Godzilla vs. Megaguirus

The Millennium era of Godzilla continues, this time in Godzilla vs. Megaguirus, directed by newcomer to the series Masaaki Tezuka. Readers of this blog may remember that I was strongly disappointed by the creature Meganulon which was introduced in the original Rodan. So, I was pleased to discover that all I had to do was wait 40 years to receive a much-needed followup on that giant insect. Enter Megaguirus, portrayed in this film by Minoru Watanabe, an evolution of Meganulon into the truly fearsome form we should've seen fight with Rodan. Perhaps predictably, Tsutomu Kitagawa returns as Godzilla. 

Besides providing some redemption to my boy Meganulon, there's not much else to mention as lead up to this film. Let's get it on.

If You Haven't Seen it Before

- In the continuity of this film, Godzilla attacked (only) in 1954, 1968, and 1998, always focusing on power plants. Clearly attracted to nuclear and plasma energy, the government bans these forms of power to deter attacks from Big G.

- Now, in the year 2001, a black hole weapon has been invented by the G-Graspers, a section of the JSDF dedicated to destroying Godzilla. One of the G-Graspers is Major Tsujimori, who lost her commanding officer and friend in the 1998 attack and seeks revenge on Godzilla.

- The idea is that they can suck Godzilla into the black hole, either killing him or trapping him inside for all eternity. Shortly after the first test, a young boy finds a giant egg inside the test field and eventually disposes of it down the sewer.

- The creature, a giant dragonfly called Meganulon, eventually emerges from the sewer and kills two people in brutal fashion. It takes up residence on a nearby skyscraper and appears to multiply.

- Meganula, being inside the sewers, cause the entire city to become flooded. An underwater drone captures images of the innumerable eggs underneath the water.

- While the G-Graspers move to destroy Godzilla with the black hold weapon, the swarm of Meganula surround Godzilla and also prevent the satellite based weapon from being able to target him.

- The Meganula feed on Godzilla while he tries to fight them off. He eventually kills enough of them that the satellite targets and fires its black hole at him.

- Predictably, Godzilla survives. The surviving Meganula swim to their base and feed the energy they collected from Godzilla to their Queen, which grows to enormous size and flies into Shibuya's airspace.

- Megaguirus, the Dragonfly Queen, raids Shibuya using razor sharp wings and some sort of sonic pulse which can destroy buildings.

- The two beasts now face off, Megaguirus being an entity of wanton destruction while Godzilla mostly focuses on defending himself.

- Eventually, Megaguirus flies in for an attack but Godzilla ducks underneath her and she slices her own arm off using his giant dorsal fin. Unfortunately the timing on this is really bad and it doesn't look like an intentional tactic.

- Adapting, Megaguirus pieces Godzilla with her tail and absorbs his energy, using it to fire a version of his Atomic Breath back at him. Knocking him down, she comes in for the killing blow, attempting to stab him in the face.

- In slow motion, Godzilla catches the pincer in his mouth and bites it off. This hurts Megaguirus and gives him to the chance to finish her off using a double blast of Atomic Breath. She falls from the sky in a plume of (atomic) fire.

- Tsujimori discovers that Godzilla is attacking the city only because the head of the G-Graspers has developed another plasma energy, which is luring the big lizard in just as it did last time he attacked. She punches her boss in the face since his actions have caused so many people to die.

- Fortunately, with Megaguirus gone, the black hole weapon is functional once more and falling into the atmosphere. Tsujimori jumps into her ship to help it target Godzilla before it's too late.

- Barely making it in time, she manages to lock on to Godzilla before ejecting at the last possible second. Godzilla sees the black hole coming and fires his Atomic Breath at it in return, the two projectiles colliding into a giant explosion that causes Godzilla to disappear and a giant chasm in the city. The humans have finally won.

- Some time later, in an epilogue, Tsujimori seeks to investigate some unusual activity. In a post-credits scene Godzilla's roar is heard outside a school, implying he is not truly gone for good.

