SuperMegaMonkey
John Averick: ChronosCat: ChronosCat: ChronosCat: ChronosCat: |
1991-12-14 20:35:38 Godzilla vs. King GhidorahNow we are talking. A classic giant monster villain, time travelers in a flying saucer, androids, and plenty of other madness. This is a Godzilla movie. Despite the fact that we only have a dubbed pan & scan version, this is probably my favorite movie of the Heisei era. Not Min, though. She hates time travel, and this movie has lots of time travel, in both directions, and with all of the paradoxes that comes with it. The movie actually starts in the future. The year 2204, to be exact. We see a submarine (hold your horses; we'll get a submarine explosion in this movie but it's not this one) searching the bottom of the ocean and locating King Ghidorah. It's observed that he has two heads and then another speaker says that he actually used to have three! In earlier days, before we started watching the movies sequentially and before i knew that the Showa and Heisei periods had separate continuities, i saw this scene and thought that maybe it took place after the aliens "escape[d] into the future" in Monster Zero. Then, when we watched this movie the most recent time and it just started with a (seemingly) dead Ghidorah in the future, i had to stop and double check that we were going in the right order and we didn't miss a fight with King Ghidorah from a previous movie. That isn't the case. After this opening scene in 2204 we'll jump back to 1992 to find out what happened. In 1992, there are UFO sightings. The ESPer Miki Saegusa is aware of them... ...and so is Chiaki Moriyuma (played by Kiwako Harada) the editor of Super Mystery Magazine. Here's Chiaki from a little later in the film. She calls her writer and love interest, Kenichiro Terasawa (played by Kosuke Toyohara; and that's the back of his head above) but he's become too successful as a writer and doesn't want to do UFO stories anymore. He wants to do serious arts and literature stuff. Chiaki convinces him to do a story about an old man that is causing a disruption at a dinosaur museum instead. Oh, she's good. The guy at the museum claims that he's seen real dinosaurs, and claims that dinosaurs will come back and save us from disasters and tragedy. When Kenichiro digs into his story, he finds that the man was a soldier stationed on the island of Lagos during World War II, and when they were attacked by US forces, a dinosaur showed up to save them. The man acknowledges that the dinosaur may have just been defending his own territory as opposed to striking a blow for Japan. I'm curious if this line is in the subtitled version, because this and a few other points in the movie actually generated a mini-controversy, especially since there were tensions between the US and Japan at this time due to Japan's ascending economy. The old man also says that the dinosaur was very gentle at first, but later went completely wild. Meanwhile, the military is looking into the UFO issue. One of the government officials, Takayuki Segawa (played by Toho long-timer Kenji Sahara), hears a bunch of data and then says, "It must be a UFO". Well, yes. Literally until you identify it, it will be a UFO. The military contact Miki at the ESP Institute. She tells them that Godzilla has been kept alive by the anti-nuclear bacteria in his body after the Biollante fight (wait, what? The bacteria that was meant to kill him actually kept him alive! Looking around online, this may be a question of a bad translation. It seems what Miki is really saying here is that Godzilla has been forced to remain underwater to stay alive to keep his body cool enough to avoid activating the bacteria.). We're shown a blip on a screen, and then she says "But now look at this." And we see an image of a UFO. Kenichiro next goes to see a professor, and... wait a minute, what is this guy wearing? I knew i was in trouble when i saw he was wearing shorts, and it just kept getting worse the farther away he walked. Anyway, this is Professor Mazaki, played by Katsuhiko Sasaki who, in a different life, invented Jet Jaguar. That outfit is his punishment for not believing in the existence of Titanosaurus. Mazaki believes that dinosaurs still exist, and so he believes the old man's story. Kenichiro starts putting things together and realizes that the H bomb was tested near Lagos (or is it Ragos?)