Kaiju Friday: Godzilla vs Biollante (1989)

Godzilla vs Biollante (1989)


Plot Summary

Following the events of Godzilla 1985, scientists collect genetic material from the mutated dinosaur Godzilla's scales. A Middle Eastern country wants the samples for their own purposes, but meanwhile, a lonely scientist combines Godzilla's genetic code with those of a rose and his own deceased daughter. The result is Biollante, an eerie plant of titanic proportions. To make matters worse, a psychic woman detects Godzilla stirring from his volcanic prison. The military sends the flying Super-X2 to stop the beast from thrashing Japan, but eventually Godzilla engages the rapidly mutating Biollante in a fight to the death.

That's a pretty succinct summary of what was a rather unwieldy Godzilla movie. The movie was borne out of a contest for the next Godzilla script and you can tell there was some crazy fan fic going on though Toho made extensive changes to it. There are just way too many things going on here which you would think could make it somewhat interesting but it comes off very flat and boring. There's the scientist Shiragami (Koji Takahashi) who's an expert on tinkering with genetic cells and such. His daughter is killed in a terrorist/corporate espionage type attack by a hitman working for the fictional Saradia Corporation. They basically want to take a new advance by Shirgami and other scientists using Godzilla's cells which would create an anti nuclear bacteria basically rendering the effects of nuclear attacks to nil.

On top of that you have this lady who happens to know the professor and her 17 year old friend who just so happens to be a telepath. The chain goes further as the lady Asuka (Yoshiko Tanaka) is dating a military/science guy named Kirishima (Kunihiko Mitamaura) who seems to have a friendship with Sho Kuroki (Masanobu Takashima) who's a military guy who'll be involved in taking down Godzilla.

WHEW! As you can see there's just too much crap going on and everybody is interconnected in a way that makes the human element somewhat convoluted and boring. I will say this, the mysterious hitman throughout the film is pretty interesting to watch so at least it has that going for it.

As for Godzilla? Well it turns out the volcano from the last film didn't finish him off and he's out on the rampage. Dr. Shirgami's experiment of taking the Godzilla cells to make the anti nuclear bacteria (which would kill Godzilla BTW) and combining it with a rosebush to save his daughter. Yes, let me backtrack, somehow in his daughter's death her spirit was transposed to a rosebush which Shirgami has kept alive for 5 years but when a tremor resulting from Godzilla's activity breaks the holding container with the rosebush he decides to use Godzilla's cells and combine it with the rosebush to create an immortal plant and allow his daughter to live on. Of course, all this backfires as it creates Biollante, a dangerous and killer mutated rosebush.

You got all that? it would be all too silly if it wasn't played up to be so serious. Anywho, Godzilla is on the attack and there's some good military/Godzilla action including the military upgrading the Super X weapon from the previous film with the new Super X-2 which is an unmanned vehicle with diamond mirrors which would reflect Godzilla's radioactive breath back to him 100 fold. The Super X-2 was also submersible and could attack from underwater. So that was a pretty cool segment. The first battle between Biollante and Godzilla is not bad though pretty violent and gory for a Godzilla movie as green acidic spray is used against Godzilla and Godzilla shoots at Biollante causing green goo to seep out. It's pretty gruesome to be honest with you. The fight doesn't take long and even the final fight between the two with an even more mutated, more animalistic version of Biollante was kept short and to the point.

All in all this wasn't the greatest Godzilla movie and unsurprisingly this was a bomb in the Japanese box office. Toho decided that the reason for this was Biollante was an unknown Kaiju and so the next few films would see modern takes on classic Godzilla villains. I think the real reason why this tanked was that the human story was overcomplicated, felt like it dragged on and the Godzilla battles were too short. It didn't help that the ending got all preachy and heavy handed.

I give this * 3/4th stars mainly due to the hitman subplot and the Godzilla action as muted as it was.