Kaiju Blender: Godzilla: Final Wars

With the reduced revenues from Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla and Tokyo SOS, Toho decided it was once again to retire the franchise. But they would celebrate Godzilla's fiftieth birthday with a big bang, a more expensive Godzilla film than they had ever before produced, directed by maverick film maker Ryûhei Kitamura. The approach had worked with the excellent and well-regarded Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah, Giant Monsters All-Out Attack. But it should be pointed out that director Shûsuke Kaneko had directed three well-received Gamera films before being asked to work on Godzilla. Kitamura had no such experience.



The first sequence is Godzilla being attacked by a flying submarine of the Atragon style. Godzilla falls into a crack in the Antarctic ice, freezing him, in a nod to Godzilla Raids Again. The gunner screams as he unleashes missiles to bring tons of ice down on Godzilla and in that moment, I knew exactly what kind of movie this is going to be.



In the narrative flashback, the audience is shown Varan, the squid from Space Amoeba, Titanosaurus, Gaira, Baragon, and Megaguirus. These kaiju do not appear in anything but stock footage, but it sets the tone. We are going to see a lot of monsters in this film.



We are also introduced to the mutants that protect us from the kaiju. A new race of superman and women have emerged from humanity, better, stronger, faster, and more psychically powerful. They, along with superb purely human specimens such as Captain Gordon, form the Earth Defence Force. After the title sequence, one of the supersubs defeats Manda. Gordon is emblemic of the film itself, big, physically powerful, and only speaking English, while everyone around hinm speaks Japanese, but somehow they understand each other anyway. As with Atragon, the sub fires its Absolute Zero gun, freezing and then destroying Manda. This introductory sequence lets us know how the Earth Defence Forces work.



The Earth Defence Force higher-ups, for reasons that will become clear, have rather Nazi-esque unforms; a grey overcoat with a belt with a black arm band. The Mutants, a scientist tells us, share a certain biological link with the kaiju. The best way to defeat monsters, it seems, is to use them against themselves. The Shobijin, Mothra's fairy communicators show up, and give us a bit of back story. They also tell out Mutant protagonist that he has some kaiju in him (now confirmed by science and mysticism), but that he has a choice, which is very Matrix: Revolutions, and badly presented in that film, as well.



Kaiju begin to wreck cities across the globe, with a similarity to the Kilaak invasion Destroy All Monsters. Anguirus, Rodan, King Caesar, Kamacuras, Kumonga, and even American Godzilla stomp on cities. Zilla, American Godzilla, is a weird sort of nod to the much-reviled 1998 film. Creature designer Patrick Tautopolis was gratified to be included in the Toho Godzilla canon, even though his creation was treated with a certain amount of contempt. Kitamura was determined to embrace as many films in the Toho library as possible, leaving out only Megalon, Destroyah, and King Kong.



Kitamura goes so far as to have an obnoxious, chocolate-mouthed American child call his turtle toy (which looks suspiciously like a Tirtouga Pokemon) a loser, attempting to compare itself favorably to the Gamera franchise. We've seen this behavior before: in 1999 Yonggary, Kraa the Sea Monster, and Gamera, Super-Monster. All these films have the same thing in common: they aren't particularly good, and they only demonstrate their own insecurity by calling other films and franchises names.



The M-Squad is deployed to take down Ebirah, the giant lobster we haven't seen since stock footage in the 1969 All Monsters Attack. Six mutants are deployed with shoulder weapons. There are a lot of pointless explosions, when the team are running, or standing still, or firing theit weapons. It's like each one is a John McClain, and their passing just causes things to explode in their wake. There's a lot of wirework which is well integrated into the miniature work, but it just feels like the director is trying too hard to be exciting, confusing motion with progress. There's a lot going on on-screen, but it doesn't engage me. A cinematic fight should be a story in itself, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. There is no progression here, nothing learned. Just weapons deployed, running, firing, and then it's all over except for the quip.



The monsters, it turns out, are being controlled by aliens, the Xilians from Invasion of Astro-Monster to be precise. They tried to be subtle, in the Japanese alien invasion thing, trying to be friendly, returning the UN secretary to humans. When he doesn't recognize his own dog, the jig is up. Subcommander X shoots the mission commander, promoting himself. The aliens, he announces, are there to make humanity their supply of mitochondria.