Kaiju Notes

- Meganulon is a relatively standard "giant insect" design, but gets bonus points for being a brutal creature. Its first two kills are fucked up, including spitting some sort of grossness and squeezing a man's head until he spits up blood.

- Megaguirus isn't the most creative of monster designs herself, being a pissed off demonic dragonfly, but we don't always need to reinvent the wheel. Dragonflies are kind of creepy anyway, so enlarging it and giving it sonic weaponry is pretty much kaiju design 101.

- Godzilla's Atomic Breath has improved somewhat in this film. While the 2000 version was fine, this movie upgrades him to a breath that looks more like plasma in consistency and color, which makes a lot of sense for his motivations in the story.

I only have a few things to say about this one, and the first is a positive: the human story is well-balanced, feeding into the kaiju story in a way that makes the human elements actually compelling enough to pay attention to while not feeling like they're detracting from what we're here for: Megaguirus vs. Godzilla. Tsujimori is a relatively interesting main human character, being a true hater of Godzilla but not letting that be her only personality trait or cause her to do incredibly stupid things. That last point shouldn't be so rare but it's incredibly uncommon in kaiju films for the human who hates the main kaiju to not be foolish as a result. As a for instance, Tsujimori does not at any point help Megaguirus because it also wants to kill Godzilla, only to realize that Megaguirus might be worse. Tsujimori: good.

On the negative side, some elements of the film are clunky. These are mostly technical errors, but can take away from the sweet kaiju action. The timing of the dorsal fin chop makes the (cool) idea seems accidental at best, and Megaguirus itself is a very physically focused attacker for a creatures with razor sharp wings and a sonic weapon. It has little claws, but they look pretty goofy trying to tussle with the much physically stronger looking Godzilla, whose teeth are roughly as large as Megaguirus' claws. Megaguirus at one point appears to try to strangle Godzilla, which works about as well as that sounds.

The Megaguirus vs. Godzilla element is quite good. As mentioned above, Megaguirus itself is pretty vicious and interesting even in larval form. When the creatures fight, there's even an element of strategy to the endeavor. While we don't fully realize this until the fight is over, Megaguirus is not the hardiest of blokes so spends much of the battle using hit and run tactics so that he can never be hit cleanly (because he'd die). Godzilla does genuinely have trouble against the mobile Mega, so ends up having to outsmart his enemy rather than rely on his sheer power and endurance as he normally can. Megaguirus itself also lack a particularly powerful weapon to use against the Big G, but he still does pretty well with what he's got. Overall, this is one of the better kaiju battles overall, not being one note or too short.

In the end, however, Godzilla vs. Megaguirus is relatively forgettable. Having seen it very recently (that's what the whole blog is about), all I can really remember is "black hole... Megaguirus...Tsujimori... Godzilla." There's not a whole lot to remember, even if all of it works. It's strange. But some things can't always be explained, so we're stuck with this fairly middling flick despite all of it being pretty solid on paper (or digital text, whatever).

Next: Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack!

Rodan

The first non-Godzilla movie on our list! Rodan was released in December of 1956 and the first movie in color. We're watching progress happen as we watch kaiju flicks, folks! Directed by familiar name Ishirō Honda and with the titular kaiju played by famed Godzilla suit actor Haruo Nakajima, this is a movie definitely made in the same vein of any other Godzilla movie, just with no appearance by the Big G. Let's get to the point.

If You Haven't Seen it Before

- Miners doing miner shit. A series of murders begins to happen, all the men sliced with an "incredibly sharp" object.

- Initially falsely thought to be the work of a particularly ornery miner, the true culprit is revealed to be a giant ancient dragonfly larvae named Meganulon.

-  An earthquake follows. Some time later, a fighter jet pilot sees an "unknown aircraft" doing loops in the sky, faster than his state of the art machine. As he approaches it he's unable to do anything but shout that it's huge before his plane is cut in half and he dies.

- While passing by and killing a couple in the mountains, presumably by accident, the new creature is identified as a giant Pteranodon: the titular Rodan.

