Mothra

Uhhmm...where do I start here...

Ah, Mothra. The film so good that every other appearance of Mothra is basically just a remake of this film (or Mothra vs. Godzilla). Well, I’ll get to that latter one in a few weeks, but sarcasm aside (I really just wish Mothra had a little more variation in basic plotlines), I have to say… this movie really is good enough to warrant the enshrined treatment that it gets!

I attribute a lot of that to Sen-chan. Sen-chan is the hero Japan deserves (if not, perhaps, the one it needs right now). My new dream for the ultimate Godzilla spin-off is a buddy-cop movie between Sen-chan and Final Wars’ Captain Gordon… just going around and saving whatever needs to be saved, kaiju-optional. I'd watch the heck out of that. It is a failure of both time and space that a matchup of both characters in their prime isn't possible.

I’ll be honest; a couple of weeks ago, Gojira didn’t do much for me. I was tired, the mood wasn’t there… it’s not that I don’t recognize the absolute quality of the film overall, but this particular viewing just left me cold. (That’s one of the reasons I didn’t review it… along with ‘what the heck could I possibly say about or add to the dialogue on an absolute classic of the genre?!’). And last week, Rodan was… just okay. The destruction scenes and final act were pretty great, but the pacing felt a little dull, the characters a little shallow, and the incessant Meganula chirps… well, I had low expectations. But Mothra blew them all away (no hurricane-wind pun intended!), redefining my expectations for this long-overdue Showa rewatch. The film was well-paced, full of engaging characters, interesting setpieces, numerous tones and a variety of situations, colorful, and funny, too.

"Awww, sheesh- he's just gonna spend this one gushing, isn't he?"

It’s strange, too- because Nelson is such an over-the-top bad guy, and Sen-chan kinda cartoonish in his antics, that it seems like this should be the same slog that King Kong Escapes (not to be reviewed herein) was; a live-action cartoon that just overdoes it. But somehow, Mothra manages to find a balance that the later film never did, using its OTT elements to inject a little fun into the proceedings- with restraint.

Having watched the series out of order, with Millenium preceding Showa, it was good to see Chujo again (who will later appears in Tokyo S.O.S.)- but frankly, he wasn’t that interesting a character (the same of which could be said for Michi, who I would have liked to see more of, as she was a good double-act with Sen-chan). Or perhaps they were decent characters, and were simply overshadowed by the larger-than-life personalities surrounding them. Hard to say.
 

Sen-chan was, if you couldn’t already tell, my favorite character. Bumbling but brave, expressive, funny, clever (a great tactic to retreat up a stairwell then double-back, forcing all of his opponents into single file), this ‘snapping turtle’ absolutely stole the show. He is probably going to end up in the top 10 favorite kaiju film characters for me- just head-and-shoulders above the best.
 

Nelson was equally entertaining as an oh-so-sinister figure, whose smarmy charm and evil grimaces were at the same time cartoony and refreshing. And his very ‘Telltale Heart’ fate, being driven mad by his crimes, was a unique (if dark!) villain comeuppance. (Not as spectacular as his originally, planned, partially-shot comeuppance, apparently- kidnapping the boy, being chased by the heroes up a mountain, and then being blown by Mothra's wings into a volcanic crevice! Wow! That could have been a much cooler climax than we got...)
 

The Shobijin make their first appearance here, and they are… a bit different than normal. They communicate by song, which was dropped in subsequent appearances, and have ‘no use’ for spoken language generally, due to their telepathy. I do love the idea that- based on what we’ve seen in future films- they basically decide to go along with the ‘Secret Fairy’ show (was that supposed to be ‘sacred fairy’ and got mistranslated? They don’t seem that ‘secret’…), and basically spent every night summoning Mothra for help right in front of everybody, including Nelson, who had no clue that their song had a non-entertainment purpose. It makes them canny and clever, and gives a nice bit of personality to actresses who got very little screentime in the film.
 

Though I will say that whenever they do appear on miniature sets, those sets are fantastically constructed and extremely realistic. The miniaturization effects in general are pretty great (with only some fringing/outlines on the bluescreen work to serve as somewhat of a low point). And the use of quick inter-cutting (with some sub-par dolls, admittedly), and even an on-camera switch to what appears to be a hand-animated double of the actress, to portray Nelson picking the Shobijin up, was jaw-dropping. It was really effectively-realized, using every trick in the book.
 

