Review: Godzilla vs. Destoroyah

Godzilla’s heart is basically a nuclear reactor and now it’s set to meltdown, which could mean absolute catastrophic disaster for planet Earth. The folks at G-Force have of course been monitoring the situation, and believe that Godzilla has re-surfaced to search for his son, dubbed Godzilla Junior. Eventually it is decided that with Godzilla clearly unstable, the best course of action is to kill it with what was used back in 1954 – The Oxygen Destroyer. Unfortunately, using this technology has unexpected and equally monstrous side effects, creating the titular monster. So yeah…the Earth needs to rely on nuclear energy (i.e. Godzilla) to save the day. 

Among the more popular Godzilla movies ever made, this 1995 film from director Takao Okawara (“Godzilla vs. Mothra: The Battle for Earth”, and the excellent ‘Millennium Era’ film “Godzilla 2000”) and screenwriter Kazuki Omori (writer-director of the previous “Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah”) has a lot going for it. I do have to come down pretty hard on it for having too many characters and lacking focus in that area, however the film’s strengths outweigh the weaknesses. It’s a dark and more mature film than you might expect, and it contains some of the best monster battle/destruction footage in any Godzilla film to date. Shot by Kishimoto Masahiro and Sekiguchi Yoshinori, the lighting in this film is truly spectacular by this series’ standards. Just look at the gorgeous shot of a yellow and red sunset matching the colours being emitted from Godzilla. Sights to look for early on are a plug for Qantas and a cross-eyed pilot. However, what you’ll really notice here is Godzilla. This is the film where Godzilla is even more threatening than usual, because he’s a big, red & green nuclear meltdown about to happen. The ‘good’ news being that Godzilla is dying, the bad news is he’s likely to take mankind with him. In keeping with that, Godzilla’s blue fire breath is now yellow and red, and it’s awesome (It has red eyes, too). It’s a really terrific start as a volcanic-looking Godzilla tears through neon-lit Japan over the opening credits. We even get a music score by the great Akira Ifukube, creator of the iconic Godzilla theme. The score is terrific throughout, but series fans will definitely recognise and love hearing a couple of familiar Ifukube themes at certain points. 

Yeah, it’s another of the ‘G-Force’ Godzilla movies, but for the most part that era (the Heisei era, as it is known) was pretty good, looking back (“Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah” was a bit of a disappointment, though). This one even ties in the original 1954 “Gojira” with inserts from that film featuring Akihiko Hirata and Takashi Shimura. All of the nuclear talk here has the film feeling at once a remake of and sequel to “Gojira”, if anything. The whole thing is founded on a fascinating and scary idea: How do you stop a monster that is essentially a nuclear explosion waiting to happen? It’s unquestionably one of the best central concepts to a Godzilla film ever. This is even before our other central monster turns up. Everyone has clearly tried hard to make this a cut above the norm, and they have succeeded quite well, despite the over-abundance of characters and talk. The talk is at least interesting, but our leads are sadly stiff as a board and it does hurt the film a bit. Thankfully, Destoroyah makes up the difference by being one of the more interesting opponents for Godzilla. Initially it comes in the form of several creatures that look like Predators mixed with “Pumpkinhead” that prove a lot of fun just causing hellacious mayhem. The film definitely has the best FX of the Heisei era (FX being a problem with the aforementioned “Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah” in particular), and it’s also one of the darker and scarier Godzilla films, too as Destoroyah takes the franchise into a more horror-oriented area than it had ever been taken before. Once Destoroyah becomes one giant monster, takes its fully-winged form and starts flying…it gets even more awesome. Less awesome is G-Force psychic Miki (Megumi Odaka), whose cutesy attitude towards Godzilla ‘Junior’ simply belongs in a different, lighter film than this. Every cutaway to them and ‘Schoolgirl uniform fetish girl’ is a cutesy bummer and unneeded distraction. 

This isn’t my personal favourite film in the long-running franchise, but it sort of plays at times like a much, much better version of the awful Roland Emmerich 1998 “Godzilla” film. Visually striking, thematically fascinating, with some terrific action. Only the human characters are a bore, and stop this from being even better than it is.

Rating: B-