Go-Go-Godzilla: #5 Mothra vs. Godzilla

Oh damn, do I need to go back and watch 1961's Mothra? How many Mothra films are there? Does it have its own spiralling mythology like Gamera that I'd need to invest in? No, no, I'm doing strictly Godzilla films. We can worry about off-shoots another time.

Name: Godzilla vs. The Thing
Japanese Name: Mosura tai Gojira
Director: Ishiro Honda
Studio: Toho
Year: 1964

The Story:
Oh boy, this one gets wet, and then gets wild.
A typhoon hits a miniaturized set of coastal beach. Then next day, while crews are assessing the devastation and reporter Junko is getting an earful from "negative" reports from the local officiate, Plucky rookie photographer  Saki is taking verite photos of wreckage, when they find a small, unusual, shiny object in the water that they take. Junko and Saki are promptly reassigned to a different beach where a gigantic egg is found floating in the water.  An biology expert, Professor Miura is brought in to assess the egg, but given little chance for research when shady businessman with weird tiny moustache Kumayama announces that he bought the rights to the egg from the locals who found it and that everyone needs to leave. Kumayama's company, Happy Enterprises, will be building a visitation center and theme park around the attraction and charging for a look. No scientist allowed unless they pay their way in.  Junko and Saki smell rotten fish at Happy Enterprises and befriend the professor.

At the hotel, Kumayama breaks down the plans for the egg (and he rents the beach too, apparently, as he has massive plans for developing there around the egg) to his financial backer, the unscrupulous Jiro Torahata, only to be interrupted by tiny pleas...pleas that say "Please give us back our egg." It's two adorable tiny fairy ladies in mushroom-shaped hats and fur shawls, looking like 60's airline stewardesses more than traditional fae folk. Kumayama and Torhata try to capture the wee lassies, as they're weird, and could be another attraction. But they escape. Junko, using his investigative reporter instincts busts into their room. Moments later he meets up with Saki and Miura in the woods outside the hotel, where they encounter the Shobijin twins. 

They're from Infant Island, where they've been doing nuclear bomb testing. The bombing unearthed Mothra's egg, and the typhoon washed out to sea. The twins plea for help. Junko promises to write a exposee on Happy Enterprises and vie to curry public favour towards Mothra's plight.  The trio are introduced to Mothra who has just been sitting on the bluffs the whole time.

The reporter, the photographer and the professor make an in-person plea to Kumayama and Torhata on behalf of Mothra, but they laugh in their face and dare them to sue for custody of the egg. Then Kumayama asks them to sell him the Shobijin twins..it's creepy the way he leers.  The Shobijin take a ride home on Mothra, all are dejected.

The locals start getting upset that Kumayama has defaulted on his payments to them for the egg and the beach rental, so he borrows more money from Torhata, putting the egg up as collateral, who then starts incubating the egg.

The shiny thing Junko and Saki pulled from the rubble earlier turns out to be highly radioactive. Returning to the site, now all cleaned up, they search for more radiation, much to the objections of local officials who have big development plans. The site isn't radioactive...beneath it is buried...GODZILLA! The look of him climbing out of the sand is awesome.  He goes on a typical miniatures-destroying rampage.

The goofball, egg-eating (he's always eating an egg) reporter at Junko's the paper suggest asking Mothra for help in defeating Godzilla. Junko feels awkward about asking the Shobijin for help when they couldn't help them but Miura convinces him and Saki to join him out on Infant Island, where they see the aftereffects of the nuclear testing, are accosted by the very red locals, and brought to their commons where they're given a bowl of red stuff their encouraged to drink to drive out any evil spirits. The islanders are not sympathetic to the mainlanders who light the devil's fire (Nuclear bombs, not marijuana) and cause them suffering. But after a lovely haunting song from the Shobijin, they confide that their telepathic powers have revealed that Godzilla poses a danger to Mothra's egg but they still refuse to ask for Mothra's support.  Suki and Junko each deliver an empassioned speech on the complexities of mankind, and Mothra agrees to help. Mothra is about to pass away apparently but will fight Godzilla with her last strength.

Kumayama, having gone into incredible debt in a stupid business venture and with Godzilla threatening it all, he's in ruins. So he goes and beats the living crap out of Torhata and attempts to steal his money, but Torhata pulls a gun and murders Kumayama. As Torhata tries to flee Godzilla destroys the building killing Torhata in the process.  

Mothra and Godzilla fight. Godzilla wins. Then the Japan Self-Defence Force take over trying to net and electrocute Godzilla (picking up that thread from King Kong vs Godzilla), They pump him so full of juice they blow their transformers and Big G rebounds so, so quickly, incinerating everything remotely human around him.

He starts heading for Iwa Island, where a teacher and 10 children are on a school outing. It's weird stakes to close out the film. But the egg hatches and twin larvae chase after the beast what killed their mama. They undulate wildly trying to catch up with him. When they do, they strategize, pinning him down so all he can do is flee.  Victorious, the Shobijin catch a ride home on the twins as our human friends wave goodbye.

