Category: Godzilla movies

Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019, Michael Dougherty)

I wonder if, much like that one immortal monkey divining Borges’s dreams and half-dreams at dawn on August 14, 1934, one could assemble a list of all the action beats in Godzilla: King of the Monsters, which are mostly from Aliens and Jurassic Park 1 and 2, and arrange them to figure out the story to this film. Once the film hits the second act, I think it’d be more—I’m forgetting the stuff with Vera Farmiga, which is more out of a Mission: Impossible or James Bond. I’m sure Borges’s immortal monkey could do it, but I guess there is something more to director Dougherty and Zach Shields’s script than just stringing together the action scenes, fitting in the right amount of product placement for the studio (turns out it’s a lot and then a lot times twelve), and making sure there enough possible toys. See, you don’t just get Godzilla merchandise from this one, there’s also the other monsters, plus the stupid giant-sized stealth bomber-thing the good guys fly around in because Godzilla: King of the Monsters is a desperately joyless adaptation of a crappy eighties Godzilla cartoon.

Complete with annoying teen Millie Bobby Brown running around. Brown’s not just a mechanical engineer and accomplice to premeditated omnicide, she also knows how to run a ballpark sound board, which is maybe her most impressive trait.

She’s daughter of mad scientist Vera Farmiga (hashtag feminism), who has betrayed Monarch—the good guys with the giant flying fortress who tell the governments of the world to eat it while they study giant monsters, called Titans because someone wanted a trademark and this Godzilla movie tries as much as it can to forget Japan exists so you know they’re not calling them kaiju—and teamed up with eco-terrorist Charles Dance to release all the giant monsters who will once again rule the Earth.

But Brown’s also daughter of Kyle Chandler, who left Farmiga and Brown because their other kid died in the first Godzilla—unseen and stepped on, confirming it did kill a bunch of civilians but whatever. Chandler lives a simple life with a nineties movies alpha male cottage on a lake where he studies wolves nearby. He doesn’t seem to have a problem with Farmiga raising Brown in isolation at the giant monster facilities around the world.

As bad as you think Dougherty and Shields can get with the script, they somehow manage to go even lower. And not just when they’re reusing quotable lines from Alien and The Abyss. It’s all the time. They’ve got nothing good going on here. Nothing.

Obviously things don’t go well with Farmiga’s plan to give the world over to the monsters because it turns out they used frog DNA in the… sadly, no. Nothing quite so good. They really do just hinge it all on Farmiga’s ability to deliver a mad scientist speech and she fails at it utterly. She’s terrible, Brown’s terrible, Chandler’s pretty bad (his part is written as a Die Hard part for Bruce Willis, which would be amusing if Chandler were acting it that way, but he’s not), Ken Watanabe is downright hacky, Sally Hawkins somehow manages not to know how embarrassed she should look during her thankless scenes but someone doesn’t, which just makes it more embarrassing. Not to mention the stunt cameos.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters, more than anything else, reminds of the first American attempt at a Godzilla, not because of plotting, but because of the film’s inability to tell an honest scene as well as the stunt casting. Zhang Ziyi gets… one hell of a thankless part, but she’s better than Hawkins for sure. Zhang’s as good as it gets in Monsters. Same goes for—shockingly because the part is so atrociously written—Bradley Whitford. He’s got the scientist slash medical doctor slash airplane pilot slash submarine pilot maybe part. It’s a really poorly written part, but Whitford manages not to be too bad. It’s the function of his part to make the film worse—kind of like how, in addition to being terrible, Thomas Middleditch literally has this recurring thing about making O’Shea Jackson Jr. seem either stupid or dickish. Jackson’s playing one of the soldiers, Middleditch is some useless company man (Monsters basically thinks Paul Reiser is the good guy in Aliens), Jackson’s Black, Middleditch’s White, Jackson’s likable, Middleditch’s a dipshit… it’s bad. And weird. Because Middleditch is apparently going to go on to become Chandler’s offscreen bro. They act like they’ve had a big bonding thing throughout, even though they never have any real scenes together because the script’s terrible and no one has any real scenes.

