The dream team is back, baby! After the diminishing returns Godzilla had been facing for the past couple of years, producer Tomoyuki Tanaka decided to bring back director Ishiro Honda and composer Akira Ifukube for what was intended to be the Big G's last hurrah. The big question was, though: if we're going to do one last film, who does Godzilla face? Gary Oldman from The Professional knows - EVERYONE! Toho threw down the gauntlet here, bringing back many fan favorites, many of which hadn't ever been in a film with Godzilla before. Not only was this just about the coolest idea Toho had ever come up with outside of creating Godzilla, but the inclusion of monsters created for other properties gave fans even more incredible work to marvel at watching. Think of it as The Avengers (2012) of monster movies. The plot would once again involve mind control as executed by an evil alien race, this time all women (!), but the real meat here, the real reason why everyone is tuning in, is for that glorious monster action. And, brother, believe me when I say this pull out all the stops to deliver one helluva time!
Don't ever ask how, but in the year 1999, mankind has managed to wrangle all of the planet's monsters into one location - Monster Island (called Monsterland here). Godzilla, Minya, Anguirus, Gorosaurus, Rodan, Mothra, Kumonga, Manda, Varan, and Baragon. All living on an island that looks like it would be small for any one of them, where we're told food is plentiful and they all get along. Sounds like a bullshit PR piece SeaWorld would've put together. But it's working. At least, it is until communications with the island are lost and the monsters escape to begin attacking world capitals. We soon figure out the Kilaaks are the ones behind it, an alien race composed of all females (and they procreate how?) who wear glittery silver spandex hoodies. The have the monsters under the control of a mind-altering signal, one that is emanating from a location on the moon. Hey, we have a base there now! Capt. Yamabe (Akira Kubo) goes up with a team of his best men to stop the aliens by destroying the signal. It works, but the Kilaaks unleash their most powerful weapon as a last-ditch effort: King Ghidorah. The monsters of the Earth must unite to fight their common enemy, all while humanity fights against the alien invasion.
Alien mind control is used a lot in these films. It's a good way to allow Godzilla, our supposed hero by this point, to cause worldwide destruction without actually looking like the bad guy. His mind was under control, after all. And when he does get his head clear, you can always tell he feels really bad about what he did. This was, however, the first entry to have the aliens use a human appearance as their cloaking device, revealing a more hideous, sci-fi origin when their true selves are exposed. In this case, the Kilaaks are extremely sensitive to cold, so when the temperature drops considerably in their environment they revert back to looking like silver slugs that live in rocks. It's funny later on when the military learns of this, and the commander can only help but grin and say something about how friggin' easy an attack this is going to be now.
We know the returning faces - Godzilla, Minya, Anguirus, Rodan, Mothra, Kumonga - so who are the new guys? Gorosaurus was featured in King Kong Escapes (1967), where he fought Kong. Manda was a chief opponent as an undersea dragon in Atragon (1963). Varan appeared in his own film, produced in 1957. And, finally, Baragon was best known as the opponent to the title star in Frankenstein vs. Baragon (1965). Of all these, only Gorosaurus gets an appreciable amount of screen time, teaming up with Godzilla at the climax to help finish off King Ghidorah. Varan gets little more than two shots during the entire film. This was due to the suit being in such a state of disrepair since the filming of that feature over a decade prior. Baragon was being used on the Ultraman TV series (monsters were often redressed for other programs, Godzilla included), so his appearance was extremely limited here. In fact, the script called for Baragon, not Gorosaurus, to destroy Paris. But in typical Toho fashion, even though the monster change had to be made the script change wasn't, leaving Gorosaurus with not only Baragon's ability to burrow underground, but also his roar and in some cases even his name, since the media refers to him in the film as Baragon.
There were to be two more monsters added to the fray - Maguma (from 1962's Gorath) and Ebirah, last seen fighting Godzilla in Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster, but budgetary concerns caused both to be scrapped from the production. Also of note, there was a brief scene filmed where Godzilla fights with Manda, which makes no sense in the context of the film since both are under the same mind control. The footage is said to be shown at conventions from time to time, though it has yet to show up on any official release.
Despite their being an abundance of kaiju, everyone gets a good amount of screen time with the exception of the two previously mentioned monsters. After the introduction at Monster Island, the film does an adept job of cutting back and forth between human/alien drama and monsters causing a melee across the globe. Some of the sets aren't as distinct as others (Godzilla destroys a seaboard that looks nothing like NYC), but for the most part it looks pretty rad to see Gorosaurus demolish the Arch de Triumph, or to see Rodan flattening Moscow. I can vividly recall seeing the extended trailer for this film on my VHS of Grandpa's Sci-Fi Hits, which was hosted by Al "Grandpa Munster" Lewis. The promise of an international incident as carried out by all my favorite monsters looked astoundingly epic to my young brain. Even now, all these hardened cinematic years later, I can say it's an ambitious entry that really put a lot into the story.
Interestingly, director Gareth Edwards, who is helming the upcoming 2014 reboot Godzilla, has expressed a desire to make a sequel to his film something akin to this film. I really do applaud his ambition, but I hope they set that universe up further with a second film before throwing too many names into the mix. Plus, I don't see that being a successful idea unless Toho grants the rights to use other monsters. Right now, Legendary can only use Godzilla.
A final film is never a final film when a series is successful. Even though producer Tomoyuki Tanaka declared this would be Godzilla's final feature film, the success it enjoyed meant another movie was in the works, this one coming out just a year later. Only to call it a new film is almost disingenuous considering almost all of the fights are culled from stock footage. And that's not even to mention the undeniably child-centric tone and core message about bullying and standing up and... oh, Christ, is there anything good to be said about Godzilla's Revenge?
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