch gears five times over the course of the movie.

Yeah don't watch this one, it is tedious, boring, and redundant. Also, Godzilla gets killed by a bird-machine and that is just stupid.

Godzilla vs. Biollante (1989) [Japanese, subtitled]
Almost certainly my favorite Godzilla film thus far, vs. Biollante tells the story of one man's boundless dream to resurrect his daughter by empowering a psychic rose with the DNA of Godzilla and... then... something. Dr. Shinagami's daughter died near a rose plant. He saved that rose. He worked under contract for the government so he could get access to Godzilla cells. On a (literally) dark and stormy night, he merged a Godzilla cell with a rose cell (by injecting one into the other - science, lol!) to create a super-rose. This unleashed a gigantic horrific Godzilla-Rose-Monster, Biollante. You could say things didn't go according to plan, but what was the plan? Create a non-gigantic horrific rose monster? Reincarnate his daughter as a radioactive psychic rose - "like she always wanted"? Better not to ask. It's not like Dr. Frankenstein had a plan, right?!

This movie starts the unfortunate (or fortunate, depending on your opinion and the particular movie) tradition of the Heisei series riffing on popular 'contemporary' Western movies. Here it's an cop/spy action subplot where two of our heroes have to play keep-away with a maguffin against a vaguely Middle-Eastern, suspiciously Prince-looking agent. In case this is too vague to key any tropes for you, the subplot also involves a pair of American agents, one white and one black, who literally speak the line, "we are a lethal weapon!"

The fight with Biollante is undoubtedly my favorite kaiju battle so far

Vs. Biollante has some of the most intense and brutal monster battles you'll see in a Godzilla movie (these are almost on par with Heisei Gamera) on top of fantastic creature design. The film manages to make Biollante both beautiful and horrifying - as the saying goes, "you can't have a genetically modified super-rose without its mile-long tendril swarms and acidic secretions".

If you love giant monsters, THIS is the movie for you. If you love corny '80s movies, that'll just be a bonus. If you only want to watch one Godzilla, this is definitely the #1 latter-day candidate. 

Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah (1991) [Japanese, subtitled]
This movie is terrible. There are funny parts, but it's so overwhelmingly terrible that after a certain point I had a hard time enjoying the ridiculous camp. See, the problem is that it's built around a terrible core. Most of the Godzilla series, despite its middling execution, is built from really cool ideas. Or at least, ideas that appeal to me. See the above vs. Hedorah and vs. Biollante. Vs. King Ghidorah is just really, really fucking stupid. It is a movie written by idiots (or written in an extremely insane way) that has no goal in mind beyond imitating great works that are far, far beyond its reach. I think I would not be alone in worrying that time travel is too high-concept for the Godzilla franchise. Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah makes this clearer than it ever needed to be: time travel is too high-concept for the Godzilla franchise.

I have never watched a movie with more plot holes, and that is not an exaggeration. Everything in the movie feels so distinctly conceived-by-a-five-year-old that my head almost exploded. The entire point of time travel is that things happen synchronously in different time periods. Kill Godzilla before he's born, and he should cease to exist forever. That's not how it works here. In GvKG, if you jump in a time machine on 11/4/1991, travel to 11/4/1945 and kill the dinosaur that will become Godzilla, then return to 11/4/1991... Godzilla drops dead on 11/4/1991. What the hell does that even mean?! I spent at least a half hour of the movie just thinking about that. Why not just have a device that kills Godzilla? The time travel served ABSOLUTELY NO PURPOSE! IT DIDN'T CHANGE THE PAST! There's also the fucking ridiculous convolution that the movie is set in 1991, but the time travelers are from 2204, but Godzilla was born around 1945, so the time travelers come back to 1991 to tell the people in 1991 "Hi, we're here to tell you that we're here to travel back in time to 1945 to kill Godzilla, okay?" Obviously the reason is that it was too expensive to set the entire movie in 2204, but it's hilariously nonsensical that the time-travelers essentially 'stop by' the movie to tell us about their plans (and inevitably foil their own sinister plot).

Gotta give credit where it's due: I never cease to be amused by anti-European racism in foreign movies. Three people show up from the future, two white, one Japanese. Guess which two turn out to be evil? The conniving, interloping European stereotype cracks me up every time.

This time the parody subplot (are they parodies though?) seems to be based on Terminator, as the future people utilize a powerful but emotionless android soldier whose skin at one point gets torn off to reveal he looks like a mechanical skeleton. At some point, in a scene accidentally edited in from T2, he gets reprogrammed and becomes good, and also runs like The Six-Million Dollar Man. There are also scenes shot-for-shot taken from Star Wars, and Back to the Future, so... I don't even know what to say about that. It doesn't seem like a joke. It's just fucking weird and gives the whole thing a not-a-real-movie feel. Doesn't help that the future costumes are insanely cheap and look like something Devo would wear.

I dunno. All of the pieces add up to a movie that should be a riot of unintentional comedy, but I was totally annoyed and disgusted the entire way through. I say skip it - there are plenty of other funny Godzillas that won't make your head hurt.

