Le Retour de Godzilla

The highlight of the movie has to be the Godzilla costume. Compared to the first 15 Godzilla movies, this movie is an improvement in the special effects department.

The story, however, is nothing special. It's not bad, but it's not something you will remember after watching this movie.

The characters are ok, but I think I prefer the characters from the original movie. Also, it lacks the classic Godzilla theme song.

Overall, with the exception of some moments, it's a pretty entertaining movie. I just wish it had something more to it, to make it more memorable.

After an extended break, Godzilla as a movie force made its comeback with this the 16th Godzilla film and the first of what would be the Heisei series. It's a reboot that basically follows on from the original Gojira film of 1954. Plot has Godzilla back as a destroyer of mankind, setting its eyes on stomping Tokyo into oblivion. As Zilla goes about its destructive way, and Tokyo attempts to repel the onslaught, there's a backdrop of a diplomatic crisis reaching boiling point as the Soviets and the Americans get ready for nuclear war. Thankfully the Japanese are able to convince the sane politicians that it is in fact Godzilla at the crux of things. Can the world powers join together to defeat the mightiest of lizards?

If a Godzilla fan you could be forgiven for going into this one fearing the worst, and yet it ticks many of the boxes for those who prefer Zilla as the destroyer of mankind as opposed to the saviour of mankind that the Showa period ended up as. There's the standard amount of miniatures and sets destruction, splendidly constructed as usual, nifty effects work and a whole bunch of iconic images to take from the experience (Zilla atomic breath destruction, stomping through the city, nuclear reinvigoration, back from the dead with awesome carnage following). There's good sci-fi within as well, such as the Japanese scientists having created a super fortress known as Super X, while sometimes all you need is to hear that brilliant roar followed by lizard devastation.

This was a return to the dark roots of Godzilla, complete with anti-nuclear sentiments. It didn't reinvent the wheel, but it did restart it successfully. 7/10

This and the 89(Biollante) film are the best in the series. They actually had a budget and you can see what happens when you invest in the film the product is amazing

Was very excited today to realise that there was a Japanese Godzilla film I TECHNICALLY hadn't seen.

When I was churning my way through the franchise in 2017-2020, I came across Godzilla 1985, and I guess I thought it was just a dubbed version of The Return of Godzilla. At the time it was the only version I could find, and so I thought it was good enough (even though I much prefer subtitles over dubs) and watched it, ultimately finding it decent but definitely not great.

Recently I learnt Godzilla 1985 and The Return of Godzilla were actually quite different, and today when I realised they were both listed separately on IMDB and had quite different runtimes, I figured I needed to watch Return ASAP.

Long story short, it's definitely not the best Japanese Godzilla film, but it's also far from the worst. I liked the political focus for the most part (though this approach was ultimately handled better - and in a more satisfying/satirical way - in 2016's highly acclaimed Shin Godzilla) and a lot of the monster action is highly satisfying, despite some inconsistencies in the special effects.

Pacing isn't always great, and the human characters are typically thin (it's a Godzilla movie; the human characters are like that 80-90% of the time) but I still enjoyed it a lot.

I've missed watching the adventures of my scaly boi, and I think I will rewatch the entire series soon. Picked up that glorious Criterion set on Bluray a couple of months ago, so am looking forward to seeing those older ones in better than DVD quality.

This has a much more modern feel compared to the earlier ones but it's still dated. The special effects are substantially better, so is the cinematography, Godzilla actually looks huge now! The nuclear power plant scene is amazing and so is the city smashing. The opening is really gross, no way it should be a PG rating! This does have a serious tone. Sadly it suffers from a very boring middle section of endless political chatter. The story follows Godzilla (1954) and ignores all other sequels but also ignores that he died in the first film so to me it would have been better as a remake. I loved the life size Godzilla foot prop and the animatronic head. The music is mostly good music. Shame about the middle but easily the best Godzilla action so far.