MonsterHunter

When you have a successful film franchise and you’ve already churned out about fifty sequels, you want to keep it going, but you need to do something to make it seem new and exciting. I can’t believe people ever tire of seeing Godzilla laying the smack down on some lackluster monster every other year, but somebody decided the series needed a kick in the green, scaly tail because it’s time for the “all star team-up” movie.

You may recall such efforts from Universal in the 1940s when they had there various monsters meet one another in such films as House of Dracula and House of Frankenstein. Are they as good as the earlier, individual efforts? Of course not. Are they fun? Sure, I like to see the Wolf Man try and take a bite out of the Frankenstein Monster’s rear as well as anyone. Well, then it would seem to be a bang up idea to team up all the monsters that Toho created in their various films. “Seems” would be the operative word, as the execution of such a potentially entertaining notion is sorely lacking. The monsters turn in their usual performances, but we are saddled with an idiotic plot involving aliens from another planet trying to take over earth and using the monsters to somehow accomplish this.

I know what you’re thinking. “Oh, it’s the old “alien invaders taking over monsters” gimmick again. Yes, we’ve seen it before in this very film series and it always seems to be a bit strained in the logic department. If these aliens were such smarty-pants nerds, couldn’t they figure out a way to take over our world without having to rely on big, smelly, dumb monsters? You would also think that word would get out in the far reaches of space that earth is more trouble than it’s worth, but most aliens are slow learners, I guess.

As is usually the case, the aliens disguise their real nature. We’ve previously seen invading space cockroaches do this in Godilla vs. Gigan. this time we are being invaded by a bunch of living metal. Obviously since they are living metal they can only survive at really high temperatures and once they get really cold they turn into this ugly sludge that creeps across the floor and under and into rocks. It kind of makes you wonder why they’re trying to take over Earth instead of someplace like Mercury.

The movie starts in the “far future” that is 1999. As you may be aware (since we were all there) 1999 was a year that saw man living on a really pretty and fancy moon base and flying around in this really cool space jet called the X-31 or whatever. They told me the name of this plane constantly, but I couldn’t remember what it was except that it had a letter and some numbers in it, like it was this newfangled carpet cleaner available from an 800 number for $19.95.

If you want to add some character to your otherwise colorless movie, you should at least name the spaceship something catchy like the Millennium Falcon or the Spruce Goose. At least the back of the video box has a handy little chart with a little picture and name of the monster to help you newbies keep track of who’s who. But even that’s not always clear since the giant spider is called Kumonga on the box, but is referred to as Spigas in the actual movie. And if you’re hoping for a lot of Spigas face time here, you may as well just skip on over to Son of Godzilla.

Now in addition to this really fancy moon base that kept the model makers at Toho working overtime, the other really awesome thing about the future is that all the monsters on Earth have been herded onto a single island called Monsterland. It’s a kind of nature preserve where the monsters are free to be themselves and roam within set parameters around the island. We are forced to sit through the run down of how monsters like Godzilla, Mothra and Rodan can do whatever they want, but each is kept on the island through some kind of future technology. Haven’t these people ever heard of a dog pen? Or a kennel? Just board those dang monsters somewhere!

All of this is done under the auspices of the United Nations Monster Council or something, providing further proof that the U.N. is going to make us all wear barcodes on our foreheads, worship a non-Christian God, and give all our possessions to Third World countries. First they’ll take our monsters, then they’ll take our guns. As with most projects the U.N. sticks it’s one world government nose into, this gets fudged up.

Monsterland is controlled through a command center deep under the ground of Monsterland. There’s some problems when the do-dads that limit the monsters’ movements go off-line, then someone notices gas seeping in under the door to the control center and the next thing you know someone is opening the door, causing the whole place to fill with gas. Some of the workers seem to be under the control of some outside force because they talk in a monotone, have no facial expression, and set the monsters loose. One of these weak-willed individuals is the girlfriend of one of the guys piloting the ZX-2 or PT-109 or whatever his ship is called. This relationship really has no bearing on the movie, but they seemed to try and make a big deal out of it, so I thought I’d mention it, just to kind of give the flavor of how long this ninety minutes seemed.