Godzilla vs. Destroyah (1995) [English dub]

While you may be asking why I jumped ahead three movies, skipping Godzilla vs. Mothra, Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla 2, and Godzilla vs. Spacegodzilla, you actually ought to be asking why I started the Heisei series here at vs. Destoroyah before jumping back to the beginning. It's because whatever. Anyway.

Destroyah is pretty neat plotwise, in that it takes a lot of arbitrary concepts and doesn't overcomplicate them. GvKG tried to play way out of its league with scifi high concepts and got smoked - this time around, fictional leaps are used to facilitate new and cool monsters, so I can happily suspend my disbelief. Destoroyah is a pre-Cambrian life-form that is hyper-evolving because of the modern climate? Well, that's not what "evolution" means, but sure, whatever. It means I get to see four (technically five) different forms of the monster over the course of the movie, so I'm cool with it. It even makes Destoroyah one of the most interesting threats since Ghidorah in that it gives him not just a limitless power level, but pairs each power-up with a completely new look and style of fighting. He goes from battling soldiers indoors to soaring over skyscrapers to towering over Godzilla - in some sense, Destoroyah alone is sort of a throwback to a number of other kaiju, which makes him a great final opponent for the Heisei Godzilla.

Of course, again there was a Western movie reference/parody thing (it actually felt like an homage this time around). Destoroyah's first form is a collective of 4-meter-tall insectoids that attack a squad of marines in an industrial complex. It's a shot-for-shot remake of the first action sequence of Aliens. Oh well.

You could say the movie was a little bloated, but considering that it was bloated with an entertaining variety of monster battles including a new Thermal Godzilla, Junior Godzilla, four forms of Destoroyah, and the triumphant return of the Super X, it didn't bother me. There was a lot going on, but I'll take that over vs. Hedorah's excruciating fascination with one boring character/gimmick.

Solid is the word that comes to mind. Exemplary for a Godzilla movie - if you want to know what the series is all about, it definitely won't hurt to start here. Have crackers ready for a hearty helping of cheese and enjoy the action.

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There you have it. Five more Godzillas down. Five to go. Then another fifteen after that. Just for fun, here's an approximate current ranking from best to worst:

Godzilla vs. Biollante
Godzilla vs. The Thing (aka Mothra vs. Godzilla)
Godzilla vs. Hedorah
Godzilla vs. Destoroyah
Ghidorah: The Three-headed Monster
Godzilla ('54)
Godzilla ('84)
Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah

What I'm Playing, October '13

In this feature, we commemorate games I have for the first time started and finished in the last few highly variable time units.

Alright gonna blast right through this because I forgot to fill it in at the end of October. Things got hectic with moving week and all.

Special Recognition for Starting and Finishing:

NAM-1975 (NeoGeo)

NAM-1975 belongs to that very small subset of shooting galleries like Wild Guns and Cabal that utilize an onscreen character, aka arcade third-person shooters - a class of games that I love and wish hadn't died after Sin & Punishment. NAM is credited to SNK and strongly reminds me of Metal Slug, though, as Slug was developed six years later by ex-employees of Irem, I doubt the games shared much personnel. Still, they both nail that perfect level of difficulty between reflex and memorization that I've colloquially labeled "fun". It's hard to describe what exactly makes an action game satisfying without just listing what it's not; it's not pure reflex, it's not pure memorization. At the highest level, there's something about learning to recognize certain setups and how enemies will organically and spontaneously interact to create threat patterns, and through failed attempts and experimentation developing high-level strategies to combat those emergent challenges without needing to know exactly what's coming when. To become skilled at the game, you memorize setups and strategies then reflexively identify situations and match them to tactics, rather than memorizing a sequence of spots on the screen to occupy and targets to shoot, or individually processing every single bullet and relying on reflexes for every move.

For instance, in the first level of NAM-1975, there's this water part. I've learned that the highest priority enemies are boats (and if you shoot the boats the riders will die), the second highest are choppers, and the lowest are swimmers. I've learned to dodge roll, not to run, because the angled bullet fire comes in quick bursts. I've learned not to take the Balcan (machine gun) rather than the Flamethrower, because the flamer has too little ammo and leaves me unable to attack the choppers. None of this has anything to do with knowing where to stand on screen, where to aim, or any specific mechanical inputs. It's all strategic data that I've stored in my head that allows me to intelligently structure a reaction to "there's an enemy" and "here comes a bullet".

NAM's got a blazing pace and plenty of variety, but it does fall short when it comes to boss battles. That's really the only reason it'll never threaten Wild Guns and Sin & Punishment 2 for the position of arcade TPS top-dog - every level ends with the same tedious tuck-and-roll fest, as SNK couldn't come up with any cleverer way to crank up the difficulty than to give the bosses super-fast projectiles.

Games Started:

Pokemon Y (Nintendo 3DS)

And the pacing is officially 'off'. It has now been 16 hours, nearly 120 caught Pokemon, and TWO FUCKING GYMS (at approximately the 8th and 14th hour). Y is chugging along SO slowly. Maybe I shouldn't be stopping to smell and catch every last Roselia, but Christ almighty, every time I think we're ready to move to a town that'll have a gym and give me a real battling challenge, yet another filler dungeon is tossed in. Save it, guys! I'm going to be so burned out by the time I get to the Elite Four that you can call me, uh, Flareon.

