Godzilla vs. Megaguirus
(2000)
Opening in Japan in 2000, this movie was a mediocre
commercial success and a critical failure. It was never released in American
theatres, but did end up on the Sci-Fi Network in August of 2003. I missed it
then, but I did manage to acquire at great expense a VCD from Hong Kong off
eBay.
This movie was kind of annoying to watch at times, The film quality is not so
great, though the VCD format is mostly to blame, and I had a hard time telling
what was just bad video transfer and what was nifty artistic technique on the
producers' part. The main annoyance was the overlapping audio tracts--in
Japanese and Cantonese--which I never figured out how to separate. I ended up
just watching the film with the sound turned down low, and I'm sure I missed out
on the music and sound effects. There were subtitles, in both English and Chinese
one on top of the other, so I was able to follow along well enough. (note: In
May '07, I found a nice DVD of this movie and added in screen captures)
This is the second movie in the "Alternate Reality" series of Godzilla movies, the
first being 1999's Godzilla 2000. In
these movies, the history and timeline of the monster is altered and none of event
of the previous movies have happened. The only thing they have in common is the
original 1954 Godzilla as a starting point.
And now on to our show...
We open with one of the greatest and cleverest openings for any Godzilla movie.
As this is an alternate reality, to set up the background we get a collage of short
newsreel snippets in a kind of retrospective of the last 45 years.
The first is from 1954, where we see and hear of Godzilla's first attack on
Tokyo, leaving it a burning shambles. In a truly outstanding move, they re-shot a
few of the classic scenes from the 1954
Godzilla using the new year 2000 suit, including the famous
Godzilla-eating-the-train-car shot that has been used as a promotional gimmick
for decades. Differing from the original, however, is the stated fact that Godzilla
wandered off into the sea after the attack. No Oxygen Destroyer in this
timeline, I guess Doctor Serizawa couldn't be convinced to use it on the monster.
The second sequence is from 1966, and we hear that it has been twelve years
since Godzilla has last been seen. In that time, Japan has fully recovered from
both Godzilla and World War II. Tokyo has been rebuilt, but the capital has been
moved to Osaka (we get a nice shot of a reconstructed Diet Building in the Osaka
skyline).
1966 is an important date because it's the year that Japan's first nuclear power
plant went on-line. This attracted Godzilla, who attacked the plant and ate the
reactor before wandering back into the sea with a full belly. Godzilla's attraction
to and appetite for nuclear energy has been well-established in the series and in
this movie it's the main driving force behind all of the monster's actions. The
reactor is at Tokai, by the way, and is the same reactor that Godzilla attempted
to stomp in Godzilla 2000.
An interlude tells us that Japan's government decided after 1966 to avoid any
further attacks by just not using any nuclear power. Wind, fire, solar and water
power has thus fed the nation's energy needs since then by policy. However,
1990s Japan needs a lot of electrical power, and since Godzilla hasn’t been seen
since 1966, it's felt that maybe it is time to try and build something more
powerful. To this end, an experimental power reactor was built by the Science
and Technology Bureau in the Nakanoshima District of Osaka. This reactor
involved "plasma generating using heavy hydrogen as fuel", the culmination of
thirty years of research into clean energy alternatives.
However, Godzilla likes plasma as well as nuclear food and comes to munch it. The
movie now cuts to 1996, to Osaka at night to join in with a team of soldiers as
they combat Godzilla, who by this time is well into the center of Osaka heading
towards the plasma reactor. Unlike the massive battles between the monster and
the military we are used to, this combat is strictly small-scale, just a few humans
on foot against this colossal creature. This is one of the most exciting action
sequences in any Godzilla movie, and really conveys the power, size and fear of
Godzilla from the ground.
First off, the new Godzilla suit is awesome. In keeping with his 1954 origins, this
new Godzilla has shrunk back to 55-meters tall and weighing 25,000 metric tons.