X is best described as a tantrum-throwing child, who will literally spazz out every time one of his monsters is defeated. He's an angry, drama-addicted, short attention-span sort of guy, exactly the sort to blow all his advantages and screw up an invasion.



The remains of humanity's defense rests with Captain Gordon and the Gotengo. Gordon decided the situation is desperate enough that he's going to unleash Godzilla, giving the TV Trope of the Godzilla Threshold its name. Godzilla then spends the last half of the film having very brief fights with all the world's monsters. Which is a pity. The technology was available to make these much more engaging and interesting fights, but because Godzilla had to get through so many opponents, each one is truncated.



Only the final fight has any sort of length. Godzilla, having knocked down six different kaiju, now comes up against Monster X. Monster X is an odd creature we haven't seen before, humanoid, with a head beam that also comes out of its shoulders. Now where have we seen a kaiju that has three breath weapons before? After he initial clash, each gets reinforcements, and Mothra faces down an upgraded Gigan.





Meanwhile, X monologues about Keisers, a mutation that happens to one in a million mutants, making them the most powerful creatures like ever. X is one, and so is our mutant protagonist. What a coincidence! Once awakened, he finds his inner Neo, stopping yellow bolts of light, burning with power, and declaiming about choice.



He defeats X, and this causes the alien ship to self-destruct. Monster X grows two new heads, and is revealed to be Keiser Ghidorah, with some very delicate blue among the golden scales. For the first time since the first Rebirth of Mothra Ghidorah has four feet. It no longer has any of the previous Ghidorah cries, and instead, some sort of strangled scream similar to Destroyah's. Other than that, the creature design is likely the best in the film.





It is immensely powerful, stronger than its last form, and Godzilla isn't doing so well until out mutant buddy focusses his psychic energy through the Gotengo, Godzilla receiving it through his spines. With the extra power, Godzilla smashes Ghidorah. He is not a grateful victor, however, and immediately uses his atomic ray on Gotengo. The upcoming massacre is forestalled by Minilla's arrival. Only children can stop the cycle of violence. Godzilla walks away through the devastation that was Tokyo, his offspring following.



The military is treated very differently from other Godzilla films. They are not incompetent, or lionized, but actually working against humanity. The Mutants who make up the Defence Force are actively working against mankind, and only those who choose to do so, mavericks and rogues, stand with humanity. The flying sub commanders who stabnd against the alien invasion are outlandish types, with dreadlocks, long blonde hair, or Captain Gordon.

Eschewing the traditional orchestral soundtrack, the rock sondtrack feels out of place and occasionally intrusive. It does not do the film any favors.

The experience of Godzilla Final Wars is something akin to watching Destroy All Monsters while watching The Matrix on the same screen. Gone is the traditional mystery story structure, in which the humans investigate and uncover and eventually solve the plot problem (in this case, an alien invasion). Instead, we have a group of superhumans who defend the Earth against the kaiju fighting. Drawing from a lot of anime, Kitamura manages to jam a lot of anime cliches into a number of overblown kaiju cliches and nods to previous films. The result feels like he jammed a bunch of movies in a blender, then reassembled it from whatever pieces he could salvage.



Next up, Peter Jackson's take on the Big Ape. All two hundred minutes of it.

Imagine Monsters: All Monsters Attack

The irony of 1969's All Monsters Attack, renamed in the States as Godzilla's Revenge is that it's considered by many to be the worst Godzilla film made, yet it was directed by the revered Ishiro Honda. Immediately notable is the really annoying acid-rock style intro song. If nothing else indicates that recreational amphetamines had finally reached Japan, this song is it. Akira Ifukube did not contribute to this film, and his presence is sorely missed.

David Kalat is kinder to this film than I have been in previous viewings. He raises the excellent point that this is a kids' film which addresses, however inept this might appear to me in America nearly fifty years later, the plight of the latchkey kid, something that was a serious social concern in Japan when this film was made. Our child protagonist, Ichiro, wears the same shorts as do most kid protagonists of the era. The main difference is that Ichiro's parents aren't around because they work, which is made explicit with an early film encounter between Ichiro and his father, who tells his son that he has to work late, and that Ichiro should take care of the house until his mother comes home.