I know, I know. "It doesn't mean anything that gyms are spaced out, that's a completely arbitrary structure that you're forcing on the game based on past experiences". That's true. What keeps the trainer journey interesting isn't strictly the idea of a Pokemon Gym every two hours, it's the iterative process of collecting new Pokemon, refining your battling squad, and taking on a concentrated challenge - a test - that allows you to pass through to the next stage of the journey. In the past, those challenges have been represented by gyms. Just because gyms are less frequent doesn't mean the challenge/tests have to be... unfortunately, in Pokemon Y, that's exactly what it means. Thus far the only even remotely structured challenges have been the gyms, and even they have been easy as shit. But outside of that the worst you'll ever see are Trainers with three Magikarps that might know Tackle.

If you're asking: "So, are the Pokemon themselves still getting stupider?", let me just point you to Hawlucha.

I dunno, it's too early to say (which is insane, considering it's been 16 hours), but right now this feels like a game that is strictly made for people who enjoy catching Pokemon, not people who enjoy raising and battling them. But I will give them that there are certainly a shitload to catch and some interesting new tricks to the process, like the ever-annoying Horde battles, more spawning subtleties, a way bigger world with (I think) more optional areas (I say "I think" because I've been going everywhere anyway), and other stuff that's frankly kinda boring to bring up. Not bad stuff, just really specific.

Ultima VII (PC)

I'm not gonna do another first impressions of Ultima VII because I've barely played it since I wrote my first first impressions. I actually hate playing PC games for totally arbitrary reasons: if I've never mentioned before, I don't like sitting at my desk and using a mouse and keyboard, since I do that all day at work. Games are my relaxation time, so I like to be able to sit in bed or on the couch - I've never found a great way for this to mesh with mouse/keyboard (and yes I've tried a lap-desk, and no I don't care for it). Moral of the story is that unless I'm REALLY into a PC game or I'm in some life-phase where I have a lot of spare desk-time (like college), I generally stall after a few hours. If you can't guess from my original article, Ultima VII is probably gonna be one of those cases. The game just fans out so fucking much after that concentrated intro, which isn't a bad thing, it's just an "I have other games to play that are better at keeping me involved" thing.

The Witcher (PC)

Kinda same thing applies here as I just said for Ultima. I actually tried lap-desking this one because I like it so much, but the words are too tiny to read on my TV. I will probably chip away tiny hour-long chunks once a month for the next year until I start forgetting to play it. It doesn't help that I'm having some weird performance issues that I can't even describe well enough to search for on Google - my machine runs the game just fine, but when in free camera mode (i.e. anytime outside of combat) the camera jerks upward every few seconds, really breaking my immersion and making it hard to enjoy looking at the world.

One neat thing I was really enjoying was that the first chapter of the game shakes up the traditional hub structure by spreading the adventure field over the exact same area as the town, relegating night to Danger/Combat time and day to Talking time. The entire act is set in this broad village area with some fields and houses interspersed (there's definitely a term for this and if we were closer to my high school European history days I would know it. Virgate? Kenning?), and during the day, everyone is out and about, frolicking around, giving out quests and selling baubles. When night rolls in, the villagers shut their doors and the ghosts come out, and what was formerly the town area becomes the dungeon. It has almost a Zelda-y feel to it, like the way the towns would shut their doors and the spooks would come out when the sun set on Hyrule/Termina/Hyrule field.

Godzilla: Save the Earth (PS2)

Well, Save the Earth gets a lot of free points for being a fighting game that doesn't immediately feel like the three archetypes (Capcom, Mortal Kombat, and Tekken) we have today. I can't think of any fighting game since Tekken 6, and before that since Brawl, that had me up til 6AM just trying out every last character. But Save the Earth's widely varying roster (and that's just the eight characters I've unlocked) did just that. Aside from some rare camera wonkiness, hard-to-pick-up controls, and a far-too-long arcade mode (~1 hour *if* you win all the fights on first try), there's very little to stop the game from being completely enjoyable. That said, this is a model explicitly designed for disposable fun, so it doesn't exactly promise bottomless depth.

There's a very rock-paper-scissors feel to the fights, with each character mostly oriented around ranged, melee, or grappling attacks. Still, such basic core mechanics leave a lot of room for flashy, distinctive quirks to each character. That's kind of the calling card of the party fighter, and it's also exactly what you want in a tribute game.

As fan service, it's stellar. Even as a neophyte I'm impressed by how loyal the game is to the characters' filmic abilities and styles and how well that's worked into the gameplay. Anguirus uses his spiked back instead of blocking, Mecha King Ghidorah absorbs lazers, Mothra starts as a larva and metamorphoses mid-battle into an imago, Rodan flies instead of walking, SpaceGodzilla is totally oriented around telekinesis, etc. It's more strictly tied to what's been established in the movies than the contriving and occasionally straight-up arbitrary Marvel and DC fighters. Of course, kaiju translate really seamlessly into well-balanced one-on-one fights (I hear they made this famous RPG based on them...) so it's only natural that they all have well-defined and corresponding move-sets. Even in the movies, they pretty much each have a special beam attack, each have a special mode of transport, each have a special throw, etc. The only big disappointment for me is that Kiryu (here called Mechagodzilla III) from 2002's Godzilla x Mechagodzilla is completely lacking its signature Gundam-style detachable shoulder/wrist cannons and backpack. What's up with that? That's the whole point of Kiryu. Though it should be noted I haven't seen the movies featuring about a third of the kaiju, so I can't comment on how loyally presented they are.