In the later Heisei series in the 1990s, Godzilla had bloated up to 120-meters tall
and 60,000-tons heavy. This smaller size allows the human characters of our
movie to interact with the beast more effectively. Godzilla's face is more
reptile-like, with longer jaws and a narrower head. Bringing back something that
has been spotty over the entire series, this Godzilla's dorsal spines heat up and
glow before each Atomic Fire Breath.
Back to the empty streets of the Nakanoshima District in Osaka. The soldiers we
follow are a 12-man team of Rangers, broken up into several three-man teams with
man-portable rocket launchers. These shoulder-fired weapons appear to be
Swedish-made 84mm "Carl Gustov" anti-tank rockets, but I'm not entirely sure
on that. We do see an ammo box with "84mm" on it, so I think I'm right.
It's interesting to note that we see no other military forces in this sequence.
Perhaps Godzilla has already broken through the outer ring of artillery and tanks
and it's now up to these foot soldiers to be the last line of defense. Their deaths
are a noble sacrifice against impossible odds.
There are two notable figures in this team, the Old Sergeant in command of the
unit and a young female soldier named Kiriko Tsujimori. The Old Sergeant is a
father figure and mentor for Kiriko and their relationship, his death and her
quest for revenge will become the central focus of this movie.
Kiriko is played by 23-year old Misato Tanaka, who would go on to play the same
character in 2002's Godzilla X MechaGodzilla. Tanaka is a very popular
television actress in Japan, having stared in the romance drama With Love
and the recent NHK morning serial Agri. She is a willowy thin woman with
soft facial features and the look of a petite-size fashion model, not a
professional soldier. She tends to wear her hair back in a very tight,
Lilith-on-Frasier-kind of ponytail that does little to make her look cuter.
During this 1996 battle with Godzilla, she was just a scared 19-year old girl with a
rocket launcher.
The coming battle is full of running men, narrow alleys, and sniping with rockets,
kind of like Panzerfaust-armed German soldiers hunting Soviet T-34s in
the ruins of Berlin in 1945. Kiriko, perhaps because the Old Sergeant wants to
keep her safe, is ordered to stand guard over the reactor facility alone while the
others go out hunting the monster. In the battle, Godzilla takes at least eleven
rockets, all to no apparent effect. At least six of the soldiers are killed by the
monster in response to the stinging missile hits.
Now it's just Kiriko and the Old Sergeant left, standing in the road in front of
the reactor building as Godzilla advances on them slowly. Kiriko's eyes grow wide
as dishes as the beast looms around a corner. She fires her rocket and it smacks
the beast in the throat, which seems to surprise Kiriko more than the monster.
Godzilla shrugs it off and smacks into the reactor building, a shower of debris
cascading down towards the two soldiers. The Old Sergeant pushes Kiriko out of
the way and is crushed by a falling girder. His dog tags are somehow tossed clear
and recovered by Kiriko, who is overcome with grief and loss. In rage, she picks
up her rocket launcher and shoots the beast once more, yelling into the darkness
as the opening credits begin.
Wow, that was a great opening! We have set up Godzilla as a killer beast to be
reckoned with and have the background needed to understand Kiriko's obsession
with killing Godzilla. The credits are in Japanese pictographs and are just the
movie's title. The cast and crew credits come at the end of the film.
We cut now to the present day, 2001, to the Akihabara District of Tokyo. In the
years following the destruction of Osaka in 1996, a special bureau of the Defense
Ministry was set up to deal with Godzilla. This is the "G-Command" team (what a
lame name...) and they're made up of the best and brightest the military and
scientific community has to offer. Kiriko has advanced through the ranks quickly
and now is a leader of the section of G-Command that is going to fight Godzilla
called the "G-Grasper" (what a lamer name...). In this timeline, there is no
G-Force, but G-Command does pretty much the same job. They do have these
spiffy uniforms, with electric blue pants and shirts and satin jackets with
G-Grasper patches all over them. They look like Power Ranger outfits.
