There’s no reason for me to be cagey about this film. It was the most fun I had this week with my clothes on. It’s a new favourite kaiju movie, but I am starting to worry that I will be saying that for every film I am belatedly discovering for the first time. I cannot imagine fans of these movies disliking this though. It is quite simply, to use the proper cinematic term, absolutely awesome.
Bear with me as I rush through the main plot points, which are quite ridiculous. A meteor hits the Earth. A princess, being guarded by a detective, seemingly dies in a plane crash, but then returns while seemingly possessed by the spirit of a Venusian prophet. The mighty Ghidorah is due to rise up and cause some stress for humans, to put it mildly, but there is a chance that Godzilla and Rodan could work together and overpower this mutual enemy . . . if they can be persuaded that Ghidorah IS an enemy. That persuasion comes from a young Mothra, with translations offered to the audience by the fairy twins (once again played by Emi and Yumi Itô).
If that all sounds pretty bonkers then, trust me, it is. It is also hilarious and entertaining, particularly during one key scene in the third act that is the kaiju equivalent of kids being talked into moodily doing some housework. As is so often the case, none of the human characters make much of an impression, although the oddness of the tale helps them a bit, but this is all about the monster madness, which is delivered with gusto in the finale.
Director Ishirô Honda is working again with writer Shin’ichi Sekizawa, and both seem to make the most of the silly premise, adding plenty of humour throughout to let viewers know that it’s fine to grin and chuckle your way through this one. And grin and chuckle you surely will.
The effects seem a bit cheaper and more crude than some of the previous stuff we have seen, but that just adds to the feeling that this has been made with an emphasis on the daffy fun.
I will mention Yôsuke Natsuki, Yuriko Hoshi, Hiroshi Koizumi, and Akiko Wakabayashi here. They all do fine in their roles, the latter particularly enjoyable as the aforementioned princess (who, let’s not forget, appears to become possessed by a prophetic Venusian), but they are, as expected, secondary to the monsters. And when the monsters are onscreen, well, the humans are quickly forgotten.
If these films keep being as good as this then I will just kick myself harder for not watching many of them years before now. Part of me hopes they are wildly inconsistent, but part of me is absolutely gleeful at the prospect of more features that are as much fun as this one.
9/10
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After the original, this is definitely one of the best Godzilla movies - and probably one of the best kaiju movies of the era overall. Helps that it has a decent plot lol
ReplyDeleteIt has me so keen for the many I still have ahead of me, even if none of them reach this level :)
DeleteI like Astro Monster a little better than this one, but only a little and that mostly on the basis of model work and costume design on the aliens there. This is definitely one of the best Ghidorah appearances in the franchise, and when you consider what had to go into making that suit work while also dealing with three other quite different kaiju types it's a really impressive technical accomplishment. Toho was extremely ambitious about what they could do with practical effects at this point.
ReplyDeleteThere's one scene here, the translation, that just edges it ahead of Astro-Monster for me :)
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