Volgarr the Viking (Steam)

Actually started this in September but forgot to cover it. Volgarr is like Ghosts n' Goblins for a new era... in that it's a lot like Ghosts n' Goblins. I actually enjoy the core mechanics more than the GnG series (some have said they hearken back to Super Return of the Jedi) and the individual challenges feel more precise and fairly parsed. That is to say, after you've cleared one screen, you won't continue to be flooded from behind by respawning enemies from that territory.

I don't know if there's a lot else to say about it. It's fun - if you're a fan of Sir Arthur, definitely pick it up.

One note - it's a bit obnoxiously old school in a way that most reincarnations of old quarter-eaters aren't - there's no way to save your progress, neither through passwords or save states. Though the full game could probably be toppled in a half hour by a master, you're going to have to master it to that point to reach the end - though there are infinite continues on hand, unless you've got infinite time to pair with them, you'll have to start from the beginning every time you boot up the game. 

Games Finished:

Castle of Illusion starring Mickey Mouse (XBLA)

A gorgeous finale to a gorgeous game. I love that they managed to make Mizrabel overflowingly cinematic while still retaining the punishing difficulty of the original game's final battle. I'm normally not a fan of talky bosses, as they tend to repeat themselves (The Witcher 2) or distract from the action (Anarchy Reigns), but Sega Australia managed to pace this fight perfectly such that Mizrabel's seamless [flamboyant?] incantation actually makes the rather straightforward platforming boss battle an engrossingly magical moment. I felt like I was playing Fantasia. The voice performance by Nika Futterman as Mizrabel and the crescendoing score by Grant Kirkhope really knock the scene out of the park.

Castle of Illusion immediately joins the ranks of games worth playing just to indulge in audio/visual beauty. I can't think of any game since Baten Kaitos which I have so delighted in witnessing unfold. It's a fun game to be sure, a loving remake to be sure, and even a rare capitalization on the full potential of 2.5D, but what will really stick with me from Castle of Illusion are those menacing saffron storm clouds, the gleaming licorice dragon bursting forth from his swirling river of creams, the orchestral attacks giving way to foreboding tinkling as Mickey was thrown to and fro through watery ruins, and all the other dazzling illusions the castle held. I cannot give a strong enough recommendation for Castle of Illusion, and if you're at all interested in 2D platform design, make sure you check out the original as a companion piece - it sheds a lot of light on just how clever the remake is. 

Here today, Godzilla tomorrow: Learning to adapt

Sometimes, when a licensed property is planted in fertile soil for just the right amount of time and administered just the right amount of care, a metaphor is born. Lavished with love and tenderness, that metaphor may just grow up into a fresh bowl of shredded cabbage.

Super Godzilla and Godzilla: Save the Earth present different facets of the character. The Godzilla character, not the shredded cabbage. We're off the cabbage thing. Move on already.

Besides supporting a series of substandard plots, underdeveloped characters, and contrived science fiction, there are two main activities associated with the G-Man: destroying cities and fighting monsters. After all, most of his movie titles are built from the words "Godzilla", "Versus", and "Destroy" (Godzilla vs. Destroyah cuts right to the chase). So it's only natural that in playing a Godzilla game we'd expect to control some egg-huffing reporter/cop who has to convince his boss that some giant monster is about to go crazy, and we'd expect to completely drop out of the game and have nothing to do after about 20 minutes. Or we'd want to be a young, optimistic politician/military officer who has to rally Japan's defense forces in their futile struggle against the unstoppable G. I kid, but it only took one adaptation before Godzilla 2: War of the Monsters (NES) shifted gameplay to a Famicom Wars army-versus-Godzilla structure. While there's certainly something to that approach, the most obvious appeal of the Godzilla franchise is shifting the Big Bad Beast into the protagonary role, giving us a break from fighting monsters and lettings us play as one. As Godzilla, the players are going to want to smash, crash, and bash; elements any decent adaptation would be wise to incorporate.

2004's Godzilla: Save the Earth and 1993's Super Godzilla are indeed decent adaptations. They let us control Godzilla, they let us wreak havoc on civilization, and they let us go toe-to-toe with other towering foes. They let us drive a Godzilla-shaped bus, eat Godzilla-shaped cereal, and brush Godzilla-shaped teeth using a Godzilla-shaped toothbrush.