We see two people moving through the crowded streets. They're Kiriko and
another man and they're looking for a young scientist who has some knowledge
and skills that they need. The scientist is a brilliant young man, tossed out of
college for his unorthodox ways, who now works in a little electronics shop and
builds tiny robots and microwave gadgets on the side. He's also a computer whiz
who has created his own operating system, just like Bill Gates. His name is Hajime
Kudo and he's played by twentysomething actor Shosuke Tanihara. Tanihara made
his mark playing Riki Fudoh in the excellent though splashy Fudoh: The New
Generation in 1996.
He's oh-so-not Bill Gates in the sense that he's leading-man cool, with long hair
and dreamy looks. He looks a whole lot like Steve Nash of the Dallas Mavericks,
or John Corbett from Northern Exposure, except he's Japanese. He has a
taste for American sports team clothes, and when we first meet him in his shop
he's wearing a Chicago Cubs hat and a San Francisco Giants jersey.
After busting him for scamming kids by thinking that he used magic to make
curry rice with little miniature robots that he designed, Kiriko offers him a job
with G-Grasper. He seems both instantly smitten with the pretty Kiriko and happy
to do something with his amazing talents other than wow kids. One wonders why,
if he's indeed such a genius, he's not already employed by some big corporation.
Perhaps Kudo is a "Loner Outside the Cold Heartless Corporate World Doing
Things His Way". Ouuu, I love those types.
And so Kiriko takes Kudo to the "Self Defense Corps Shibaura Base" where
G-Command is headquartered. They come in Kiriko's company car, a Honda
compact that I've never seen before. It must be a Japan-only model, but looks
like a version of the Civic. It has "G-Grasper" painted on the sides, and is an
electric blue, matching the group's uniforms. It's a coupe, so Kiriko has to stand
aside as Kudo gets out of the back seat. This is a little funny to see, though I
don't know why. Later we will see corporate and military big wigs have to get out
of this little car in the same way. You'd think that G-Grasper could afford some
four-door cars.
They enter the G-Command's HQ in a large building. Here we see that the
organization is divided into four sections. S-1 is seeking for Godzilla in the ocean
(search), S-2 is studying it as a living being (study) and S-3 is simulating how to
evacuate large cities (shelter). The fourth section is G-Grasper, the combat
troops of the force.
The overall command of the bureau is Secretary Sugiura, a stern political type
whose shifting loyalties will come to light later in the film. Motohiko Sugiura is
played by 51-year old Masatô Ibu, best known as Sergeant Nagata in 1987's
Empire of the Sun and as the voice of Desler from the 1970s TV series
Space Cruiser Yamato.
Kiriko introduces Kudo to the other G-Grasper team members, of which there are
only five total counting Kiriko the Leader. This seems like a really small number
of combat team members, but it does make it easier on the audience to keep all
the characters straight. The other members are Hosono the Pilot, Niikura the
Spokesman, Mima the Electronics Whiz, and Okamura the Ranger. Okamura was
the only other survivor of the squad of Rangers that we saw fighting Godzilla in
1996, and as such is aware of Kiriko's back-story and reasons for being obsessed.
These men will be little more than cardboard cutouts for the rest of the film, so
don't bother learning their names.
Kudo is now reintroduced to Doctor Yoshino Yoshizawa, his old college physics
professor and now the G-Command's lead scientist. It's just assumed, but we can
guess that it was the Doctor that sent Kiriko out to get her former prized
student Kudo to help her out.
Doctor Yoshizawa is played by 57-year old Yuriko Hoshi. Hoshi was one of the
younger members of the Toho stable of actors during the 1960s. She made her
mark in the Young Guy series of comedy movies and Toho's early Godzilla
movies. She is well-known for playing Naoko Shindo in 1965's Ghidrah, the
Three-Headed Monster and spunky reporter Yoka Nakanishi from 1964's Godzilla vs. Mothra I. She basically
spends this entire movie wearing a white lab coat, so we don't forget she is a
scientist, with her hair up in an old-lady's bun.
