Director: Masaaki Tezuka
Year: 2000
Length: 105 minutes
The Gist:
The G-Graspers division of the Japan Self-Defence Force (or whatever acronymic organization is now in charge of defending the country in this film) plans on using a plasma energy device to develop a miniature black hole - fired from a satellite in space, the Dimension Tide - to swallow Godzilla and end his threat forever. There's no way this can go wrong, ridght?
Oops, after testing they've left a tear in the spacetime continuum. A creature has come through, left an egg behind, then disappeared back into the tear. A young boy finds the shining silver egg and hides it away. His family moves to Tokyo where the egg has cracked open in the move. He disposes of the egg down a sewer and that's that. All good, right? Nothing to worry about.
Oops. The egg enters mitosis and starts rapidly growing. Soon there's a giant bug creature on the loose feeding on unsuspecting humans in surprisingly grizzly scenes, changing after each feeding. It's not long before it attracts the attention of Godzilla, and their (off-screen) conflict attracts the attention of the G-Graspers who take off Thunderbirds/Gatchaman-style in the advanced fighter jet Griffon. They're too late to witness the battle, but they find a bug carcass and manage to plant a tracker on Godzilla
Turns out, there's not just one bug, but a whole swarm of them, and their's rapid underwater growth in the city's water tables is causing extensive flooding resulting in an evacuation of parts of Tokyo. The swarm of thousands of Meganulas fly to Godzilla and start attacking, sensing Godzilla is an energy source. Godzilla heats up his own body before blasting as many of them out of the sky as possible but, before he can finish them off, the Dimension Tide is fired and Godzilla is zapped into a black hole... and that's that. Movie done.
But no! Godzilla saw it coming and buried himself in the dirt and survives. Big G stares down the Griffon team, as if to say "nice try assholes".
The Meganulas swarm flees back to Tokyo, where a mege-mega egg lay in wait. The Meganulas feed the egg the energy they received from Godzilla and die, but a new titan is born, the Megaguirus, like the queen of the Meganulas, sort of like a killer bees species...territorial and aggressive.
Godzilla and Megaguirus fight while the G-Graspers try to tee them both up to get blasted by the Dimension Tide. Unfortunately Megaguirus' high frequency attacks disrupt both the sattelite and the Griffon and the humans are out of the fight.
But when it's revealed that there's actually a Plasma energy prototype being developed in Tokyo it makes sense why Godzilla was coming back again. And so, with systems rebooted, the humans take one last stab at firing the Dimension Tide. All seems successful, but weeks later, a seismic reading leaves the possibility that Godzilla somehow escaped his fate....
Godzilla, Friend or Foe:
I mean, the humans of the film are only about getting rid of him...but he's the one that needs to take care of this human-generated Megaguirus problem. So...yes.
Anyone Worth Caring About?
I get fooled every time. The opening sequence focuses on female ranger Kiriko Tsujimori, who loses her leader when he saves her from falling debris from a Godzilla-ravaged building. She's later the leader of the G-Graspers...
She recruits miniaturist and microwave expert Hajime to help with their project, and he's pretty sweet on her from the get-go. But she's so Godzilla-foused, she just rolls her eyes at his flirtations. She's got a pretty steely determination. She also gets to punch a greedy bureaucrat in the face so that's fun. And in the end, with Hajime the guy in the chair, and Kiriko flying the Griffon, they fulfill her objective of ending the threat of Godzilla, and they continue flirting.
I like them both.
The Samesies:
Oh, the Megaguirus is a flying kaiju. Great. Because Toho's had such a great track record with flying kaiju.
This one at least gets flapping wings and GCI effects to help dramatize the effect of its power, but it still looks pretty bad (and boy are the strings ever so obvious). Like every flying Kaiju it creates sonic booms when it flies that destroy things in its wake, it can create massive wind gusts when it flaps its wings.
Evacuations and mass panic sequence (but with a bit of comedy) as Godzilla heads for Tokyo. Reuse of the original Godzilla theme as he emerges into the bay.
It's been established numerous times over in the Godzilla films that big G will go wherever the opposing threat is, but here the G-Graspers don't seem to understand why he's heading for Tokyo. They don't even consider that it's to face off against Megaguirus.
The Differences:
This film starts as a pseudo-sequel to the original, except with a new alt history where Japan has banned all use of nuclear energy, relocated it center to Osaka, and is entirely focused on developing clean energy. They develop Plasma energy in 1996, but even that is enough of a draw to attract the creature, so that has to be ceased. There is a montage of scenes recreated from the original Gojira with this current Godzilla, in black and white even, with a voice over (the first in Godzilla films).
The opening battle against an rampaging Godzilla is handled by foot soldiers with bazookas, which was pretty exciting (there's something about seeing people against Godzilla rather than the usual 5 minute montage of tanks assembling and firing... hey, both bazookas and tanks are equally in effective, but at least we get some human reaction out of this one). Some of the miniature work in these scenes is really clunky, and unintentionally funny.
While we've had the three different Super X model hover tanks of the Heisei era, and the astro-soldiers of Destroy All Monsters and Invasion of the Astro-Monster in the Showa era, but this one really goes for the kitted-out anime-style action hero force with the G-Graspers.
I can't believe this is the first time we've ever seen anyone climb onto Godzilla. I doubly can't believe he would even notice, but he does. Sensitive creature.
We've only gotten a few underwater scenes before in Godzilla, but there's some submersible images - some CGI, some miniatures, some practical - that mostly pretty fun.
In Godzilla 2000, like in many of these films there's often a character who is all about killing Godzilla, and then there's the counterpoint (typically lead) character who is about studying and protecting Godzilla. In this case our lead character, Major Kiriko Tsujimori is the one hell-bent on Godzilla's destruction, even at one point authorizing use of the black hole gun before it is ready or they know what the side effects will be. Dangerous.
It's got a big, sweeping, pounding, somewhat 90's superhero/action film-inspired score from Michiru Oshimawhich I really, really liked.
It also has a post-credits scene (another first for a Godzilla), where the little boy from earlier is at school when it seems Godzilla emerges again.
The Message:
When you're afraid of something, you don't run. It's a stand-out line Kiriko says her mentor taught her, but you know...it's never really applied to the story at all.
Rating (out of 5 Zs): ZZZ
There's a good progression throughout all of this. Everything sort of tracks and moves from A-to-B-to-C-to-D. There's no wild swings or randomness.
I enjoyed a lot of this, but it's unfortunate how really bad CGI (which almost all of the Meganulas scenes are terrible late-90's era quality CGI effects) can put a damper on it. The fight between Godzilla and Megaguirus is very dynamic, the most dynamic Godzilla fight yet. However, it's often framed poorly and its CGI fails to benefit it, so it's far from perfect. But it's still pretty entertaining. I hear there some incredible Millennium Era films still to come so I really, really look forward to those based on this.
Sleepytime Factor:
Surprisingly, no sleepiness. I was really entertained by this one.
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