Godzilla: Save the Earth is the easier game to describe, so let's start there. One of the main things Godzilla has done is his half-century as our spiritual guide is lay waste to other big dudes. Particularly in the late Showa era (~1966-1975), Godzilla served the function of a gigantic reptilian Hulk Hogan. The kaiju had human personalities, their own signature move-sets, and match records to defend. This was the era that gave us Destroy All Monsters and All Monsters Attack. Save the Earth was a semi tie-in with 2004's Final Wars, a revival monster mash that made for a temporary sendoff to God-Z and his over-sized compatriots, so it's to be expected that it's a 4-player 3D arena fighting/wrestling game the likes of Power Stone and other games in that genre that I don't play. Rakugaki Showtime? That's such an obscure reference I'm not even sure it fits here. Anyway, Save the Earth isn't completely off-the-hook Party Fighter; the big focus is on one-on-one matches, and practiced strategy is enough to overcome ad-hoc "equalizing" mechanics like power-ups and environmental attacks. It kinda goes without saying why this works for the Godzilla franchise - of course we want to select from the classic kaiju lineup, of course we want to battle it out across cities, of course we want multiplayer mayhem. The entire concept is a no-brainer, it sells itself.

Save the Earth, in accordance with the film era that inspired it, is very man-in-a-suit Godzilla. When we step into Godzilla's (or any other kaiju's) shoes, we aren't necessarily restricted in unusual or specific ways any more so than when we take over Sub-Zero or SoulCalibur. It looks like we're playing as a giant monster, but doesn't inherently feel like it. Godzilla controls like a human. BUT!, Godzilla's capabilities and surroundings are not in keeping with those of a normal human. He towers over a fully interactive playground of office blocks, skyscrapers, boulders, and oil tankers. The uniqueness of this interactive incarnation of the Gentle Giant comes from what you can do, not how you do it. The game gives us control of a massive all-powerful abomination and lets us gleefully run rampant in the sandbox of civilization, freely flexing our new-found might without limitations. Chuck buildings? Swat helicopters? Swing a radio tower like a club? You better believe Godzilla can in Save the Earth. It's a game that lets our imagination run wild over what it might be like to have a tiny city at our feet - what it might be like if we were the man in the suit. It's a game about the abstract concept, appeal, and potential of Godzilla.

On the flipside, Super Godzilla lets us feel like we've stepped into the films and wormed our way into the cinematic flow. The Heisei film run (1984-1995) focused on the antagonistic, monolithic nature of the big G, painting him as mankind's terrible curse that repeatedly comes back to punish us. This fully animalistic Godzilla is indifferent to humanity, often destructive but occasionally manipulated to good ends. Super Godzilla sticks with this framework and the general storytelling rules of the movies, using a human cast to bridge the player to Godzilla and providing only second-degree control of the monster. The conceit, if you'll allow me to use that word in a way that it is not supposed to be used but frequently is, is that Japanese scientists have developed a device that draws Godzilla in a certain direction, north, south, east, or west. (This feels loosely based on the "bird-machine" from Godzilla ('84) that used magnetic "bird-waves" to draw Godzilla into a volcano). Godzilla marches forward on his own, but the player sets his direction as indicated by an onscreen arrow. The split-screen interface pairs a symbolic tracking map with a widescreen video monitor on the beast himself, steadily plodding forward. When Godzilla moves through an obstacle we watch on the monitor as he autonomously interacts, tearing terrain to pieces and shrugging off gunfire. The boss fights likewise implement a heavily cinematic spin on fighting games, in which the player needs to time attacks with Godzilla's and the enemies' "fighting spirit" to execute lengthy cut-scene specials.

The player gets the sense that they're barely in control, clutching the reigns of this relentless force, struggling to coax it to the desired goal. They can never concretely specify a path or destination (or an attack in the boss fights), left with the imprecise means of the Bird Machine. Godzilla can't be expected to wait or make intelligent decisions on his own - direct him through a building, and he will crash his way through. He is a dumb animal, but a powerful one. That makes it that much cooler that we have even a little bit of input - our limitations show how powerful he is, while the extent of our influence is enough to make that power feel our own. Super Godzilla puts the inhuman, savage power of Godzilla in the hands of the player.

Save the Earth and Super Godzilla make a pretty interesting pairing, both as different types of Godzilla games and as different types of adaptations. Save the Earth decides to hone in on the most game-ready aspect of the franchise and run with it as far as possible, letting the player indulge in the sensation of control in a familiar setting; "if I were Godzilla, I would...". Super Godzilla recreates the movie-going experience from top to bottom, establishing the core audience participation that defines the films: the simultaneous awe and terror in response to Godzilla, the notion that this is a horrifying, destructive monster... that is also essentially innocent and thus fun to root for. The real battle is for control of Godzilla. It's kinda interesting that the more cinematic and what could be called more mature interpretation is the one that came out in 1993. Anyway, what we have are two really great adaptations. Great games by their own right? Who cares. No one's trying to sell them without the 'Zil. But absolutely a great case study in how to successfully translate other media into video games.

Trying to buy a Godzilla game

Was thinking about picking up one of the sixth gen Godzilla fighting games for a few bucks and went looking to find which is preferred. Reviews gave higher scores to the first game, but their main complaint about the second was "too similar", so I was looking at fan feedback. So far I have found these extremely helpful and well-informed recommendations:

In an Amazon review of Destroy All Monsters Melee: 
"This is the best Gamecube game ever. But it is much more than that. It is quite possibly the GREATEST SINGLE GAME EVER CREATED IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND."

