Go-Go-Godzilla #26: Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-out Attack

Director: Shusuke Kaneko
Year: 2001
Length: 105 minutes

The Gist:
An American nuclear submarine has gone missing in Pacific waters. The Japan Security Defence Force is assisting in the scouting only to find that the sub has been torn apart, and in the area they spy movement of something very, very large.  It could only be...Godzilla.

After a series of random events (a low-budget movie shoot, a group of drunken teens trying to drown a dog, a man attempting suicide in the woods) disrupts some protective stone idols, the Guardian Monsters awaken: Baragon, Mothra and Ghidorah.  They are on the hunt for Godzilla, and will protect the world from his wrath.

Except, when last Godzilla faced the Guardian Monsters, he was but a simple kaiju himself, not emboldened with the souls of the people Japan killed in the Pacific war, and the additional power and strength that comes with it. Baragon (a second-stringer kaiju, thus not featured in the title) is no match for him solo. Even Mothra and Ghidora tag-teaming cannot defeat him. With all the Gurardian Monsters having sacrificed themselves in the effort, it's up to one man in a submersible carrying a specialized burrowing torpedo to get inside Godzilla and shoot his way out.

The resulting effect opens a gaping wound in Godzilla's neck so when he goes to use his atomic breath, it instead fires out the side of his neck, and ultimately he explodes. The day is saved...except, unbeknownst to the JSDF, the heart survives, and continues to beat.

Godzilla, Friend or Foe:
Oh, decided enemy. He's a brutal, aggressive violent prick of a kaiju.

The Samesies:
As seems to be the trend of the Millennium Era Godzilla films, it dispenses with all Godzilla history except for those of Gojira.

The JSDF have been organized for 50 years to protect against Godzilla, but have not had a single encounter with him in that time. They have no experience, and do not know how deadly he can be. So, as was so common in the Heisei era, they mount attacks with tanks and planes that have no effect on the beast.

Mothra and Ghidora as flying creatures, once again look ... not great when they take to the air. Mothra gets a boost from a CGI model that looks pretty decent flying (in the dark), but the big puppet still cannot move its legs and the wing flapping is moderately effective. Ghidorah's flying is clunky and awkward, both in the suit and in CGI.

The Millennium Era has been experimenting a lot with underwater sequences and they vary in quality here. The earliest sequences in the film are the best, the rest are mostly OK, with a few clunky CGI swimming Godzilla sequences.

The Differences:
There's a real viciousness to Godzilla in this film, as if he's very spiteful of humans. Director Kaneko seems to delight in both the direct and collateral damage that the creatures cause, and he takes pains to show it. It's almost comedic at times, like the scene where a frightened girl with a broken leg in a hospital sees Godzilla through the window heading right for her, only for the creature to pass by and she breathes a sigh of relief. Then Godzilla's tail swings and demolishes the building (we've seen this gag once before, and it remains a good one, but I believe it was with a bad guy character before, not a wounded by stander).

Godzilla (and the Guardian Monsters) origins are changed dramatically here from a science-derived background (nuclear radiation) to a fantastical one (they are composed of souls?).  It's not the first time that Godzilla films have delved into fantasy, and when the kaiju are killed in this one they explode into stardust, kind of like Biollante did at the end of her film. So there's precedent. I don't care for this type of b.s. though. When Mothra is destroyed and her stardust is absorbed by Ghidora who then sprouts wings. There's precedent for this as well, as recent as Godzilla vs Destroyah,where one kaiju can give another its energy so they can continue the fight.  In this case, it doesn't really help Ghidorah ultimate. There is a whole mythos about the Guardian Monsters that is talked about by the human characters but not at enough length or with enough connection to the characters to give us much sense of its importance or develop strong world building out of it.   

They've really changed Godzilla's physicality here. He's much slimmer on his upper torso and more reptilian. He doesn't look like he's made of stone like the Godzilla of the previous two films.  His hips are really, really wide, and so he moves with a very broad strut that looks like a baby walking with a heavy, saggy diaper. I'm not a fan of the look.

They've flipped Ghidorah and Godzilla's roles, with Ghidorah now a good guy for the first time, and Godzilla the ultimate evil. If the Millennium Era is proving anything, it's that they want Godzilla to be the ultimate threat.

This is a rare instance where the humans figure out early that some of the kaiju are there to help them, so they don't bother attacking Baragon, Mothra or Ghidorah.

Anyone Worth Caring About?
Sigh. The film spends a whole bunch of time with Yuri Tachibana, who starts off as an actress in the no-budget scifi movies but then starts pushing the low-end TV studio into letting her be a field reporter on Godzilla even though they don't do news. It's really stupid. Why not just make her a reporter?

Her father is an Admiral and while Yuri is digging into all the Guardian Monster mythos, he's getting all the real world intel on what's happening everywhere. You would think the two would wind up collaborating, which they do for a hot second, but then that's kind of it.

They're a loving father-daughter duo who spend almost no time together in the film, and there's no dramatic tension between them for them to resolve so there is literally no human journey here. Nobody learns a lesson, nobody conquers over any internal adversity, everything is solely related to the external threat, for which, until the final 10 minutes, they have absolutely no impact over.  The human angle is almost completely pointless here, as it seems the director was really, intently focussed on the kaiju fights, which are good, but not *that* good.

The Message:
The sins of our past will come back to haunt us.

Rating (out of 5 Zs): 
ZZz - this was a film of diminishing returns for me. I had high hopes given what G2K and ...vs Megaguirus led the Millennium Era in with, but yet another continuity reset and a dramatic (shocking) redesign of the creature suit very quickly made it a challenge.  Cluing in that the investigation into the Guardian Monsters wasn't really going anywhere except to provide exposition as to why they are in the film just made the human side of the film so tedious.

The monster fights are lively, and yet, do not seem as creative as the improvements the prior Millennium Era films would imply they should be. I blame flying monsters, the bane of the entire Godzilla series.

I didn't really care for the creature designs here. They seemed to be retro Showa-era homages, and if they wanted us to take this film as semi-seriously as I think they intended, they would have shaken things up. Baragon in particular has been, and remains, one of the doofiest looking kaiju in the series.

I had seen this high up, or topping many G-fan's lists, and, as with previous favourites like Godzilla vs Biollante, I really didn't connect with it. It wasn't very fun.

Sleepytime Factor:
Because the human story was so inconsequential and there was lots of military shenanigans, there were many times my eyelids started to droop. I did a rough time check each time I found myself nodding off.
30 minute mark.
45 minute mark.
106 minute mark.
Plus the score introduces a new theme to the Godzilla series in the opening credits, a pretty dang solid one by composer Kow Otani, but then he proceeds to use it liberally throughout the film, leading to a bit of a numbing effect.