... ...in 1954, and so the dinosaur may have been mutated into Godzilla. Meanwhile, helicopters locates, and are destroyed by, the UFO. Kenichiro continues to investigate the dinosaur story, and finds the captain of the contingent of soldiers that were on Lagos. It's Yasuaki Shindo (played by Yoshio Tsuchiya, who we refer to as the PTSD guy thanks to his roles in Matango and Son of Godzilla), and he now just happens to be the head of Dinosaur World. Yasuaki denies having ever seen a dinosaur until Kenichiro tells him his Godzilla theory. Then Yasuaki not only admits it, but pulls out photos. Oh yeah. That looks like one of those gentle, carnivorous dinosaurs. He previously was afraid people wouldn't believe him. Really dude? You have photos. And Godzilla's been rampaging all over your country since 1954. And Professor Mazaki was ready to believe dinosaurs existed even before this. So why the hesitation? It's said that the people that saw the *ahem* Godzillasaurus "are the very same men that rebuilt our economy". Well, maybe Dinosaur World is a bigger deal than it sounds like, but the first old man seemed to be running a food stand. Finally the people on the UFO send a message saying that they've come here to speak to Japan's authorities. The seem to beam down out of their ship... ...and we meet the leader, Wilson (played by, er, Chuck Wilson)... ...Grenchko (played by Richard Berger), and Emmy Kano (played by Anna Nakagawa), who is notable for being Japanese, which will be important later. They make a big show of demonstrating that they aren't really on the ground. They are hologram projections. They explain that the Earth Union sent them from the year 2204. "Men of your time would call our ship a time machine, but we call it our mothership." The military men at the scene respond, "So... it's a time machine." I don't know if it's just in the dubbed version, but everyone in this movie seems incredibly dumb and seems to have to repeat back what the other person is saying before they can understand it. "We're from the future." "So... you're from the future." This happens throughout the movie. So what you're saying is, this happens throughout the movie? They set up a meeting with the prime minister, and then teleport to his office the next day. There, they explain that they wish to change incidents that caused catastrophes in the 23rd century. There is no Japan in the future due to nuclear pollution. Godzilla will destroy the nuclear plants, causing devastation. Radiation will destroy vegetation, cause cancer and mutations, and make Japan uninhabitable. The plan therefore is to go back in time and stop the Godzillasaurus from transforming into Godzilla by bringing him to the present (or maybe just teleporting him away from Lagos island, which is what i think actually happens but i'm not sure). Or...they could just shoot him dead? The Futurians, as they're called (creative), have brought a book with them that was written by Kenichiro with a forward from Professor Mazaki, explaining Godzilla's origins, and the Futurians want them to go back in time with them on the anti-Godzilla mission. They also want Miki the psychic. It is not explained 1) why the Futurians didn't just go directly to the past to stop the explosion or 2) why they actually need these three people to go along with them. We'll learn shortly that the Futurians' purpose is actually more sinister than they are letting on (oh, if only someone was a powerful psychic who could sense their evil intentions), but that still doesn't answer these questions. The closest to an explanation that they can get is that a person can't exist twice in the same timeline, so they can't bring back one of the WWII soldiers to identify the Godzillasaurus. But it's not like the three "experts" that they bring know anymore than what is already in future Kenichiro's book (which probably also included Yasuaki 's photos, or if not i'm sure the Futurians could get them), and what we'll actually see is the Futurians watching the scene on the island play out, so they didn't really need anyone to tell them which dinosaur it was, as if there really were a ton of dinosaurs on Lagos that the Godzillasaurus needed to be distinguished from anyway. When the experts are brought to the UFO, they meet another member of their expedition. He's an android called M-11, so named because he first appeared in the Atlas era comic book Menace #11. Oh wait, that's a different M-11. This one is kind of a goofy version of the Terminator (Terminator 2 came out in 1991). He's played by Robert Scott Field. We also meet the Dorats, which are "a new kind of animal. They're created through biotechnology." It's said that they make perfect pets because they can sense our feelings through microwave impulses. Emmy claims that they're being brought along because they will be very helpful to us if we get lost, because... "they can always cheer us up!". Good cover story, Emmy. Really thought that one through. Luckily our cast of experts are the most credulous people you can ask for. And how about if you don't raise the possibility of us getting lost when we're traveling back in time to a remote tropical