Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018)

Jake Pentecost (John Boyega whose performance only isn’t the most lifeless and dull one in a movie full of lifeless performances because Scott Eastwood is even more of a zombie), rogue yet boring – and retconned in so the lazy script can include Hollywood’s daddy issues fixation - son of Pacific Rim’s Stacker Pentecost is roped in to help train a bunch of teen cadets as the next generation of Jaeger pilots. They may or may not be obsolete soon, for a Chinese company has invented piloted drone Jaegers. Returning to die – and if you think that’s a spoiler you haven’t seen any movies at all, have you? – Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi) isn’t quite convinced of the concept. Soon a mysterious evil – it is painted black, after all - Jaeger attacks, and other supposedly exciting things are bound to happen later on.

As someone who liked Guillermo del Toro’s original Pacific Rim quite a bit (well, actually loved it to bits), I was going into Steven S. DeKnight’s sequel with a degree of optimism despite the bad write-ups for the film at the time it came out. Alas, this one’s really just barely better than a Transformers film of the Michael Bay era, dropping basically every bit of interesting world building (drift compatibility between pilots as a form of intimacy for example is written out completely except for one scene that repeats a plot beat from the first film but much worse), and misusing the returning characters badly. As a matter of fact, quite a bit of the film feels as if the filmmakers feel more than just a little loathing for the first one and go out of their way to tell you. It’s not just the identity of the villain – whose plans and actions being undetected by the way makes no logical sense whatsoever even if you’re applying tolerant blockbuster logic – or the undignified way Kikuchi’s character is written out, the film’s whole approach to mecha, kaiju and human beings is unpleasant and cynical where del Toro’s film goes out of its way to be anything but.

One might think the high diversity of the kids playing the cadets would at least be a nice step in the right direction, but the script just doesn’t bother to provide anyone with any characterisation going beyond their skin colour at all. This thing’s so badly done, you often don’t even know who is supposed to be in which mecha. The writing as a whole is atrocious: there’s no concept of how a film can make shorthand characterisation work, the plotting is vague, inconsistent and anti-dramatic, and there’s nothing here that doesn’t come directly out of the big book of Hollywood blockbuster clichés. Now, the first film did use said book quite a bit too, but it also knew how to give a cliché a little twist and how to put some heart and excitement into it when done straight. Where the first film understood clichés and knew how to use them creatively, Uprising just reproduces them, badly.

The mecha and kaiju action are a huge step backwards, too. It’s supposedly bigger, better and more fun, but in actuality, there’s no heft, no excitement and no verve to any of the action set pieces. They are joyless, pointless and lack any sense of wonder. Which actually make them perfect fit for the rest of Uprising.

King Kong vs Godzilla (1962)

Original title: Kingu Kongu tai Gojira キングコング対ゴジラ

While a reawakened Godzilla makes his way back to attack Japan, some ad men are sent on an expedition to a mysterious island. After some misadventures with the local natives, the guys manage to capture their god – King Kong. The ad-men’s boss decides it would be great ad copy if the pharmaceutical company they work for would officially sponsor Kong, and they’d get him to beat up Godzilla. Monster fighting ensues.

Some would argue that here, finally, Showa era Toho kaiju cinema has arrived at the overtly childlike and silly yet also often thematically rich tone it would keep to until the era’s end in the 70s.

I don’t exactly disagree, but would also suggest that Toho – as well as director Ishiro Honda – already had arrived at that tone much more successfully with the preceding, Godzilla-less Mothra. Where Mothra does a comparable thing a lot more effectively, here, the satire of capitalism, its expression through a modern media circus and consumerism turns at times gratingly unfunny and drags down the pacing of too much of the first two acts.

Because Honda was one of the great directors of his time, there are still moments of great joy in the first fifty minutes or so: the Japanese people in brown face pretending to be South Sea islanders dancing to a sleeping Kong is pretty incredible (also thanks to Ifukube’s wonderful theme) if “problematic”, and there’s even a bit of fun smashing going on when the film bothers to get away from ad-men and expositing scientists.

The final act, on the other hand, is flawless in its mixture of the silly, the outrageous (there’s for example an incredible bit of dialogue about an electrified Swiss postman only a giant ape wouldn’t love), and the utterly bizarre, wonderful and impactful fights the title promised.

It’s no wonder the US cut – for a long time the only version of the film you could see outside of Japan – decided to cut quite a bit of the material in the first acts. Unfortunately, the news reel style nonsense they replaced it with was even more grating and boring, while sanding away any attempt at depth.

Daimajin (1966)

Nasty ronin turned respected retainer Samanosuke (Ryutaro Gomi) murders his liege lord Hanabusa (Ryuzo Shimada) to take control of his castle and lands. Thanks to the help of loyal samurai Kogenta (Jun Fujimaki), Hanabusa’s daughter Kozasa and son Tadafumi escape. The trio hide away in the mountains, close to a giant stone statue that is supposed to protect the lands surrounding it from “Majin”, an evil, buried thing the local peasant population fears and tries to keep away with rituals and spells.

Ten years go by. Samanosuke has established himself as a bit of a warlord power player and has enslaved the peasantry as a workforce to improve his castle in preparation for further conquest. Dissent is dealt with harshly even for the tastes of medieval Japan. Of course, Samanosuke has also abolished the folk rituals; and going by his character, probably also singing, dancing, and smiling.

When Tadafumi (Yoshihiko Aoyama), clearly having been taught good guy morals and swordplay by Kogenta, realizes how badly the people suffer under Samanosuke’s rule, he decides to do something about it, even though he has neither men nor allies apart from Kogenta and his non-combatant sister (Miwa Takada).

Samanosuke is still holding some of Lord Hanabusa’s surviving men prisoner – the guy clearly can’t resist an opportunity for prolonged torture – but an attempt to free them goes badly for our heroes.

Fortunately, Kozasa, pure and virginal, is exactly the kind of person whose prayers for help giant stone statues might listen to.

I’ve always liked Kimiyoshi’s Yasuda’s first Daimajin film, but I never realized what the film is actually doing until a recent re-watch. This isn’t really a kaiju movie that attempts to mix up genres with a morally very black and white jidaigeki/chanbara film, but rather a film that aims for a folkloric tone.

In that context, the extreme pure-heartedness of the protagonists and the even more extreme vileness of the antagonist make a lot more sense – these aren’t supposed to be characters but archetypes – as does the very idyllic idea of good and bad noble rule.

Stylistically, Yasuda does a lot to situate his tale in the proper, dark, folkloric place – the use of fog, artificial light and Dutch angles particularly in the mountains, where a hidden God of terrible wrath dwells, is striking (and yet I never really noticed it before, embarrassingly), lending proceedings in turns qualities of the fairy-tale and the Gothic – or properly, the world of the kaidan.

The film’s slow progression from suggestions of the fantastic surrounding the characters to the full-on rampage of Daimajin in the climax is realized perfectly – human evil growing so heavy, the supernatural world’s anger awakens.

