Director: Takao Okawara
Year: 1993
Sutdio: TriStar, Toho Pictures
Length: 105 minutes
Godzilla back! Back with first-monster narrative of Godzilla experience in Godzilla movie.
This one start with Godzilla just hanging out in the sea, living life when sense something up on surface. A disturbance, in the force...the kaiju force. Stupid Rodan making trouble. Godzilla hate that lizard bird. It easy enough to spit nuke breath on and blast out of sky then wring dumb leather bird neck. But wait, Rodan not what Godzilla sense in kaiju force. No... Godzilla sense...unhatched baby Godzilla? Hashtag not Godzilla baby. But who baby then? Not Rodan baby. Damn. It must be Godzilla baby. Godzilla get around. But Scaleless human take Baby G egg away.
Godzilla sense when Baby G hatch and Godzilla go to smashy town to find Baby G. But along way, Godzilla encounter Big Metal Beast, BMB, BaMBi. This BaMBi real tough. It take multiple nuke breaths and still stand. It also have very annoying, painful nuke breath, and nuke glare, and nuke belly. Godzilla not like BaMBi. Godzilla not make new friend today. What Godzilla make is big can of whoop ass...on big can of beast. Godzilla take BaMBi down. Then teensy humans send their stinging birds and beetles after me, fire their sharp little poops. So annoying. Godzilla been through this rodeo too many time. Stompy stompy, smashy smashy. Baby G cries tell Godzilla where to go. Until Godzilla no hear Baby G cries anymore.... Oh well...maybe Godzilla make mistake. Godzilla go home now.
Later... Godzilla just hanging out, living Godzilla life when Godzilla sense Baby G again in the kaiju force. Dammit, guess Godzilla got go do the dad thing and bring Godzilla baby home. But stupid BaMBi back in action and have special backpack. Lot tougher with special backpack...and ow! Shit! BaMBi blow up Godzilla second brain. Godzilla not feel good.
Dumb leather bird, though, make dumb sacrifice and save Godzilla by passing all Radiation along. Eventually dumb ant people get gist that if they just give Godzilla Baby, then Godzilla go away. Dumb one-brained humans. Godzilla take Baby and go off again, live Godzilla life.
The Human Story:
After the events of Godzilla vs King Ghidorah, the newly formed United Nations G-Force (no, not those hamsters) have salvaged the remains of Mechaghidorah and built the ultimate weapon against Godzilla: Mechagodzilla. And they had just built the Garuda, a flying tank that improves upon the Super X and Super X-2, but Mechagodzilla is such a better weapon.
Kazuma Aoki, who helped build the Garuda is reassigned from his cozy desk/tech job and into the field, slated to be on the team piloting Mechagodzilla. It's evident he doesn't have the warrior instincts. But he's got the technical expertise the team needs (apparently, it's never explicit why this apparent doof is needed on the team).
Meanwhile the Professor and Azusa are on Adona Island where they find an irradiated egg, which, when they encounter Rodan, they presume incorrectly is a pteradon egg. They load the egg onto a helicopter and steal it away while Godzilla fights Rodan. Back in Kyoto, Azusa and Kazuma meet when he barges into her lab and starts taking pictures. He's a pterodon fanatic. Azusa demurely forces him out of the lab, only for the egg to hatch and imprint upon her. But the awoken Baby Godzilla's cries draw Godzilla to the city. Kazuma is too busy farting around with the Baby to assist the team in Mechagodzilla taking on Godzilla when the big guy wrecks Kyoto (both coming and going), so he gets demoted to valet duty in the G-Force parking lot. They do figure out that Baby has a link to Godzilla and they need to figure out what to do with him.
Scientists theorize that Godzilla has a second brain in his spine, and they think that Miki the psychic girl can help locate the brain, and they can permanently cripple, if not kill Godzilla in an outright attack on this brain. In his spare time Kazuma figures out that the handling of Garuda can be improved and that it can pair with Mechagodzilla to make Super-Mechagodzilla. He also gets a very slow moving flying rocket sled which he takes Azusa for a spin on. But when a crew of psychic children come to sing a song to Baby Godzilla they trigger a stress reaction which once again alerts Godzilla and a supercharged Rodan to their location. They need to get Baby G out of town before the destruction happens, but it's too late. Rodan is too fast.
Eventually Rodan is taken down by Mechagodzilla, but then Godzilla shows up for round two. The fight is brutal, and Super-Mechagodzilla takes the big guy out, until Rodan sacrifices himself so that Godzilla can get the baby Godzillasaur and live. It's a tearful goodbye for Azusa, but a beautiful beginning for father and son.
Godzilla, Friend or Foe:
In this case, sort of misunderstood foe. Reluctant. To the point that when the humans are about to defeat him, it's not a triumphant moment but a sad one, and Miki, who's had a connection with Godzilla for five films now, has to be the one to pull the trigger.
The Sounds:
Akira Ifukube returns, but his score once again feels largely derivative. Where throughout the Showa era he didn't repeat themes and each film had its own unique flavour, over these past two films he's returned to, it's felt like a lot of the same repeated notes over and over with scant variation.
The Message:
Maybe leave nature alone? Had the humans just left the egg, Godzilla and Rodan could have co-parented and maybe saved themselves a lot of destruction and grief.
Rating (out of 5 Zs): ZZZz
This is really what I've been waiting for in the Heisei era, for a straightforward story with some emotional component that dares to be adventurous with its action. Director Okawara employs a lot of zoom, shaking, and abstract angles in the camerawork during the fight sequences adding a frantic element missing from the previous "vs" movies in the Heisei era. The fights also feature a lot of creative attacks and look vastly different from what we've seen in 'zilla films before. The compositing between the suits, the minis and live action is all done really well, with some impressive shots that make Godzilla look appropriately monstrous.
The characters are pared back in this one, there's not a half dozen or dozen extraneous players muddying up the field so we get somewhat of a character-based story. It's still a pretty thin arc for both Asuza and Kazuma but the increased amount of screentime as compared to past leads at least gives us more time and connection to them. It would have served the film (and series) much, much better to have Miki be the one who gets attached to Baby G since her character has been so poorly developed and had so little to do so far.
I watched this one on an American-released DVD and it was only in dubbed form. I watched along with the subbed version on the Internet Archive and while some of the English translation varies, it doesn't appear that anything was cut out or re-edited.
I was worried about Baby G, but they did a pretty good job with not making it too annoying or too cute, and he was pretty sympathetic as a poor scared creature.
This is not a direct sequel to Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla, nor is the mech called "Mechagodzilla 2" in the movie so I'm not sure why they went with the roman numeral "II" in the title. Just to be different I guess.
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