Gojira tai Megagirasu: Jî shômetsu sakusen

I avoided this movie for months; most online reviews I read were negative, and it just had a bad stench about it. But then my ever-wise brother recommended it, and I'm glad he did.

It's fun - damn fun. Where else can you see Godzilla besieged by giant dragonflies, or cool visuals like a half-submerged city and a woman riding on Godzilla's purple-tinged spines? Many of the special effects shots are a touch sloppy in execution (obvious CGI is rampant), but they're tremendously imaginative in concept. So, improbably enough, they work.

Megaguirus is a cool opponent for Godzilla, and their climatic battle is practically high comedy. Both monsters get great reaction shots and some particularly nasty moves. In one infamous - but quite amusing - shot, Godzilla wallops Megaguirus with a leaping tackle that evokes the wrestling maneuvers of his 1960s-70s movies. Fans who complain that too many of the Big G's more recent battles have been decided by "beam contests" should delight in the wacky grappling on display here.

The human characters have interesting motivations, and are even allowed to be selfish, which is a nice change of pace from the preachy and saintly types you usually get in these movies. There's even a cute kid who manages not to be annoying. In short, it's all good - I like the silly monsters AND the incredibly earnest humans AND the totally insane visual effects. All these ingredients add up to a rare Godzilla feast.

Now I'm more jazzed than ever to see "Final Wars"!

Version: Eastern Eye R4 DVD - Japanese, English subtitles

Godzilla is back to stomp all over Japan, but this time he has to fight a giant dragonfly... Sounds awesome, yes no?

In 1996, Japan has been running on clean, renewable energy for thirty years, and has not seen Godzilla since 1966. Clean energy can no longer provide enough power for Japan, the government begins research into neutron energy. Naturally, Godzilla takes the opportunity to announce his coming out of retirement and levels the neutron facility while decimating the anti-Godzilla force 'G-Grasper'. Obviously, military's plan was to confuse Godzilla with a funny name, and then fire a few missiles at him. Needless to say, it doesn't work.

Several years later, Kiriko Tsujimori (Misato Tanaka) - a survivor of G-Grasper's 1996 encounter with Godzilla - is now the G-Grasper commander and has a grudge against Godzilla. Obviously G-Grasper need a new weapon to take on Godzilla, and so they turn to Japan's crazy scientists. The result is a cannon called the 'Dimension Tide': a weapon designed to shoot black holes, which they intend to shoot at Godzilla, from space, to minimize the damage to Earth. Obviously no one thought of any possible negative consequences of shooting a black hole - from space, mind you - towards a moving target Earth. The mad scientists have really gone off the deep end here. Of course, they test it first, and open up a rift to another dimension, letting a swarm of Meganuron (over-sized dragonflies) through.

Essentially, 'Godzilla vs Megaguirus' is a lighter, happier version of both 'Godzilla vs Destroyer' and 'Gamera 2'. The Meganuron / Megaguirus greatly resembles the Legion from 'Gamera 2'. The shots of Godzilla being swarmed by the Meganuron, look much like the shots of Gamera being swarmed by the Legion. However, going one up on the other two movies, 'Godzilla vs Megaguirus' has better special effects. The 'Alien' style Meganuron look a lot better than the 'Alien' style Destroyer(s) from 'Godzilla vs Destroyer'. Also, it has mad scientists. A big bonus. They might not look like mad scientists, but they certainly think like them.

There is some nice monster action, even if it is heavily offset by the human characters running shooting black holes at things. The Tokyo showdown between Godzilla vs Megaguirus is fun. It may not come close to one of the best monster fight scenes, but its funny and entertaining. Smart use of CGI ensures the monsters and fights look good, but on the other hand, for a giant dragonfly, Megaguirus does not beat his wing that often.