These final scenes of carnage are pretty incredible – stylish, surprisingly brutal and realized with special effects that look as good as anything in a contemporary Toho movie. There’s a sense of actual dread surrounding Daimajin’s awakening, and a palpable sense of terror, awe, and inhuman anger oozing off it that’s incredible coming from a well-filmed guy in a suit and some clever editing.

Godzilla Minus One (2023)

Original title: Gojira -1.0

During the last stages of World War II, kamikaze pilot Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) decides not to throw away his life for nothing and lands at a small island base for repairs to his not actually damaged plane.

At night, a large lizard creature that looks much smaller than the Godzilla we know and love attacks the base, killing everyone but Shikishima and the mechanic Tachibana (Munetaka Aoki). Because he freezes up during a moment of danger that may or may not have been decisive, Shikishima adds another dollop of guilt to the bag his not having committed suicide by plane has already filled rather heavily. It certainly doesn’t help that Tachibana puts everything on Shikishima, leaving him with the family photos the other mechanics on the island were carrying with them as a goodbye gift.

After the war, returned to a destroyed Tokyo, with all of his family or friends dead, Shikishima drifts until he meets Noriko (Minami Hamabe), who has taken it upon herself to take care of an orphaned baby named Akiko. When Noriko with the baby simply follows him home, he just as simply lets them stay.

Eventually, Shikishima manages to get a dangerous but comparatively well-paid job on a wooden mine clearing ship that will pay for the found family’s survival. There, he also finds his first actual close human contact apart from Noriko and little Akiko, in form of the ship’s captain Akitsu (Kuranosuke Sasaki), former military engineer Noda (Hidetaki Yoshioka) and the very young – so young he wasn’t drafted into the war and gets starry-eyed about something everyone else on board ship wants to forget – Mizushima (Yuki Yamada). He’s not exactly close to anyone, mind you, for his sense of failure and guilt as well as good old PTSD do tend to make him keep everyone around him at an emotional remove. Yet there is a degree of loosening up happening for him.

So slowly, Shikishima appears on the way of healing, until Godzilla, now mutated and made even angrier and much larger by US nuclear tests, and basically indestructible by any conventional means, re-emerges and begins to attack Japan. This shortly after the war, the Japanese Defence Force lies in the future, and the US are at a stage in their dance with the Soviet Union where they’re afraid to provoke the latter by any military moves, so the Japanese people find themselves unprotected and underinformed. Eventually, Shikishima, his trauma raw again, will become part of a somewhat crazy civilian plan to destroy Godzilla; though he also has a plan of his own to make up for his “failure” as a kamikaze.

But, and that’s important, Takashi Yamazaki’s Godzilla Minus One is not at all a film that condones the kind of “heroic” sacrifice its protagonist is attempting, but rather one that argues that there’s something wrong with the glorification of young men throwing their lives away on the battlefield. Like in Honda’s initial Godzilla, the film at hand, while enjoying the spectacle of warships and arms, does argue against the idea of war as a glorious or even just politically sensible thing – here, war is a waste of humanity that leaves behind broken people populating a broken country, and actual heroism is people doing dangerous things out of their own free will not because their potential death will be glorious but because they have to be done.

Minus One explores these thoughts, as well as Shikishima’s specific trauma, with a surprising love for complexity and depth for a film that could get away with being a nostalgic monster mash or just a bit of silly fun without anyone complaining. Instead, this focusses on ideas and on its characters to a degree that is often dangerous in a kaiju movie – we are, after all, here to watch everyone’s favourite lizard smash Tokyo, and not for watching traumatized men (this is a film predominantly about men, which is the movie’s only weakness) in a traumatized country. However, the writing is so strong, the film’s conviction in its portrayal of people, places and time so great, and Yamazaki so effective at staging emotional moments that mostly don’t feel manipulative but just somewhat larger than life to make life clearer, there’s none of the dreaded “waiting for the monster” here.

Godzilla really isn’t the main point of the film, but a catalyst that drags the inner lives of the characters and their country to the surface, exploring what’s wrong and what’s worth saving, and why.

This doesn’t mean that the kaiju scenes aren’t effective. In fact, Godzilla’s rampage through Ginza is one of the most impactful scenes of its kind I’ve seen – and I’ve seen most of them – emphasising the horror and the trauma of the event, the human cost, and the awesome (in the old meaning of the word) impact of Godzilla on Japan not as an abstraction called a country but as a conglomerate of individual people.

Apart from its insistence on actually being about something and its ability to pull this off, there are many little things to admire here: for example the way the soundtrack keeps away from the classic Ifukube themes for nearly the first half of its running time and then uses it score that horrifying Ginza scenes, recontexualizing them as much as those scenes of chirpy pop playing to something particularly unpleasant in a horror movie do; or Yamazaki’s incredible ability to pace narrative and emotional arc of the film while also creating scenes of real suspense and interest.

Despite its two hour running time, its long-ish time scale, and its general vibe of being a slick, big production with all that comes with that sort of thing, this is also a wonderfully lean film. There’s no bloat here, no scene that doesn’t help carry the film’s weight – there’s nothing here that is not in service of Godzilla Minus One’s specific goals as a narrative. It is a rather astonishing film.

In short: Godzilla Raids Again (1955)

Original title: Gojira no gyakushû

While scouting for tuna for their employers, two airplane pilots stumble upon a second Godzilla, fighting another giant monster, a supposed ankylosaurus SCIENCE dubs Anguirus. When the kaiju aren’t fighting, they are threatening Osaka. Fortunately, the JDF and the tuna scouts are there to save the day, eventually. Turns out Godzilla doesn’t take well to being buried under an avalanche.

Ah, if Doctor Serizawa had only known.

This second Godzilla movie, a clear quick shot trying to cash in on the success of the first one, is often said to prefigure much of the rest of the Showa era cycle of Toho’s Godzilla films.

I can’t really say I agree with that particular assessment, for while this does completely ignore the metaphorical level of the first movie and introduces the kaiju against kaiju fight, there’s nothing of the feel of the best – or even the mediocre - of the later productions in Toho’s first cycle. No joy, certainly, no quick cleverness, no silly and fun ideas, no bits and pieces of subtext peeking out at those looking for them.

Instead, this feels like a film made by people who really didn’t care for the material they were working on – Motoyoshi Oda’s direction is professional but also utterly lifeless, and he has learned nothing from Honda’s staging of the original movie. Of course, behind the scenes, there’s only about half of the talent that made the first film what it was, and particularly the lack of Honda and Akira Ifukube is felt deeply. Speaking of the latter, there’s a curious lack of music in many of the scenes – the footage taken from the first film early on for example plays completely silent – that turns the dullness even more dull. When the score by Masaru Sato does come in, it never lives up to what Ifukube did.

Raid not living up to the first film is made even more obvious by its repeated mistake of pointing out its superior successor. That silent footage of Godzilla rampaging early on is so much better than what Oda does, and dragging Takashi Shimura out again for one scene of dignified exposition only makes more obvious how much lesser the characters in here are.

Philosophically, the first film might as well not have existed for this second one; for what’s come before, but also for the often very silly yet also very excellent films that came after, Godzilla Raids Again might as well not have, either.

