Godzilla vs King Ghidorah (1991)
Plot Summary
time-travellers from the future warn that Japan will ultimately be destroyed if the monster Godzilla can't be neutralized. They reveal the circumstances of Godzilla's origin: a dinosaur who survived into the 20th Century (and who inadvertently saved a group of Japanese soldiers from American forces during World War II), only to be mutated by atomic testing on his island home. The future people have an audacious plan: to remove the pre-Godzilla dinosaur from his timestream and prevent his mutation. However, things take an unexpected turn, resulting in the creation of a new horror--the three- headed dragon King Ghidrah.
This is the first of the "modern" Godzilla movies to really capture the feel of the old Godzilla movies of the '60s. Not only that, it captures the look and feel of old American sci-fi movies of the same period. This is one movie that knew it isn't to be taken seriously as tongue if firmly planted in cheek throughout what with references such as when the time travelers and the three 20th century people they selected fly into Lagos to find the godzillasaur and two American naval men observe it and conclude that it's a UFO. One of them asks if they should report it and this is the exchange:
U.S. Ship Commander: What? That we're being invaded by little green men from outer space? Let's just keep it as our secret. You can tell your son about it when he's born, Major Spielberg.
Major Spielberg: Sir, yes Sir!
[Commander leaves]
Major Spielberg: I will Sir.
There are other cute little references such as when Godzilla is attacking Tokyo a reporter and cameraman go out to cover the event and the cameraman basically calls the reporter out on his craziness whereupon the reporter compares himself to Peter Arnett. If you're not aware, Arnett became internationally known for his work covering Operation Desert Storm for CNN in 1991.
As for the plot itself, it's fairly convoluted but has a consistency to it. Basically three time travelers and their android go back to 20th century Japan and warn them of Godzilla destroying the entire country and putting them to ruin. They then offer to go back in time to WWII where a pre-Godzilla dinosaur lived on Lagos island and saved a Japanese regiment there as they were attacked by US naval forces. The head of this regiment, a man named Shindo would become a major economic powerhouse in Japan. There's an interesting little subplot regarding him which I'll get into. Anyways, the time travelers select a reporter named Tarasawa (Kosuke Toyohara) who found out about Godzillasaur becoming Godzilla before they showed up, Dr. Mizaki (Katsuhiko Sasaki) who helped Tarasawa on his theory of Godzilla's origin and Miki Saegusa (Migumi Odaka) who is part of the Godzilla defense force to join them on the mission to fetch the dinosaur.
They go back to 1944 and witness the dinosaur saving the Japanese regiment and nearly dying at the hands of the Americans. They then transport the dinosaur way off into the sea where he won't be hit by the H-Bomb testing in 1954. Before going back to the present day though one of the time travelers named Emmy (Anna Nakagawa) leaves these little cute flying animals that they brought with him onto the island. When they get back to the present day it turns out those three little critters got hit with the H-Bomb testing and merged to become King Ghidorah. Without Godzilla to take on Ghidorah the Japanese are screwed and the time travelers reveal themselves to be malevolent. It turns out they're really from some kind of quasi terrorist organization and they want to see Japan give in to their demands so that Japan won't become a major economic force in the future. It turns out that Japan would become THE world superpower in the 23rd century and dominate the world. Either way, if the current day Japanese government won't give in, well then Ghidorah will just destroy the country for them so its a win-win.
This is where the controversy comes in, two of the three time travelers were Caucasian while the third (Emmy) was from future Japan. Over in the US the controversy was how the west was portrayed as bloodthirsty what with the "evil' WWII soldiers and their getting beaten to a pulp but the Godzillasaur and as oppressive in the form of the time travelers. This kind of brings up the East/West tensions at the time as the US was worried at how economically powerful Japan was becoming and there were a great many books and news reports proclaiming Japan to be the new Superpower. So, naturally a movie which sees the West look so evil and humbled played up on xenophobic fears while at the same time in Japan it would probably play up to their perceptions of the West. In my opinion though I think that's reading far too much into what is essentially a camp flick. I mean these guys were from an organization that wanted to see all nations equalized with no superpower. You'd be hard pressed to think a Japanese national from the 23rd century would want to see the destruction of their home so what other way of representing these guys is there?
Emmy sees her colleagues for what they are and escapes to tell Terasawa what's going on and they work with the Japanese military people to try and revive Godzilla. This doesn't go unnoticed by her colleagues who send out their android to first spy on her and then to take her away. There's a great car chase scene which reminded me of a low rent Terminator 2 as the M-11's car flips over and burns. He of course survives and then runs at super speed to catch up to Terasawa and Emmy by stopping his car and picking it up. Terasawa wants to fight M-11 but Emmy wisely gives up as Tersawa would have no chance of beating up the android.
I won't go too far into what else happens in the movie (aside from the Godzilla/Ghidorah fights) but here's where a MAJOR plot hole occurs. So the bad time travelers now have Emmy back in their custody and they know she's against their plan but somehow they allow her to freely be with the android and she re-program it to serve her! This makes no sense whatsoever. if I know someone is going to fight against me I don't let them have act like everything's all okay again and have access to something that would doom me.
Anywho, the revival of Godzilla in modern Japan goes awry as the plan was to hit Godzilla with modern nukes but then a nuclear sub also smashes into Godzilla and he absorbs that radiation as well creating a larger, more mutated version of Godzilla. The look of Godzilla in this movie is pretty terrifying especially from the neck up. He just looks like a mean SOB and really he's an unstoppable force. In the first fight with King Ghidorah Godzilla just about bites it which would in turn allow the evil time travelers to get their way but Emmy, Terasawa and M-11 blow up the computers controlling Ghidorah and Godzilla gets the upper hand thus ridding Japan of that menace. Of course, that leaves the rampaging Godzilla to destroy Japan which has everyone scrambling. Eventually they come up with the idea of going to the future and creating a Mech Ghidorah...The rest i'm sure you can fill in.
As I said this was a pretty tongue in cheek movie from the examples above but also in a lot of the SFX. They used a lot of green screen which made the movie look a bit cheap at times but it lends to the charm of a modernized '60s styled Godzilla movie. The plot as I said can be a bit out there but it keeps things going. In fact, one of the things I love most about this movie is that there is NO fluff. We dive right into the plot and never let up. As for the subplot with Shindo it also plays into something else in the Japanese national psyche. Shindo survives WWII with the help of the dinosaur whom he views as his savior. He has so much faith in this belief that it's his company's nuclear sub that creates the super mutated Godzilla. In the end when he calls the HQ as Godzilla is rampaging across the city he notes the irony of Godzilla saving him so that he could build Japan up as an economic power only to see Godzilla tearing it all down and indeed after facing Godzilla face to face he's nuclear blasted to death by his "savior". This is imagery for Japanese audiences as it touches upon the feeling that the country is proud of what it's accomplished but at the same time is insecure especially in the sense that the national infrastructure is run by nuclear energy which well, nearly destroyed the nation in WWII. Thus the death of Shindo is symbolism of the feeling that perhaps one day nuclear energy might destroy Japan. This is bolstered even more since the events of Fukushima a couple years ago.
So this movie despite being light and frothy DOES have some hidden meanings and messages but unlike the '60s Godzilla movies it's presented in a way that doesn't feel like the point is being drilled into you. The acting is uniformly good aside from the Americans speaking English but that's to be expected.
A great call back to the best of the original Godzilla movies I give this *** stars.
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