Just the Ticket #230: Godzilla vs Megaguirus
a.k.a. The Ticketmaster.
Today, the Goj-Year-ra project ends the first week of August with the second film, and second continuity reboot, of the Millennium Era, which the fandom often ranks with Some Monsters Almost Attack, Godzilla Raids Again, Godzilla '98, and Ebirah, Horror Of the Deep as among the franchise's worst entries.
I'm not quite so severe on it, but in contrast to Godzilla 2000 (which I reviewed last week), it gave me a strong first impression and spun into a rapid decline from there, for numerous reasons I will get into later.
Godzilla vs Megaguirus (released in 2000 under a Japanese title that translates as Godzilla×Megaguirus: The G Extermination Strategy, so I guess the multiplication symbol is a Millennium Era "versus" thing?) was the directorial debut of Masaaki Tezuka (Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla and Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S., a.k.a. "the Kiryu Saga") and written by the team of Hiroshi Kashiwabara (Godzilla vs SpaceGodzilla) and Wataru Mimura (Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla II) with effects by Kenji Suzuki (Godzilla 2000) and a score by Michiru Ōshima (the Kiryu Saga).
As previously mentioned, Godzilla vs Megaguirus is the second reboot in the Millennium Era, and unlike Godzilla 2000, it begins by establishing agency with a version of Gojira '54 where the Oxygen Destroyer either failed or was not used, so that same Godzilla (now portrayed by Tsutomu Kitagawa in his second franchise appearance, and the film recreates some of the original's destruction scenes with a sepiatone filter and Kitagawa in the Millennium suit, which was a nice touch even though it most likely infuriated continuity hounds) is still alive to attack a nuclear plant twelve years later, leading to vehement discussion about abandoning nuclear energy in favor of a new power source. It's unclear how Godzilla was dealt with in the absence of the Oxygen Destroyer or how he was kept at bay (so to speak) throughout that twelve year period, but the capital was moved to Osaka during the post-'54 reconstruction of Tokyo, and would remain there through the next thirty years, when there is a scientific breakthrough in finding a clean, stable replacement for nuclear power: plasma energy (which is a real thing; just look at lightning, though I'm not scientifically knowledgeable enough to be able to say whether it could or has been used this way in real life; otherwise, we wouldn't still be using nuclear power so much). Heavy hydrogen (²H, an isotope you might recognize from its mention in Ebirah, Horror Of the Deep) is involved as a stabilizer somehow (again, I'm not a chemist or a physicist, so my understanding approaches zero). But Godzilla attacks a plasma reactor, too, so maybe the scientific breakthrough was just a bullshit political maneuver?
Anyway, the plasma reactor attack is grounds for a sick pre-title action sequence where the JSDF's elite unit (including immediately obvious focus character Kiriko Tsujimori, played by Misato Tanaka of Sadako vs Kayako) try and fail to stop Godzilla on foot with conventional, military-grade weapons. It's dumb as hell considering what we've seen every other Godzilla survive, but the combination of kaiju horror suspense and war movie action drama is near perfect at establishing Tsujimori's motivation for the path she takes in the movie going forward (a rote, simple quest to avenge her comrades and commanding officer that turns her into a flat, desperate, inferior version of Yuki from Godzilla vs SpaceGodzilla).
Title-cut to 2001, and Tsujimori is now the captain of the JSDF special division, G-Graspers (which is the stupidest name for an organization in the franchise since...every group of evil aliens and humans ever, really, and makes her perfectly qualified to find G-Center—yes, I will milk that joke into the ground...). Using multiple scientific and military disciplines, they assist Tsujimori in her Ahab blood vendetta against Godzilla (whom almost no one in the movie calls Godzilla, instead referring to him by the code letter G, like there's suddenly a cap on the number of times you can say Godzilla in a Godzilla movie. Godzilla, Godzilla, Godzilla. Godzilla? Godzilla!
And everyone knows that when you're obsessed with hunting the great, green gorilla-whale, you need a harpoon of some quality.
Enter cocky, quirky inventor Hajime Kudo (Shōsuke Tanihara, Godzilla: Final Wars). He makes miniature robots to con children, whips up amphibious surveillance drones offscreen like he has Rick Sanchez living in his colonic hammerspace, and invented a proprietary AI operating system with an avatar (based on Tsujimori, by the way, because she recruited him for a special weapons project at G-Graspers, and they seem to have that kind of chemistry) that would make any turn-of-the-millennium computer explode like a Cybertruck in winter. He's fun. I like him.
Before we go from the fun and slightly disappointing to the aggravating, cheap, and batshit insane, though, it's important from a franchise legacy standpoint to note that Kudo's mentor, Yoshino Yoshizawa, is played by Yuriko Hoshi (Mothra vs Godzilla and Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster). This is her third and final performance in the franchise, and she's...there. Her brief dynamics with Kudo are cute and heartwarming, and she has one dramatic scene revealing that she is a survivor of the pre-title plasma reactor attack, but that's about it.
So, what's this about Kudo helping Yoshikawa and the team design a metaphorical harpoon to slay Godzilla? Well, it's a perfectly sane plan to shoot Godzilla with a satellite that fires a two-meter-wide black hole toward the surface of the Earth. And the reason my sarcasm is perfectly sane is because a black hole the size of an atom can destroy the Earth, and now we're talking about a black hole that's four billion times that size being fired from orbit to the ground, consuming the atmosphere as it falls (plus the other consequences I'll get to in a bit), to kill a radioactive dinosaur (and we've seen what happens when black holes and Godzilla mix, thanks to Godzilla vs SpaceGodzilla) who can just dig out of the way and be completely fine. Twice.
