Godzilla - Final Wars

For those who love to see Godzilla as the true, unstoppable King of Monsters, GFW is a true return to form. Godzilla has never seemed stronger, or been portrayed as more of a force to be reckoned with. However, it is this, and only this that seems to find familiar ground with the rest of the series.

Godzilla:Final Wars is a drastic and puzzling step in a different direction for the Godzilla franchise. While TOHO should be given credit for being willing to take their creation and franchise in a different direction, they should also be more careful in the manner to which they do so.

Godzilla: Final Wars feels like many different movies in one, and by this I do not mean any of the films to which it owes it's inspiration. At times, the film feels like it is a pure action take on the King of Monsters. At other times, it feels like it is an exercise in camp excess. But it is these two varying points that makes Godzilla: Final Wars both hard to classify, and hard to comprehend. The film suffers from not having a set mood, or set atmosphere for the viewer to really settle into. The plot and atmosphere simply take too many turns too many times for the viewer to get comfortable with the film.

I won't go into too many plot details, as I don't want to ruin the film or any of it's points for those who have yet to see it. But briefly, this film takes a cue from the Godzilla films of the Showa era and brings back the Xilians, once again bent on world domination.

GFW features a huge all star cast of kaiju. However, the shear number of kaiju may be impressive, their appearances are not always of the same result. Kaiju such as Hedorah, King Seesar, and yes Minilla are sorely out of place in this film, or if nothing else, sorely misused. While I applaud Ryuhei Kitamura for casting a kaiju all star cast, I feel that fewer monsters would have sufficed had they been given more screen time, and stayed a little truer to form.

However some of the films kaiju make truly great returns, most notably Rodan, Angillas, and most importantly..Gigan. These three monsters are my personal favorites in Godzilla Final Wars. Rodan looks better than ever, and while the monsters screen time and fight time are limited, it makes a fantastic impact during a scene in NYC. Angillas, a long time favorite of so many GFAN's, is given his respect in GFW. The monsters new design is fantastic, and the kaiju maintains its beloved fighting spirit and comes complete with some new tricks to boot. However, it is Gigan that steals the show. Gigan returns to the Godzilla franchise, and in many respects does so in the wrong forum. This Gigan deserved a chance to face Godzilla in it's own movie. The new design is amazing, sleek and deadly, with new weapons, and old weapons never before seen.

Overall, Godzilla Final Wars is an entertaining film, but it is certainly not the best of the Millennium Series, nor the best movie it could have been given the talent and resources at it's disposal. The film is an interesting take on the Godzilla franchise, but note the farewell that the Big G deserves. If TOHO were smart, they would allow Godzilla his time away from the screen, and take some of their newly revamped kaiju and give them their chances at real screen time in some new adventures.

A very unusual Godzilla film.

It Moves very fast. The monster battles are not like any of the previous films and the human side of the story is as much a focus as the Monsters tale is and surprisingly it is interesting. It works mainly as an adrenaline rush though, it's cathartic. The "monsters" have a lean, muscular look and move fast- they are not the puffy slow moving beasts of the past.

No long drawn out scenes of endless wrestling, this is more like boxing and Godzilla is the master dispatching them all. No need to be a fan to find it entertaining.

This movie does something similar to what "Aliens" did way back in '86. It redefines Godzilla as an Action Hero and goes past what any casual viewer might expect. This is a hard core action film that never lets up and leaves you drained.

The main negative is that it cribs way too much from the film "The Matrix". While Matrix lifted from Asian cinema generously, Final Wars does a Xerox of the copy and in several places has a tin ear regarding some things that are now considered trite and overused the world over.

The movie is just a lot of fun.

If this is the last Godzilla as said, then I can say the series had a good run and ended on a high note. Perhaps not the highest note possible, this is a very flawed film. However, it is the second best in the Millennium series (next to Megaguiras).

If you read my Godzilla, Mothra, Mechagodzilla review, than you can easily see why i say so. Many of this series have had this annoying habit of having about thirty minutes of plot, then an hour of monster combat. This one gives equal time to storyline and action sequences.

No matter how short, the monster battles are always entertaining, the high point being a fight between Mothra and Gigan. This battle is relatively quick but still very entertaining. Gigan is one of the most powerful foes in the movie, and it was good to see Mothra getting to fight the second most important monster.

Monster X looked like something that would be creepy if it was human size, or maybe a little taller, and crept around in the shadows of a space station. However it didn't matter when he was easily the most powerful monster in the film (or, at least could transform into it).

The human battles were all done very well, accept for an annoying motorcycle chase which had the dumbest use of Matrix style special effects I have ever seen. However, many disappointed fans exaggerate the Matrix influence. It is clearly there in the action scenes, don't get me wrong, but other than the one I mentioned they are well crafted fight scenes.

I rather not talk about the film's flaws, after all, when they are flaws you find in any action film, what are you going to get from going over them. And that in itself is a flaw: This is an action film. Don't expect a monster movie, it is an action film that happens to have a lot of the action being done by monsters.

