Okay, first of all, I need to apologise. In making 2024 a year of Godzilla on the blog, I soon realised that I wanted to cover every connected kaiju film. It's a task as momentous as the creatures themselves, and I have already missed out some key movies I wanted to cover on the journey. So there will be a little bit of backtracking before we move further forward. And this is my resource for planning the rest of the year (or however long it takes to cover the movies I want to review here) - https://www.tohokingdom.com/genre_movie_lists/kaiju_listing.htm - and any input, especially from those who know much more than I do, is always welcome.
Go ahead and make all the jokes you want (particularly if you are already envisioning the size of the giant bulb you would need to lure away a giant moth), but Mothra holds up very well today as another fantastic Japanese kaiju film. Based on a book by Shin'chirô Nakamura, it's the tale of greedy and exploitative individuals who bring the titular beast upon their heads when they fail to heed warnings against uprooting two tiny young women from their island home. These "twin fairies" aka Shobijin (played by Yumi Itô and Emi Itô) don't lash out at their captors, but they make everyone aware that the situation will lead to dire consequences. Those dire consequences start off in the form of a giant egg, which hatches a giant caterpillar, which eventually builds a cocoon and prepares to become, as you may have surmised already, Mothra.
Another film from the kaiju master, AKA Ishirô Honda, Mothra is everything you want from this kind of film. The screenplay, by Shin'ichi Sekizawa, mixes the usual messaging with a good smattering of atmosphere throughout the first half before delivering the fun spectacle in the second half. It somehow manages to deliver the goods without feeling like a lazy retread, thanks to the use of the Shobijin, and Mothra makes a hell of an impact in both main, destructive, incarnations.
The cast make much less of an impact, although both Yumi and Emi Itô are delightful every time they appear onscreen. Jerry Itô is the evil capitalist, Clark Nelson, Hiroshi Koizumi plays Dr Shin'ichi Chûjô, someone who might come up with whatever plan is needed to deal with/placate Mothra, and Kyôko Kagawa is a photographer named Michi Hanamura. They all get one or two decent moments, but the film always steps up a notch when showing us either the Shobijin or Mothra.
I don't have much more to say. Although I was familiar with the titular beast, I'd only ever seen the modern Mothra in the American "monsterverse" movies, which is a different, but beautiful, visual feast. Finally seeing the original creature in the original film was a real treat, and I was smiling from start to finish as the pieces of the plot were moved into place, paving the way for the expected third act of panic and large-scale catastrophe. Mothra deserves to remain such a beloved film (and I know it is, considering how many friends of mine are fans of it) so I encourage others to avoid delaying a viewing of it for as long as I did.
9/10
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It is hard to take a giant moth seriously as a threat. I don't think Mothra though has had the awkwardness of trying to make it go from bad to good like Godzilla or Gamera. I don't think Mothra was ever really cast as an evil monster stomping cities for vague reasons; it was the response to the fairies being taken that unleashed the beast.
ReplyDeleteI'll bear that in mind as I see more Mothra movies later on :)
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