Go-Go-Godzilla: Heisei Era in review

I come out of the Heisei Era of Godzilla (1984 - 1995) wondering if I even like Godzilla at all anymore. I mean, I must otherwise I wouldn't be putting in this kind of time and energy into watching every damn last one of them. But I'm trying to remember if there's a single Godzilla film that I didn't fall asleep to while watching, at least since maybe the first two from the Showa era, and I can't think of one.  If I need to go to naptown, it looks like Godzilla is the guy to take me there.

The Heisei spans 7 films over an 11 year period, as opposed to the Showa era which spanned 15 films over a 21 year period. All things told, both eras were dispensing films at almost the same rate. Toho, once they get the machine up and running, can seemingly just crank these things out. The last 5 films of the Heisei era all came out in a 5 year span (the last 12 Showa era films came out in a 13 year span). But that kind of speed does show in the quality of storytelling.

The first four of the Heisei era films are not readily available to stream, rent or buy. I saw a copy of Godzilla vs Biollante on Blu-Ray at a video store a few weeks ago, and it was selling for over $200. I wound up finding free streams in Japanese with subtitles on the Internet Archive. The video quality was ok, but the sound quality was terrible...all I can say is it's good that there was subtitles. I did wind up acquiring the latter three Heisei films on DVD, since distribution rights were acquired by TriStar in America. Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla came in a sealed 7-movie set with all the Millennium Era Godzilla films (so I'm set for the next phase) while Godzilla vs SpaceGodzilla and Godzilla vs Destroyah came on a single, double sided disk which I found at a used store.  These three were all dubbed, which is not my preference at all. I did watch most of Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla with the Internet Archive subtitled version on my phone just to compare the dub vs the sub, and they weren't exact, but they weren't too egregiously different either, not like the heavily edited American versions of the Showa Era G-films.

After I watch a Godzilla film -- or rather, after I start watching a Godzilla film, fall asleep through half of it, get confused and frustrated by the ending, then re-watch another day, and do my silly and wholly unnecessary play-by-play write-up -- I hop over to youtube and watch Big Action Bill's amazing "history of" videos which go deep into the pre-production background, details on the suits used for the production, info on the director and performers and writers and music...just really well researched and essential compendiums for pop culture tourists like myself who are only going to spend a limited amount of time and investment in a property before they move onto something else.

Through Big Action Bill's videos, it sort of confirms the chaotic nature of these films behind the scenes. Scripts seem pretty rushed in coming together, often just cobbled from the dregs of past disposed-of story ideas and monster concepts. Where a lot of time and energy are put into building miniature cities and the suits, the actual filming of these movies seems very much a "get the shot, move on" concept. 

There's a marked improvement in both miniature construction and suit construction in 9 years between Terror of Mechagodzilla and The Return of Godzilla, but the production values seem comparable between the two eras. Depending on the director , you might get some absolutely gorgeous shots, with impeccable lighting that really trick the eye in a delightful way, or you might just get puppets on strings swirling around on what's clearly a badly lit set, and  sometimes both even within the same film... there's no consistency.

After 22 films, they still haven't figured out how to do a flying creature well. Whether it's men in big rubber suits hoisted in the air by cables, or static mini-puppets bashing into each other, they all look unconvincingly awful.  Every time they introduce a new monster with wings I have to groan, because the monster fights with flying creatures are the absolute worst. 

Big Action Bill also pointed out that in Japanese cinema it's common for extraneous or tertiary characters to pop in to deliver exposition or do an action beat or take up space that one of the main characters would otherwise take in a North American film. Most Godzilla films in both the Showa and Heisei era sink because there are too many characters, and the "main" characters of the film are really non-entities with no development to speak of. That Toho recycles their actors from film to film in different roles only confuses things even more. I found myself asking myself "Are we supposed to know that guy?"  

The Heisei era had a few recurring characters, including government and military personnel, who, if they had a name, I never really cottoned to it, because they are so minor and inconsequential despite being in (nearly?) every movie. Then there was Miki the Psychic Girl who appears in 6 of the 7 films, but has no distinct character arc and no defining personality to speak of. She's a consistent presence but has so very little to do. She's supposed to have this strong connection with Godzilla, but it amounts to almost nothing but an exposition dump every time.

The first two Heisei films, The Return of Godzilla and Godzilla vs Biollante, felt ...elevated somewhat from their Showa Era predecessors, but following that it felt like the Heisei era was really reverting back to Showa-era goofiness to varying effect. Godzilla vs Destroyah does effectively return a bit of actual horror and tension with Godzilla's impending meltdown set to destroy the world, but really inept scripting and storytelling rob the film of much of its dramatic and emotional impact.

I went into the Heisei era really excited, hoping to see better stories, better characters, tighter continuity, and, well, I got one of those three, the one that matters least. I come out of the Heisei era feeling pretty drained on the property, and let down overall.  Many fans, I've been hearing, consider the Heisei era to be be the best of big G, which has me even more worried as I head into the Millennium era. 

One big change needs to happen in this process of watching all the Godzillas is a further adaptation of the template I'm using to recap them... especially the "recapping" part. It started with the Double Oh series for James Bond and then was almost a necessity with our A Toast to HallmarKent series, but recapping a movie beat by beat, or even in broad strokes, has become one of my least favourite things, primarily because Godzilla films are so anti-structure and, frankly, poorly written, event-focused stories.  So recapping all the sort of stream-of-consciousness flow to these movies is kind of maddening, because they don't make much sense and trying to capture every absurd swerve is a fools errand. I'm that fool, but I can no longer be.  Heck, maybe we'll find the Millennium era finally finds some narrative drive to their movies....

At least I know, post-Millennium, getting into the Monsterverse and Reiwa era, that there's some actual great stuff happening there to look forward to.  

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Rankings:

Heisei Era

1. The Return of Godzilla
2. Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla II
3. Godzilla vs Destroyah
4. Godzilla vs Mothra
5. Godzilla vs Biollante
6. Godzilla vs SpaceGodzilla
7. Godzilla vs King Ghidorah
8. Godzilla 1985

All the films (so far):

1. The Return of Godzilla
2. Godzilla vs Mothra (1964)
3. Gojira
4. Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla (1974)
5. Ebirah, Horror of the Deep
6. Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla II
7. Terror of Mechagodzilla
8. Godzilla vs Destroyah
9. Godzilla vs Mothra (1992)
10. Godzilla vs. Hedorah
11. Godzilla vs Gigan
12. Godzilla vs Megalon
13. Destroy All Monsters
14. Godzilla vs Biollante
15. Godzilla vs SpaceGodzilla
16. All Monsters Attack
17. Ghidorah the Three Headed Monster
18. Godzilla vs King Ghidorah
19. Invasion of the Astro Monster
20. Godzilla Raids Again
21. Godzilla 1985
22. Son of Godzilla
23. Godzilla King of the Monsters (1956)
24. King Kong vs Godzilla (US version 1962)