In fact, the effects throughout this are top-notch. The ship in the storm, the island shots and water scaling, the Mothra egg above the gathered worshipers in split-screen… and most especially, the use of bluescreen to put human characters in with miniatures (like the atomic heat rays). This really is an effects tour-de-force, and almost everything works beautifully. The bluescreening doesn’t quite hold up to modern eyes, and a few of the models (especially the cars) in New Kirk City were a little off (an effect of the budget being stretched when Columbia studios demanded this alternate climax after much of the budget had been used up), but by far and large, this has some of the best effects I’ve seen in a Showa-era film, particularly astounding for its era. The montage-esque shot, with the flying carriage going overhead and Mothra swimming beneath, was both striking and trippily-60s; a real standout effect, like the picking-up scene earlier.
 

(On the downside, Toho throughout the ages really have to work on their ‘wrinkly sky’ problem. Just smooth out the blue drop-cloth, guys! This problem persists as late as Godzilla vs. Hedorah, perhaps beyond; but the first noticeable instance was here…)
 

The most important effect for the story, of course, was Mothra. A surprisingly passive and little-glimpsed element in the story, Mothra doesn’t show up until well through the movie, spends most of the larval form getting firebombed, and as Imago, has only a few minutes of wandering around aimlessly and searching… but thankfully, the story is engaging enough that it works. Both suits/props look good- in fact, the modern versions have remained largely unchanged from this iconic look. The Mothra portrayed here is a little less gentle (in a modern film, I suspect Mothra would be the one saving the baby on the bridge, not Sen-Chan), and a little dumber; the Shobijin talk about her as more of an animal led by instinct that an intelligent, communicative presence. (One can also assume that her silk is insulated/contains asbestos, as she seemed unscathed by the little barbecue that the military had planned for her…)
 

The fictional nation of Rolisica (a Russia-America hybrid that seemed to my perhaps-biased eyes to lean a lot more on the American side) and its New Kirk City were an interesting patchwork, with the odd Japanese-English language hybrid (which was not subtitled in Japanese for a surprising number of occurrences, at least on the print I saw) that can often be found in this era. Not a lot to say about them- just a clever plot device to avoid offending anybody while still making a pointed commentary. More recent films *ahemShinGodzillaahem* seem to have abandoned such pretense at subtlety or inoffensiveness. Though honestly, it’s not like anybody was ever beyond fooled as to the intent. In that way, there’s been little change from 1961 to 2016; Japan still seems to see the Western powers (or at least the USA) as a sort of nuclear bully, making unilateral decisions and bossing everyone else around as if they had an entitlement to authority in every nation they come across.
 

…Okay, that may be fair.
 

Despite the slight shabbiness of the final models compared with the rest of the film, and the somewhat-anticlimax of the climax (especially compared to the originally proposed ending), we do get a surprisingly faith-based finale, with the characters openly professing belief in God; that was a bit of a (pleasant) surprise (and unusual for the genre, which tends to be far more mystical than religious).
 

The music in this one didn’t jump out at me as much as the pseudo-themes of Rodan did, but that was perhaps in part because of how familiar a number of the pieces were, so well-known from subsequent films that they went subliminally-undetected. The themes used for Mothra continue to be used (I would assume, should we ever get another Japanese Mothra appearance) to this day, and always complement the action nicely. I particularly like the thin, jingly version of the Mothra theme that the Shobijin are ‘speaking’ with when they’re first encountered. Overall, it’s unsurprising that these excellent compositions became Mothra standards, perpetually tied to the iconic character that they helped to launch.
 

Oh, a total side note… who was that deep-voiced guy speaking at the end? That wasn’t supposed to be Mothra, was it? Maybe it was just one of the many natives of the Island that the post-Showa era didn’t see fit to retain. I kind of like a native population (even if it is kind of just a Kong rip-off) rather than the more modern portrayals of the twin (or occasionally triplet) fairies and Mothra living all alone on their jungle island. It’s nice for there to be a population for Mothra to be patron of.

Overall, I enjoyed Mothra a TON, and unless a number of other movies strike me differently than they did in years past, I think it’s safe to say that this will be in my Showa top 5.

Rodan

...pretty sure that's not true though.

Well, Rodan was… interesting. A mystery-horror show that was… surprisingly brutal, actually; then a disaster pic that really feels like it’s riffing on Gamera (except for the fact that Gamera hadn’t been invented yet), and a kind-of tragic ending.