The Doctor asks Kudo to join them, and Kudo puts his foot in his mouth by saying,
"And be killed like them?" as he sees a photo of the Doctor with some of her
former colleagues. A quick and well-edited flashback takes us back to 1996, to
the Osaka plasma reactor building as Godzilla smashes it to pieces. We see the
Doctor and her staff running for the exits, and the roof collapsing, killing all but
the Doctor.
The Doctor shakes that off and tells Kudo that this time they have constructed a
new "fatal weapon" that will kill Godzilla once and for all and avenge all those who
have been lost to the monster. This involves a device that can create a "micro
black hole using plasma energy" (!!!) in a designated location, which will open for a
short amount of time, sucking all matter into it within a relatively small radius.
The plan is to "shoot the black hole into Godzilla" so that nothing around him will
be harmed in the process. Hmmm...sounds like a Pandora's Box to me.
They are working on a prototype now that is just two-meters wide that can fit on
a satellite. Apparently, the best results can be had by firing the weapon from
outer space (!!!). The problem is that they have had trouble miniaturizing the
weapon to fit the satellite. This is where Kudo and his genius skills come in.
Just as Kudo happily accepts the offer to help with the project, word comes to
our heroes that Godzilla has just been spotted. The telltale signs of heat rising
from the Japan Trench are detected. Dialogue clearly states that this is the
"first time in three years that Godzilla has risen to the surface". This means that
in 1998, Godzilla came up to the surface, though we don't know why. Just as
quickly as it arose, however, Godzilla's heat signature vanishes as the beast sinks
back down into the trench. With this scare driving them on, the scientists rush to
build and test their first prototype of the black hole device.
We cut now to a rural area, a title card tells us that this is "three months later".
We see a young boy, about ten-years old, in shorts and a striped shirt. Instantly,
our Kenny Alarms are blaring loudly as we fear another in a long series of plucky
young boys in shorts named Kenny. And, alas, this boy will turn out to be another
Kenny. His name is never actually given, but we have to call him "Kenny" out of
tradition.
Kenny's family is moving to the city very soon, as we hear his mom tell him,
because his dad got a job transfer. His mom is quite attractive, by the way,
despite her boy hair cut. We see Kenny leave home to take his insect collection
back to a friend. As we shall later see, the insect collection is a nifty bit of plot
foreshadowing.
Kenny runs down a country road. A white minivan passes him from behind.
Suddenly, the boy runs into a military roadblock. He ducks behind a jeep, though
there is absolutely no way humanly possible that the soldiers at the roadblock
could not have seen him running down the road towards them. Furthermore,
another jeep drives right by him (!!!) and up to the roadblock. The soldiers in the
jeep (which passed by him in plain sight about five feet away) don't say, "Hey, we
just saw a kid over there!" or anything! So Kenny is able to sneak off into the
woods astride the road and bypass the roadblock.
Kenny works his way through the woods to a vantage point where he can see the
primary school that the roadblock was guarding. Apparently, the G-Command
science group has commandeered this primary school for use in testing it's black
hole prototype. The black hole emitter looks like a huge laser gun, situated in a
clearing aimed at the school building. It seems that there is no hint of perimeter
security for this test area, as Kenny is able to come quite close to the area
without being spotted.
Umm...I certainly hope this was an abandoned school. I'd hate to think that they
couldn't find any better target that a country school to shoot black holes at.
This isn't going to turn out well, is it? Even Doctor Yoshizawa has her doubts
about the project as a whole. She tells Secretary Sugiura running G-Command
that he had better dispose of the technology right after they use it to kill
Godzilla. In typical shifty politician style, Secretary Sugiura only replies, "Sure."
In this we see echoes of Doctor Serizawa's mental battles over whether to use
the Oxygen Destroyer or not from the original 1954
Godzilla.
With the press of a button, the black hole emitter fires a swirling ball of gravity
at the school in a really quite cool CGI effect. It works like a charm, the school
and a hunk of surrounding soil is totally gone, having been sucked into the
singularity. In just a few seconds the black hole itself is gone, leaving no apparent
side effects. Yes!