Some Thoughts About Godzilla (1954)

In truth, there isn’t all that much one can still add to everything that has been written about the movie that started it all, Ishiro Honda’s incredible original Gojira, a film that has been something of a given for me all of my life, at first in the curious German cut (that is based on the US cut, but mutilated further), then in the much superior Japanese original.

My umpteenth rewatch, however, did bring up a handful of observations: first, how much of a horror movie this initial Godzilla movie is at its beginning, with much of the monster action taking place in gloomily lit nights scenes, and a structure that slowly reveals the giant lizard that’s going to threaten Japan. Much of the film’s visual language must of course have resonated quite heavily with a populace that has lived through the war years and their particularly brutal end, and at first, these shots as well seem to be in the service of simply making the horror more horrific.

But the more emotional gravitas the film gains – and this film is all about gravitas, and sadness, and things and people destroyed in the end even when the world is saved – the less Honda uses his shots of destruction that way, and instead utilizes them to argue his emotional, humane and political points. In the end, Honda’s always the humanist, the pacifist who enjoys shots of destructive technology with the best of them but is also genuinely saddened at their use, and only the guy trying to creep us out on the way to get there.

Speaking of the political, it’s interesting to watch a couple of scenes here after Shin Godzilla and after Godzilla Minus One, how important Godzilla’s moments of the squabbling, ineffectual, officials will become to these films in the century after it was made.

In general, one of Honda’s particular strengths here isn’t just that he creates surprisingly complex characters particularly in Drs Serizawa (Akihiko Hirata) and Yamane (Takashi Shimura), but that he understands how to create side characters who feel memorable and alive enough to stand up to the giant lizard with the atomic breath – which most kaiju and giant monster movies simply don’t manage.

It is also fascinating to keep in mind how much this one is a movie all about the filmmakers figuring out how to do what they are trying to achieve while doing it, and how little this looks like a movie made by people who weren’t quite sure how to do it until they did it. In fact, Godzilla feels like a fully thought through and composed masterpiece from shot one to its finish, where one has to look very hard for the traces of the scrappiness of some of the production.

Three Films Make A Post: Expose the corruption. Protect the hive.

The Beekeeper (2024): Somehow, for reasons only known to the Hollywood gods who keep good directors out of work, David Ayer still ends up with decent budgets for his movies. This Jason Statham vehicle is John Wick minus the style and the weirdness, with added bee metaphors (so many bee metaphors) and shows our hero boringly killing his way through the usual hordes of incompetent caricatures. There’s never a second where he appears actually threatened, which doesn’t exactly up the excitement ante, and the staging and filming of the action sequences is blandly competent without any sparks of visual or kinetic imagination.

The plot is silly, but never so silly it ever threatens to make the movie fun, and Ayer’s direction lacks style, visual imagination and character to a nearly disturbing degree. Bees and Jason Statham deserve better, as do people who want to actually be entertained by their dumb action movies.

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters (2023): On the positive side, The Beekeeper does at least have a vague idea of what its audience might expect of it, it’s just not terribly good at delivering it. This (first and only?) Kaijuverse streaming show as produced for Apple doesn’t, or rather, it appears to believe that what an audience wants from a show named after a secret giant monster hunting organisation are endless scenes of badly written soap operatics, mostly done by C&W style pretty young actors lacking the gravitas and actorly depth that might draw interest out of this nonsense.

Things tend to pick up whenever a monster appears or when the show spends time on flashbacks into the early years of Monarch, but most of its running time is wasted on moves that were old when Dallas made them. Apart from being clueless about what an audience may want from it, the show is also unlucky: take for example, the stunt casting of Kurt Russell’s son Wyatt as the younger version of Kurt’s character. This sounds clever on paper but suffers from the younger Russell’s inability to act his way out of a wet paper bag.

Lord of Misrule (2023): It probably shows my skewed tastes that William Brent Bell’s critically drubbed folk horror movie is the one of these three pieces of media I’d actually recommend to anyone. It’s not that I disagree with the general gist of its critical reception: this is indeed a best of folk horror tropes compilation tape that has little of its own to add to the canon, and isn’t always great at connecting the tropes sensibly.

However, I happen to like these folk horror tropes, and am perfectly okay with the way Bell arranges them here, especially since the production design is derivative as hell, but also looks and feel pretty good. Thus, Bell manages to create at least a handful of decently creepy scenes for Tuppence Middleton to be dramatic in. Which to me makes for a decently good time.

In short: Gappa the Triphibian Monster (1967)

Original title: Daikyojû Gappa

Sent by some rich fool to acquire undiscovered new species from an not as unexplored by Japanese people as they think South Pacific island to populate a resort fake pacific island called Playmate Island, a group of explorers meet a tribe of Japanese people in brownface. When they’re not doing risible “native dances” that make those parallel dances in Toho movies look downright sensitive, these guys and gals pray to something they call “Gappa”.

The expedition members discover an egg from which a rather ugly new (to them) species hatches, some sort of flying, amphibian dinosaur thing. Let’s call it Gappa. Obviously, our “heroes” grab the thing to take it with them to Japan.

Just as obviously, where there’s a giant monster egg, there are also giant monster parents, and these ass-ugly dinobirds follow the expedition to Japan to go on a rampage.

Nikkatsu’s only kaiju movie – after three or four earlier aborted attempts – is generally seen as an inferior rip-off of Gorgo crossed with a bit of Godzilla vs King Kong, and inferior it certainly is. Director Hiroshi Noguchi has little experience with this kind of material, and directs the human drama bits with often surprising leadenness, given how pop Nikkatsu’s movies in other genres typically were. Consequently, things are pretty dull when it comes to the scenes featuring people, at least whenever they aren’t hilariously “problematic”.

It doesn’t help the film’s case there that most of its characters have all the ethical depth of a black hole, but its attempts at talking about that little problem for their part have all the depth of that cardboard cut out over there.

The effects, supervised by former Toho man Akira Watanabe, are a curious case. The kaiju carnage is generally at least competent, usually even genuinely good, particularly in the miniature work. However, the design of the monster suits is abysmally ugly, and the suits themselves look terrible awkward in action and even worse in those scenes where the parent Gappas are supposed to express emotions.

In short: Godzilla vs Hedorah (1971)

aka Godzilla vs the Smog Monsters

Original title: Gojira tai Hedora

A meteorite drops a mysterious and very dangerous lifeform this movie’s Kenny (Hiroyuki Kawase) will randomly dub “Hedorah” on Earth. At first, the creature appears as a series of large, acidic tadpoles who love to eat toxic material and generally adore industrial sludge, but the more human crap it eats, the larger and more mutated it becomes. Now, one might think having a waste-eating kaiju around would be rather neat for a world drowning in man-made waste, but what Hedorah metabolizes, it spits out as even more toxic and dangerous mist or sludge.

Eventually, Godzilla will come to the rescue, but what’s a giant lizard to do against a toxic, icky waste monster?

Some courageous souls at Toho tried something new with the flailing late era Showa Godzilla by hauling in young director Yoshimitsu Banno and letting him concoct his very own kind of kaiju.

