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 Since Godzilla has destroyed Japanese cities for years, the "G-War
headquarters" is established and they invent a "Black Hole Bomb to bombard
Godzilla." There is a problem with the experiment which causes the "ancient
giant bug Megaguirus" to be reborn and it fights Godzilla for energy. "Japan,
a state of despair, becomes a battlefield among Godzilla, Megaguirus and
human..." 2000, 105 minutes, Widescreen, VCD
Godzilla laces up his boots for his record-setting seventy-eighth movie and
distinguishes himself by pretty much standing around biting a big dragonfly.
Toho, having been at this for something like forty years, knows just how to
stretch such an obviously lackluster premise into a movie that is well in
excess of an hour and forty minutes. How do they do it? With the liberal use
of what I call "Godzilla Helper." Godzilla Helper is the chunks of plot that
is inserted in between the Godzilla battles to give the movie a more "feature
film" feel. By that, I mean, the movie lasts longer than twenty minutes. The
problem with Godzilla Helper is that it is used to stretch the good stuff, you
know the stuff you actually paid money to see. When I laid out my ten bucks
for a Video CD (who invented this format?) of Godzilla vs. Megaguirus, I didn't
pay to see stupid people flying around in their model planes while wearing
their blue jumpsuits and bragging that they belong to some group that sounds
like one of those cartoons that existed to sell cruddy action figures no kid
wanted anyway. In this case they are called the G Graspers. I suppose the G
stands for Godzilla, but from what I could tell they only thing they were
grasping at were straws. This is one of those organizations that the makers of
the recent spate of Godzilla movies seemed fond of creating. I seem to recall
in some of his earlier, 1990s movies that the Big G had to battle some pesky
people in model planes called the G Force. I don't know what happened to that
group (probably broke up since Godzilla kept showing up every two years or so
in spite of such gallant and legendary efforts like the armpit bullet), but I'm
pretty sure that the G Graspers don't claim them. After all, the G Graspers
have an even better plan then the shooting the big lizard in the arm pit and
hoping that he gives himself up once his anti-perspirant wears off. How are the
G
Graspers going to succeed where so many others have failed? They're going to
suck Godzilla into a miniature black hole!  In case some of you managed to miss out on Godzilla's early career as a rabble
rouser, the movie starts off with a little rehash, I mean, refresher course,
about Godzilla. Basically you get a few scenes of him terrorizing Japan at
various times and wrecking stuff and it all looks like new footage to me, but
they manage to leave out all the exciting stuff like his battles with Megalon,
Mechagodzilla, Ghidorah, and the rest. I think the point they were trying to
get across was that Godzilla showed up to party whenever he sensed there was a
really nice power source nearby, like a nuclear plant. After getting their
dojos leveled every other week, the Japanese decided to switch to sources of
energy that Godzilla didn't have a sweet tooth for. Bland tasting stuff like
solar, wind, lightbulb in potato, that sort of thing. Of course, the power mad
elite of Japan decide that they need a power source that actually could power a
city of millions so they do some kind of plasma energy thing. I think it was
supposed to be all hush hush and there are scenes late in the movie that make it
out like this revelation is a big shock to the Godzilla Helper guys and they
get all huffy about it, and I'm thinking, why don't you just lead Godzilla over
to China to their nuclear plants and have him roll over them like he was a tank
and they were students protesting a totalitarian government. Shoot, then
Godzilla would be some kind of liberator and be hailed as a hero, instead of
treated like a red-headed step child. The G Graspers decide that they need a
plan to get rid of Godzilla for good and this is where the whole "little black
hole" gag comes into play. I don't know how they thought that up or why they
think it's a good idea, but they seem to think that just because nothing, not
even light can escape a black hole that somehow it could likewise beat
Godzilla. I'm sure that a black hole is one mean hombre (I saw what it did to
Maximilian Schell in that Disney movie years ago), but I think if you went to
Vegas, you'd find that the smart money was on Godzilla to outclass some bizzaro
galactic phenomena.  The G Graspers recruit some kind of computer whiz that specializes in miniature
stuff and we now he's a typical computer geek because he wears a baseball cap
on his head backwards and insists on leaving his button up shirt unbuttoned
with a t-shirt underneath, even after deciding to sell out and work for the
Man. This guy also has one of those long shaggy hair cuts that just screams
"practiced disarray." He and the woman leader of the G Graspers have a real
low-level bickering deal going on, but we all know that he's probably sweet on
her. We all also know that we don't really care either. Somehow they get a
cute little bitty black hole invented in about a week and they go out to some
uninhabitated spot to test the thing out. It's uninhabited except for the
farmer trying to get to his field and the little kid trying to go to school
with his insect collection. They test this gizmo out and it manages to blow up
some old abandoned building. I'm not sure what the point of that test was. If
they need buildings all blowed up they can just have Godzilla go and do that.
They don't actually have to go and invent a contraption that does that. The
other thing this test accomplished was to open up a doorway to another
dimension. At least it did something along those lines. Whatever the exact
lingo is (I think most of us might know it as a "time-space distortion," right
Lt. Data?) it's one of those deals where the air is all messed up and wavy and
a strange creature flies out of it. This is the Mega-something or other. It's
a really big dragonfly and it flies around and manages to leave an egg nearby.