island. Can i get out of this trip? *shudder* The trip back in time is successful. As they arrive and fly to the island, they are spotted by the US forces in battleships off of Lagos. Two of them see the UFO, but the superior officer tells the other one that no one will believe them so they should just forget about it. "You can tell your son about it when he's born, Major Spielberg." The crew on the time machine locate the Japanese army and send M-11 to check them out. To demonstrate his bionic capabilities, they must have put him on a moving platform like the kind they have at airports, covered it up with some brush, and then had him make a running motion as they moved him along on it. It's hilarious (and of course impossible to capture with screen grabs). Then they do a shot from behind, put a blur effect on him, and speed up the film. Those aren't coveralls. It's a speed suit! Then we meet our Godzillasaurus. We get to watch as the Godzillasaurus repels the attack by the US forces. The best bit is when the officers still on the boat get reports of a dinosaur attacking the landing force, and they look through their binoculars to see him. Godzillasaurus kills the entire US landing operation, and the Navy gives up on the attack, but not before shelling the dinosaur, seemingly fatally wounding him. The time travelers then wait until after the Japanese soldiers say their goodbyes to Godzilla and go home, and then teleport Godzillasaurus away. I guess now is a good time to say this. If you came to me from the future to show off your flying saucer time machine and your teleportation abilities and your holograms and robots, i'd be like, you know what? You're fine. You don't need to go back into the past to mess around with stuff. It all seems to have worked out ok. Before leaving, Emmy secretly pushes her Dorats out the window. Miki seems to notice that they are gone, but doesn't push the issue. Oh, Miki. Presumably you've figured it out by now. Or maybe you're in denial. I remember the first time i watched this, i was looking at those cute Horrible! Dorats with their very familiar coloration and scales, noting that there were three of them, and that they were being left behind on the island where the Godzillasaurus was turned into Godzilla, and saying, "Naw! This can't be happening! This can't be the origin of King Ghidorah!". But it is, my friend, it is. Now, here's the reason Min hates time travel movies. Everybody gets back to the present, and King Ghidor(at) is on a rampage. But it's not like he's been rampaging nonstop since 1954. He's just appeared. And it's not like no one remembers Godzilla. As far as everyone in the present is concerned, Godzilla disappeared in 1992 and then King Ghidorah appeared. That doesn't make any sense. Why does everyone who didn't go back in time also remember everything? Not just the things that changed because they moved Godzillasaurus. They remember how things were originally. I hate time travel stories. But then there's a lot about this movie that doesn't make a lot of sense. It turns out Emmy is shocked, shocked i tell you to see Ghidorah on a rampage. She says to Wilson and Grenchko, "I didn't know you could control him!", in anger. Would it be better if Ghidorah was mindless? What did she think the plan was? She seems perfectly clear on the fact that they left the Dorats behind to be mutated into a giant monster, and she knows that the goal was really to come back in time to destroy Japan. But she's upset about something. *holds head and groans* But back to the time travel problem. Kenichiro gets home (yes, they just go home after finding out that they're unleashed a monster more destructive than Godzilla into the world), and he's got a message from Chiaki on the answering machine: "Good news. We're going to publish your Godzilla book... I'm sure it will be a best seller. And if it is, will you marry me afterwards?" If the book is a flop, he can go to hell. Emmy actually told him it was going to be a flop, and that was back when Godzilla still existed in the time stream. Now, i don't know why anyone would publish a book about a creature that doesn't even exist. Emmy decides that she's going to betray her fellow time travelers. So she grabs a jetpack and flies over to Kenichiro and explains everything to him. She and the others are part of the Equal Environment Earth Union, which sounds like a terrorist group. Everything they told the present day people before was a lie. The truth is that in the future, Japan will become even stronger. It will be the richest nation and buy up nations in South America and Africa, making it bigger than China, America, and all of Europe. All nuclear weapons were banned by the end of the 20th century (in real life we seem to have missed