The pointy-heads at the U.N. are concerned that their plans for world domination, I mean for world peace, are compromised by the likes of Godzilla stomping around various locales with his pals, so they tell the space jet’s crew to come back to Earth and straighten things out. I have no idea why this space jet has anything to do with this movie. It didn’t have any special abilities and certainly couldn’t fight the monsters, yet they act like this is their big ace-in-the-hole.

Around this time, we are treated to a montage of monster mayhem as the different monsters take vacations to different parts of the world and trash the place like a junior high chorus at a Holiday Inn Express. People are starting to think that maybe there’s some reason why some of the employees of Monsterland are acting like they are extras from a seedpod movie and why the monsters have gotten so crabby all of a sudden.

The corpse of a deceased Monsterland employee is examined and something is pulled out of his neck. Checking it out, one guy says something like “that’s definitely not a hearing aid.” Yeah, because it would be kind of stupid to insert a hearing aid into your neck. You know, since you don’t hear with your neck and all. It turns out that it’s some type of transistor made out of a strange metal that has been used to control this guy’s actions. Everyone stands around going “oh, so maybe somebody got Godzilla to sit still long enough to implant one in his neck.” Of course that would just be silly, and they actually find out that the monsters are being controlled by waves transmitted by gizmos that are spread out around the earth, hidden in things like rocks and coconuts.

Since we now know how the monsters are being controlled, we can change things up a little to control them ourselves. Don’t ask me how, it just sort of happened about 65% of the way through the movie. With the monsters under our control, they are sent to the secret base to beat some alien invader ass! This monster attack is highlighted by the play-by-play that this Japanese version of Marv Albert does. He’s out there in the field yakking about which monster is going to show up first and who’s going to attack and I’m thinking that you just know this is something that Arthur Kent would try and show up at, with his leather jacket and perfect hair, in an effort to rekindle the whole Scud Stud gimmick.

Somehow Godzilla finds the secret base and destroys it by kicking in the door or something and all looks like it’s lost for those pesky aliens, but then they summon their secret weapon. It’s a backup monster from space. Just a deep space jock known to his monster buddies as… King Ghidorah!

The final fight between King Ghidorah and the Earth monsters is really as pathetic a monster battle as you’re likely to see. Ghidorah just gets dominated by all the other monsters and has almost no offense at all. Almost. Guess who the only monster is that Ghidorah treats like a red-headed step-child? Anguirus!

You knew that was coming didn’t you? That spiny loser is back again to embarrass himself, his family, and his fellow monsters with his completely inept handling of Ghidorah. Somehow Ghidorah ends up lifting off into the air with Anguirus and then drops him flat on his back from high up in the sky. To add insult to injury, Ghidorah then flies back down and stomps on the stunned Anguirus who is lying on his back like a prom queen after two wine coolers. The other monsters take over on offense and defeat Ghidorah and Anguirus even gets back into it and chomps one of Ghidorah’s three necks, but everybody knows the real deal on Anguirus and he didn’t fool anyone, not even that awful looking Godzilla wannabe Gorosaurus.

The whole movie was premised on lots of monster attacks and action and delivered virtually none of it. First of all the monsters never really had any fights. They trampled cities and secret bases, but you can see that in any other Godzilla flick. Their final battle with Ghidorah was so one-sided you almost had to root for Ghidorah instead of the hundred other monsters that were getting their cheap shots in. The time not spent on the monsters that was spent with these bland, boring humans and their cheap looking space jet was a total waste and contributed nothing to the film except to its absurd length.

Destroy All Monsters needed more monster screen time, more balanced battles that leave the outcome in doubt, and should’ve given some of the lesser known monsters like Manda and Spigas their moments. Except Anguirus, he actually needs less screen time.

© 2008 MonsterHunter