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 The question posed is: Can Godzilla save Japan from intergalactic evil? It's a
"supernatural, super-powered Godzilla adventure for the '90s." The Japanese
have implanted a "telepathic amplifier" in Godzilla's brain to control him.
Faraway, in outer space, the "mutant SpaceGodzilla turns its evil eyes toward
Earth planning to destroy Godzilla and conquer the planet for its own."
Godzilla is the only hope! 1994, 108 minutes, Widescreen, DVD
This is another in the new series of Godzilla movies that Toho began making in
the 1990s. These were supposed to be bigger and better, with cutting edge
special effects, souped up monsters, and exciting plots. These flicks were
supposed to tear a Godzilla-sized hole in your ass and I guess this one did,
after a fashion. Going into this one, I have to admit that I was pretty jacked
up about it all. I mean, here you had the Big G battling his most heinous and
unexpected foe: SpaceGodzilla. An evil spawn of a creature if there ever was
one, SpaceGodzilla was born in one of two improbable ways (for some reason the
movie put forth two competing theories). Either Godzilla's DNA got shipped off
to the far, far, evil and strange reaches of deep space by his titanic, most
epic battle of 1989 against Biollante or Mothra carried it into space after her
titanic most epic battle of 1992 against Godzilla. However G's DNA got out
there, it combined with a bunch of bizarre crystals, fell into and out of a
black hole and out popped a SpaceGodzilla (just like the recipe on the back of
the box!). So SpaceGodzilla is sort of embedded in a bunch of these crystals
and hurtling toward Earth. I don't have any good reason why he would be
hurtling toward Earth from the far, far, evil and strange reaches of deep space
of all places, but he is anyway. Along the way, Earth gets a report of some disaster aboard an American space
station. The Japanese officials say that the Americans have no explanation for
this and so they (the Japanese) can only speculate that it was caused by a
giant monster. At first, that sounded a wee bit beyond speculation, but the
Japanese do have an extensive history with giant monsters (hell, they got a
whole freakin' island full of them - remember Monster Island?), so I figured
they would know the signs of an impending giant monster attack better than
anyone. As SpaceG is hauling his crystal butt to Earth for a showdown with his
DNA donor, we go to a mysterious island (probably not Monster Island, only two
monsters here) where some scientists are working on some ridiculous plan to
control Godzilla. Known as Project T (short for Telepathy - catchy aint it?),
they are going to implant some device on Godzilla and use it to order him
around with their thoughts. Of course, there are doubting Thomases like myself
who think that Godzilla might be a prima donna and not take kindly to that
idea. Naturally, these people have a plan that is just as retarded. See,
there's this guy, whose brother was wasted by G back in a prior movie, so he's
got an ax to grind and has come up with the ultimate revenge scheme to do away
with the greatest giant lizard monster to ever stomp the far east. He is going
to shot Godzilla with a special bullet full of anticoagulant and he will hit
Godzilla in his most vulnerable spot - the armpit! If I was teaming up with
this guy and he told me that was the plan, I'd tell him to send me postcard and
let me know how it all worked out.  As you can see, Godzilla's biggest challenge is to try to stay in character
and not laugh when these idiotic plans are brought to bear. Now that you know
about the big Project Armpit, you're probably saying, well, sure this movie is
loaded with high drama, but isn't there some type of comic relief to take the
edge off of all this seriousness? I've got two words for ya: Godzilla, Jr. He's
the most precious little man you've ever seen. Whenever baby G is on screen
this little fairy music plays that makes you taste that acidic stuff that runs
up from your stomach to your throat right before you blow chunks all over your
living room in situations like this. Even better, when he growls, it sounds
like someone twisting a cat. The best part though is that this creature is so
god-awful in the special effects department that you're left thinking, "man,
that doesn't look like a guy in a rubber suit at all, how fake!" Thankfully
SpaceGodzilla gets his biggest pop of the movie when he captures that sickening
little turd in a bunch of his crystals. Of course, that provokes Daddy Zilla to
get a little rough, but heck, SpaceGodzilla didn't travel from the evil reaches
of deep space for tea and crumpents. It should be noted at this point that throughout the movie, we are subjected
to the human characters and all of their pathetic antics. This involves Yuki
(he's in charge of Project Armpit) and a couple of other guys who work for a
special military group devoted to harassing Godzilla. Yuki looks dirty and has
one of those too cool to care attitudes (as opposed to my "too bored to care
about your stupid-ass movie" attitude) that all fighter pilots and armpit
shooters seem to have. A great moment occurs when he's on the launchpad about
to board the Moguera, which apparently is some kind of secret weapon robot that
is supposed to battle Godzilla, and this woman that I guess has some kind of
thing for him is there seeing him off. Well, she gets that "I'm worried that my
stud-pilot-boyfriend can't get the job done against both Godzillas and he's
going to get killed" kind of look and they exchange meaningful glances. Then
Yuki pulls out a lighter, flips it to her and tells her to get it refilled. Too
sweeeet! Then they take off in Moguera and think I started to doze off at this
point because I don't even remember what Moguera did in the final battle, but
I'm sure they gave a good accounting of themselves. Godzilla and SpaceGodzilla battled for the last several minutes of the film.
It was one of those back and forth affairs where Godzilla tried to use his
chronic halitosis on SpaceGodzilla and SpaceGodzilla deflected it because of
his superpowerful crystal deflectors. They rolled around awhile and somehow the
giant crystals on SpaceGodzilla's back got all busted open. I was really beyond
caring at this point. This really didn't have the gleefulness that the classic
Godzilla battles had when he fought monsters like the three-headed Ghidrah and
took great delight in ripping off heads and stomping them into the ground. This
one was just kind of a lumbering fight with both monsters going through the
motions and showing little, if any personality. You watch these movies for the
fights. Those are the "money shots" in these flicks. If they don't deliver,
you're left watching a movie about some idiot trying to shoot a big dinosaur in
the armpit. There was also some incomprehensible moments when Mothra and the
two tiny fairy twins that travel with her appeared. They gave advice to some
telepath about this or that, but I never did figure out what in tarnation that
had to do with Godzilla's movie. Mothra only appeared in regular moth-sized
form and never got embroiled in the various donnybrooks that transpired once
everything thirty minutes or so. A Godzilla/SpaceGodzilla movie could've been a
decent entry in this series, but they bogged it down with these human plotlines
that made no sense (the whole Moguera/Project T/Armpit bullet stuff just can't
reek enough). At 108 minutes this "modern" Godzilla film runs a good 20 minutes
longer than the ones made 35 years ago. Oh and when I say "a good" 20 minutes,
that's purely a figure of speech. On the upside, this one did not star Matthew
Broderick.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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