My wife hated it; I will admit that the pacing for the bug-chase and some of the fight-scenes were a little… glacial. The aerial jet-fighter scenes were very ambitious, and a lot of fun, and the city destruction was tremendous (although, was Rodan blowing really hard? Since when does he have Superman-style super-breath?), and most of the high-speed stuff (such as the flipped jeep, which truly looked like a brutal car crash) was fantastically done. The ending bombing, by contrast, was an effects scene that went on FAR too long, and by the end, I was in stitches over how they kept using the same single explosion sound effect over and over for every explosion. It came off like a parody in which the sheer repetition becomes the joke.

The plot’s a little thin, so there’s not a lot to say on characters; there’s some nice gender-equality in that no, it’s not just the women that are called upon to scream and faint at the sight of a kaiju… people went into fugues and traumas and faints a lot more easily in the 50s, apparently. Like, I get that seeing a Rodan hatch would be kind of scary, but utterly destroying your mind? Well, like I said, at least they didn’t just single out the girls for that kind of treatment in this era, so that’s something. 

I found the geologist to be the most interesting character; the scientist trying to explain Rodan’s origins was no Dr. Yamane. And I had to laugh when the picture of the pteranodon they pulled out matched the body-position, pose, and even size of the photograph exactly. Ah, 50s filmmaking- don’t ever change.

The messages in this film were light; the anti A-bomb statement seemed almost perfunctory, tacked on… while 

the global warming conversation was just… there. Discussed jokingly and in such an offhand manner that it almost felt like it wasn’t supposed to be a message at all. Just out to raise awareness more than tell the audience what to think, I guess; it was just a strange way to start the movie.

In the end, I never cared much about the protagonists, had to wait half the film to get to Rodan, was irritated by the repetitive screeching of the Meganula… but I don’t hate the film. The spectacles are superb, the ending volcanic scenes are especially fantastic (this is perhaps the best miniature lava I’ve ever seen; far more realistic in its behavior than the more visually-creative efforts of even films like Temple of Doom and Revenge of the Sith; it had enough verisimilitude that if not for the signature focal depth of miniature photography, I would have assumed it was actual volcanic footage), and the death of the Rodans generates some serious pathos despite the clumsiness of the film to that point. Rodan isn’t a great film… but it’s not too bad. (My wife would disagree).

(Though I will say, in the last 3 months or so since I wrote this, I have come to think of it as one of the biggest snooze-fests of the Showa era, so… maybe I was being a little over-generous here? Considering the brevity of the review, and the slothful pacing of the first half, that would seem to be the case…)

 

'The movie wasn't THAT bad!"
"Go away...forever please."

One other note; the music is a very strange proto-version of many of the other Toho stock, as if this film was a musical test-bed. Rodan’s hatching has a clear Heisei-era Godzilla sting, while the ending music is so close to what would come to be associated with sad/pathos moments for Mothra that it’s uncanny; I feel as if Ifukube was refining his work for use in future films here. And while the music in a lot of other moments (particularly the opening credits) sounds sub-par to me, these little moments of eerie similarity give the soundtrack a very fun, scavenger-hunt feel for me.

All-told, Rodan was nothing to write home about; the kaiju parts are fairly solid, but the human interest story lacks... well, interest... and too many of the sequences drag. In many ways, it is the inverse of Godzilla Raids Again, but both are emblematic of the footing that Toho has yet to find for the kaiju films. Perhaps next week, however, they'll manage to strike that balance at last, and capture lightning in a bottle again, for the first time since the original Gojira...

Godzilla Raids Again (And an Introduction)

Godzilla Raids Again...like he ever stops.

Before diving into Godzilla Raids Again, a little background about why I’m reviewing kaiju movies.

 

I grew up with the Godzilla films- an interest sparked, I believe, from my neighbors and closest friends in Washington, the Dupeas- sparked in turn, I believe by some of the G-films on MST3K. The origins are far enough past to be lost in hazy memory, but I do recall checking out a mix of Showa and Heisei G-films throughout my childhood. I even remember the few the library didn’t have (especially Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II and Godzilla Raids Again) that were therefore my holy grails and last to see. I watched US versions with dubs, owned a number of them on VHS, and have even been fortunate enough to see Godzilla 2000, Godzilla (2014), and Shin Godzilla in theaters.