Unless you count the Joe Morton going and looking for someone scene. Joe Morton and David Straithairn somehow get through this one unscathed. And CCH Pounder. It’s very nice to see her in something… especially since she’s in the first scene so you could just turn it off after she’s done.

Also bad is Aisha Hinds. Not sure how much of it’s her fault but whatever her agent convinced her was going to happen because of this part… the agent was incorrect.

Terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible music from Bear McCreary. There’s not even a lot of it. It’s sparse. But ungodly awful when it comes in. The movie ought to give some kind of warning so you can steel yourself.

Umm, what else. The editing’s not good, but Dougherty’s direction is awful so it’s not like there’s much the editors—all three of them—could do. Lawrence Sher’s photography is similarly not noteworthy. Monsters’s “mise-en-scène” is broke—Dougherty doesn’t know how to direct a single scene in the movie, giant monster or not—so what’s Sher going to do to fix it. What’s anyone going to do.

There are a handful of other things—okay, maybe a dozen but then like five things (plus the dozen)—I’d really like to enumerate but I can’t. If I list these silly, silly things, it might encourage someone to watch Godzilla: King of the Monsters because it would seem like you couldn’t not have some kind of fun with the goofy things on the list. I don’t even want to tease them.

So instead I’ll just mention Doughterty’s “Brodie Bruce” type obsession with kaiju banging—Mothra and Godzilla are (apparently unrequited) soulmates but there’s a good chance Monsters is implying Ghidorah bangs Rodan. It comes up in a lousy attempt at a joke but then at the end the plot perturbs in just the right way for it to seem like a thing, even if it’s just the movie being cheap or expedient or whatever.

Once upon a time, Charles Dance wore a t-shirt with “Cheaper than Alan Rickman” on it, referring to his casting in a film. King of the Monsters—the entire production, the entire cast, the entire crew, everyone, everything, every frame—is wearing a “Cheaper than Alan Rickman” t-shirt.

It’s an astonishingly silly movie and it’s mortifying the filmmakers weren’t able to at least make a fun, astonishingly silly movie.

Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters (2017, Seshita Hiroyuki and Shizuno Kôbun)

The first half of Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters is surprisingly good. The film sets the scene during the opening titles–giant monsters attack in 1999, followed later by unstoppable Godzilla, two different space aliens show up to help in exchange for residency on the planet. Godzilla kicks everybody’s butt, driving the last 4,000 people from Earth (including the aliens) into space.

The movie opens twenty years later. The refugees can’t find a habitable planet. There’s some drama establishing lead Miyano Mamoru as a soulful military captain who hates Godzilla. He was a kid when they evacuated Earth and Godzilla not only killed his parents, Godzilla also made him drop some family heirloom. This hot alien priest dude, voiced by Sakurai Takahiro, takes pity on Miyano (well, not exactly pity–Seshita and Shizuno’s best work as directors is the sexual tension between the two). With Sakurai’s help, Miyano anonymously publishes a plan to kill Godzilla. The leaders of the refugees read the plan and think, hey, why not try going back to Earth.

Thanks to lightspeed and whatnot, it’s hundreds of years later. Or is it more?

Everything is fine until they get back to Earth. When the movie becomes Miyano’s, it goes to pot. Seshita and Shizuno are fine with the space ship drama and so on, but they’re crap when it comes to action. They apply live action logic to Planet, which is animated (though Godzilla is CG-assisted to questionable result), and the action scenes are choppy and absent thrills. Possibly because the characters become more and more unbearable as the film continues.

A lot of the fault is Urobuchi Gen’s screenplay. The characters are, at best, thin. At worst, they’re grating like Miyano.

The battle stuff is also poorly written. The timeline on Planet of the Monsters is always questionable–unless all the soldiers are actually children. Otherwise the years don’t line up. And the soldiers are a problem anyway because they’re all using awesome mechanized war machines (one alien species is religious fundamentalists, the other are tech nerds). How did they learn how to use the machines? The tween soldiers. They grew up on the space ship.