It's one of those dang monster eggs that seem to infest Japan. You know it's
bad news because it's silver and has strange bumps on it. The other thing that
tips you off that maybe you should just microwave the thing and be done with it
is that it's the size of a watermelon. So the little kid (would I be out of
line if I assumed his name was Kenny?) takes it home with him. He moves to
Tokyo and takes the egg with him, but the stupid thing starts to leak, so he
does what any kid that has seen those giant alligator movies does and dumps the
thing down into the sewer. 
While all this high-level foreshadowing was going on in Tokyo, the G Graspers
have managed to locate Godzilla out somewhere in the ocean (is that really so
hard to do?). Big G has been busy taking out the trash, because when then the
Graspers get there, they find the remains of that big dragonfly which Godzilla
apparently just dominated so badly they didn't even bother to televise this
one. I'm thinking that that was one wuss interdimensional monster to not even
get any face time before doing the job to Godzilla, but back in the sewer, the
egg is hatching and all these little dragonflies come out and fly off to this
island where they find Godzilla. Godzilla has been lured to the island by the
G Graspers in an effort to fire the black hole gun (a weapon that sounds only
slightly better than the much-maligned armpit gun) at his green butt and send
him off to the Phantom Zone or where ever. The only problem is that now all
these little dragonflies are attacking Godzilla and sucking power from him.
This messes up the targeting system on the gun, but once Godzilla starts taking
care of business with his famous Stankbreath, the dragonflies leave and the G
Graspers fire the gun at Godzilla. There's a lot of explosions and stuff gets
leveled and everyone holds their breath and waits for Godzilla to inevitably
utter his trademark roar and bust up out of the rubble. It turns out that the
dudes aiming this gun didn't nail him straight on, so the whole thing failed.
I would think that of all the objects on the planet that you could aim
something at and hit would be a fifty foot high dinosaur on a small deserted
island, but I'm sure it's pretty nerve wracking being in that situation even if
you are a G Grasper and it is your job to battle Godzilla. The gun takes an
hour to recharge (get a better battery charger next time) so they don't get
another shot at Godzilla before he leaves or the G Graspers break for lunch or
whatever. The little dragonflies that have sucked up Godzilla's power have
located the carcass of the adult dragonfly and are injecting it with all this
magic Godzilla juice. It acts pretty much like monster creatine because this
thing gets all alive and fierce and the next thing you know, some dude in a
white lab coat is explaining to the G Graspers and us that it is Megaguirus and
it's really mean. How do they always know the names of the monsters in these
movies? Is there some kind of government list for naming them like they have
with hurricanes and scandals? Megaguirus flies around Tokyo causing problems
with its supersonic screech or wing flapping. It also flies into buildings
pell-mell causing the requisite damage to the models that the Toho peons spent
all month building. Godzilla shows up around this time, either smelling a
title match or some plasma energy or both and girds himself for the epic
showdown sure to ensue. I don't even think that Godzilla bothered taking the warm-ups off for this one.
It had to be one of the shortest and weakest of his many fights (and really,
would you expect anything else when he was fighting a dragonfly? What's next?
Headlice? Scabies?). Basically Godzilla stands around and watches this thing
fly around and beat its wings and try to look all tough with its red eyes and
pincers. It didn't look like Big G even broke a sweat and he was relegated to
doing one ridiculous looking frogsplash on Megaguirus. The other moments of
offense in this clash involved Godzilla standing around while Megaguirus
thumped him on the head a few times. Mega so and so also pinched him a few
times for good measure. He ends up
getting a
pincher sawed off for his troubles. Then Megaguirus came at Godzilla and tried
to throw his rear end mounted stinger down his throat. Godzilla just bit it
off! Classic! I was cringing for that poor dumb dragonfly when that went
down. Godzilla finished him off real fast after that and then the G Graspers
tried to use their stupid gun on him again. This time they hit him and he
disappeared, but being the hard core Godzilla fan that I am I watched this
movie until the credits were over. After the credits ended there is a sequence
where the little kid with the bug collection is at school and everything starts
shaking and then you hear the tell-tale roar of Godzilla. Godzilla is coming
back! I can't believe the black hole gun failed! Late last year Toho released
another new Godzilla flick, this time with Mothra, King Ghidorah
, and even
Baragon
! Sounds like he's got a little more on his plate that this gnat he
battled here. There really isn't anything to recommend about this film. You
watch these to see monsters get it on and that means you need monster fights
and good monsters. You get neither here. The dragonfly reeked of something
that would have been merely a supporting monster in one of the old movies.
Somebody that just kind of hung out on Monster Island with Manda and the big
spider to fill out the roster. It sure isn't anything to build a whole movie
around. They need to get away from all this big government stuff, too. It's
dull, repetitive and adds to the whole fake feeling of things (G Graspers?
Black hole guns? This is strictly the province of crazy scientists and nosy
kids! Lets return the saving of the planet back into the hands of regular
folks, not faceless and interchangeable bureaucrats.). Even the kid in this
movie didn't get to do much more than dump the egg in the sewer. What kind of
Godzilla kid is that? He needs to be outside cheering on the monsters, rooting
for Godzilla or Mothra or whomever is playing the good guy that week. Instead
the
kid just pretty much disappears half way through things. A pointless and
forgettable entry in a series full of pointless and forgettable entries. Bring
back Gigan already!
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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