 

As for why now? Well, my franchises are failing me. Star Trek, Star Wars, Doctor Who- most of the properties I’ve spent an unhealthy amount of time devoting my entire life to are just… moving to a place that I can’t follow. They aren’t really the properties I love anymore. And when I received a blu-ray of the Heisei Gamera trilogy through a DVD-swap site I was involved with for a time, it seemed like the perfect ‘nicotine patch’- one franchise I still enjoyed to the fullest that would ease the symptoms of withdrawal. So, my wife and I kicked off what would become a weekly tradition- our Sunday night kaiju movie.

 

In our marriage, we’d already done a Toho marathon; we’ve seen the majority of the sci-fi entries, from Matango to Gorath  (Maguma forever!), as well as all the Gamera films. We’ve got a few small gaps (The Human Vapor,  Legends of Dinosaurs and Monster Birds), but generally we’re pretty well-rounded in the kaiju canon. However, we’d never watched the majority of these films in their uncut Japanese forms.

 

So, a number of months and some obsessive DVD/Blu-ray collecting later, we’ve assembled and have been working our way through the Godzilla series (along with the Heisei Mothra and Gamera trilogies), seeing them, in many ways, ‘for the first time.’ And for my own amusement, I have been writing reviews of them.

 

As for why ‘Raids Again?’ Well, honestly, the original Gojira is an acknowledged and mesmerizing classic, and I honestly don’t feel I have anything original or unique to say about it. It’s one of those films that seems almost… beyond critique. So, we’ll start on the next film in line and proceed from there- all the way to Shin Godzilla. (Skipping the ’98 monstrosity, because I don’t want to watch that thing). Who knows- by the time all’s said and done, maybe the Anime Godzilla film will have come out.

 

So, preamble aside, on to the first review…

 

 

Godzilla Raids Again has a reputation as perhaps the weakest Showa Godzilla film (perhaps barring Godzilla’s

"Did he say weakest!?!?"

Revenge). Well, I’m a little early on in my re-watching to make or challenge a comparative statement like that, but… I didn’t think it was that bad. Certainly, I enjoyed it more than Rodan.

 

Sure, it lacks the epic sweep of the original. The story is less consequential. And it suffers from two major slowdowns… the pre-refinery-fire Godzilla landing, and the ending (more on that later). But otherwise, the characters are likable, and their story is engaging enough; Tsukioka is the guy who has it all, and his friend Kobayashi wishes he did. Their friendship is at the core of the film, with Kobayashi’s loneliness a subtle but persistent theme throughout that really makes you pull for the guy. Both Tsukioka and his fiancé Hidemi are trying to help him- but their lives are complicated by the arrival of Godzilla. Sure, it’s not the deepest story; no one’s going to say this one’s better than Mothra vs. Godzilla or Ghidrah the Three-headed Monster. But it’s engaging enough that I seldom felt impatient, except for the long stretches of rampage. The criminal-escape added a nice bit of action, the dance was effectively romantic (and the interruption effectively mood-breaking, giving at least a hint of the dismay that the characters must be feeling at a much-higher level), the character-building and empathy were really brought by the restaurant scene… and hey, a Dr. Yamane cameo- fun! There were a lot of little moments that really worked, including Kobayashi’s fumbling attempts to find out from Hidemi how best he might woo his crush. (Though a more jaded, genre-savvy audience immediately know he’s going to die at this point…)

 

Okay, so there were some lagging points. The silent film reel of stock footage form Gojira? A bit too long. The evacuation procedural before the criminals mess everything up? A bit too long. And the ending… I understand why they went back to base (so Tsukioka could become a fighter pilot and avenge his friend personally, and to try and set up a major ‘spectacle ending’- however, just like the bombardment in Rodan, a ‘spectacle’ of a lot of subsequent explosions just gets numbing after a while), but the film would have ended a lot stronger if, after Kobayashi crashed, and everyone got the idea, their coordinated attack buried Godzilla. Narrative momentum would have been kept, the key inspiration of Kobayashi’s unintended sacrifice would have resonated a lot stronger- it would have been tight plotting. As it is, the sidetrack and protracted bombardment just kill the pacing a bit.