One of the soldiers is Hanazawa Kana. She’s either Miyano’s sister or his cousin. They have the same grandfather. But they don’t seem to know each other well. Their family relationship takes a while to get revealed (and it’s still never clear). At first I was wondering if she was the love interest, in which case I was going to be mad because the forbidden elf alien priest love thing. Right, the religious aliens look like Lord of the Rings elves.

Later I didn’t care because I just wanted Planet of the Monsters to end. And for Miyano’s character to die so if I ever saw the sequels (it’s the first in a trilogy), I wouldn’t have to suffer through him again.

But then the movie kept getting worse. Turns out the only thing Sehsita and Shizuno are less impressed directing than action is Godzilla. Unless you really like Godzilla marketing campaigns because the big CG Godzilla is often nothing more than a static image in a familiar poster pose.

For a while, it seems like Hattori Takayuki’s music is going to hold up. It’s good on the space ship. It takes some hits on Earth, but Hattori at least keeps it interesting. While he never uses Godzilla themes, he does do the same type of mood for sequences. Then he just goes to pot too.

Planet of the Monsters isn’t quite a monstrosity (though it’d be more amusing if it were); however, it’s still quite bad.

0/4ⓏⒺⓇⓄ

CREDITS

Directed by Seshita Hiroyuki and Shizuno Kôbun; screenplay by Urobuchi Gen; music by Hattori Takayuki; production designers, Ferdinando Patulli and Tanaka Naoya; produced by Yoshizawa Takashi; released by Toho Visual Entertainment.

Starring Miyano Mamoru (Haruo), Sakurai Takahiro (Metphies), Hanazawa Kana (Yuko), Sugita Tomokazu (Martin), Suwabe Junichi (Mulu-Elu Galu-Gu), Miyake Kenta (Belu-be Rilu-Elu), and Ono Daisuke (Leland).

RELATED

Shin Godzilla (2016, Higuchi Shinji and Anno Hideaki)

Shin Godzilla is the story of hard-working bureaucrats responding successfully to a national crisis. When the giant monsters invade, you can’t do better than the able public servants of Shin Godzilla.

And for most of the film, directors Higuchi and Anno pull it off. The first act of the film, with the introduction of the unlikely new Godzilla, races–Anno edits with Sato Atsuki and they don’t slow down until it’s time for a full stop. There’s a lot of humor to Shin Godzilla, but it’s entirely for the viewer. The characters don’t get a break or a laugh or even regular smiling. They stoically battle the apocalypse, whether it’s a giant monster or the U.S. government externally unwanted pressure on Japan.

Shin Godzilla avoids politics. Way too much. But it does have this steady mistrust of the United States. It’s too bad too, because the U.S. shows up in the second act with all sorts of Godzilla info and those information dumps are a mess. On one hand, Anno doesn’t want to take the kaiju thing too seriously. He knows he’s got disbelief suspended by this time, so why not rush through some really silly origin stuff. There’s a portents to Shin Godzilla, which the directors pull off (thanks to the actors, thanks to the editing), but Anno doesn’t have a sense of humor about it. After the almost goofy first act–which transitions masterfully into the second act through montage–it seems like Shin is going to be something special.

Except it never gets there. For two hours, the movie keeps promising something more in a few minutes, delivering an almost perfect moment here and there, but always dragging it out. The second act is lead Hasegawa Hiroki dragging the cast of hundreds through the clumsy introduction of new ideas, new mutations, new characters.

Shin Godzilla has a hundred speaking parts. Maybe. It has a lot. It’s this rapid fire political thriller thing, only instead of a nuclear war, they’re fighting this giant monster. Every once in a while, there’s a “Godzilla moment” with the giant monster and the film seems to be moving more towards something to do with Godzilla symbolically. Even self-referentially. Anno and Higuchi use some classic Godzilla music, but they don’t do much else referential. The locations, sure, but it’s supposed to be scary. Godzilla’s supposed to be dangerous.