that deadline), so the other nations have no way of controlling Japan. So the Equal Environment Earth Union has stolen a time machine and traveled back in time to try to find a way to even out the odds by weakening Japan. If you're looking for a political angle to the movie, or at least for a sign of the zeitgeist of the times, this is it. In the late 80s Japan was ascendant in the world's economy and it looked like it was well on its way to expanding into an economic superpower, and because of that anti-Japanese sentiment was rising in the US (and probably elsewhere). So here's a movie where a) the titular hero monster sided with Japan during WWII and b) white people and a duped Japanese woman come back from a future to try to rewrite a history where Japan has indeed become the dominant power. (Ironically, by the time this movie was released, Japan had actually entered the beginning of what is known as the Lost Decade.) To achieve their goals, the other Futurians are trying to get the Japanese government to accept a supercomputer that they say will help them deal with King Ghidorah, but clearly has some other sinister purpose. The Japanese government, with advice from Emmy, refuse to accept the Futurian's help. Instead the idea is to locate the Godzillasaurus and nuke it to bring Godzilla back to life. The problem is that Japan has no nukes, but the head of Dinosaur World is pleased to announce that he's got a nuclear submarine armed with nuclear missiles. But don't worry. Of course we haven't kept it in Japanese waters. It's in Southeast Asia. Meanwhile, M-11 is sent after Emmy, and here's where his Terminator side really comes out. He comes charging after her with his super speed, which is shown by holding a camera to his head and having him run while speeding up the film. Awesomely cheesy looking, but totally great. And he manages to retrieve her. But the weird thing is that after she's admonished by the other Futurians, her punishment is to repair M-11. And while she's doing that, she reprograms him (by taking out his red discs and replacing them with green discs, naturally). Meanwhile, Miki has used her ESP to find the location of the Godzillasaurus, but she's surprised to find that he seems like the regular Godzilla. And when the Dinosaur World sub goes to that location, they do indeed find a full-sized Godzilla. Uh oh... And of course, the sub drives right into Godzilla and is destroyed. The speculation is that there is so much ambient radiation in the world that the Godzillasaurus must have had enough to become a Godzilla anyway (also remember Godzilla's been on the rampage since 1954 until his mysterious disappearance just yesterday!!! when King Ghidorah took his place!!!! YOUR STUPID TIME TRAVEL STORY MAKES NO SENSE!). But now that he's absorbed the energy of the nuclear sub, which was armed with nukes more powerful than those used in 1954, he's become much bigger and stronger (and angrier). So instead of being 50 meters like in the Showa series or 80 meters like in the pre-time travel Heisei series, he's now 100 meters high. Nice work, guys, on that whole changing the past thing. After eating the sub, Godzilla emerges from the ocean to the sound of beautiful harp music as he flings the water from his hair like he's in a shampoo commercial. King Ghidorah, meanwhile, is destroying fighter jets as the Futurians scoff, saying that present day aircraft are so primitive and that it's no challenge. Oh yeah? You're just lucky we're not bringing out Super X! Godzilla comes ashore near a heard of cows. The Futurians send King Ghidorah to fight him. Here's a comparison photo for you. Maybe they should have just killed the Godzillasaurus instead of teleporting him. Godzilla is definitely looking a little better, especially in the eyes and face. His chest and thighs are still ridiculous, though. While Godzilla and King Ghidora fight... ...Emmy, Kenichiro, and the reprogrammed M-11 work to sabotage the Futurians' computer systems. Once the Futurians no longer control King Ghidorah, Godzilla has the fight well in hand. Literally. He grabs Ghidorah by the tail(s) and does the old body flop. Our human and robot heroes continue to fight their way through the Futurian ship... ...and confront Wilson. Wilson just laughs. He and Grenchko intend to escape back to the future. Despite King Ghidorah's defeat, their plan has basically been implemented, since "this new Godzilla is unfriendly, and there's nothing you can do about it", so he'll cause just as much destruction as King Ghidorah would have. No one points out that the earlier Heisei Godzilla wasn't exactly friendly either. The Godzilla/Ghidorah fight gets up close and personal... ...and Ghidorah starts choking Godzilla with one of his necks. He's foaming at