Just the Ticket #238: Godzilla - Planet Of the Monsters
a.k.a. The Animeister×Ticketmaster.
Anything I could think of to say in the intro is just something I would end up saying again in the review, so all I will say as the anime renaissance of the Goj-Year-ra project continues is that I was warned. And that you should watch this cartoon instead of Godzilla: Planet Of the Monsters:
It's Tex Avery's "King-Size Canary" from 1947, and is an infinitely more entertaining, better paced, more original animated kaiju film with a similar ending reveal. And the tone of Godzilla: Planet Of the Monsters would insist on me saying that my statement is mathematically provable, although I know better than to actually waste your time with said mathematical proof...unlike Godzilla: Planet Of the Monsters.
I mean, the first hour-plus is mostly 2001: A Space Odyssey imagery and Star Wars prequel politics with dialogue that's drowning in astronomy, engineering, and biology statistics such that you could convert the script into binary and not notice a difference.
Basically, Destroy All Monsters (or Godzilla: King Of the Monsters, if you're a Legendary fan) happened, but Godzilla went all Final Wars and killed the other kaiju. But then two alien races showed up to save the day (because they wanted Earth, too, but with pre-Godzilla property value) and failed to give humanity either a prayer (the Exif religious cult aliens) or a fighting chance (the technologically advanced Beer-Salad aliens with their unfinished Mechagodzilla—yes, I know they're actually called the Birusarudo, but I have to have some fun when I'm falling asleep from all the gigawatts, light-years, and gravitational re-entry mumbo-jumbo, right? Plus it's kind of a Dragon Ball reference, maybe?). So the only option left was to abandon Earth and spend the next twenty years searching space for another habitable planet, all the while going stir-crazy from looking at the same metal architecture and the same four thousand people for two decades, dealing with dwindling supplies, and watching as their elderly are sent to their deaths "investigating habitability."
Enter Haruo Sakaki (I think the dub calls him Socrates, which is hilarious for unquantifiable reasons, and he's voiced by Light Yagami himself, Mamoru Miyano, and the character's first name is a nod to Godzilla's Shōwa Era suit actor), your typical Millennium Era military protagonist, but a dude this time: emotional, rebellious, and fixated on getting revenge on Godzilla. After watching Godzilla kill his parents as a child and watching the government send his grandfather to die in a planet's volatile atmosphere as an adult, Haruo lands himself in prison for insubordination and mutiny, but buys himself some time by revealing that it may be possible to return to Earth and kill Godzilla.
The problem: time has dilated by a factor of ten thousand, so even the plant life has evolved to a deadly edge (sound familiar?) and Godzilla may be stronger than before, if not also capable of reproduction.
The solution: After his military rank is restored and he gives everyone a rousing speech, he leads a full aerial assault on Godzilla with the goal of breaching its energy shield and infecting it with a technological frequency virus that will blow it up from the inside with its own energy (sound familiar?).
The Other Problem: Sheriff Brody got the wrong shark the first time, and now there's an even bigger one to deal with, but no one will leave the beaches of Amity because of tourism. Oops; wrong franchise. But yeah; Haruo Socrates and his crew of six hundred military elites succeed in trapping and killing a Godzilla, only to be literally shaken (and then casually massacred) mid-celebration by the awakening of the Godzilla, Destruction King, a.k.a. Godzilla Earth, a.k.a. Godzilla's dad. The end!
Underneath the dry space travel jargon that makes Singular Point feel like an S-tier MCU movie by comparison, there's a decent-by-parts human underdog story (that was told infinitely better in the movies it was pieced together from, but unlike in Singular Point, the characters here are actually characters by Godzilla standards, with relationships and motives and emotions), the space visuals are gorgeous, the animation is pretty good for what it is (it really gets good and dynamic and epic in the third act, even though the Godzillas
Godzilla: Planet Of the Monsters did not need to be feature-length. It did not need to share the size, shape, and RGB values of every atom and asshole that was put on screen. It did not need to barely introduce two humanoid alien races that it does almost nothing of importance with (unless they become important in the sequels—dear Godzilla, there are two more of these! And yes, I am going to watch them—assuming there's any Exclusive If Beer-Salad left after Dadzilla swung its tail, that is...). I was awake for Haruo's backstory at the beginning and all of the action from The Speech onward, I slept through the rest in the middle, and I had a perfectly serviceable time by the time credits rolled and the sequel bait was over. But I could have watched or re-watched three to six better movies of drastically varying quality instead and not fallen asleep from jargon poisoning.
D+
I'm off to start bingeing Is It Wrong To Try To Pick Up Girls In A Dungeon? V for Monday's Anime Spotlight, so please Stay Tuned for more monster action, and as always, continue to support me and what I do by Becoming A Ticketholder (none of you have yet), leaving a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, helping out my ad revenue as you read so I can experience cash flow dilation, and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Patreon, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.
Animeister×Ticketmaster,
Out.
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