Just the Ticket #207: Mothra vs Godzilla
a.k.a. The Ticketmaster.
It's only fitting that the Month Of Love would feature not just relationship-themed anime and comic books about archers and jilted lovers, but also a movie starring the King and Queen Of the Monsters.
Mothra vs Godzilla (censored and Americanized as Godzilla vs The Thing—which just makes me want to see Godzilla fight a kaiju-sized Ben Grimm, or John Carpenter's arctic parasite monster, or the disembodied hand from The Addams Family—and not to be confused with Godzilla vs Mothra) is Mothra's second film and Godzilla's fourth, chosen in place of a Kong sequel after the success of Mothra's debut.
The team of Honda, Tsubaraya, Nakajima, and Tezuka returned yet again, bringing with them some of the same themes and setpieces that were present in King Kong vs Godzilla, such as commercial greed, characters visiting an island populated by kaiju-worshipping tribal stereotypes, the humans trying to defeat Godzilla with military might and electrocution (and failing, as they do), and the guest monster(s) knocking Godzilla into the ocean before they swim back home. Also returning to the then-fledgling franchise are actors Akira Takarada (Ogata, whom I referred to as "Captain Cuck," from Godzilla), Hiroshi Koizumi (one of the pilots in Godzilla Raids Again), and Yū Fujiki (Furue, one of the explorer goons in King Kong vs Godzilla).
In the aftermath of a typhoon, a cartoonishly greedy land developer named Kumayama (Yoshifumi Tajima, of Mothra, Rodan, and King Kong vs Godzilla) and his ruthless financier (Kenji Sahara, of Godzilla, Rodan, and King Kong vs Godzilla) make plans to erect an amusement park around a mysterious kaiju egg that washes ashore. They are visited by two singing fairies from the nuclear testing site of Infant Island (Emi and Yumi Itō, a.k.a. The Peanuts, reprising their roles from Mothra), who ask repeatedly that the egg be returned to their Goddess, Mothra (because She got top billing, so this crossover is Her movie first and foremost, with Godzilla serving as the antagonist for the last time in his Shōwa Era run).
And because Japan doesn't really care about continuity and canon like modern American nerds do, Godzilla returned somehow, erupting from the earth in sudden, dramatic fashion to begin stumbling around like a drunken cruise passenger, groping everything within reach and melting his surroundings with his nuclear breath...like a drunken cruise passenger.
Certain that Godzilla will try to destroy and/or eat Mothra's egg (and they just happen to guess right with very little supporting evidence because they're reporters and scientists in a 60s movie and the plot must plot), a no-nonsense journalist (Takarada), his thoughtfully artistic photographer who rolled rizz-maxing when the D&D campaign started (classic beauty Yuriko Hoshi), and a nuclear scientist (Koizumi) travel to Infant Island to ask the natives and the fairies for Mothra's assistance (which is where that charismatic photographer comes in clutch, because the human condition is complicated). Though the fairy priestesses say Mothra is about to die (and Her design gave me reservations that their fight would be another boring, repetitive one like we got with Anguirus in Raids Again), She gives the Big G a pretty savage and dominant thrashing that he's only able to survive by randomly spraying his atomic breath and getting in a lucky shot on one of Mothra's wings. It's no epic masterpiece of choreography because Mothra is a practical puppet with limited articulation and Godzilla is two guys tagging in and out of a cumbersome rubber suit in 1964 (which, a new suit was designed for this movie, hence the bony brow, dead-eyed expression, and less prominent spinal plates), but the music, cinematography, acting, and Mothra being Godzilla's first flying opponent do a lot of heavy lifting to sell it as the epic confrontation it needed to be.
But then, almost as if a page of the script went missing, Mothra is crippled by the aforementioned lucky shot from Godzilla and She just...gives up and dies shielding the egg because real moths do that, I guess. It is a tense, emotional moment that leads to a desperate play of "do we risk the egg's contents eating Japan for sustenance or let Godzilla rampage until he gets bored and we lose our country anyway?", but has a clear "and then" feel to anticlimactically speed up the pacing rather than being a direct consequence of something previous.
So after the foot-tall, radiation-proof twin fairies (actually, almost everyone in these movies seems to be immune to nuclear poisoning) hatch the blimp-sized egg by singing Mothra's name a few hundred times (because tokusatsu makes sense), two larvae who make stock locomotive noises when they move around emerge and spray Godzilla with cotton batting until he trips and falls into the ocean, because craft supplies are more dangerous than a nine-digit-volt shock and the movie needs to be over.
The forced perspective effects looked cleaner than in previous entries, the human protagonist group got to contribute more to the plot (though they could not rightly be called characters with and degree of generosity on my part), the villains got deservedly gruesome ends for what the time period would allow, the tone was balanced better than in the Kong crossover, and I enjoyed the Mothra portion despite having to do a little homework to make sense of Her lore (I May end up watching the Mothra series next year, hint, hint). But Godzilla was made a chump, counter to his "nuclear trauma personified" theming in previous entries (the clumsiness, losing to glitter, strong wind, and cotton fiber,...), the plot felt like a retread of King Kong vs Godzilla, and the ending was terribly unsatisfying.
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Ticketmaster,
Out.
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