The result of that attempt is a wild mix of the most childish bits of kaiju eiga, random pieces of pop art (including some equally random metaphorical animation), some of the most gruesome and classically horror-style moments you’ll find at this point in the series, some trendy ecological messaging, and half a dozen other elements of no import. Unfortunately, Banno seems to have no control about the movie’s disparate elements whatsoever, leading to a complete mess whose tone and style shifts so wildly and randomly, it doesn’t even manage to make something of its very obvious and clear ecological themes. One would expect the film’s general wildness would at least make it entertaining, but for a a tale that’s as full of everything under the sun as this is, it is nearly absurdly sluggishly paced. A film full of hippies turning into skeletons after being spit at by a sludge monster that features symbolic cartoon interludes really shouldn’t be this dull, but Hedorah manages handily.

Adding insult to injury, the movie also doesn’t know how to be a kaiju. Even if you ignore Riichiro Manabe’s terrible score replacing proper Ifukube monster action music, there’s something a bit embarrassing about a movie that really thinks having Godzilla fight a monster whose only fighting techniques are slithering away and spitting sludge at our hero kaiju could work in any way, shape or form.

Shin Ultraman (2022)

For some time now, the members of a government organization known as the SSSP have fought off one kaiju attack on Japan after another. The danger and weirdness of the attacks only seem to increase over time. Fortunately, a giant silver guy quickly dubbed Ultraman – there’s a running gag about a politico coming up with kaiju names on the fly - appears and begins fighting the kaiju.

As it will turn out, SSSP member Shinji Kaminaga (Takumi Saitoh) has died and somehow melded with the alien Ultraman, who now sees it as his responsibility to protect humanity from alien menaces while driving Shinji’s body, or a version of Shinji’s body. Ironically enough, Ultraman’s appearance might actually worsen the situation, putting a cosmic spotlight on our (self-)destructive species.

After doing their very clever and fun version of Godzilla (which I apparently haven’t written up here), Shinji Higuchi and Hideaki Anno continue their renewal of classic Japanese kaiju and tokusatsu franchises. This time around, Higuchi is solely responsible for the direction, while Anno – who was apparently working on the eternal return that is his perpetual rejiggering of Evangelion – “only” directed, produced and edited. Tonally, this doesn’t lean quite as heavily on the political satire as the duo’s Godzilla movie did – though there certainly is some satire here – nor is the main story quite as serious. Rather, this one aims at being as fun as possible, throwing an astonishing number of monsters and fights and so much plot at the audience, you could make one and a half seasons of most streaming shows out of the material. There’s a sense of lightness to the film even once its plot escalates and it starts talking about the self-destructive nature of humanity and becomes something of a parable of the colonialist mind-set. With this lightness comes a willingness to take the silliness of its set-up seriously without being over-earnest, embracing the silliness without shame or irony.

It is also full of jokes that are actually funny.

The film is suffused by a palpable love of the original Ultraman series (and the franchise that became of it), not the sort of fanboy love that deems everything about the old material perfect and sacrosanct, but one that has identified which elements of the original it loves and then doubles down on them while being fully willing and able to discard those elements that were simply mirrors of its own time. Which to me seems like the obvious and best approach to this kind of project, avoiding slavishly tying oneself to elements that simply wouldn’t play to anyone but a tiny percentage of the most fanatic fans of a franchise, while also keeping the doors open for all kind of fanservice of the good kind, as well as people who might have been excluded from earlier iterations of the series. So why not make the original suit actor of Ultraman your mo-cap actor for this one? Why not have credits that show the SSSP minus Ultraman fight off half a dozen or so kaiju from the original show? But also why not give your female main character (Masami Nagasawa) actually something to do?

When it comes to the copious kaiju action, Shin Ultraman doesn’t falter, either. I’ve seldom seen CGI that not only shows such an understanding of what is awesome about suitmation traditions, but that also manages to integrate this knowledge (and some actual suitmation) this well, thus realizing kaiju fights that are inspired, awesome, dramatic and often also quite funny. And because the film is much pacier than basically anything else coming out right now, there are five or six big fights in here, one better than the next, until things culminate in the sort of psychedelic space shenanigans that reminded me of nothing so much as 70s cosmic Marvel comics, in form as well as in pop-philosophical subtext and heft. That, by the way, is one of the highest compliments I could make any piece of media.

In short: Troll (2022)

A publicly not exactly lauded attempt to build a tunnel through the Dovrefjell mountain range in Norway awakens a kaiju-sized troll. The thing turns out to be rather unhappy with certain elements of Norway’s secret history and goes on a bit of a rampage that will eventually lead it to Oslo.

The authorities are not especially effective fighting a giant menace that seems immune to modern weapons. Only palaeontologist Nora Tidemann (Ine Marie Wilmann), who grew up with a father (Gard B. Eidsvold) obsessed with the hidden truth of troll lore, is willing to think outside of the box. She acquires her own mini-coterie of nerds – her father, assistant to the prime minister Andreas Isaksen (Kim Falck), Isaksen’s techie friend Sigrid (Karoline Viktoria Sletteng Garvang, owner of what I imagine to be a very exhausting name even for Norwegian names), and special forces captain Kristoffer Holm (Mads Sjøgård Pettersen) – and just might be her country’s only chance against the troll and the experimental weaponry of the mad minister of defence (Fridtjov Såheim).

I actually love parts of the world building of Roar Uthaug’s Troll, the way it creates a space where the international language of kaiju movie tropes can be read through the lens of the Norwegian local, folklore and cultural specificities.

Unfortunately, once it leaves the conceptual level, Troll’s script (by Espen Aukan) fails on nearly every conceivable level and plays out like a particularly lazily written pre-Sharknado SyFy Original with a bit of a budget but little idea of what to do with it.

Characters aren’t just one-dimensional tropes, something I’d be totally fine in a giant monster movie, but the blandest version of them, spouting ill-timed one-liners and tumbling awkwardly into emotional beats the script doesn’t put even the tiniest amount of work into preparing. The plot doesn’t actually feel like any such thing but a string of beats cribbed from other giant monster movies strung together with little thought about how they actually hang together. The writing lets Jun Fukuda era Toho kaijus look like Shakespeare, or really, like films crafted by actual professionals with a bit of self-regard. There’s nothing wrong with underwriting the humans in a monster movie; there’s a lot wrong with underwriting them so badly they get in the way of a viewer having fun with the monsters.

Andin the way the shoddy plotting of the affair and its non-characters truly get, always adding at least an element of irritation to what should be perfectly fine giant monster action and actually perfectly fun giant monster mythology.

Godzilla vs. Kong (2021)

Up to this point, the Monsterverse US kaiju movies have been rather reluctant to fully and openly embrace their chosen genre’s silliness, playing things more or less dramatic, an approach that has resulted in at least one of the best giant monster movies ever made (that would be Kong: Skull Island, for the barbarians among my imaginary readers), but also in the idea that Kyle Chandler looking as if he had very bad case of constipation makes for an engaging human anchor.

