Just the Ticket #211: Son Of Godzilla
a.k.a. The Ticketmaster.
Today's film in the Goj-Year-ra lineup left me with a lot of conflicting emotions. Seriously, I went in wanting to hate it because it was handled by the same team that made Ebirah, Horror Of the Deep such a mess (even though there was plenty to like about that one), and because I had seen enough memes to "know" how useless the title character is (and because I know how objectively bad a certain other, similarly-titled sequel to a beloved film with a green protagonist is). But then I watched it...and I was right about how bad it is, but also, I kind of loved it, and was left with feelings I didn't expect from a Godzilla movie.
Back from The Deep are director Jun Fukuda, special effects director Sadamasa Arikawa, and an admittedly burned out Shinichi Sekizawa sharing script duty. This time, it was because the dream team were busy with King Kong Escapes, rather than because Toho had already committed the B-tiers to give them...something (but in the case of both the Ebirah film and Son Of Godzilla, it was technically a Kong problem).
Somewhere in the Pacific Ocean (so more like the non-sPacific Ocean), there are several cases of Godzilla-related radar and sonar interference by what the nautical extras identify as radioactive brainwaves (so Minilla, played by "Marchan the Dwarf"—yes, really—has nuclear psychic powers, I guess), possibly emanating from the nearby Solgell Island, which is where we cut to our mostly insufferable human plot, and our villains (just try to convince me that I'm not repeating myself!).
A team of scientists accidentally create mantis and spider kaiju while inventing climate change and cloud seeding as a solution to future overpopulation (which is kind of like the series finale of Dinosaurs, and has the potential to be just as unintentionally effective, according to the head scientist, played by King Kong vs Godzilla's Tadao Takashima, as he parrots Dr. Serizawa from the first film). Suddenly (because the guy who played Dr. Serizawa won't be marginally interesting here until he turns feverish and stir-crazy in the last third of the film), a parachuting reporter with a personality and a libido falls out of the sky because "my stomach told me there was a good story here" (he's only, like, half-right about that at most, and is played by the Invasion Of Astro-Monster loud noise-inventor himself, Akira Kubo) and starts asking unanswerable questions and taking pictures of everything from every angle, which definitely doesn't get old immediately, until he starts creeping on a lone island girl named Saeko (which is pronounced like "psycho" for no particular reason because Japanese and English are two, very different languages), who somehow survived being Tarzan'd on an island populated by lesser kaiju for her entire life, can speak Godzilla (without a 3D-printed resonating chamber, because I randomly have bad Jurassic Park pseudoscience on the brain today), and is the best human character in the movie because Bibari Maeda (the Japanese voice actor for Carmilla in Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust) gives her performance the perfect balance of graceful self-sufficiency and fish-out-of-water naivete with a throughline of youthful optimism.
The kaiju stuff is likewise a mixed bag. You get cool stuff like the impressive Kamacuras (mantis) and Kumonga (spider) puppets, Godzilla (duties shared by Haruo Nakajima, Rodan's Seiji Onaka—who took lead in the new, larger suit made for this movie—and Ebirah suit actor Hiroshi Sekita—who replaced Onaka after a finger injury) scoop-slamming and cooking two of the former with his trademark attack, the acting of the non-verbal relationships Minilla has with Saeko feeding him and Godzilla teaching him how to roar and use atomic breath, and the emotionally charged finale where Godzilla and Minilla freeze together and go into hibernation. But there's also the fact that Minilla looks like someone stuck a melted E.T. head (apparently inspired by an Osomatsu character, and I can kind of see it) on a raw chicken in a gimp suit, he's so clumsy and useless that Godzilla almost physically abuses him and leaves him to die several times (which there are deleted scenes of on some collection releases), and he cries like a goat fifty-something years before Marvel really made it annoying.
But Minilla was suggested by kaiju producer Tomoyuki Tanaka to get Sekizawa's creative juices flowing again and created as a Cousin Oliver to turn this movie into a draw for dating couples, so as accident-prone, weak, and inconsistent at breath-nuking even the most generic of foes as he was,
and audiences and early critics ate it up. I can understand why, because Son Of Godzilla made me feel things, too. But on top of the endearing(?) family dynamic that was "The 'Zilla & Minilla," and the nigh-tragic ending, I also feel like maybe Godzilla should have gone for that proverbial pack of nuclear smokes and left his adopted baby to just one appearance.
D+
Next week, anime characters fight each other with magic garbage, cats and dogs fight like cats and dogs, Zenescope remakes Caged Heat, I finally throw it back to old TV finales, and Godzilla tries to Destroy All Monsters. Please stay chill and Stay Tuned by remembering to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, leaving a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have feelings about, helping out my ad revenue as you read because a clumsy, childish idiot with nuclear capabilities just might end the world for real, and following me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.
85
Ticketmaster,
Out.
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