And Godzilla does do some serious damage, which the film completely ignores in terms of human casualties. There’s maybe one tragic scene, early on, when it seems like Shin Godzilla still might go somewhere else–into the cellphone footage, into the lives of the displaced–but then it doesn’t.

Instead, the film introduces Ishihara Satomi. Ishihara is the half-Japanese, half-white American daughter of a U.S. senator who’s on her way up the ladder in Washington. She’s also a bit of a party girl, because she’s rich. Ishihara does okay with some of the part. She’s bad at the English deliveries, which immediately kills the cinema verite the directors try to keep going. She’s got too much character for the movie and nothing to do with it. If Ishihara were better, the character not be such a drag. But Ishihara’s just fine, not phenomenal. Again, she gets no help from the directors. Maybe one of them told her to play flirty with Hasegawa and the other said not to play flirty with him.

As for Hasegawa, he’s a great lead. His character is a young, bright, impetuous staffer who just wants to do good. He wants to be Justin Trudeau. Ishihara wants to be Hillary. Except to change political analogies, Ishihara’s character is more the Mandy Hampton part.

Everyone else is great because they aren’t in it too much. If the performance is broad, the actor is gone pretty soon. By the time they’re back, they’re now a familiar face and they’re welcome. It perpetuates. It’s a very well made film. Until the third act, at least. The sludge second act seems like it’s building, through monotony maybe, but definitely intensifying. Because it’s so well-made. Then it collapses and Shin Godzilla just gets heavier and heavier.

Anno, in the script, tries to keep it light. He tries to play up the characters as familiar to the audience, but the film’s lost its teeth. If you’re going to deus ex machina, put it in the right spot and don’t try to drag it out two weeks in the present action. Because the directors break Shin Godzilla. For a better part of its runtime, it could’ve gone somewhere. But Anno and Higuchi don’t want to take it anywhere.

Except as a politician positivity message.

2/4★★

CREDITS

Directed by Higuchi Shinji and Anno Hideaki; written by Anno; director of photography, Yamada Kosuke; edited by Anno and Sato Atsuki; music by Sagisu Shiro; produced by Satô Yoshihiro, Shibusawa Masaya, Ueda Taichi, and Wadakura Kazutoshi; released by Toho Company Ltd.

Starring Hasegawa Hiroki (Yaguchi), Takenouchi Yutaka (Akasaka), Ishihara Satomi (Kayoko Ann Patterson), Ôsugi Ren (Prime Minister Okochi), Emoto Akira (Azuma), Kôra Kengo (Shimura, Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary), Ichikawa Mikako (Ogashira, Deputy Director of Nature Conservation Bureau), Kunimura Jun (Zaizen, Integrated Chief of Staff), Pierre Taki (Saigo, Combat Leader), Shimada Kyûsaku (Katayama, Minister of Foreign Affairs), and Mitsuishi Ken (Kozuka, Governor of Tokyo).

RELATED

Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (2001, Kaneko Shûsuke)

While watching Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack, I had a daydream. I day dreamt Craig Armstrong, composer of The Incredible Hulk score, had been brought in the redo the score of Attack for the U.S. home video market. He did not. Instead, Ôtani Kô actually did compose the score for the film I was watching, meaning director Kaneko okayed that music. Because the music is where Attack forecasts its eventual problems. The music goes from undistinguished but fine to godawful. Shorting after the music goes to godawful, the film starts its slide down from the not insignificant heights it had reached.

Kaneko’s approach to Godzilla, the monster, is to make him a villain again. Kaneko’s approach to a Godzilla movie is to make the viewer the victim. Kaneko makes every giant monster attack visceral. Introduce a couple disposable characters, identify with them as giant monsters threaten their lives. It’s occasionally successful and at least once pretty fun, but it’s a contrived approach. Kaneko’s not trying to tell the story, he’s trying to make the viewer like the movie. Two very different things.