Chandler’s still in this movie, but you might miss him if you blink, for the only human character from the last Monsterverse film this one cares about is Millie Bobby Brown’s Madison, which seems to be a fair assessment of the situation. And while Brown’s subplot here doesn’t exactly make a lot of sense, and suggests that Evil Elon Musk (yup, that’s our human villain) has never even heard of the concept of operational security, or just plain security, it does go through a lot of the sort of conspiracy and weirdness human subplots the non-monsters in a kaiju movie are supposed to go through. With a smile on its face and whistling a merry tune.

The other humans of note are Alexander Skarsgård as the rogue geologist version of Fox Mulder – and the way Skarsgård plays it, he knows he’s Mulder – and Rebecca Hall trying to chat with a very huge gorilla with the help of an honest to gosh Kenny. Well, because we now live in 2021, the Kenny’s actually a mute little Inuit girl (Kaylee Hottle), but that’s certainly an improvement over a little Japanese boy in short trousers. Also eventually involved will be a little trip into the Hollow Earth. That old Fortean chestnut is presented through some genuinely beautiful and bizarre effects, and seems like the logical next step (before the alien invasion I hope for in the next film) for the series to take.

So this time around, those pesky humans do get some interesting stuff to take part in again, but Adam Wingard’s (coming off his terrible Death Note thing for Netflix and the dire Blair Witch swinging) film is pretty clear about what’s the main event (see the title of the damn movie) and goes all in for the big damn kaiju action in lovingly staged fights that lay waste to quite a few pretty cities this time around. There’s a wonderful sense of abandon to those fights, comparable to that phase in the Showa era when the films were becoming sillier but were still using that silliness to put their audience – kids at heart, sometimes in body – in a state of awe and wonder and the sort of giddy excitement that can come about when movies show you something that just can’t be seen in real life (cf., why the movies are better than life) – just with a different style of special effects.

Speaking of those, whoever is responsible for the motion capture and animation of Kong here is an absolute genius, providing personality and weight in spades; only in comparison does Godzilla look like a grumpy old lizard.

Terror of Mechagodzilla (1975)

Original title: Mekagojira no Gyakushū (メカゴジラの逆襲)

A short time after the end of Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla, a submarine working with Interpol is searching the ocean floor for the remains of Mechagodzilla, when it is destroyed by a titanic amphibian kaiju the film is going to insist is a dinosaur, soon to be dubbed Titanosaurus.

It turns out the aliens from the last movie haven’t given up and are trying to smash Japan (the rest of the world to follow later) to build a beautiful, orderly New Tokyo for them to dwell in from the rubble. They are planning to use said Titanosaurus as well as a rebuilt Mechagodzilla for the smashing, and as their tools to destroy mankind’s most competent protector – as it happens also the one with the best theme song – Godzilla. To be able to control Titanosaurus, the aliens – apparently coming from somewhere romantically dubbed Blackhole Planet 3 which does explain their wish to move pretty well – have managed to win over tragically mad scientist Dr Mafune (Akihiko Hirata), who comes in a package deal with his somewhat mysterious daughter Katsura (Tomoko Ai).

Mafune has his reasons for hating humanity. Once a pioneer in underwater agriculture, he then turned to experiments concerned with trying to control animals as if they were robots. When he discovered the peaceful Titanosaurus swimming around in its natural habitat, he decided to make mind-controlling it his next big project. This led to his rejection by the rest of the scientific community, half of which seems to have poopooed the idea of the existence of Titanosaurus despite living on the same planet as Godzilla and company, the other half of which simply wasn’t keen on animal mind control. Afterwards, a mental breakdown and years of poverty that killed his dutiful wife.

Helping out on Godzilla’s side of the equation are the usual assortment of people in lab coats and suits, as well as marine biologist Akira Ichinose (Katsuhiko Sasaki) and his old school buddy turned Interpol agent Jiro Murakoshi (Katsumasa Uchida). Also, the potential power of love and long buried humanity.

Terror of Mechagodzilla, set as a direct sequel to Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla was the very last hurray of the Showa era Godzilla films, holding the sad record of having been the commercially least successful entry in the series at the time it came out. Nowadays, the steady stream of home video versions has of course turned it into a commercially rather successful kind of commercial flop, all without the magic of Hollywood accounting. This film is also the return of the great Ishiro Honda to the Godzilla franchise, and big screen movie direction, as well as his final feature film as a director before he did some intermittent work for and with Akira Kurosawa in the final decades of his life.

It is also a much better film than its clearly low budget and the trajectory of the Godzilla movies suggest. While I’ll always defend the Jun Fukudas of this world for being purveyors of fun nonsense at the worst of times, the comparison of this direct sequel by Honda to a Fukuda movie does not exactly make Fukuda look good. Honda had the same diminished production values to work against yet the resulting film is simply better in every possible aspect, from the character work right through to the realization of the monster fights.

Rather more pertinent, Honda is much better at keeping an audience interested between the rare monster fights (Godzilla himself makes his first non-flashback appearance when the film is already half over). Or really, in this case, Honda simply avoids the feeling of the alien invasion plot, the mad science business and the desperately sad background of some of the villains being any kind of filler between the fights by making the often much-loathed bits of a kaiju concerning humans, as always was his wont, important parts of the actual point of the film. Don’t get me wrong, this is still a somewhat silly pulp alien invasion plot with bad guys so sadistic, they cut the vocal chords of their prisoners just in case they might escape their clutches, a cyborg woman, and some of the silliest helmets any alien invader ever wore, but Honda uses of all of this to treat many of his regular humanist concerns, showing much more interest in motivations and self-justifications of characters than you’d usually get in this sort of film, and doing it so well, a viewer might find oneself actually caring.

Of course, this is also thanks to Yukiko Takayama’s (yes, it’s that pleasant and alas rare occurrence of a woman writing a kaiju) script, that hides some complexity and a lot of intelligence between fun monster fights and Interpol versus alien invaders, clearly sharing in Honda’s understanding of how to join pulp fun and serious themes without losing the fun.

Another element that makes Fukuda look bad in comparison is Honda’s direction of the monster fights. They are few, and they are certainly cheaper than anything made at the height of the series but Honda uses all the tricks - the slow motion, the camera angles from below, editing to the rhythm of Ifukube’s (who wasn’t involved in the Fukuda film either) music, and so on – he has learned over a long career of having men in monster suits smash Tokyo to give the fights weight and drama. In Terror’s particular case, there’s also the excellent intercutting between the climax of the human drama and the monster fights to mention, which is perfectly timed, providing a series of emotional jolts that don’t distract from the city smashing business but enhances it.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is how a master takes a bow.

In short: Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (1974)

Original title: ゴジラ対メカゴジラ, Gojira tai Mekagojira

There’s trouble brewing in that most exotic of places, Okinawa. A priestess has apocalyptic visions, something the film calls “space titanium” is found in a local cave, and an excavation opens up a treasure trove of objects, including a pretty apocalyptic sounding prophecy and a statuette of an Okinawan protector godhood with the somewhat culturally improbable name of “King Caesar”.

And wouldn’t you know it, very quickly, parts of the prophecy come true. Godzilla, with a very unpleasant new voice and yellow-coloured nuclear breath starts on a minor rampage, has a little bout with the always outclassed Anguirus (despite their friendship, human characters comment with shock), until another, correctly voiced version of Godzilla appears and fights the impostor. Said impostor turns out to be a Godzilla-shaped mecha and proceeds to kick our hero’s ass.

