Review: Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah

Three supposed time travellers from the year 2204 (Chuck Wilson, Richard Berger, and Anna Nakagawa) and an android arrive in Japan to warn of the radioactive disaster that is Godzilla. If the big green lizard isn’t stopped, it will mean disastrous things for Japan’s future, environmentally. The future humans travel back in time with Terasawa (Kosoyuke Toyohara, as the author of a book on Godzilla) to the 1940s, where Godzilla was just a regular dinosaur (!) who actually helped the Japanese in WWII (!) before nuclear tests turned him into the radioactive giant lizard known as Gojira/Godzilla. However, these future humans and their ‘cute’ little creatures they bring with them aren’t all they appear to be. Oh look, those cute little ‘Dorats’ appear to be turning into a three-headed, dragon-like monster. That’s what happens when you feed them after midnight. Megumi Odaka essays her usual role of ESP-gifted Miki, who travels with Terasawa etc.

 

Socially conscious 1991 Godzilla film from writer-director Kazuki Omori (the previous “Godzilla Vs. Biollante”) isn’t bad and has a fun, if not always air-tight plot (It’s a slight variant on “The Day the Earth Stood Still”, it seems), but it’s cheap-looking, even by 1991’s standards, which is unacceptable. It’s not as fun as the original series of films (the best of which was the all-star monster effort “Destroy All Monsters!”) nor as well-made as subsequent films like 1993’s “Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla” and “Godzilla vs. Mothra: The Battle for Earth”. In fact, the film feels like a dry run for the latter two films (not to mention the more recent likes of “Godzilla 2000” and “Godzilla: Final Wars”) which managed to iron out this film’s kinks somewhat, or at least improve the FX. It’s neither bad nor good (that robot is pretty dumbski, though and a cheap T-1000 rip-off), but a warm feeling welled up inside me upon hearing the strains of the familiar “Gojira” theme by the inimitable and invaluable Akira Ifukube (“Gojira”, “Destroy All Monsters!”), who does a typically excellent job here.

 

Godzilla’s first appearance is pretty cool, making him look massive with a nice use of scale. Dodgy blue screen, though. Yikes! The monster design seems more akin to the films of the 60s than the 90s, if you ask me, but that may or may not be a criticism depending on your sensibilities. And the Dorats are the creepiest fucking things ever, giving me nightmares for days. Holy crap they are freaky little buggers. As for Ghidorah, he was always the coolest-looking monster, but ungainly and frankly useless in battle. I always like seeing Ghidorah…until I remember that it never works out quite as awesome as I expect it to. However, there’s nothing more fun than watching Godzilla pick up Ghidorah by the tail and smacking the fuck out of it. ‘MechaGhidorah’ (as it should be known) is pretty damn bad-arse looking, it has to be said, too.

 

I tend to favour the “Godzilla” films with an alien or time travel bent, but the cool plot is really this film’s only big selling point. Otherwise it’s a pretty middling, cheap-looking film at around the time the series was gearing up for more technologically impressive things. Series fans will no doubt want to see it, but there’s much better entries out there.

 

Rating: C+