You can't argue he's not level-headed.

In a thread asking which is better, Destroy All Monsters Melee or Save the Earth: 
"All Godzilla games suck and fail beyond everything. Get Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World." 
The OP responded that he was not looking for an RPG, but a giant monster game, so the same poster added: "Giant monster games always suck. I’ve never seen one that DOESN’T suck. Try a different genre."

Not a great troll, as no one could possibly believe that a human being has enjoyed Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World, the second worst JRPG ever made. Nor would a human, even a psychopath, suggest that JRPGs are a universally recommendable genre. Nice try though.

Anyway, probably'll get Save the Earth. Sure as hell not bothering with the motion-controlled Unleashed for Wii. 

Godzilla meets Ghidorah: San Daikaijū: Chikyū Saidai no Kessen

That's Three Giant Monsters: Earth's Greatest Battle, or, as it was released in the West, Ghidorah: The Three Headed Monster, the 1965 direct sequel to Mothra vs. Godzilla and the fifth movie in the Godzilla franchise. I use the Japanese title this time 'round because I watched the Japanese version. But I'm going to call it Ghidorah from here, because typing. It was okay (not as good as Mothra vs.), but oddly, what was good in this one was basically the inverse of the last. 

Reminiscent of the original Gojira, Ghidorah sports a lot of build-up to the arrival of the kaiju, playing the classic horror card that what the audience doesn't see is scarier than what they do. The high points of the movie are the tense and creepy scenes dealing with the investigation of sites of suspicious activity like Ghidorah's meteorite "egg" and Rodan's volcanic resting place. A brainwashed foreign princess thinking she's from Venus serves as a prophetic doomsayer, heralding a coming apocalypse at the hands of the evil alien Ghidorah. She proclaims that Ghidorah is far more devastating than any threat Earth has ever faced - that even Godzilla pales in comparison to his might. This is a great and atypical setup - Mothra vs. Godzilla played its hand early and recycled (half) the mystery of the first movie: "what can stop Godzilla?" (the first movie also had another component - "what is Godzilla?" - but we've stopped caring about that by now). That's getting old at this point - we know what Godzilla can do, and plenty of stuff can stop him. So it's a lot scarier to keep the new monster off-screen and let our imaginations envision, "what could be even more powerful than Godzilla?" Especially when the movie tells us that not only has Ghidorah rampaged before, annihilating the entire planet-wide civilization of Venus, but he is intelligent and evil - he chooses to destroy. Godzilla is an animal - he's deadly by accident, and mankind are the evil ones for awakening him. Ghidorah is malevolent. 

Unfortunately, the third act fails to deliver on this cataclysmic promise. No intelligent malevolence shows through in Ghidorah's behavior once he hits the screen - he stomps and shrieks just as mindlessly as Godzilla. His arrival-rampage through a small mining town is completely unimpressive, taking place on a much smaller scale than we're used to. What's made Godzilla seem so invincible in the past isn't so much that he smashes buildings, but that he shrugs off the full military might of humanity. We've directly witnessed that Godzilla is more powerful than any weapon ever created. Mankind puts up little resistance to Ghidorah, so we don't get long montages of tanks firing on him or planes dropping bombs. This was where we really did need a "what can stop this monster?" phase - the premature resolution of that question significantly undercuts the threat of the antagonist. Instead, by that point in the movie it's already been decided that the only way to stop Ghidorah is an alliance of Godzilla, Rodan, and Mothra. 

This weak introduction of Ghidorah ripples into our perception of the other kaiju. Since we're never shown how much stronger Ghidorah is than Godzilla, the kaiju triumvirate feels like overkill. Worse yet, it pussifies the "good" kaiju, suggesting that it takes three of them to combat this decidedly mundane (by Godzilla standards) threat. We do get a hilarious whipping-the-shit-out-of-Mothra fight that spurs Godzilla and Rodan to join forces, but it never actually feels like the heroic kaiju are outmatched - it just feels like Mothra sucks. And Mothra does suck! It's entirely worm-Mothra this time around, since I guess the surviving larva born at the end of the last movie hasn't grown up into an imago yet, and you know what that means. Yup, String Shot again! (This is painfully obvious, but it didn't strike me until actually watching these movies that they're the direct inspiration for Pokemon.) And once again, it's the reams and reams of silk that are the villain's downfall. Sorry, that was funny before, but at this point it's unbelievably lame. God-Z, Rodan, and Ghidorah just push each other around for a while until Mothra gets a clear shot, and the great Ghidorah, destroyer of worlds, supposedly far more than a match for mankind or even Godzilla, is conquered - and, frankly, humiliated - by silly string. Great teamwork gang.

Ghidorah's puppet heads make for a particularly disappointing prop - the monster ends up looking stout and stubby.