Afterwards, it’s time to spend more time with the humans, who uncover that Mechagodzilla is part of an invasion plot of evil alien monkey people and have spy fy adventures which will eventually bring us to the climactic fight.

By 1974, the second generation of filmmakers working on the Godzilla films, who were never as beloved as the simply brilliant bubble around Ishiro Honda, was pretty much on the ropes. Kaiju cinema was one of the genres having particular commercial difficulties with the competition coming from TV. That situation was certainly not helped by first generation kaiju people like Tsuburaya making arguably better kaiju and tokusatsu entertainment for the small screen than guys like poor Jun Fukuda did for the big one.

Fukuda never managed to really fill the footsteps left by Honda as Toho’s main director of kaiju cinema, his competent craftsmanship not really standing up to the comparison with Honda’s – often quiet - brilliance. But then, I don’t necessarily need a film concerning a silly alien invasion by mildly evil monkey people and Godzilla turning Magneto to fight a mecha version of itself to be brilliant. As cheap and joyful entertainment, I like Fukuda’s last Godzilla movie just fine.

It is of course a shame that the budget only left space for two relatively small scale monster sequences (I prefer lots of kaiju in my kaiju movies, strangely enough), but Fukuda and company do make the best out of what they have, trying to put at least a good silly idea into every thirty seconds of these fights. There’s obviously Godzilla’s sudden magnetic powers to mention there, but I’m also very fond of our hero’s jack in the box style appearance to the climactic fight, or that he’s literally screwing his bad copy’s head off in the end.

The light and pulpy invasion nonsense in the middle is entertaining enough too. Fukuda could by now probably shoot stuff like this in his sleep, but here, again, he does his best to provide something of entertainment value every couple of minutes, be it goofy monkey masks for the aliens, a cackling Interpol agent, or just some mild but not boring chases and punch ups.

There’s really worse things to spend one’s time on than Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla, and if that sounds like a somewhat underwhelming recommendation, a recommendation it still is.

Godzilla vs. Megaguirus (2000)

Original title: ゴジラ × メガギラス G消滅作戦

As it goes, this second entry in the short-lived “Millennium” era of Godzilla movies ignores most of the Godzilla films that came before apart from the original first movie. While I’m never completely happy with this approach, at least this one has a reason for it, for the film takes place in some kind of alternative Godzilla timeline as well as an alternative history of Japan. So, Godzilla wasn’t killed in 1954 and instead hit Tokyo so badly the Japanese moved their capitol to Osaka. For some reason, it took another attack a decade later for the country to step away from the nuclear energy Godzilla feeds on. This went well until 1996 when experiments with a new form of energy again provoked a successful Godzilla rampage, despite a military unit charmingly named the “G-Graspers” having had a good thirty years to prepare for it. Obviously, that was it with the new-fangled plasma energy, too.

However, Japan really, really wants to get rid of Godzilla, and by 2001, they are in the final stages of developing a weapon that’s supposed to shoot a miniature black hole at Godzilla from orbit. In a classic “I can’t see what could go wrong there” moment, the first test of the weapon also opens a wormhole. Through that wormhole – that the G-Graspers for some reason don’t bother to monitor – flies some giant prehistoric dragonfly (or a normal one gets mutated, the film’s pretty unclear here), and is never seen again after it pops out an egg. Said egg is found by a little boy, brought to Tokyo, and hatches a bunch of prehistoric cow-sized dragonflies that eat energy, which in turn eventually produce a proper kaiju dubbed Megaguirus. Godzilla more or less to the rescue, only to be murdered afterwards by the very unthankful humans.

Masaaki Tezuka’s entry into the Godzilla canon is certainly not a classic of kaiju cinema, but I have seen worse films, even worse Godzilla films, too. Its main problem is a plot that’s often needlessly convoluted, as exemplified by the egg business. There’s really no reason at all for the egg to simply hatch in the countryside and the film being done with that part of its plot. Instead it fiddles around with plot-lines around the little boy and the egg that have no dramatic reason to exist and only slow things down until we finally, eventually, get to the good stuff. Which, if I really need to say it, are giant monsters. I’m also not terribly sure the film actually needed the alternative history angle after all, for after the turn of events has been established in the film’s beginning, there will turn out to be no discernible difference between this Japan and ours apart from its capital.

I do understand the need to have something, anything to do for the human characters beyond fighting against Godzilla (a fight they can’t win), but the old-fashioned stuff with alien invasions or evil spy agencies most other films of the various Godzilla eras get up to really is the better choice here. Especially compared with a film that turns out to have trouble deciding on the metaphorical meaning of Godzilla, and eventually pretends killing off this force of nature that has just protected humanity against its own folly is some kind of heroic act.

Once and whenever we do get to the monster business, the film markedly improves, with much of the monster stuff demonstrating the imagination most of the rest of the film lacks. I’m particularly fond of the final beat down between Godzilla and Megaguirus that heavily nods in the direction of the sillier kaiju eiga from the 60s and the charming way they provided their monsters with personality. Godzilla’s pissed facial expression after he gets up following Megaguirus’s first attempts at sucking his precious bodily fluids, I mean tasty radiation, is absolutely priceless.


Not terribly well used, but at least interesting in how atypical it is for kaiju cinema is the character of Kiriko Tsujimori (Misatao Tanaka), who plays your typical main rocket jock with a grudge role, not the kind of role you’ll encounter many a Japanese film - and a Japanese kaiju film even less – giving to a woman and playing her straight like it would a male character.

In short: Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019)

There are some curious weaknesses to Michael Dougherty’s second Godzilla film that keep it rather behind Legendary’s until now best kaijuverse movie, the grand Kong: Skull Island. Most obviously it repeats the mistake of the first Legendary Godzilla movie and concentrates on the least interesting of its human characters, in this case portrayed by Kyle Chandler giving his sad sack character a particularly whiny note (which sure doesn’t help), while he’s surrounded by a bunch of much more interesting actors involved in much more interesting business (Ken Watanabe! Zhang Ziyi! Bradley Whitford! Vera Farmiga! Millie Bobby Brown! Aisha Hinds!), who all do get their moments to shine but are still not allowed to be a proper ensemble for reasons only known to Dougherty. In other regards, the film is actually much better than the first Godzilla at integrating that pesky human element into the plot.

Now, I could go the way of various mainstream film critics and complain about the mild silliness of that human business, but for an old kaiju hand, the mix of earnest eco monologues, mild action, and big fat McGuffins seems perfectly appropriate to the film, and provides quite a bit of entertainment to the friend of explosions, dimly lit corridors and terribly incompetent security forces too. Plus, while I’m no fan of Chandler’s character or Chandler’s acting here, I do appreciate how the film suggests that both he and his ex-wife have lost their respective marbles in very different ways after the kaiju-induced death of their son, turning both the protagonist and the antagonist of the film into characters who have turned to destructive views and ways of life after contact with something they can barely comprehend. It will need a member of the next generation to teach them better. Which, if you’re not a mainstream movie critic, you just might be able to identify as a couple of the film’s themes.