With an ending that could bring a tear to one's eye. So the Godzilla series (presumably) ends on a good note, much better than Godzilla vs. Destroyah (Terror of Mechagodzilla was not an ending in my opinion). This is a film to be enjoyed, and should have a place in your collection. Its the movie that every now and then you might just want to pop in the DVD player, just because.

***/**** stars

Neither did the makers of this movie ... that's why they took the US-Godzilla "for a ride here"! But that's not the only creature from the Gojira/Godzilla past that is brought back. I don't if every creature is on display here, that was in a previous movie, but there quite a few of them. So if you know your Gojira movies, you'll have plenty to enjoy from those "cameos" alone!

You might have guessed it already, but this movie doesn't take itself serious, too. It's a great fun ride and it never aims for anything else than this promise. And since it delivers on that promise/premise, it's a pretty good movie (for me at least)! You will even enjoy it, if you're not familiar with the back story of Gojira, just bare in mind, that this is mostly old-school effects (man in costume kind of effects, so to speak). There are occasionally a few CGI, but it's mostly old school. And that's the fun of it! So it just depends on your expectations, on how you'll like the movie ...

First, before my review, I have address two points of contention about this film. For starters, the hero (Ozaki), besides having short black hair, black clothes and martial arts skills, no more resembles Keanu Reeves, than a brick resembles a prime-mover. His clothes may have similar pigmentation to the Matrix's Neo but in this film Ozaki is actually wearing white plastic body armour, and his military coat is dark green. Both he and Neo might share martial-arts knowledge. At least Ozaki is from the country that invented a large portion of it! Besides, I thought he looked MUCH more like Noah Wyle. If his coat had been white, perhaps people would say the film was ripping off ER.

The second issue is about the 'Matrix style'. Since even the creators of those films admit that their style harvests greatly from manga, anime, and HK action movies, it would be fair to say that Final War's director, Ryuhei Kitamura is more influenced by his own culture than three blockbuster popcorn flicks. Stopping bullets with telepathy, psychic battles, gravity defying fights, and slow motion have been enjoyed in Japan and mainland Asia for a VERY long time. Unfortunately, many aspects of their fiction have been somewhat hijacked by Hollywood.

The director shows many influences in this film, and it would foolish to deny that the Matrix did not play a part in shaping his approach. However, many film goers are simply unaware of the depth of The Matrix's own influences, and shouldn't attribute too much to them. Anyway, on to the review.

Well, if you are seriously wanting to get anything out of this film, you should probably become a fan of Godzilla and Kaiju genre. Anyone else would probably mistake this film's style, steeped in Kaiju tradition, for faults. It is true that the special effects are mostly 'analogue', and that the monsters are NOT CGI (usually). Yes, they are men in suits wrestling in model cities, but is it a flaw? Heck no! This film is great entertainment, and even a little touching!

The story is simple: a new force threatens the earth and sends monsters to destroy cities and crush humanity. What else? Luckily, the defenders of earth, a collection of mutants themselves, strive to combat the threat and restore peace. Godzilla herself may just be the only weapon left to mankind that could save the human race.

And so stylistically this film is very SF. The human forces wear futuristic body armour and sport hightech weapons. There are flying battleships and alien spacecraft. This may be an angle that some fans don't agree with but atleasy the monsters are all here. I forget how many, but quite a few from the Godzilla bestiary return to wreak havoc, and there are some fantastic clashes between them.

However, Final Wars is as much a human story as it is one of mass destruction at the hands of giants. Yes, that was a little difficult to say. But there is quite a lot of focus placed on the human protagonists this time. They are fighting a new and mysterious new foe. Many of the action sequences, and in fact often the longest ones, involve humans in hand-to-hand.

Even if this raises the hackles of a few Kaiju fans, I can understand: bring on the rubber-suited titans and all that. Yet I think that this dual focus adds an engaging dramatic quotient to the film. The action sequences may also draw a few comparisons to a certain fizzled out sci-fi trilogy, and all I can I say to that, is written above. And the words "get", "over" and "it".

The acting skill of the players varies between that of a seasoned performer to that of a pro-wrestler grapling with his lines. Oh wait, I think he is a pro-wrestler. I feel though, that if viewers are looking at acting skill in a film like this, they missing out on the bigger picture. Rest assured however, that this is definitely not like Devilman, where store-front manikins could have acted better.

Reportably, Final Wars is an anniversary film, and it is, though doubtfully, the last in the Godzilla series. For that reason, regardless if it remains that way, I was very happy to see the film stay true to the heritage it is a part of. It provides a fitting farewell. There is something refreshing, watching rubber-suited actors trample miniature sets - actors pretending to be monsters, waving their claws about. Sure the such things are cheesy and yes the rest is overly stylised, but the film makes no excuses for that, and it shouldn't.

Bring it on!