'Godzilla vs Megaguirus' is a fun Godzilla movie, and should appeal to Godzilla fans. It does drag on a little though - 7/10

Masaaki Tezuka clearly understands the secret to making rubber monster movies - make 'em big, and make 'em fun! GXM returns the element of spectacle to the series that had been missing in the later 90s entries. The battles are epic, the monsters believably gigantic and menacing, and the destruction sweeping. When crowds of extras run away in GXM, they look genuinely terrified. The wonderful musical score and "old school" directorial style come as close to rivalling the best of Honda-Tsuburaya-Ifukube as anything Toho has done since their heyday. Perhaps most important, the monsters have personalities, without sacrificing menace. No more stiff, slow-moving suits lumbering in a straight line toward one another for a battle consisting primarily of optical effects. Both Godzilla and Megaguiras are intelligent, cunning combatants, and their climactic war is among the best of its kind ever filmed. On a whole, GXM is not as flashy or technically seamless as its followup, 2001's GMK(also an outstanding film), but I found it to be more fun. It reminded me of nothing so much as curling up on the floor on Saturday as a kid, watching an AIP rubber monster epic on Shock Theatre or Son of Svengoolie. GODZILLA VS MEGAGUIRUS is a genuine classic!

The Godzilla series came to a dramatic end with the death of Godzilla (after 22 films and 41 years) in GODZILLA VS. DESTROYER (spelled in the U.S. release as DESTOROYAH) in 1995. The survival of little Godzilla, grown up from Baby Godzilla in the two previous films, paved the way for a sequel. Instead, sequel plans were squelched by Sony's planned American version, which came out in 1998, and Toho Pictures instead produced a series of three new Mothra movies. After Godzilla fans expressed supreme disappointment with the Hollywood remake, Toho revived the franchise in Japan with GODZILLA 2000, which dispensed with all of the history and events of every Godzilla movie since the first one and was touted by Toho as a sequel to the very first Godzilla movie (1954). Some Godzilla fans bought this and some didn't, causing great debate over the film's merits or lack thereof. Leaving aside the issue of where the film fits in the Godzilla timeline, G2K still came up short in the areas of monster battles and urban destruction. MEGAGUIRUS is a half-hearted effort to keep the franchise alive until someone can come up with new ideas. It offers a bit more action and urban rampage than G2K and features a couple of no-nonsense women as the leading characters. It has no real relation to any other Godzilla movies and simply treats Godzilla as a monster menace who needs to be stopped at all costs.

The military and government agencies charged with the task of stopping the Big G come up with a device called Dimension Tide that's designed to create a black hole that will presumably suck in Godzilla. In the course of testing it, they somehow create giant dragonflies which morph into an awkward, clunky, flying insectoid monster dubbed Megaguirus by some handy old male scientist whose only role in the film is to tell us this. Before the morphing, the dragonflies invade Tokyo, causing a devastating flood which inundates the Shibuya district. What causes the dragonflies to transform into the monster is never explained. G and MegaG eventually battle it out in Tokyo to great destructive effect.

The human cast is, thankfully, rather small and they keep to their assigned roles efficiently, in contrast to the overbearing busybodies in G2K who kept getting into G's face (sometimes literally!). Interestingly, the two female lead characters, one an officer (Misato Tanaka) devoted to neutralizing Godzilla, and the other an older scientist (Yuriko Hoshi) overseeing the Dimension Tide project, dominate the action with their resolute behavior and forceful personalities. The actresses are quite good and one wishes they'd been given a little more to do with their characters (but not too much).

While this film decidedly breaks no new ground, it does offer enough action and destruction to please the less discriminating Godzilla fans. Although its effects are not sophisticated enough for the jaded palates of today's JURASSIC PARK-weaned monster fans, the film's bursts of imagination might well surprise them.

An action heroine in this one surprisingly gets as much screen time as the big G, and her character surprisingly has as much depth as the G's wrinkles when he smiles. Of course, he never smiles. But the plot of the humans has received more attention than the big G's carnage for this one. It's basically the plot of the heroine of Gamera 3, but with more development. And, unlike the Gamera teenager, the heroine of Gojira vs Megagirasu does not wait for a monster egg to fall on her laps to go after the big G. She kicks ass big time! Don't worry Gojira fans, the movie's title is not Tom Boy kicks Gojira's ass, so you know who's the boss. And this one's got a trick up its sleeve too! I'm sure you'll all fall for it. This movie has nothing to do with Gojira 2000, if you couldn't stand that little brat and the journalist, or worse, the guy who's last wishes were GOJIRAAAAAAA. I won't say action girl in here does better than Jean Reno in the infamous Godzilla, but the monster she's fighting is more lovingly menacing. No raptor look-alikes running around here. Just the big G and her. The music also changed. Each movie in the new Gojira trilogy must have been made for different audiences. This one is for the wide movie-going female audience between the kids for whom they made Gojira 2000, and the otakus and die-hard fans for whom they've made Daikaiju Soukougeki.