The Creatures:
Shobijin - the fairy folk of Infant Island, not even two apples tall. They have telepathic powers which they use to communicate with Mothra and her children. They're otherwise pretty defenceless. But boy can they sing. And they're cute as the dickens.

Mothra - a fluffy, cuddly-looking moth-like creature adorned in colourful earthen tones of brown, beige, orange, yellow and red. It has shiny segmented bug eyes that have a glint of blue in the light. She has a little beak in the middle of her face. She fights with wind power and releases a toxic pollen. Clearly a large puppet of some kind. As well as a mini-puppet at times

Godzilla - Looking positively svelt, big G, with seemingly longer, leaner legs.  He's not so pear-shaped. This version of Godzilla has an upper lip that tremors when he roars, and his eyes are livelier than ever before. The active tail of King Kong vs. Godzilla is back, and his radiation breath is not nearly as sparingly used as it has been previously. They add some light colouring to Godzilla's brow which makes it look like he has blonde eyebrows.  

The egg - out of the giant egg is born twin larvae, who look like ... slimy larvae with funny little beaks that are actually mandibles. They're each about as long as Godzilla's tail, so they're not that small. They spit ample strings of silk that can constrict even the mightiest beast. And they can swim.

The Battle:
At the 1 hour mark, using a mix of live action costume play and speed-ramped miniatures, the fight commences. As Godzilla ventures closer to getting Mothra's egg, Mothra arrives, flapping her winds generating a torrential wind that even pushes Godzilla's massive frame back. Stunned, Mothra gets behind him and grabs him by the tail, dragging him face first across the ground. Godzilla can't get his bearings. Mothra needles his head before releasing her poison dust. Gozilla flails wildly, firing his breath into the air blindly. He strikes Mothra's wing and she cannot stay aloft any longer. With one last heave she knocks Godzilla off the bluff and goes to die next to her progeny.  Godzilla walks off and moves with a bit of a kick in his step. Winner: Godzilla, barely.

When Mothra's larvae catch up with Godzilla, one of them bites him on the tail so hard that it swings around as his appendage flails about. Once shaking it loose, he pounds the creature with his tail. Its sibling squirts Godzilla with silk which doesn't harm him but annoys him greatly. The two siblings flank the big beast and just hose him down with their silly string, absolutely coating him in it.  All he can do is kick rocks and once again blindly spout his radiation breath. For newborns, the twins are surprisingly adept strategists as they duck in and out of cover avoiding anything Godzilla can send back at them.  Eventually all Godzilla can do is roll into the ocean and escape into the deep.  Winner: Mothra twins

The Humans:
While the Toho team have yet to have a really good human centric story arc, there's at least good humans characters that are driving this story. For the first two acts at least Junko and Saki are a lively, verbally sparring duo who, in a non-kaiju film, would be a total rom com couple. Professor Miura is a necessary part of the trio, and its their involvement that takes us through the unveiling of the egg, meeting the Shobijin, unearthing Godzilla, and getting Mothra involved in the fight. Once Godzilla starts rampaging though, it's hard to get them involved in anything but pointing and exposition.

Kumayama is the cartoonishly slimy capitalist, so cocky and self assured in everything he does, without any consideration at all for anything other than capital gains. He's so proud of himself and his ideas. Torhata is the cartoonishly sly capitalist, ready to invest in the goofball but ask for everything should he default. They both suck. That it comes to such desperate blows in the climax of the second act is rather shocking. Like, actual bloody violence shocking.

Friend or Foe:
Mothra is definitely friendly, attuned to humanity, specifically the natives of Infant Island.

The Sounds:
Godzilla's roar has stabilized at this point, nothing new or surprising coming from the creature. 

Mothra and the twins have a squelch that's sort of a cross between a slide whistle and scraping metal against more metal. Mothra makes a whirring sound when flying that is not too dissimilar to typical 50's UFO sounds.

Akira Ifukube delivers a string bass-heavy, bombastic, staccato laden main theme played in the lower register, signalling slow, lumbering death is on its way. Lovely work with the three different songs sung by the Shobijin and the music of the Infant Island tribal people.

The Message:
There's a real anti-capitalist message here. First that capitalism shouldn't take precedence over the needs of the people or the betterment of society, or the interests of science. And yet it cruelly does, the film acknowleges. But capitalism is also a folly, as Kumayama learns. For his greed, he has nothing but desperation and ruin in the face of the ecosystem. His unscrupulous financier, a man of inaction, is even more vilified as his riches allow him to stack the deck in his favour. Except when natural disaster comes, what good are riches?

Even the politicians in the film are more concerned with commerce and optics than truth and safety.

Of course, there's also a strong anti-nuclear proliferation message, but that's just the constant in all these.

There's also an undercurrent of anti-colonialism, as the native people of Infant Island, living in harmony with their environment and their fairy and giant beasties, resent the mainlanders and their playing with godfire that hurts everything in the ecosystem. They abhor the intrusion the mainland continually has on their life.

Rating (out of 5 Zs):
ZZZZ