In terms of the battle itself: taking the kaiju away from civilization is rarely a good idea. The farther isolated these creatures become, the less foreign and menacing they seem. And the less giant. Miniature cities give the kaiju scale because, whether we're taken into the illusion or not, we still see a direct communication of size. We see that Godzilla is literally twice as tall as a skyscraper, and we know from reality how big skyscrapers are. Set entirely against "mountains" that look like mounds of dirt, there's no visual reference to gauge the kaijus' size. In fact, the only thing making us believe the mounds of dirt are mountains is the preconception that Godzilla is tall. But that's cyclical logic: we're supposed to believe the dirt heaps are mountains because we've been told Godzilla is tall, and we're supposed to believe Godzilla is tall because we've been told the dirt heaps are mountains. It doesn't work. Movies are a visual medium - you have to show me, not tell me. It's always going to be a bit of a challenge to get us over the hump of seeing the kaiju as men in suits, but it's worked before (and will work again). Ghidorah, however, does a pretty poor job, and the action falls flat for it. It's difficult to see anything but a battle of Halloween costumes.

This movie made two major contributions to the series: its most prolific antagonist, Ghidorah, and Godzilla as a hero. I've talked about how much I like Ghidorah in concept but was let down by his execution, but now let's talk Godzilla as defender of humanity, undoubtedly the biggest turning point in the franchise. As handled in Ghidorah, I fucking hate it. For Godzilla to be reasoned with is utterly antithetical to everything that makes him Godzilla. Maybe I'm in the minority here, as the rest of the original run (til 1975) stuck with this heroic Godzilla-Man angle, but the way the change is facilitated in Ghidorah is awful. I realize at this point we're pretty far removed from Godzilla as a metaphor for the atomic bomb, but he's still always been a mindless, primal force of destruction. He is innocent in that he has no conscience. When Mothra convinces him to fight against Ghidorah, we are introduced to the notion that he has thoughts and feelings. Which makes big ol' Godzilla seem like, well, a retard. And a jerk too. This movie tells us there has been a mind behind the menace all along, meaning that he's been totally cool with murdering thousands of people - and even must've had a reason for it. It eradicates the concept of the primal force unleashed by mankind's hubris. And if he has been self-aware all this time, why the fuck would he change his mind now - and why would humans go along with it? Ghidorah's "plan" (destroy all humans) is exactly the same thing that Godzilla's been working on for five movies now. There's no way to reconcile this change of heart with the character's history, because, until now, the character has had no heart to change.

Godzilla and Rodan being good listeners. Yeah, this doesn't clash with my understanding of giant monsters.

This anthropomorphism of consciousness also shows itself in Godzilla's physical conduct. He now does ridiculous stuff like pick up and throw rocks, headbutt other kaiju, sit down, and worst of all, laugh. Yes, Godzilla laughs in this movie. It is the epitome of Godzilla as a kids' movie (a paradigm shift that was underway at the time) and cringe-worthy to watch after a serious and well-developed first two acts. 

Watch the exact moment where the average age of Godzilla's audience drops to single digits.

I chose to watch this one in Japanese after seeing the English dub of Mothra vs. Godzilla to see how different the acting is in tone. I barely noticed a difference - the Japanese acting is still laughable and over-the-top. In the future I'll probably stick with the English versions for ease of watching, though I can see bouncing back and forth.

Ghidorah is impressive in that it takes concepts just as bonkers as those in Mothra vs. Godzilla (a possessed Venusian prophet, a magnetic meteorite) and weaves them into a compelling and atmospheric build-up. In terms of running time, there is more good than bad. Sadly, the concentrated bad of the last half hour cleanly wipes away any chance of walking away satisfied. Somehow, I think this actually would've been a better movie had it been a worse movie. If the early scenes had been as terribly wacky as those in Mothra vs., the third-act goofiness of Godzilla-Man probably would've played. As is, we get a tease of good kaiju horror with a slap in the face for a finish. It's hard to conjure a recommendation without experience with more of the series, but Ghidorah is definitely not one for newcomers and is probably a skip for casual fans.

Wow, Mothra vs. Godzilla is amazing

When a typhoon dumps a giant easter egg at Japan's doorstep, Japanese David Byrne and Hitler try to exploit it for commercial gains to the chagrin of its owners: primitive, atomically irradiated island tribesmen. Tiny singing Minimoth Girls teleport around town to plead for the egg's return, just in time for Drunk-zilla to appear at a construction site to put everyone in danger. When Godzilla withstands a giant moth and the army, the tiny girls must sing at the egg until it hatches into twin larvae who know the beast's only weakness: String Shot. Like, 30 fucking minutes worth of String Shot.

And I was worried it was gonna be boring! I've seen the original Godzilla (1954 - the Serious one), but am otherwise naive to kaiju films, so I didn't know what to expect here. The prospect of equally crappy action with even worse plot/acting/budget never enticed me. Little did I realize how gonzo shit had already become by 1964 - in this case, the "worse" story is far more entertaining than a real one. Each unexpected twist is quickly one-upped by the next: oh no, giant egg! And um, tiny one-foot-tall fairy girls naturally follow from that? Oh, and they sing? And they're actually representatives of a primitive island tribal society (whose chanting can somehow be heard from the mainland)? And the tribe worships a giant moth? It gets sillier and sillier, but the movie isn't laughing. There's some trite attempt at commentary when the Japanese go to the islanders to plea for Mothra's help, the tribal chieftain turning his back and responding "nope you ruined the earth and you ruined our land with your nuclear testing, serves you right", which becomes the silliest moment of all when our protagonist melts his icy heart with the most patronizing, two-faced speech ever. He says, "look. We screwed up with the nuclear testing. We destroyed your land, and that's totally our bad. Then when you wanted your egg back, we ignored you. Again, dick move by us. But listen, for the good of the world, we all need to work together, and that's something you guys could really stand to learn. If you learn to help us, you can finally overcome the mutual problem that we keep completely fucking you over!" And that actually works!