- Rodan is hunted down by the military and attacked, in full view of civilians. They are able to slow but not stop Rodan as bridges, buildings, trains, and planes get destroyed.

- Eventually pinned down by tanks and other artillery, Rodan appears to be losing before a 2nd Rodan appears and rescues the 1st. They escape and the military regroups.

- Hunted down to a volcano, the military devises a plan to bury them underneath the fire, rock, and ash of the volcano. 

- In the conclusion, the plan succeeds and one of the Rodan's is set into the volcano and catches fie. Presumably not wanted to be alone, the 2nd Rodan joins its mate in the flames and they die together.

Kaiju Notes

- Rodan's powers are the ability to cause sonic booms by flapping its wings and also causing great damage by flying past things. In its first few appearances people are killed and vehicles destroyed just by the force of the giant creature flying past.

- As far as the creature itself, I honestly found it didn't make much of an impression at all. Besides the difficulty and clunkiness of having a flying creature onscreen in the 50's, Rodan leaves no major impressions.

- Meganulon is a much more interesting suit: claws and clearly a complex creation, if I had to choose one creature to have featured more (or even had as the main character) it would have been the much more interesting Meganulon.

To put it bluntly, Rodan is a very bad movie. It builds up a premise that has a lot of potential and wastes almost all of it. Meganulon is a demon from the gates of hell in the beginning of the movie, but when the earthquake happens and we shift focus to Rodan the movie begins to suffer. Making some initial good moves to establish Rodan as a danger to everyone around it despite not even being violent or angry, the major loss here was writing Meganulon out of the story entirely. Following Godzilla Raids Again I would assume that the idea of featuring two monsters fighting each other took hold here, but they squander it in a much bigger way than they did there. When we find out where Rodan came from (a giant egg), we also find out that in order to grow so large baby Rodan(s) just ate all of the Meganulons! What the actual fuck is that? There's not even a scene showing the swarm of Meganulon trying to fight Rodan off, just an off-screen explanation and with no more mention of Meganulon at all.

Now, I'm no kaiju movie writer (yet!) but I simply don't understand why you'd spend the first third of a movie focusing around a ferocious murderous bug monster only to have your giant flying dinosaur creature to simply eat them all offscreen. It makes no sense at all. When you factor in all of the additional work that had to be done to establish the new threat of Rodan (and earthquake, a plane, killing a couple, stealing cows, then there's a second one) it just makes the entire endeavor clunky. Especially when you had the great opportunity to have the larval Meganulon as a threat that could have evolved into the giant angry dragonfly monster that it was clearly conceived as. Everything else can function very similar, you just have a giant dragonfly instead of a flying dinosaur. You could even include the loss of the swarm of Meganulon, as maybe one eats all the others as they vie for being the Mega-Meganulon for the finale.

Speaking of failures, I have no idea what this movie is about. I read somewhere that Rodan was supposed to represent the threat that the Soviet Union posed to neighboring nations, but I don't see it. The only scene that comes remotely close to reflecting that is the scene of the fighter pilot encountering Rodan for the first time, initially thinking the dinosaur was some advanced new aircraft. But at no other point is anything even resembling arms race or invasion concerns even touched on. Rodan is a force of nature that mostly seems to accidentally harm people, so the military hunts it down and eventually succeeds in killing them. I could be missing something but I don't see how that serves as a metaphor for anything except possibly other natural disasters? Even if we take it as that, the military can't exactly shoot down a tsunami or a tornado so it still doesn't work.

Quite simply, Rodan is a mess. It's unnecessarily complicated, truly baffling narrative choices are made over and over, and it doesn't seem to be going for anything like an idea. Perhaps the kaiju genre is still truly finding its feet with releases like this and Godzilla Raids Again, but for me this film in particular just seems like an unforced error that failed to realize the potential of its own premise. I fully believe that in some alternate dimension there's a version of Rodan, probably called Meganulon instead, that is actually pretty awesome. A man can dream, at least. This will not be the last time we see the Main Man Rodan, so stay tuned for that. Hopefully his next appearance will be little more cohesive.

Next: Mothra!