Review: Return of Godzilla

Rebooting the franchise whilst also being a follow-up to the original “Gojira”, our title monster bursts out of an erupting volcano 30 years after the events of the first film. A group of fishermen witness this, but are quickly attacked by mutated sea lice, who kill all but one of the men. This lone survivor is rescued by a vacationing journo (Ken Tanaka) who tries to get all who will listen to take the story seriously. Familiar faces Yoshifumi Tajima and Hiroshi Koizumi (who had roles in several previous Toho films) turn up as a government minister and geologist, respectively.

 

The 1984 Japanese version of what was eventually sliced and diced into the Americanised “Godzilla 1985”, this Koji Hashimoto (a veteran 2^nd assistant director on several Toho films including the tedious “King Kong vs. Godzilla”) film was meant to be the vastly superior cut I was informed. I haven’t seen “Godzilla 1985” in decades, but this sloppy, unfocussed, and dull affair is bottom tier Godzilla for me, just ahead of “King Kong vs. Godzilla” (both cuts) and the very fairly maligned 1998 “Godzilla”.

 

An awkward bridge between the Showa and Heisei eras (and indeed it has been attached to either one of those eras at various points over the years), there’s still some things to like here but some big swings and misses as well like the dum-dum finale including a dreadfully slow pace. The characters are likeable and there’s some effectively creepy enlarged sea lice FX creations that I liked. 30 (too) long minutes in our title character finally shows up in an awesome but simultaneously very silly first appearance.

 

I certainly admire the attempt at scale and grandeur with the closeups and the scenes of destruction, but the execution is an awkward mix of awesome and silly. And the pacing. I’m sorry, but this thing is just far too slow. I appreciate the dedication to story and giving us characters to care about, but you can do that while also giving us plenty of monster action. The original “Gojira” strikes a fine balance, for instance. This film doesn’t do that, and likeable or not the characters still aren’t compelling enough to cover for the slow pace and lack of monsters (the recent “Godzilla Minus One” managed to make it work by being an exceptionally well-written and well-mounted story). There’s no pulse here, and after 45 minutes only one brief appearance by our title character whilst we focus entirely too much on political and military tedium instead. In fact, for a film that overdoses on characters and dialogue, those characters don’t have a great deal of depth at the same time. Aside from the occasional familiar cue, the music score by Reijiro Koroku is forgettable and underwhelming.

 

I like the camera angles, I like the model work and FX. I do not like the film. The sombre tone works, the agonising pace does not. I appreciate the attempt at a sombre, dark Godzilla film but the execution here is slow and flat. The screenplay is by Shuichi Nagahara (“The Sun Above, Death Below”), combining elements from two unproduced Godzilla films, including one worked on by Fred Dekker (director of “The Monster Squad”) of all people which was set to be directed by Steve Miner (who directed “Friday the 13^th Part 3D” and several episodes of “The Wonder Years”) and proposed as a 3D endeavour.

 

Rating: C