Some of the problem is that story. It’s light. Godzilla is a soulless monster (with grey devil’s eyes), the other monsters are all Japanese folklore creatures who are coming back to save Japan from the invading monster. They just didn’t help at any other time. And there’s some historical and political things thrown in because Kaneko and the script want to appear edgy. But it’s not edgy. It’s silly. As Attack progresses, the film descends into narrative absurdity, even lower than when the film started with wisecracks about the crappy American Godzilla remake.

Attack should still be better. Kaneko does a fabulous job for the first half of the film. The first monster fight is outstanding. He just flops on the final one, when there’s multiple magical resurrections and so on. But that flop isn’t about pacing, which is bad, or about the effects, which are good, it’s about the narrative. The script goes slack at the end. The last twenty minutes are tedious and the coda is awful.

Better humans–and better human stories–would help. Niiyama Chiharu is an intrepid faux news reporter who decides to cover the giant monster story. No other reporters are covering it. Luckily her dad is the Navy admiral in charge of hunting Godzilla. Uzaki Ryûdô plays the dad. Neither of them are particularly good, neither of them are particularly bad. Niiyama gets annoying in the second half when she’s telling everyone to trust in the giant monsters.

So much potential, so much technical talent, such a bad second half. Kaneko figured out the beginning of a movie and then got lost he was done setting up.

Godzilla vs. Megaguirus (2000, Tezuka Masaaki)

To say Godzilla vs. Megaguirus is good for a while might be a stretch, but it’s definitely okay for a while. It’s a Godzilla movie with a lot of CG, whether it’s the giant monster itself swimming or the millions of prehistoric dragonflies out to sting him. Director Masaaki tries hard to integrate various effects styles, all with a certain degree of competence. This perceived competence makes it easier to endure the film’s lesser elements, like charmless lead Tanaka Misato.

Megaguirus takes itself–and its characters–way too seriously. Whether it’s Tanaka with her Ahab complex or Ibu Masatô’s politician with a secret, the film tries to give undesirable depth to its already unlikable cast. As the likable guy–the rogue computer programming with an inevitable crush on Tanka–Tanihara Shôsuke is actually sort of likable. Amid all the angst and seriousness, Tanihara seems like he’s at least enjoying being in a Godzilla movie. Him and one of the people running away from Godzilla later on. She doesn’t get a line, of course, but from her expression, you can tell she’s trying.

Then the bad guy, Megaguirus, shows up. It’s a giant bug. It’s a terrible design, terribly executed in the special effects, whether it’s the giant bug or how the giant bug flies around. Immediately upon its arrival, Masaaki’s built-up goodwill is gone. It just gets worse from then on, with terribly stylized fight scenes, bad mattes, ineptly constructed mattes, terrible music. For over halfway, Megaguirus is dumb but not incompetent, in fact it appears like it might be downright ambitious in creating a 21st century Godzilla.

But it isn’t. It’s a lame wreck of a film. It doesn’t help Tanaka manages to get more annoying in the finale. It probably doesn’t hurt much–after Tanihara’s inexplicable striptease of silly bandages, nothing could bring Megaguirus back from the brink.

Godzilla vs. Destoroyah (1995, Okawara Takao)

Godzilla vs. Destoroyah does a lot. It mixes an Aliens rip-off into a Godzilla movie, then tries new things for the giant monster fight, all while finishing off the series. Destoroyah is meant to close off the franchise, giving director Okawara plenty of opportunities to tug at heart strings. Okawara’s attempts at homage and reference matter more for sincerity’s sake than success’s. There’s a lot going on in the film and it tries a lot of things. Not all of the spaghetti sticks.

Major missteps include all the ties to the 1954 Godzilla, including Kôchi Momoko’s pointlessly contrived cameo. None of the new characters this entry have much to do. Ever returning Odaka Megumi gets a good part. Tatsumi Takurô is weak as the scientist. There’s always a scientist. Tatsumi isn’t the worst scientist, but he’s pretty weak.

The human interest stuff this outing, besides all the references to the original, has very little to do with the film. This time, Godzilla is in danger of melting down. It’s a global disaster. Oddly enough, a monster created when the original Godzilla was destroyed is also attacking. And the little Godzilla is missing. There’s a lot going on.