Yeah, a woman endangers the entire planet on three separate occasions (again, I'll get to the third one shortly) to avenge her war-daddy senpai because of Godzilla and survivor's guilt. Granted, plasma energy and heavy hydrogen draw out the black holes' Hawking radiation faster than they can consume matter because theoretical quantum physics and sci-fi bullshit make everything better or something, but even though she does cool, dangerous, badass stuff at several key points in the movie and she looks kind of hot in uniform, her "a black hole space cannon is the only way to kill Godzilla, and the only thing I want to do is kill Godzilla" plot/defining character trait made her likability fall off hard.
Which brings us to that third (sequentially the first) time she and G-Graspers endangered the Earth with the black hole cannon, and to a new contender for worst child character in the franchise. I hate Jun Hayasaka (Hiroyuki Suzuki, Haunted School). On his way to turn in his summer homework on insects, Jun witnesses G-Graspers testing the weapon, and even speaks to Tsujimori about whether he can keep it a secret. But when a spatial distortion left behind by the weapon test brings a prehistoric dragonfly kaiju (inspired by the meganeura, and identified as Meganula, so Rodan probably happened in this continuity, too) into the present day, Jun sees it and says nothing to anyone. Then he finds a strange egg that emits slime and water, and instead of trying to find Tsujimori and tell her about it, he...dumps it in the sewer and tells no one until it's too late, then we don't see him again for the rest of the movie (not counting the post-credits scene; yes, Godzilla vs Megaguirus has a post-credits scene) because he only exists to be hated by the audience for escalating the kaiju threat through cowardice, laziness, and stupidity, but I repeat myself. He's a poorly written plot device, not a character, and the movie suffers for it on both sides of the screen.
So now, Japan is infested with hundreds of thousands of power-, blood-, and ki-sucking insect monsters that turn Godzilla vs Megaguirus into a creature slasher for five minutes, the streets are flooded, and it's basically all Jun's fault. Fuck you, Jun! Dumbass kid....
There's also a giant Meganula egg at the bottom of the flood waters that all of the others start sacrificing their energy to so the rest of the effects budget can go to something cool, though, so there's that.
And this seems like a good time to talk about the designs, effects, and the final fight. Concluding the negatives, in addition to insane plot points, an unfocused script, and mostly unlikable human characters, Godzilla vs Megaguirus boasts (but why boast about this?) some of the worst digital effects in the franchise so far. Like, the CGI in Godzilla 2000 was laughable, but at least I could laugh. The compositing that's used here to accomplish what was previously done with model sets and rear projection (and looked goofily charming but impressive in previous decades) makes this Japanese cinematic blockbuster look like a straight-to-VHS SyFy Channel knockoff animated in Adobe Flash by a child smashing his Godzilla toys together and learning how to use a mouse for the first time. And the "slow motion" meant to simulate Megaguirus' hypersonic perspective of Godzilla looks like it belongs in the finale of The Longest Yard...from 1974.
That said, I think I've warmed up to the Millennium suit now that it's shown in more clear detail. I still don't like his frowny, lizard-Muppet mouth or how angular the face is, but there's something Asian dragon-ish about the lips and the texture language in the head that I can appreciate for what Godzilla is supposed to be. And the spines, irregular and shard-like as they are, do cut an intimidating profile when he's charging up his breath. So, yeah; I have my preference of what "the ideal Godzilla look" is (Heisei Era, hands down), but my "new thing sucks because new" feelings have tempered since last week. And because I like it when Godzilla faces a monster that's visually interesting and poses a genuine threat to him, I like Megaguirus. A rare, female kaiju (I think we've just had Mothra, Titanosaurus, and Biollante in the past, but let me know in the comments if there have been others), Megaguirus is a power-hungry, sometimes sadistic warrior-queen who makes Godzilla bleed several times in their big final fight with her claws, tail, and jaws (a fun, primal struggle when Suzuki isn't playing around with his new Adobe creative suite in post), sucks enough of his nuclear reserves to drain his atomic breath as he's firing it (I love the little heat effect it makes as it comes out of his mouth), which is something we haven't seen before, she knocks him out temporarily with an energy blast that's speculated (and adapted as such in video games and comics) to be Godzilla's own atomic power concentrated and fired back at him, and in a "this needed to happen because we forgot the humans had personal stakes, too" moment, her wings flapped with enough sonic force to disrupt the G-Graspers' computer system, trigger the black hole cannon's auto-firing sequence (meaning there was almost a fourth time that Tsujimori endangered the planet with her personal grudge against an animal too big to care about her existence), and send its orbiting satellite into free fall.
And her "based on a giant version of a real creature, but with draconic features" design reminds me of Battra a little, and you know I like the Battra design. So again, Megaguirus is a cool monster villain with an intimidating design and abilities, underrepresented in the franchise, stuck in an inferior movie, and I like her. Maybe too fragile as kaiju go, but her defeat was among the most brutal and spectacular in the series, fitting of her presence here.
There's also the human plot resolution where Tsujimori gets to do something heroic and awesome as a too-spectacular means of black holing Godzilla (which fails twice in this movie for the same reason, as previously mentioned), but I think I've said everything I wanted to say, and here's to Godzilla vs Megaguirus being more consequential and more fun at times than Godzilla 2000, but also worse in its technical execution.
D
Next week, it's more One Piece, more Zenescope, and more Goj-Year-ra. So please Stay Tuned for tomorrow's (belated push of) this month's Time Drops calendar, and continue to support me and what I do by Becoming A Ticketholder (you haven't yet), leave a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, help out my ad revenue as you read so I can afford to suck the existential, nuclear rage out of my soul, and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.
27
Ticketmaster,
Out.
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