Godzilla: Planeta dos Monstros

You know, you'd think that since anime and Godzilla are so big in Japan that they'd combined the two a long time ago. Surprisingly, it took 60+ years to actually do so. Now, we have the first of a brand new animated trilogy called "Godzilla: Monster Planet", released not too long ago in Japan and more recently on Netflix (complete with English dub).

In this refreshing iteration, mankind lost the war for dominance over the Earth to the kaiju, chief among them Big G. With the help of two alien races, the survivors set off to the stars to colonize another planet, but it proved incompatible. Low on resources and options, they return to retake the Earth. However, it's been 20,000 years since they left and not only is there now an ecosystem of monsters but Godzilla, still alive after all this time, reigns supreme. Who will win, man or monster?

Right from the start, they show you of just how grim a situation humanity is in as hope and pride are barely holding on by a thread. In fact, it gets pretty dark at certain times. The humans are in such a sorry state that you sympathize with them but there are tiny hints that they as a species had it coming. There are also religious themes weaved into the story, including references to divine retribution. The cast is a mixed bag. The protagonist is Haruo, who is basically Ahab or Eren Jaeger from "Attack On Titan" (for anime fans reading this). He's passable I guess, though he tends to repeat himself from time to time, which gets old. Scientist Martin and commander Leland are a little more interesting as are two of the main aliens, but the rest are pretty bland and it's hard to say whether they'll get more development in the near future.

As for Godzilla, I love his design. He kind of resembles his 2014 look but with his body looking like a mix between muscle and tree bark and sporting new variations on his abilities. It's also the largest version yet and the animation emphasizes his immense size with slow, foreboding movements. He truly feels like a force of nature and he's got the power to boot; if he has you in his sights, you know you're screwed. New to the franchise are Servum, dragon-like beasties that are nice secondary threats to the humans. Most of the other kaiju are nothing more than cameos in the opening montage. Given the title "Monster Planet", having them show up more in the story would've provided more exploration of this ecosystem.

The overall story is good, though the first half is a touch slow. The reason is simply to establish this universe and provide exposition on the characters' plight and plan to reclaim Earth. This does provide decent suspense and once the monsters show up, it's mostly action. Speaking of which, the battles offer enough thrills to satisfy, pitting futuristic technology against beastly power and the animation allows for great visuals that you normally wouldn't get in live action. Expect a few good plot twists, one hell of a cliffhanger, and an after-credit scene.

Despite the aforementioned flaws, I'm still glad I saw this. The sequel expected to be released this May, this time featuring Mechagodzilla, which I look forward to. It's weird now seeing three separate Godzilla series happening at once, which is a first (Monsterverse, Shin, and Anime). Long live the King of the Monsters!

Beautiful animation and epic, well directed, action sequences combined with terrible writing and unbelievably thick exposition, creates an interesting futuristic take on the Godzilla story. I'll skip a story synopsis since IMDb has the plot up already. Being a big fan of Godzilla, I did enjoy most of the film, I loved the animation style, the environments are beautiful and the model for Godzilla is similar to newer films and still bad ass. The fiery action sequence were engaging and intense, though there wasn't as much as I would have hoped. With those good aspects in mind, lets talk about the bad, and some of it was REALLY bad.

The writing in this film is very bad, much like many Godzilla stories, but this one was bad for a different reason, exposition.... LOTS of exposition. Exposition is necessary for films but in this film, nearly ALL dialogue is explaining things. Many times 20 seconds into the explanation, I understood the idea/plan and found myself wanting them to shut up after 15 minutes of exposition, and move on. When planning attacks, I again understood the plan in 20 seconds in and waited several more agonizing minutes while waiting for the admittedly great action sequences. This film is filled to the brim with painful exposition related dialog that almost made me fast-forward through it.

All in all a cool first film with upcoming parts, most Godzilla fans will enjoy the effort here, while non-fans might not like it.

The biggest problem of the 32nd entry in this franchise is that it feels like apart of a series, a middle part, yet at the very same time it has almost nothing in common with the previous movies. While it does have references to the previous movies like Mechagodzilla, and obviously Godzilla himself is the main antagonist both his powers as well the world it takes in is completely original and knowledge of previous entries isnt required or even helpful, meaning no matter if you are new to Godzilla movies or not you will go in and leave equally confused.

In this universe humans live together with another alien race, earth is completely devoid of human life while humans themself long ago abandoned their home star system as they poses space faring technology. This weird but never explained society is ruled by some barely described group that refuses to give up power, they are internally divided among factions never described, and there is a some barely mentioned alien church also struggling for power. On top of that there are resource and living space problems, but how serious we dont know, as well as light speed travel capabilities that seem to be breaking down, or maybe not as the movie dosnt bother to cover this field ether.

And yet nothing of this is part of the story, it feels like there is one movie missing setting up the world and the current political situation, its this very lack of setup that hurts the movie the most when complex internal politics get involved. As most of the time we dont know what going on the movie is forced to constantly explain the situation to us in minutes long exposition dump monologues. Characters will often stop what ever they are doing turn to each other and give an info dump for a minute or two filling us in on the lacking world building as well as explain to use what this futuristic technology is capable of and how it will be used in the next scene. While many of s-f movies set in far away future are guilty of this its rarely to this extent.

The action is passable, but the characterization is awful as there is barely any time left for characters whose role isnt explaining to us one thing or another. If you want to know more about those aliens, something that you would think would be quite a game changer for the series then you are out of luck, they play no real role in the movie.

And to top it all off there is no ending. While the movie is supposed to be fallowed with 2 more sequels, its hard to be satisfied with a fade to black in a middle of an action scene as if someone cut the power at your house. We leave the story almost in the same place we start, with not much resolved but with few of barely developed characters dead.

In the end it feels just like another low budget 24 episode s-f anime series only with half the content cut up and sold as a single movie. Its not one i would recommend for ether Godzilla fans or s-f fans.

The start to a unique and "controversial" entries in the 65 year legacy of the atomic menace that is Godzilla, we at It Came from a Monster Movie had a very interesting review for this movie. While we highlight that this film's narrative has flaws, there are some interesting and if you go into without expectation, you might actually surprise yourself with this film!

For more, please check out episode 3 of IT CAME FROM A MONSTER MOVIE for the full review wherever you listen to podcasts.

When we read these reviews we see a mixture of those greatly appreciative of this film, and those who consider it garbage. To the later I can only guess two things apply:

1) They are not aware this is PART 1 of the movie. More to come. 2) Some quite likely don't understand the Japanese mentality or the Godzilla mythos. In such case this will make no sense. Those who understand both Japanese cinema and the Godzilla mythos understood this film and rated it highly.

First regarding the film itself: animation was top-quality, with an excellent mix of anime and realism with computer graphics. The blend is fairly perfect, so much so that one forgets we are watching an animated film-- until something strikes us as particularly well-done.

The story line and plot-- and even the very final after-credits scene-- contrary to some claims makes perfect sense, is consistent and follows a logical flow. It is a well-done story... and I am very critical of films with lousy stories and plots. Of course to understand, one has to understand Godzilla. If one thinks Godzilla is just a "scary monster" or a dinosaur on steroids, they have no idea what Godzilla really is.

So considering the terrific animation, good voice-over acting, well-done story line and consistency with the Godzilla theme, we have a real kicker of a Godzilla movie... one of the best I've seen. I tend to be very critical of movies and don't cut them much slack in the case of sloppy production. This was done well and is definitely worth watching... unless of course, one understands zip about Godzilla. It does help to be acquainted with the concept going in.