And, you know, then there’s the actual reason for anyone sane to go into a movie called “Godzilla: King of the Monsters”, and that’s enjoying the monster action as well gawking at the way King Gidorah, Rodan and Mothra have been Americanised. And wouldn’t you know it, the monster action is indeed properly great, usually emphasising the sheer size and mass of the creatures, the way they dwarf the human characters not just physically but conceptually. That last element is of course weakened by a modern Hollywood movie’s need to have its human protagonists actually do something that matters, and go through a character arc but that sort of thing is rather inevitable. On the positive side, the film does again and again provide a feeling of sheer awe and wonder at the kaijus that made all of its failings null and void to me while watching, and still looks pretty damn good weeks later.

Past Misdeeds: Agon (1964)

aka Giant Phantom Monster Agon

aka Agon: Atomic Dragon

Through the transformation of the glorious WTF-Films into the even more glorious Exploder Button and the ensuing server changes, some of my old columns for the site have gone the way of all things internet. I’m going to repost them here in irregular intervals in addition to my usual ramblings.

Please keep in mind these are the old posts presented with only  basic re-writes and improvements. Furthermore, many of these pieces were written years ago, so if you feel offended or need to violently disagree with me in the comments, you can be pretty sure I won’t know why I wrote what I wrote anymore anyhow.


Agon is a series consisting of four twenty-five minute episodes that make up two storylines which are distinctive enough in tone and substance to not treat the short series as a traditional four part mini series, but rather as an aborted attempt at a continuing kaiju show.

In the series' first half, atom bomb explosions awaken and mutate a prehistoric monster and hobby Godzilla impersonator soon to be dubbed Agon (that's a Japanese English short form for "Atomic Dragon"). Agon has the munchies, so it soon attacks an important nuclear research facility that comes complete with its own nuclear reactor to get at all that tasty, tasty uranium. While its at it, Agon also causes a nuclear explosion, but thanks to this being the 60s, there are no repercussions to that at all.

Anyhoo, Professor of SCIENCE(!) Ukyo (Nobuhiko Shima), shaving-impaired cop Yamato (Asao Matsumoto), roving reporter Goro (Shinji Hirota) and professional professorial assistant Satsuki (Akemi Sawa) are taking on the case of the hungry kaiju. Well, actually, after an unsuccessful fight between Agon and library footage of the JDF, they just lure Agon back into the sea with more tasty morsels of uranium. The End.

Of course, Agon returns in the second storyline to walk into a plotline about two yakuza and a suitcase full of drugs that soon finds the still hungry monster walking around with a small fishing boat and a little boy in its mouth, while vaguely stomping on a small industrial town. Fortunately, our heroes contrive to poison Agon with the suitcase full of drugs, a fantastic plan that at least drives the monster back into the sea. The End again.

Agon surely is not one of the high points of kaiju film making, but at least the show has an interesting story behind it. I have to admit to certain doubts about how the official story explains why the Fuji TV series was only broadcast in 1968, four years after it was made. Officially, Toho complained that the film's monster was resembling their very own Godzilla too closely, seemingly not knowing that the monster was designed by an apprentice of their very own Godzilla-creator Eiji Tsuburaya and the much superior first two episodes were written by the frequent Toho kaiju writer Shinichi Sekizawa. Supposedly, when Toho learned of that fact four years later, they suddenly had a change of heart and allowed Fuji TV to go ahead with the broadcasting.

I can't say that story makes much sense to me, especially when we have the much easier explanation of the utter crapness of its last two episodes for Agon's absence from the screen. The Sekizawa episodes, both directed by Norio Mine (says Wikipedia), are actually pretty decent stuff as far as ultra-generic kaiju romps go. There's nothing about it anyone hadn't seen in the genre by 1968, but it's decently enough paced, and rather cleverly written around the problems of a TV budget.

It also helps the series' starting case that Mine does some quite decent work, too, using clever editing and well-chosen camera angles to let the few extras he has look as much as panicking crowds as possible, and using shots of modernist buildings and models of modernist buildings to get the proper pop art city-smashing mood going even though he doesn't actually have a city for his monster to smash. The slightly pop art-y mood is further enhanced by the strange sepia-toned black and white stock the series is shot on, which, I assume, is the best way to colour-code things when you can't afford to actually colour-code your sets. Then there's Wataru Saito's strange little score that consists of some jazzy beats and a lot of weird synthesizer warbling that suggest a Japanese version of the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop and really help to pull the first two episodes into the realm of the cheap yet formally interesting.

The special effects themselves are all over the place; there are some very fine model shots, but there are also horrible moments like the one where a very bad Agon doll just stands in a pool of water standing in for the monster appearing out of the sea: The Agon suit itself does look good enough from a certain angle, but there's a lack of detail in its face and an immobility about its whole head - especially the eyes - that's never convincing, but is survivable as long as Mine shoots around it.

Unfortunately, Fuminori Ohashi, the director of the final two episodes does not keep up with these minor aesthetic achievements at all. The director instead opts for a bland point and shoot style that seems ready-made to show off all the worst sides of the series' effects work, with Agon walking around with a boat model crammed into its mouth for about twenty minutes being one of the most embarrassing - though of course pretty funny - things I've ever seen in a kaiju picture; and I've watched all of the original Gamera movies by now. For some reason, Saito's music isn't put to any decent use at all anymore, either, warbling around ineffectively and utterly divorced from what's going on on screen. It's difficult to watch these final two episodes and not think nobody involved in the production actually gave a damn about what they were doing.

Apart from Agon's boating trip, the so crap it's funny part of the later episodes also includes long shots of the monster standing around not moving a muscle (one suspects the suit actor was on holiday), and one of the more undignified methods of getting rid of a kaiju I've ever had the dubious luck to witness. Don't do drugs, giant monsters, okay?

The rapid decrease in quality is a bit sad, really, for while the script of the show's first storyline doesn't have an original bone in its body, its execution speaks of enthusiasm and creativity behind the camera, and it's not difficult to imagine the show the first two episodes promise to be a lot of fun to watch.

In short: Love & Peace (2015)

Original title: ラブ＆ピース

Warning: spoilers ahead, little turtle!

Leave it to Sion Sono’s year of six films (William Beaudine had nothing on the man, particularly since Sono’s films are always good to brilliant) to include a sort of family Christmas movie that manages to not just feature an alcoholic Santa living in the sewers with a bunch of talking and living toys and talking animals who were deserted by their owners, and an adorable giant turtle rampage, but also manages to have that fit nicely as part of a tale about a socially painful office worker (portrayed by Hiroki Hasegawa in modes reaching from physically painful to witness to hilarious to grotesque to unpleasant to actually sad) who becomes a rock star and the same sort of hypocritical arsehole he always hated. While the plot is outrageous and weird in a very Japanese style of weirdness, it also makes complete sense on a thematic and emotional level. This isn’t just a whacky thing to gawk at.