 

The effects are… actually quite good. Okay, the scout planes have visible wires far too often… but the miniatures look pretty great, the demise of the criminals in the subway is clever and effective miniature/live set overlaying, and the ending locale is well-realized. Those chunks of ice look a bit plastic, but other than that, the production values are high. A similar panning-through-the-ruins aftermath shot as the original is appreciated (and highlights nicely the terrain differences between Tokyoi and Osaka), the ‘centerpiece’ castle destruction is nicely achieved, with the shot of roof-tiles tumbling adding an extra ‘oomph’ to what would have otherwise been a run-of-the-mill miniature destruction, giving it a little extra scope and impact, and the choice to establish a (slightly fake-looking rear-screen projection, but we can forgive that) balcony view of the cityscape, then revisit it as ruins, was an excellent choice. The location was memorable enough the first time to stick, and really drive home the before-and-after nature of the destruction.

 

The music, meanwhile, is a bit repetitive, but still stirring and quite appropriate to the musical style created by the original film. I just wish the soundtrack had far fewer announcements preceded by grating buzzer-noises in the middle section.

 

A completely casual non-awkward picture.

Godzilla was a slightly more brutish, animal-type presence in this film, lacking his usual cunning and intelligence… but overall, he looked pretty good. The slimmer suit looked good. The puppet head was a bit lifeless, but he was well-articulated. The overcranked motion (accidental, and then decided to go with it) is a strange look for a kaiju that we’re used to seeing move slowly; I was reminded of the CGI Godzilla in Shin Godzilla, who likewise had some much faster movements than the lumbering slow-mo we’re traditionally used to. It does work against the sense of scale, unfortunately… but not too distractingly-so.

 

Anguirus doesn’t look quite as good here as he later would, with a larger, goofier crown of horns and much longer limbs keeping him higher off the ground. He looks much more like… well, a man in a suit, than later incarnations would. And the tradition of getting bit on the neck and soaked in his own blood comes right at the start, I see. Poor Anguirus. His resistance to the atomic ray is notable, at least- for as long as he was living.

 

A scrappy little fellow, but his end was FAR more decisive than I remembered. All the early Kaiju come in pairs, it seems, with at least one very clearly and definitively dying, and the second appearing with little explanation later on. Just as this is a second Godzilla, and we’ll see a later apparent survival of a second (or, if they both perished in the volcano, third) Rodan, we clearly have an inexplicable second Anguirus in later films. Perhaps ancient dinosaurs operated by Star Wars’ Rule of Two? (‘No more, no less- a master, and an apprentice…’)

 

My wife suggested that Godzilla and Mrs. Anguirus (the 70s Anguirus) were having an affair, and this was Godzilla

Definitely the face of a spurned lover.

taking out Mr. Anguirus so that the two of them could be together. That’s certainly a new way of looking at their relationship…!

 

Overall, Godzilla Raids Again was not nearly so flawed as its reputation led me to expect. Certainly, it lacks that ‘special something’ to make it great… but it also lacks any major flaws or irritants to make it unwatchable. It is solid, middle-of-the-line, average daikaiju fare- with only the occasional pacing problems, especially at the end, keeping it from nosing up to ‘pretty good’ status. (That sounds like ‘damning with faint praise,’ but that is not my intent.) Still, it’s watchable, I found the character drama and interplay engaging, and I was invested in the human storyline, which is more than I can say for a number of Showa entries (like, sorry to pick on it again, Rodan. We’ll get there soon, but I ended up watching it before GRA, so it was fresh in my head for this review… and even 70% of the way through the Showa era, at time of writing this note, Rodan still remains a low-light). 

So if it’s not as good as its peers, that’s a testament to their exceeding quality, not to any inherent shabbiness of Godzilla Raids Again. It does not transcend as some of the more classic entries do, and for that, it often gets dumped-on by comparison. But standing on its own, it’s a perfectly enjoyable little flick that satisfies nearly all the requirements of a classic, and falls short only on lacking a ‘spark’ or quality to elevate it to that level.

 

In a world where some kaiju films are actively hated (SpaceGodzilla, Final Wars, Megaguirus (if-you’re-like-me)), this film should definitely not get any flack, because while ‘innocuous’ may sound again like faint praise, it is definitely on the positive side of neutral, and that automatically puts it head-and-shoulders among some of the G-films that have actual issues. It’s fun, it’s watchable, I care about the characters; that’s really all you can ask of a movie. With some of the momentum-snags edited out and slightly broader imagination to its scope, it could well have been remembered as fondly as many of the entries that surround it.