Ichiro is at odds with children his own age, they bully him, and he seems to have no resource to adults to protect him. The inventor who lives in Ichiro's building is more his speed. As an artist/scientist, Shinpei can relate to the imaginative Ichiro in a way that kids his age cannot. And Ichiro is polite to him. When his parents both cannot come home, Shinpei feeds Ichiro. But Ichiro won't touch the beef until he is assured his host can afford it. That's pretty polite.



The film establishes itself in a busy, industrial landscape of rusting metal, brown smoke, rushing cars, and clouded, polluted skies. Honda's bleak urban landscape has a depressing start to a kids' film, but it emphasizes the richness of Ichiro's imaginative escape to the lush Monster Island.



It's worth pointing out that the film's monster sequences are in Ichiro's imagination. He has a monster toy in his closet, and his initial flight to Monster Island is made with the assistance of a 'computer' with crayon-drawn dials. Once he is on the flgiht to Monster Island, he imagines the rest of the passengers away. This could also explain the repetition of monster fights from the previous films, Ichiro is replaying them in his mind. He begins to repeating the sequences he has seen, and then moves on to creating his own, with Godzilla taking on Gabara, the kaiju incarnation of Ichiro's bully, at the end of the film.





Gabara is sort of a standard monster. He's got some red hair, bumpy skin, no tail, and a mocking cry that sounds like nasty laughter. He's perfect for what he is--a monster invented to personify bullies. He has no berath or distance weapon. He can send what are apparently surges of electricity through his hands, giving him a killer grip. This is true to his metaphor--you run from a bully.



Godzilla, as father-figure to Minilla, forces him to fight Gabara, despite the bully-kaiju being twice his mass. Seeing that Minilla is overmatched, Godzilla steps in, and finally, Gabra gets the thrashing that we have all been waiting for. And while this is what we as the audience want, Godzilla in a fight we haven't seen yet, it undermines the film's message (which comes home when Ichiro tricks some bank robbers) of self-reliance.



This was a film aimed at children, and as I have said before, Godzilla films that aim at children as the audience tend to fail. All Monsters Attack was the first Godzilla film to sell less than two million tickets. While this was not intended to compete with the extraviganza that was Destroy All Monsters, the drop off is notable. The next film in the series, Godzilla vs Hedorah, controversial and strange as it is, sold a quarter of a million more tickets.



Having learned from his imaginary monster friends, Ichiro turns the end of the film into Home Alone, defeating the thieves we have heard about. He then spends some time with his mother, who swears she will never spend a late night at her job again. Ichiro stands up to his bully, then goes on an explosive tear, dong what the bully's gang dared him to do earlier. Is this the freedom of someone who has been oppressed getting a little clean fun in, or the start of a psychotic little crime spree as the oppressed turns into the oppressor? Has Ichiro joined the bully's gang? Taken it over? The film is silent, ending before telling us the answer.



The final shot is the kids, all together, still in the polluted industrial landscape. The smaller problem has been solved, but the society and conditions that created the problem still exist.



All Monsters Attack is unsatisfactory for most Godzilla fans for two reasons. One, Godzilla isn't the focus of the story. It's really a story about Ichiro and how his imaginary friends, who could have been anyone, help him with his bully problem. And that probably would have been forgivable if the new Godzilla sequences had been longer, or more compelling. But the low budget is once again in evidence, and the fight is less than satisfying. I'm more forgiving of the film because I think I can see what the film was trying to say, but it's not a film I'm going to pull out for sheer enjoyment value.

Next week, Giant Turtle vs Knifehead.

Godzilla and the Giant Lobster: Ebirah, Horror of the Deep

Ebirah, Horror of the Deep, made in 1966, starts off borrowing a note from the original Godzilla, with the disappearance of a fishing boat. The laid-back attitude here is in stark contrast to the original, with people trying to push through to get news of their lost loved ones. Here, is serves as the impetus to try a crazy scheme to join a dance marathon to win a sailboat. This is typical of Godzilla's new direction, and certainly of his new director Jun Fukuda. Fukuda, who had been Honda's assistant director on Rodan, would direct some of the franchise's worst films, Godzilla vs Megalon and Godzilla vs Gigan. He would also write and direct the film that began Godzilla's recovery, Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla.



Remember when I talked about the dances in Frankenstein vs Baragon? Early in the film, we have a character who is in a dance marathon, looking to win a sail boat. The script disposes with the usual scientists and reporters as main characters, replacing them with a failed dance marathoner of no determines occupation, a thief, and an Infant Islander.



