Director: Masaaki Tezuka
Year: 2002
Length: 90 minutes
The Gist:
It's 1999 all over again, Godzilla is attacking Japan for the first time in 45 years. Lieutenant Akane Yashiro is an elite pilot of a maser-cannon. But when the military response is utterly ineffective, the only sane thing to do is retreat. In attempting to turn the maser-tank around, Akane accidentally knocks her comrades' jeep over the cliff side where it is crushed under Godzilla's heel. Akane is spiritually crushed, and accepts a demotion.
Meanwhile bio-robotics expert Tokumitsu Yuhara is recruited by the military for a special project, along with the nation's biggest brains... to create the ultimate anti-Godzilla weapon...out of the skeleton of the original Godzilla! Tokumitsu agrees to sign onto the project when his daughter, Sara is allowed to live on base with him.
Akane is recruited to be part of the Mechagodzilla (code name: Kiryu) piloting force, and she trains her ass off, while facing discrimination and harassment from the brother of a soldier she inadvertently knocked off the side of a cliff.
Just when the project is ready to revealed to the world, along with it's ultimate anti-Godzilla-weapon, a sub-zero chest ray, Godzilla attacks. Kiryu is sent out into the field for its first test run, and not only does it go badly, but less than two minutes into the fight, Godzilla roars at the metal beast, and it unlocks something in its regenerated DNA. The reconstituted "original" Godzilla inside the metal suit takes control and goes on a rampage. The Kiryu team is helpless to stop it, instead just having to wait for it to exhaust its power supply. Godzilla just walks away. It's pretty hilarious.
Tokumitsu hits on Akane a bunch, but Akane instead bonds with Sara over their dead moms. It's very Hallmark.
Kiryu is repaired, it's operating system upgraded to resist any sort of sentient takeover, and just in time for a rematch when Godzilla returns (the speculation is that Godzilla's actually coming ashore because Kiryu is built out of reconstituted Godzilla DNA). Kiryu is built to fly, which, as we know with Godzilla movies, means it looks awful when it does, and it manages to knock Godzilla around quite a bit. It even manages to fire off the absolute zero freeze ray gun but it misses, and the attempt drains Kiryu's energy. After Anane gets inside the metal beast, and the team taps the entire Tokyo power grid, Akane pilots Kiryo to fly it and Godzilla out to sea where she blasts him point blank with the absolute zero gun.
Both creature and mech survive, heavily, heavily damaged. Akane watches on as Godzilla retreats into the ocean. It's a draw.
In a post credit scene, Akane agrees to go out for a meal with Tokumitsu.
Godzilla, Friend or Foe:
He's a baddie, although, it seems his impetus for wrecking Japan is largely as a result of Japan building a mech out of dead Godzilla bones.
The Samesies:
Much of ...Against Mechagodzilla feels borrowed. It feels very samey.
The set-up of this feels largely regurgitated from Godzilla vs Megaguirus. A female military personnel feels guilty over the death of colleagues and seeks to redeem herself by killing Godzilla. The soldier having no time for love also carries over.
Like all of the Millennium Era Godzillas so far, ...Against Mechagodzilla acts as a sequel to the original Gojira, where they haven't seen a Godzilla since 1954. Only in this they acknowledge that other monsters, such as Mothra and Gaira (the green giant Frankenstein from War of the Gargantuas), have attacked in the intervening years. The ending of the original Gojira is modified as well for their purposes here. Where the oxygen destroyer completely obliterated every trace of the original Godzilla, here it is said it only stripped its bones clean, leaving the skeleton behind.
Michiru Oshima returns to score her second Godzilla feature (after ...vs Megaguirus) and brings back her thumping Godzilla theme. She hits the rest of the film with a heavy orchestral score that kind of bleeds into one bombastic sound instead of distinct compositions. It stands out at first but ultimately just becomes texture.
Mechagodzilla doesn't look dramatically different than his Showa and Reiwa Era counterparts despite modified weapon bits, and its hangar bay feels very Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla II.
Once again Toho decided that they needed to aim for younger audiences, that Godzilla was getting too scary, so the horror or gory elements are quite toned down compared to prior Millennium era entries, to its detriment. In the final battle, Godzilla has his chest blown wide open, but we barely even notice it. Plus the injection of Sara into the film is clearly kid-pandering but ultimately yields little in terms of rewards. She's mostly just there.
The Differences:
What I enjoyed a lot early in the film is how it strove for a more ground-level-eye-view of the monsters more often than not, up until it has Godzilla and Kiryu face off. Unfortunately each time that happens we get a very level side view and occasional overhead views, and it all feels like fairly bog standard Godzilla fighting, only with more CGI accompaniment to move the creatures faster or into the air. It really doesn't look great at all. The idea of presenting the scale of Godzilla is something the Millennium Era films have improved greatly upon, but the directors seem to revert to standard filming techniques for fight sequences in most cases.
Anyone worth caring about?
I've been nagging and nagging on and on about how these films seem so utterly resistant to telling a story about human characters with Godzilla attacks or monster battles as the backdrop. Well, finally we get one that is so fully about Akane's redemption arc and feeling worthy of Tokumitsu and Sara's affections that I should finally be happy right?
Alas, no. It's such an utterly cliched story as to be pretty direly boring. It doesn't find any new beats and is often very confused about the beats it's trying to hit, particularly when it comes to her relationship with Sara. There's a very awkward scene where Akane is trying to tell Sara she will need to let go of her mother's death at some point, when Sara hits her back with her own bit of advice that rocks Akane to her core. But it's not really clear to me what was said that was so affecting.
That the post credits scene is just about Akane accepting a date from Tokumitsu is an incredible miscalculation of the use of a post-credit's scene. It does show a fully repaired Kiryu though.
The Message:
All life is precious. That's the message director Tezuka wants out of all his films. But despite a character (Sara) preaching it, and crying over it, the film itself doesn't fully respect this idea. At one point Sara notes how Godzilla and Kiryu are the same species and should be friends, not enemies, and tries to get the team to understand the Kiryu is a living being, but all of that concept goes out the window once rubber suits need to bash into one another trying to kill each other, and having the audience root for it to happen.
That it comes to a draw seems to be the satisfactory outcome for all.
Rating (out of 5 Zs): ZZ
I really wanted to like this one. It does so much that seems to be what I've been asking after, and yet it all feels muted, hollow and unexciting. The best moment was the awakening of Godzilla inside the Kiryu armor, a real highlight moment in all of Godzilla film, actually. But where prior Mechagodzilla films had a definite "fun" element to them, this one doesn't seem to know how to have fun. And when it does goofy things with CGI, the fact that it's not otherwise a "fun" movie just makes goofy CGI things feel out-of-place amidst the film's tepid melodrama.
Sleepytime Factor:
I only almost nodded off once, as usual it was during a "Godzilla fights tanks and planes" battle. Boy have those ever gotten so tiresome after 27 movies. That there is a character story to focus on make it a more watchable film, just not a very good one.
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