flash-hammer's Full Review: Godzilla Vs. Megaguirus
Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.
While it may have been the worst Godzilla movie in a long time, Godzilla 2000, in the wake of the Tristar Godzilla debacle, actually proved quite successful amongst Godzilla fans, most of whom were simply happy to have a monster that looked and acted like Godzilla stomping Japan and deuling a more evil enemy. Naturally, Toho, the studio behind the King of the Monsters' cinematic legacy, decided the time was right to hit quick with another Godzilla movie, and around a year after Godzilla 2000's late 1999 release, the naughties saw their first Godzilla feature: Gojira tai Megagirasu: Jî shômetsu sakusen
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Directed by Masaaki Tezuka, who went on the helm two more Godzilla features, Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla and it's sequel Godzilla: Tokyo SOS), Megaguirus would see Godzilla taking on yet another new foe, as opposed to bringing back a classic enemy for the King of the Monsters to duke it out with. With that said, in a nice touch, Toho decided to further develop a lesser monster from their past into the main antagonist of the feature. In Rodan, the film's titular flying monsters ate giant insects known as Meganurons. These have been updated, and are now the larval stage of a much larger monster.
I can actually remember the build up to this movie, and anticipating it quite a bit. My first viewing of it took place on an imported Hong Kong DVD which was subtitled in English, and while I wasn't exactly enamored with the film, I found it fairly enjoyable, and thought it had some cool scenes in it's favour. I recently picked up the Region 1 Columbia Tristar DVD of the film, under the title of Godzilla Vs. Megaguirus, which, while I suppose is the obvious choice, still puzzles me a bit. For a start, the movie's subtitle of 'The G Extermination Command' has been totally dropped, and while it isn't hard to see why Tristar chose not to use it, I still would have expected them to come up with something in it's place. Yet, most importantly, most fans hadn't been reffering to the movie as Godzilla Vs. Megaguirus, but in a move designed to distance the film from the Heisei era Godzilla movies, where all but 1 of which boasted 'Vs.' in the title, fans called the movie Godzilla X Megaguirus, and this is the title many import DVDs go by. Even more odd is why they chose to alter Godzilla's enemy's name for the Western release. However, Godzilla Vs. Megaguirus it is, and the DVD comes subtitled, the subs being of a reasonable quality, but featuring the eternally irritating habit of occasionally jumping from the bottom of the screen to the top.
The movie, despite appearing to be a sequel to Godzilla 2000, in fact introduces us to an alternate timeline, where Godzilla has attacked Japan on only 3 prior occasions, once, in the events of the first movie, in 1954, once in the mid 1960s and once in the mid 1990s. On his first two occasions, he came for nuclear nourishment, so Japan outlawed Nuclear generators, to replace them with Plasma energy generators. However, these also attracted the monster in 1996, so they have also been banned in favour of 'clean' energy sources.
In a flashback to his 1996 attack, we witness a soldier in an Army Ranger squad sent out to fight the monster, a beautiful female troop named Tsujimori(Misato Tanaka - Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla) refuses to back down, and her CO is killed under a pile of rubble. She dedicates her life to the destruction of the monster, and when we return to the present date, she is now Major Tsujimori of the G-Grasper unit, a special team aimed at detecting, preparing for and combating Godzilla should he emerge again. This is funded by a Government operative named Sugiura(Masato Ibu - Godzilla Final Wars) who seems to have some bizarre secret reasoning for wanting Godzilla kept at bay, and has granted the G-Graspers all sorts of high tech equipment, including a photon-cannon armed VTOL battleship named the Griffon, of which Major Tsujimori is one of the pilots.
The latest recruit to the team is a brilliant young electronics whizz named Kudo(Shosuke Tanihara - Aegis), initially isn't so hot on the idea of signing up. He and Tsujimori immediately have a clash of personality, and it's only when his former physics teacher Yoshizawa(Yuriko Hoshi - Godzilla Vs. Mothra) reveals herself to be working on a project, and reveals the details of it, that he signs up. Her plan is to create a device that creates an artificial black-hole, which the plan to fire at Godzilla and suck him in, ridding the world of him forever. This machine is code-named the Dimension tide, and it is tested outside a remote Japanese village, where it sucks up a building and is declared a success. The only problem is that it seems to create bizarre wormholes in reality, and the evening after the test, a giant prehistoric dragonfly known as a Meganuira emerges and lays an egg, an egg found by a young insect enthusiast, whose family relocates to Tokyo, with him taking the egg with him.
As Godzilla starts to make movements under the ocean, and the G-Graspers are ready to scramble, the boy decides to dispose of the egg by dropping it in the sewers, which is a big mistake as that is how it it nurtured, and before long it causes Tokyo to be flooded, and hundreds of other eggs are layed by the Meganuiron, that's the larval stage of the Meganuira, that emerges from the boy's egg. Soon the G-Graspers have a clear shot at Godzilla on a remote island, but this is ruined as a flock of Meganuira swoop on Godzilla, causing the DT to miss. The Meganuira seem to syphon energy out of Godzilla, before flying back to Tokyo, where they inject it all into their 'Queen', the Megaguirus, super-charging it with Godzilla's Radioactive energy. It isn't long before the Megaguirus emerges, and decides to try and steal the energies of the biggest source of power in it's path...Godzilla.