The Red Bamboo, our antagonists, are an unlikely organization. They've got their own uniforms, a shitload of guys to throw around, jet planes, a nuclear reactor, and this isn't even their main base. The fat guy who sits on the not-throne comments about getting orders from headquarters. These guys have to be as wealthy as Bond's SPECTRE. And they're dumb. Kidnapping the people of Infant Island which is known to have a vengeful giant monster god? Incredibly dumb. Building a base on the island where Godzilla is sleeping? Colossally dumb.



This touches on Ebirah, Horror of the Deep's theme of monster control. Ebirah is kept away from the Red Bamboo ships by use of a yellow chemical, derived from bananas, called X-13. All boats that do not pump the X-13 overboard are attacked by the world's largest lobster. This is a contrast to Mothra, who voluntarily guards the inhabitants of Infant Island. Since Red Bamboo are entirely human, and have no mystical connection to Ebirah, they don't have the technology to fully control it. Which leads to their downfall.



The Peanuts do not return as the Shobijin this time around. The are replaced by "Pair Bambi" another set of musical Japanese twins. It seems that Mothra is asleep, and won't be wakened by the prayers of her subjects at the beginning of the film. Or perhaps she is no longer amused by the old man in the astonishing feather hat, who is absent from this film.



Masaru Soto replaces Akira Ifukube as the composer, and I find his musical invention jarring. There's a jaunty, modern aspect to every piece, whether it's attempting to be stealthy tension, or waiting for lightning to strike Godzilla. I find it undermines the feel of the film, even though Fukuda's direction trends towards a lighter, action-adventure film. The combat music often sounds like 50's beach music. Modern, I suppose, but it dates itself rather quickly, unlike the classical work of Ifukube.

Godzilla is at his most human and emotive, and it doesn't serve him well here. It comes across as goofy. And damn if he doesn't look like Cookie Monster from the side.



The Giant Condor that shows up is very strange, and about as well put together as the Giant Claw. It flies in to disturb Godzilla's nap for no apparent reason other than to give Godzilla something to fight. It could be an homage to King Kong, similar to the pterodactyl that tries to snatch Fay Wray. But it's not done nearly as well. It's two saving graces are that the sequence is short, and that it never shows up again.



The first encounter between Godzilla and Ebirah features some more of that rock throwing. This time, the rock is volleyed back and forth between the two giant monsters through the use of some creative animation. David Kalat sees this as an indicator of the original intent to use King Kong in the Godzilla part. I have to disagree. Rock kicking and throwing has been with the franchise since King Kong vs Godzilla, and showed up in Ghidorah the Three-Headed Monster.





Kalat sees the lightning strike as stengthening Godzilla, as it did with Kong in King Kong vs Godzilla, but I can't say I see evidence of that. The lightning strikes waken the sleeping Godzilla, but I don't see anything, even in dialog, to indicate that it makes him stronger. In fact, when he encounters the hundred thousand volt electrical wires that surround the Red Bamboo base, he staggers back for a moment. He finds a rock to destroy the tower with, and with that, he's free to rampage across the base.



The Ebirah suit looks pretty good, a gigantic shrimp, with nobby armored plates and a pair of vicious claws. Unfortunately, the brightly-colored unsubtle direction does it no service, and good design and suit acting drown in a rising tide of uninteresting direction.



Kalat is very positive about the role of Dayo, the native girl who escapes the Red Bamboo. I am not to happy. She shows toughness when she is introduced, but then quickly becomes a silent partner in the business, following the men. She has to be rescued from Godzilla, she often stumbles as she runs.

In the end, Godzilla tears Ebirah's claws off. Returning to the island, he tries to pick a fight with Mothra, but she will have none of it. As Mothra bears the escaped slave labor off the island, our heroes consider that Godzilla has done them no harm, so they shout at him to get off the island before the nuclear powerplant goes critical. And he does, leaping into the sea just before detonation.







Overall, Ebirah, Horror of the Deep is on the downward slide of the Showa Godzilla franchise. Jun Fukuda lacks Ishiro Honda's deftness. The script is uninteresting, more about the wacky adventures of the humans than their interactions with the monsters. The suitimation combats are pretty good, aside from the Giant Condor. This is not one of the classic Godzilla films, and really doesn't add much to the franchise.

Next up, Gamera and the amazing technolcolor rainbow!