the mouth, always a sign that you're close to death in the Toho world. But then he starts to breath his radioactive fire. This is it! This is how he loses it! This is how he loses his head! But it doesn't happen quite like that. Goddammit. The breath just repels Ghidorah from Godzilla instead of exploding the head off right there. Then Godzilla blasts him again from afar. And this time Ghidorah is decapitated. Finally! Pretty awesome, but it would have been cooler if it happened while Ghidorah's neck was wrapped around Godzilla. After that happens, Godzilla starts doing a weird Stevie Wonder dance. Then, to prevent the Futurians from escaping into the future, Emmy has M-11 teleport the time machine in front of Godzilla, who is happy to blast it. Godzilla is mean. He's not done with King Ghidorah, either. Ghidorah tries to flee, but Godzilla blasts holes in his wings. Ghidorah then drops into the sea. This might have been the end of the movie, but we're not nearly done yet. M-11 puts the odds that Godzilla will go on a rampage in Tokyo at 91% (a sucker's bet, imo), and indeed he does. Everybody keeps talking about how mean Godzilla looks now. And he's back to his usual MO. Shrugging off FAHPs. Destroying Tokyo Tower. Accidentally falling into buildings. Hey, that drop off is really dangerous. You should put up a sign or a safety rail or something. As she's leaving, Emmy remarks that she kind of likes 1992. This gets Kenichiro's hopes up, especially when she kind of flirtily says, "I like it here only because you're here!". So now we're back to where we started the movie, with Emmy in the future having located King Ghidorah. It turns out that he's still barely alive, too. Sure, why not? It worked for Captain America. In this version of the future, it's said that Japan was destroyed by a monster because of its vain prosperity and its lack of concern about nuclear waste. And Emmy has to get permission from the Great White Father to go back in time to change things. Back in the present, the Dinosaur World guy refuses to evacuate from the city that "he built". He watches Godzilla "destroy all the prosperity I created"... ...while the scene flashes back to him with the young Godzillasaurus. Fnord: You see, the Godzillasaurus gave these Japanese soldiers a second chance on life. They then went back and rebuilt the Japanese economy, but they did it in a way that wasn't respectful to nature, allowing all the pollution and radioactivity that exists in the modern world. So Godzilla has come back to punish them... [drones on about the sociopolitical metaphor] Too late to save the Dinosaur World guy, but before Godzilla completely destroys Japan, we see a familiar shape. But he's a little different this time. Is that awesome, you guys? You're goddamn right it's awesome! Mecha-King Ghidorah goes to confront Godzilla. It turns out that it's being piloted by Emmy. She's in the little bubble in the front. So it truly is a Mecha King Ghidora. Not Mecha as in "mechanical", like Mechagodzilla or Mechani-Kong. Mecha like a Mecha. Of course, then this happens. Well maybe you should have put yourself on the back of King Ghidorah instead of right in the front. The fight continues. Oh now she's just button mashing. I know about that. Godzilla has just played this game, and knows that he should blast King Ghidorah's wings, so he does that again. But Mecha-King Ghidorah and Emmy, and M-11 who has been repurposed into MKG's computer, have one more trick up their sleeves. The Godzilla Grip! There's even a central claw. Once he's caught, Mecha-King Ghidorah electrocutes the hell out of Godzilla. And then Ghidora flies Godzilla out over to the sea... ...and this time both of them fall in. But Emmy and M-11 are still alive, and they fly out on a small ship. When it's over, Emmy is set to go back to the future. The smitten Kenichiro says, "I have to live 200 years just so i can see you again.". Emmy smiles, and then right before she leaves, she drops the bomb: "You're one of my distant ancestors from this wonderful age!". Ewwwww! I think there's just something wrong with Emmy's brain. She was completely in on the "let's turn dorats into a radioactive monster" plot, but then seemed to forget she was in on it got mad. Then she flirts with Kenichiro knowing he's her ancestor. Definitely something wrong with her brain. I guess i'm stuck with you then, Chiaki. But the Heisei series isn't going to be stopped here. Deep beneath the sea, guess who's still alive. No, not him. Surprisingly, this is the only appearance of the awesome Mecha-King Ghidorah in all of the Godzilla movies (although his head does show up again). I meant the other one. Yep, that guy. Great, crazy movie. King Mecha-Godzilla is a lot of fun. Toho actually considered trying