While there are some more little strands of plot, to be honest, that is the gist of it, and it's all you need. Godzilla Vs. Megaguirus is a real let-down for fans of the series, and while it is at least better than it's immediate prequel, it's plot consists of a few good ideas, some of which have subsequently been done better, mixed with a whole lot of rehashed elements, an unoriginal enemy monster and a dose of Movie Science/History that pushes the boundaries of 'Suspension of Disbelief' a bit too far.
You see, not only is the DT a pretty outlandish plot device(although to a certain degree, hats off to Toho for coming up with something at least slightly original), but the film makes out that the Megaguirus and it's lesser underlings are actual prehistoric creatures, as opposed to a nice little nod to Rodan, which I'm not sure if the audience is meant to react to in a comical light, or if writers Wataru Mimura and Hiroshi Kashiwabara, who have 4 prior credits on Godzilla movies to their names, actually believe the viewers to be complete morons.
While the film does boast some nice scenes, including the eerie depiction of Tokyo flooded, and the scene of the Meganura swarming Godzilla, but then, with hindsight, something occurred to me about that last scene. It was painfully ripped off from Gamera 2: The Advent of Legion, which was already had an almost identical scene in Godzilla Vs. Destoroyah. A fact made all the more shocking given that both of those movies were released in 1996, but the effects looked a lot better in both of them.
The entire 'boy genius recruited by the government' was done in Godzilla Vs. Destoroyah, and the soldier out for revenge for a fallen comrade angle was tackled in Godzilla Vs. Spacegodzilla. Diredctor Tezuka clearly likes taking this angle and applying it to a sexy female lead, because he done it again in Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla, only so much better. The 'G-Graspers' is not only the most ridiculously named group in cinema history, but also a painful attempt to rip-off the Science Patrol on TV's Ultraman. The Major's 'romance out of arguments' relationship with Kudo is also painfully cliched, and handled in such a painfully haphazard way that it almost makes the fact that Megaguirus is essentially a skinny Battra less noticeable.
And that's another problem with the film. The monsters. They suck. Choosing to stick with the woeful Godzilla 2000 suit, which looks like an action figure and features garish purple spikes, Megaguirus makes a double whammy of poorness by having it's other titular monster equally as lame. As I mentioned, it's like Battra hit the slim fast, with the same grey/black and yellow colour scheme and everything. The only difference being it doesn't have any beam weapons, and in their place is a lame stinger which he uses to syphon energy out of Godzilla. This sounds like a decent idea in theory, but the fact the beast does nothing with this power makes it just pointless.
What's worse is the special effects that bring them to life. While many people rip on all Godzilla movies for their special effects, many people actually rate Orlando Bloom as an actor, idiots exist, and sadly some of them seem to have been hired to work on the effects for this film.
The miniatures are painfully obvious as nothing but, the Godzilla suit was lame when it was first used, and isn't any better now, and Megaguirus is quite frankly a joke. In at least 8 scenes the wires used to hold up the puppet are clearly visible. I don't mean 'squint and you'll see them', I mean in your face, blatant. A monster like this should have been created via CGI, but then you witness the CGI in the film and realise why it wasn't. Godzilla's beam once again looks excellent, but basically any other CGI shots, most notably the diabolical underwater Godzilla shots, make you wish they really hadn't bothered, and had simply wheeled out the old Gigan suit from the early 70s, because it would have looked better.
The film is also rather tepid when it comes to action scenes. There are few of them, and while they sometimes set themselves up to have potential, they completey blow it in most cases. Far too much of the film is wasted on human blabbering and bad movie science, so when we get to the monster battles, much entertainment is expected...and little is delivered. While there are some cool scenes, such as Godzilla's tail whip that catches Megaguirus stinger, most of the action resorts to utterly despicable Matrix-bullet time scenes and failed attempts at comedy relief.
The film's score comes courtesy of Michiru Oshima, who also borrows liberally from series maestro Akira Ifukube's Godzilla theme. While there isn't anything wrong with Oshima's music as such, it's just not really very memorable. Despite this, Tezuka enlisted him to score his two other Godzilla movies, but personally I feel his work here was rather bland.
The film's acting is generally quite passable, if not memorable. Tanaka makes for a decent lead, but Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla's Yomiku Shaku, who played that film's nigh identical lead character, does so with a lot more class. The acting, as with most things in the movie, is really rather nondescript...the actors play their roles to a degree where you can't really badmouth them...but they leave little room for compliments either.
In general, while Godzilla Vs. Megaguirus is a big improvement over the dismal Godzilla 2000, that really isn't saying much, given how bad that movie was, and this film is easily worse than anything the Heisei series of Godzilla movies produced, which is a pretty depressing fact. Come to think of it, Megaguirus essentially feels like a lame Heisei era film. It takes various ideas from almost all of them and mixes it up to little positive effect.
Given that it is watchable as a Late-Night TV movie, I will add an extra star to the score I gave Godzilla 2000, but I'm still not going to recommend Megaguirus. It's something a film about giant monsters should never be: bland.
Year: 2000
Titles Gojira tai Megagirasu: Jî shômetsu sakusen
Godzilla X Megaguirus: The G Extermination Command
Godzilla Vs. Megaguirus: The G Annihilation Strategy
Godzilla Vs. Megaguirus
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