God and I didn't even mention that the dastardly plan of the villains is to turn the egg into a tourist attraction. With all the dubious profiteering that could be going on, these guys are playing it pretty fucking safe here. Sell tickets! O...kay, but that hardly addresses that it's the scientific discovery of a lifetime and that, you know, it's probably going to hatch into something gigantic and impossible to control. You'd think these guys had never seen a Godzilla movie.

So the great strength of the movie is that it constantly introduces weird shit. By comparison, Godzilla himself feels mundane and boring, his introduction perfunctory at best. There's a really weak attempt at build-up when a reporter discovers (what I assume is supposed to be) one of his scales (which in fact looks like an unidentifiable piece of plastic... exactly what it is) and someone says "we've gotta shut down construction, boss!" or some shit like that. Pretty much Godzilla just bursts out of the earth somewhere in the middle of the movie and no one asks why. What makes this even more hilarious is the big lizard's initial rampage, which has him literally falling over himself.

I can't even begin to fathom the thought process that went into these introductory scenes. Godzilla stumbles around like he's wasted, even tripping over his own tail! What the fuck? The series was not comedy at this point. Godzilla is supposed to be an unstoppable antagonistic force, yet he gets tangled up in an electrical tower? Why doesn't the army just dig a giant ditch and put a trip-wire in front of it? Seems a lot smarter than their convoluted (and, shockingly!, unsuccessful) plan to drop electrical nets on him from a helicopter. This comic ineptitude of course works in the movie's favor: instead of a terrifying apocalyptic beast, we get a Godzilla who's kinda just a nuisance because he doesn't know what he's doing. He's like an innocent toddler stumbling around, trying to get his bearings. 

One of the nice things about the movie is that it doesn't look as bad as you probably think it does. While the monsters themselves are utterly bogus - Godzilla walks like Big Bird and sports scales that look more like fleece, and Mothra doesn't look or move even remotely like a living thing - the rest of the special effects and compositing mostly work. Primarily with regards to the miniatures - as stupid as the monsters look, I still believed they were giant thanks to the excellent mini-sets. And, on the flipside, I never found myself distracted by the tiny size of the Minimoth Girls. It helps that there are plenty of practical explosions and tidal waves to support the shoddy creature effects. The only time the quality becomes a matter of comedy is a scene in which Godzilla melts a battalion of tanks with his atomic breath; I'm afraid I don't believe that real tanks would begin to liquidate and drip plastic. 

Those ships look real to me!

Here's a learning fact about this movie's history: the original direction of the franchise would have pit Godzilla against classic movie monsters. The preceding series entry is King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962), which was to be followed by Frankenstein vs. Godzilla. When Toho didn't like the script of FvG, they opted instead to fold in one of their own existing monsters for the fourth movie: Mothra (who debuted in 1961's semi-appropriately titled Mothra). With Mothra vs. Godzilla's smashing success, the producers dropped the classic monster idea, settling on in-company crossovers with other kaiju. The Giant Frankenstein concept did eventually take shape as its own film, Frankenstein vs. Baragon (Frankenstein Conquers the World in the US). And then I think Baragon later showed up in the 'Zilla franchise.

Fun fact 2: Almost all (if not all) Godzilla movies were released under different titles in the US. The American title of this one is Godzilla vs. The Thing. While that'd certainly be an interesting prospect post-1982, it's an asinine title. The title change is carried into the dub, where characters frequently call Mothra "the Thing", an element not present in the Japanese script. So... why? "Mothra" is a silly name, but "the Thing" is much worse, and in particular makes no sense in the dialogue - everyone knows the creature's name as soon as it's introduced AND they call Godzilla by name, so why would they make up a nickname for Mothra? Well, I've got the answer right here in this envelope: the American production company decided on an advertising tactic before titling or dubbing the film. The idea was to withhold images of Mothra and play up the mystery of "the Thing", this new match for Godzilla, forcing audiences to buy tickets if they wanted a look at the monster. I don't know how well this worked as advertising (seems retarded, but I know nothing about popular film-going culture in 1964), but it left a lot of really weird dialogue for posterity. There is no mystery in the movie over Mothra's identity. It shows up like twenty minutes in, completely out of nowhere, and the audience and characters all get a clear look and are told its name, origins, and motives! So the entire "the Thing" idea is just an advertising lie - it has no connection to the actual film.

So if you're ever curious about the God-Z franchise, don't be overwhelmed by the selection of 20+ movies - Mothra vs. Godzilla is a great place to start, enjoyable for fans and newcomers alike. Also, don't mistake it for 1992's Godzilla vs. Mothra. Totally different movie.