#7 in my ranking of the Heisei, Millennium, and Reiwa eras of the Godzilla franchise.
Another reset to the Godzilla franchise, this time inventing an entire timeline from about the 2/3 mark of the first movie on, Godzilla vs. Megaguirus is an interesting continuation of the more grounded ridiculousness that Godzilla 2000 started. It’s actually quite interesting in the first half with a script that has focus on a small set of characters, a set and well-defined goal, and some intertwining subplots that move towards a singular end point. And then…it just kind of turns into a typical Godzilla movie for its finale. The inventiveness goes away in favor of typical genre fare, deflating my enjoyment of what felt like a different way to approach a giant monster smashy-smashy on Tokyo.
Since 1954, Godzilla has attacked two more times. The second of the three was in 1966 when Japan started its first nuclear reactor. The third was in 1996 when Japan tried a new clean energy process with plasma. Godzilla is obviously attracting to huge energy sources (why it never goes after China…shut up, this is about Japan). The JPSD is committed to trying to destroy Godzilla once and for all, and they recruit Hajime (Shosuke Tanihara), an engineer who’s very good with small electronics, to help them develop a black hole gun to use against him. Recruited by Kiriko (Misato Tanaka), the female member of the G-Graspers, an elite fighting unit specifically for Godzilla action, he helps Professor Yoshizawa (Yuriko Hoshi), make the black hole small enough for their purposes. Yes…it’s stupid. But no more stupid than an A-bomb test making a hidden dinosaur turn into Godzilla. Moving on.
Where the film is interesting is in the arrival of an egg from the black hole, discovered by the small boy and deposited in a city’s sewer system, that hatches a bunch of large wasp-like creatures. They become a swarm and even face off against Godzilla at the mid-point of the film.
So…new weapon that brings in the next monster that also attracts Godzilla because it’s plasma based. The next monster is actually very different, a swarm instead of a building-sized creature. And the intersection of everything means that there are naturally arising difficulties to get things to work. I mean…it’s not great cinema, but it’s quality genre plotting. I like it.
And then the black hole gun misses Godzilla…somehow, the remaining wasp-dinosaur things inject Godzilla energy into a hidden larva, and we get Megaguirus, the requisite giant building-sized monster for Godzilla to punch and bite and blow nuclear breath at.
Now, I’m not complaining about this part too much. There’s actually some inventive stuff going on like Megaguirus dropping part of an overhanging bridge structure onto a prone Godzilla’s head that’s fairly amusing. However, it’s something of a letdown from what felt like a fairly tightly plotted opening half. There’s the requisite brushing aside of humans in order for giant monsters to punch each other, the punching, and humans actually having something to do to help resolve it. We completely lose other subplots like the kid, only for him to come back in a post-credits sequence, but the ending is fine, standard, monster action.
It’s just not as interesting as the first half. Have the swarm stick around and maybe have the characters need to make a choice between getting the swarm and getting Godzilla, needing to choose Godzilla because the swarm is worse, or something. I mean, it’s nice that we’ve stayed with “Godzilla is bad” for so long since the start of the Heisei Era and into the Millennium Era, but Godzilla 2000 actually tried the balance between his badness within the universe and his appeal outside of it. This one doesn’t at all, which is a choice, and a valid one. But, it’s less interesting than the direction I thought it was going to go and which the franchise has previously gone.
So, the end product is…fine. It’s one of the better examples of the post-Showa Era, but it’s not really good. It had the makings of being really good for a while but just went standard after that. And standard Godzilla just isn’t that…interesting. It can be fun in some silly ways, which Godzilla vs. Megaguirus does do, but it’s capable of more.
Oh, well. Standard Godzilla is better than bad Godzilla. I’ll take what I can get.
Originally published here
English (US) · 