Also leave it to Sono to shoot this tale in a style that teeters on, jumps over and completely ignores the lines between camp, artistry and truthfulness, until it becomes a question of personal taste more than analysis what of the film, if anything, is meant ironically or directly. What I can say is that I found Hasegawa’s way from complete outsider through all stages of glittery rockstardom and its accompanying stages of being a horrible person at times sad, at times incredibly funny, and at times hair-raising. I absolutely admired how the film ends on a grown-up yet hopeful note that shows kindness instead of condemnation to its characters faults. My emotions concerning the other plotline, I can’t even begin to describe.


Because it seems to genuinely be meant as some sort of family movie, Love & Peace should actually be watchable as one. There are, however, many moments in the film that transcend the ironic clichés and seem genuine more because than despite of them, as well as some darker feelings and ideas you can generally expect not to find in your family films outside of Asia anymore, even the strange ones. There is, after all a reason why Santa lives in the sewers and drinks too much, and his whole plot line centers around a perpetual repetition of certain kinds of pain and suffering that might as well belong in a horror film (even though it of course isn’t openly played that way by the film).

Three Films Make A Post: The Strangest Girl-Hunt A Man Ever Went On!

Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017): Following the Andrew Garfield movies Jon Watts’s new Spider-Man version is a little wonder, what with it being a film that actually has a concept what its hero is about, with a plot that knows what it is about, a proper villain in Michael Keaton’s working class version of the Vulture, and a good grip on the idea of a teenage superhero. It’s more than just a bonus that lead Tom Holland – despite being 20 – as well as the script actually sell Peter Parker as a teenager this time around, and that Watts’s direction is just as showy as needed, no more, no less. The integration into the Marvel mainline universe works well, too. Why, unlike with the last two Spider-Man films, this one feels as if it was made by people who actually care about the character and what he means. Personal bonus points for this not being another origin tale.

Casque d’Or (1952): Jacques Becker’s tale of crime and heated romantic passions taking place in the underbelly of Belle Epoque Paris is one of those films that pop up in most lists of “the greatest films of all time”, and it’s not difficult to understand why, for this is one of these note perfect films high brow, mid brow and low brow viewers should all get something out of, be it its portrayal of romantic passion, the way Becker creates a criminal underworld that at once feels romantically-stylized and real, or how the film posits ritualized male violence as the true cock blocker of the ages. While the director’s at it, he also creates a film that feels like the sort of proper tragedy art for a long time didn’t allow us of the lower classes to take part in as anything but servants and comic relief.


Rebirth of Mothra aka Mosura (1996): After they had sewed up the Heisei cycle of Godzilla movies, Toho went about reviving kaiju fans’ favourite giant moth. Directed by Okihiro Yoneda, this is very much an attempt to make a Mothra film as a Japanese interpretation of a Spielberg-style family movie. Consequently, it is at times kitschy and cloying, and at other times perfectly okay with having its kid (and fairy) protagonists deal with pretty heavy problems. I could have lived rather well without some of the comedic bits here, but the monster fights are tight, and it’s impossible to be too down on a film whose main villain is a tiny fairy goth riding an adorable miniature dragon.

Godzilla vs. Biollante (1989)

Original title: Gojira vs. Biorante

Some time after Godzilla fell into a volcano in the dreadful Return of Godzilla (a film that is the honorary first film of the Heisei Godzilla cycle even though it was made during the Showa Era – go figure), an action scene of dubious quality ends with cell samples of the big lug falling in the hands of an imaginary Middle Eastern state, probably situated next to Qrak. There, mad scientist Dr. Shiragami (Koji Takahashi) wants to use Godzilla’s genetic structure to make super corn (or vegetables or what have you) that’ll grow in the desert. Alas, a bomb blows up his lab while he’s not in, killing his daughter as well as his mad science plans.

Five years later, various factions – an evil Japanese corporation, the Japanese government, an evil US corp whose agents are - as is traditional - played by the first Western guys the producers could grab randomly from the streets, and the Middle Eastern state are in play – are still battling over these samples, though most of them don’t want to stop the coming food crisis but use them to somehow destroy radioactivity which would of course destroy the Cold War balance of power and lead to dreadful things, and so on and so forth. This subplot full of horrible acting, bad English and shoddily filmed action scenes will haunt the viewer for the rest of the movie, even though there are much more interesting things going on.

For the kid psychics of a government institute that’ll change its name in the subtitles of every Heisei film are - in a scene that does have a friendly hint of Lovecraft’s “Call of Cthulhu” - all dreaming of one thing: Godzilla. This can only mean that Godzilla is on the cusp of climbing out of the volcano and rampaging through Japan again. Various half-assed plans are invented, half-used and sort of used; teen psychic Miki Saegusa (Megumi Okada) who will be the only character recurring in every film of the Heisei series (sometimes even for a reason) has a staring contest with Godzilla in a pretty great scene; and Shiragami gets the opportunity to get his hands on some of the Godzilla cells.

That last bit leads to Shiragami crossing these cells with a rose bush that apparently holds some of the genetic material and the soul of his dead daughter. Obviously, this being a kaiju film, said rose bush grows into a giant monster thingie called Biollante, and just as obviously, Biollante and Godzilla will slug it out.

And if this description of Kazuki Ohmori’s first real Heisei Godzilla film sounds confused and confusing, full of plot threads that don’t pay off, I have to add I have already cut out a lot of other pretty pointless stuff, so the actual film is even less coherent. Biollante’s main problem as a narrative is that it really doesn’t have a good grip on how to fill the time between the monster fights, and so just throws basically everything at its audience anyone involved in the production might have come up with, in a valiant attempt not to bore. That, it certainly succeeds at, for while the industrial espionage action bit lacks in sense, and the action in these scenes isn’t terribly well directed, it is at least pleasantly garish and pulpy and is certainly never boring. In fact, these parts of the film have a feverish aspect which is of course only right and proper for a film that features a kaiju that is a giant rose bush (later with a reptile head) with the soul of a woman.

On the negative side, these parts of the movie do overwhelm the more thoughtful bits of the film. A tighter and more thematically conscious and coherent film could probably have found the actual tragedy and sadness in the story of Dr Shiragami’s inability to work through the loss of his daughter and express it through the monster action. As it stands, Shusuke Kaneko would use this and other elements of the Heisei era Godzilla films for his brilliant Gamera trilogy a decade later and make good on their inherent promises.

Speaking of the film’s negative sides, I really have to mention composer Koichi Sugiyama’s horrible treatment of Ifukube’s themes for the Godzilla films. There’s some horrible orchestration of wonderful music, some plain crap additions of his own, and worst of all, an electric guitar treatment of the Godzilla theme mostly used for the action scenes between humans (why?) that is so badly arranged I found myself having very rude thoughts towards the composer. Fortunately, the next film would see the triumphant return of Ifukube.


But what, I imagine the Godzilla-fond reader will ask exasperatedly, of the kaiju fights? Well, the Godzilla suit is a bit too cute for the evil bastard version of our favourite monster the film is going for, and Biollante suffers from being pretty immobile, what with it being a giant rosebush. However, there’s much more good than not so good city smashing and a general air of excitement surrounding the monsters that convinces the kaiju loving viewer to forgive Godzilla vs. Biollante’s flaws immediately. Non-boring human nonsense plus good kaiju fighting equals an excellent time.