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.