to use King Kong, and then Mechani-Kong (which may have been the inspiration for Mecha-King Ghidorah) but to avoid any copyright issues they went with King Ghidorah instead. I'm glad they did, because bringing back Godzilla's old arch-nemesis helps gives this movie a classic feel. As mentioned above, looking around online it seems like this movie actually makes a lot more sense. The story is really that Godzilla had been contained in the sense that the bacteria injected into him in Biollante was working, keeping him from coming out of the sea. Then the idea is that the Futurians' plan fails; moving the Godzillasaurus didn't actually stop it from becoming Godzilla thanks to the large amounts of ambient radiation in the world, so the events of Return and Biollante still happened. So that explains why everyone still knew about Godzilla, why Kenichiro's book would still be relevant, etc. King Ghidorah's sudden emergence may be thanks to the fact that he was controlled by the Futurians so he was dormant until they returned to the present. Even the line about Godzilla now being mean (he was already mean!) makes sense; it's really that Godzilla is now free to go on the surface again since absorbing the radiation from the Dinosaur World sub got rid of the bacteria in addition to causing him to grow. So it seems like the actual plot of this movie is a lot more internally consistent. But we can only go by what we have in our version, which flubs all of this and delivers a movie with a lot of plot holes. Stop trying to peddle your snake oil around here, bub. It was a time travel story and time travel stories never make sense. I should note that even though King Ghidorah and Mecha-King Ghidorah are really the same entity, we've listed them as two separate Monsters Appearing. That's not entirely incorrect since MKG really does have a separate brain (in the form of Emmy and M-11), but mostly it's just for the sake of having him in the listings, and because i have a separate toy of him! Oh, one final thing. At one point in this movie, we saw a door labelled Experimental-Room. And we wondered why we didn't have one of those. But then later, we saw a different door labeled Super Scientific Play-Room. And we changed our minds. That's definitely the room we want. I don't see why we can't have both.
Monsters Appearing: Godzilla, King Ghidorah, Mecha-King Ghidorah CommentsThis movie was a lot of fun, but the plot was a mess - much more so than usual. In particular, while I like time travel, I like it better the more well-thought-out the time travel rules are - and either they failed to make it clear that history wasn't really changed (in which case why did Godzilla disappear and wind up somewhere else when they traveled to the past?), or the rules used in this move make no sense. Also, I felt having Ghidorah be the creation of time-traveling terrorists was a lot less impressive than the legendary destroyer of civilizations status he had in the Showa continuity. "The man acknowledges that the dinosaur may have just been defending his own territory as opposed to striking a blow for Japan. I'm curious if this line is in the subtitled version, because this and a few other points in the movie actually generated a mini-controversy, especially since there were tensions between the US and Japan at this time due to Japan's ascending economy." The line is in the subtitled version. "I don't know if it's just in the dubbed version, but everyone in this movie seems incredibly dumb and seems to have to repeat back what the other person is saying before they can understand it." I only noticed that happening a couple of times, and chalked it up to shock at the idea of time travel being real. "The plan therefore is to go back in time and stop the Godzillasaurus from transforming into Godzilla by bringing him to the present (or maybe just teleporting him away from Lagos island, which is what i think actually happens but i'm not sure)." In the subtitled version, they say they're going to teleport him away from the island, but not to where; later it turns out they seem to have teleported him to the middle northern Pacific Ocean (which raises the question of how a non-mutated dinosaur could have survived underwater for decades). "The speculation is that there is so much ambient radiation in the world that the Godzillasaurus must have had enough to become a Godzilla anyway" The impression I got from the subtitled version was that at some earlier point a different nuclear sub sank over the place where the Godzillasaurus lay, mutating him into Godzilla. However I'm not sure about that; they didn't spell it out very well. Posted by: ChronosCat | May 14, 2018 11:53 AM Comments are now closed. |
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