The big monster fight is a bit of a bust. The miniature sets are fantastic, but the other monster is really dumb looking. It’s like a giant crab mixed with an Alien and a demon’s head. It’s really dumb looking, especially when it gets bigger than Godzilla. So it’s even more impressive how well Okawara does on the finish with the lame bad monster.

Destoroyah’s relatively successful.

Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (1993, Okawara Takao)

Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla is outrageous spectacle. The film has the perfect combination of story, director and special effects. The film allows its giant monsters limited personalities, feasible motivations. It even manages to raise questions of morality as this version’s Mechagodzilla is piloted by the anti-Godzilla task force. They’re blowing up just as much as the giant monsters, they’re torturing the monsters. It’s simultaneously heavy and not.

Director Okawara gets to that weightlessness through some disarming, yet empowering moves–it’s a serious movie, but it’s also not a serious movie so don’t dwell–you can acknowledge, but don’t dwell. The result is a Godzilla movie where the viewer has an intense investment in the fight scene. Okawara then proceeds to play with every expectation. He draws things out–those disarming yet empowering moves–showing the viewer what to expect.

The movie rewards the viewer for paying attention, for patience. It’s often delightful, with something for everyone–including an adorable “baby” Godzilla. Mimura Wataru’s script really pulls all these threads together into something cohesive and affecting. He gives the characters just enough depth the actors can imply even further layers. It doesn’t hurt Okawara excels at the saccharine flirtation between leads Takashima Masahiro and Sano Ryoko.

And Odaka Megumi finally does get something to do this Godzilla installment. She gets a significant personal subplot and everything. Odaka nails it, of course. She makes her unlikely character (telepathic Godzilla hunting consultant) the most human part of the film. She, just like the viewer, is jaded by Godzilla movies.

Excellent editing from Yoneda Miho, excellent photography from Sekiguchi Yoshinori. The effects in Mechagodzilla are outstanding. A lot of thought goes into everything, like how Okawara gradually prepares the viewer for miniature sequences. Mechagodzilla is a welcoming Godzilla movie. It’s enthusiastic about its genre and itself.

Nice score from Ifukube Akira. It’s just a nice, solid Godzilla movie.

Godzilla vs. Mothra (1992, Okawara Takao)

Godzilla vs. Mothra ain’t bad. It ain’t bad at all. While Ohmori Kazuki’s script leaves something to be desired in general, it doesn’t leave anything in specific to be desired. It doesn’t fail to do something. It sets forth its concept and fulfills it. I’m thinking mostly in terms of the human stories, which are contrived but genial enough to get through, as it’s director Okawara and the technical crew who desire the credit for the amazing giant monster battles.

Mothra already has something going for it just in how sincerely the film deals with the giant moth meant to protect the planet Earth from environmental dangers. It’s this gorgeous moth with very pretty theme music, how can you not like Mothra? Mothra is like the potpourri of Kaiju. Really, you don’t like pleasant smells? And Okawara and the effects team go all out on Mothra; she’s got flying battles with actual good matte work, she’s got multiple iconic shots. It’s a pilot for a Mothra spin-off. A really effective one.

The entire cast is strong. Even Bessho Tetsuya’s deadbeat dad Indiana Jones knock-off (he gets better once he’s out of the fedora and trying to make amends for kidnapping to pay alimony). Because Mothra’s actually from Yonezawa Shiori’s perspective. She’s Bessho’s daughter–Kobayashi Satomi, in a solid supporting lead performance, is the mother. It’s about the magic of Mothra getting Mom and Dad back together, but with strong enough special effects values for it not to seem condescending. Okawara doesn’t shortchange the human actors. They don’t have the best material, but he takes it seriously.

Except poor Odaka Megumi, of course, who’s just in the movie because it’s a Godzilla movie.

Great photography from Kishimoto Masahiro, especially with the effects work. Nice score from Ifukube Akira. Godzilla vs. Mothra is an entertaining, technically outstanding giant monster outing.

Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah (1991, Ohmori Kazuki)

Not much goes right in Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah. Director Ohmori has a strange way of being boastful about really lame ideas and even worse technical executions. He spends a lot of time–and the film’s not short, it runs an hour and forty-three–trying to show off the film’s big ideas. It’s a bunch of time travel nonsense involving a bunch of white dorks from the 23rd century who travel back in time to tell the Japanese how it’s going to be.

Seriously, it really is about white people being so jealous of Japan’s success they don’t just travel back in time, they create a giant monster to destroy Japan. It’s a film made under the assumption children are dumb, which is different than the assumption children like dumb things. What’s so strange about it is how vested Ohmori gets into the time travel nonsense since it’s terribly handled, both in the script and his direction. It’s not like there are any gem moments in Ghidorah; the monster fight scene is technically marvelous but dramatically inert–Ohmori blows through any goodwill on the nerd Terminator (Robert Scott Field) who terrorizes the good guys.

There’s a slight subplot about ostensible protagonist Toyohara Kosuke figuring out the true origin of Godzilla and investigating it. The time travel thing then directly effects everyone already involved in that subplot, which makes things real contrived. It’s one of the worst time travel movies. There’s nothing smart about it, it’s mostly all profoundly idiotic. And Ohmori does it to delay Godzilla’s appearance in a movie called Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah.

Is it worth it?

No, not at all. Technical competency aside, that third act is a fail. It’s not like Ohmori asks much from his cast but he even short-changes them with the finale. Anna Nakagawa does okay as the sympathetic future person, but it’s all on goodwill Ohmori never delivers. Okada Megumi has nothing to do. She doesn’t even get to spout exposition. Still, just standing around, she’s better than Sasaki Katsuhiko. He’s the scientist advising the good guys. He’s comically bad. It’s a bad part and Ohmori doesn’t direct his cast well, but Sasaki’s still a weak link.

Occasionally, Nakagawa or Toyohara will have a good delivery and the movie won’t be in the middle of dumb exposition and Ghidorah will be all right. For a while, it seems like the film will coast through. It can’t make it through that disastrous third act though.

Terror of Mechagodzilla (1975, Honda Ishirô)

Terror of Mechagodzilla is an uncomplimentary mix of a sixties Godzilla movie with the production values of a seventies Godzilla movie. It’s got a lame monster with cool powers and a cool monsters with lame powers. The Mechagodzilla fight scene is mind-numbing. He shoots rockets at Godzilla. Explosions incur. Director Honda has all these resources–an obviously ambitious pyrotechnic unit, huge sound stages–and nothing to do with them. Honda initially tries a more realistic approach with the film, but then just forgets about it.

Because even if it weren’t giant monsters, Terror is still silly–very silly for the mid-seventies with its small cast and brand characters. Hirata Akihiko (the good mad scientist from the original Godzilla) plays a bad mad scientist here. Under a lot of make-up. It’d be something if it were a good performance, but it’s not. Hirata is working for evil aliens–who have very dumb helmets and very silly costumes and the supreme commander whips misbehaving subordinates. Terror is what happens when you should be camp and you don’t. Honda wants to be taken seriously and refuses to understand it isn’t possible.

Anyway, Hirata has a cyborg daughter. One of the scientists working for Interpol–Terror’s Interpol is a multi-national giant monster hunting organization–loves her. But the aliens have installed Mechagodzilla’s controller chip inside her cybernetic circuitry. Ai Tomoko, as the cyborg girl, isn’t good but she does better than she should. As her beau, Sasaki Katsuhiko is lame. He’s simultaneously supposed to be a goof and a stud. He comes off as neither.

Ifukube Akira’s music is good. Even though there are some bad decisions with the music, it is good. It just doesn’t always fit the tone of what Honda’s actually got going on, versus what Honda wants to have going on. Terror fundamentally misunderstands how its genre now works.

There are some nice miniature cityscapes though. Honda’s fight scenes in them aren’t great, but Tomioka Sokei photographs them well. Terror’s got its pluses. They just don’t come close to overcoming its minuses.