But wait...seems that there's some weird aftereffects in the air where the black
hole was targeted. Just by looking at it, Kudo is able to call it "contorted
dimensional space". The effect only lasts a few seconds, and the scientists
seemingly disregard it totally and declare the test a huge success.
Hmmm...shouldn't someone be concerned about those contorted dimensional space
effects? Apparently not. The rush to get the weapon operational has made
everyone blind to any possible negative aspects. This will come back and bite them
in the ass later.
This whole test is watched by Kenny, of course, and only when it is done is he
captured by the military. It's not one of the soldiers that catch him, but one of
the G-Grasper team (names don’t matter). He contacts Kiriko directly, and she
runs out to see the boy. She asks him nicely (!!!) not to tell anyone what he just
saw (!!!) and he says "Ok." and she lets him go (!!!). Arg! So much for national
security! We get the impression that the military and the rest of G-Command
doesn't know about the kid, as they would probably not be as lenient on him as
Kiriko was.
Two notes. During the conversation, Kenny sees that Kiriko is a G-Grasper. He
says to her, "You're a woman, why are you fighting Godzilla?" To which she only
laughs and changes the subject. What did that comment mean? Why can't a
woman fight Godzilla? Also note that Kiriko just walks off and leaves the boy to
find his own way home (!!!). She could have at least made sure that he got out of
the woods safely.
We cut now to sometime later, at night, back to Kenny's house. Kenny is awoken
by a strange noise and an ominous shadow outside his window. Putting on his
shoes, he sneaks out of the house and for some reason works his way down to the
exact spot that he earlier watched the Black Hole experiment from. Brave kid,
walking alone in the dark through the woods all that way to investigate a
monstrous shadow and a creepy noise!
Kenny sees that the dimensional ripple is still bubbling over the gaping hole where
the school was, and suddenly a big dragonfly-looking creature zips over his head
and disappears into the ripple. Frightened, Kenny runs for home, but stumbles
upon an egg lying in a marshy part of the forest. It's the size of a football,
translucent and pearly, with little oval mini-eggs stuck all over it's surface.
So Kenny runs in terror the other direction an...wait, no he doesn't. He calmly
picks up the egg and carries it back to his house! Man, this kid is nails! I sure
hope he grows up to become something. I'd hate to see a kid this tough ending up
flipping soy burgers.
Ok, we move now to the Shibuya District in downtown Tokyo, where we see that
Kenny's family has just moved into their high-rise apartment in the city. Kenny
looks forlornly off the balcony at the city and longs for the rural pastures again.
He notices that the box that he has hid the egg from his mom in is now leaking!
Being quick, Kenny puts the egg in a shopping bag and goes down to the street to
dispose of it. After looking around a bit for a good spot to ditch it, finally
deciding to dump in into a sewer drain! Oh, that's not good.
Back now to G-Command HQ, where we rejoin our G-Grasper team in the exercise
room as they work out. A slow pan across the room shows us that one of the guys
has one leg of his sweat pants pulled up in a clear homage to the hip-hop fashion
craze of the 1990s. Please tell me that this was just an accident and not cool in
Japan in 2000?
Kudo comes in, looking for Kiriko. He tries some lame computer-geek flirting with
her that fizzles. Then Hicks gives Ripley his homing beacon an...umm, I mean Kudo
then gives Kiriko this special bullet with a micro-transmitter in it. If she ever
gets stuck somewhere, she can fire the bullet and Kudo will come running for her.
Why a bullet? Why not just something she can keep in her pocket, wouldn't that
make more sense? Kiriko seems annoyed that he keeps bugging her, and even
smacks him by telling him that before he can come rescue her he has to "build his
body first." Ouch.
Kudo then further annoys her by making fun of the Old Sergeant's dog tag that
she still wears ("Your boyfriend?") before being set straight by the other team
members. Kiriko changes the subject by asking if she can test fire the bullet. For
some reason there in the weight room she has a pistol! She aims and fires the
bullet at a round free weight hanging on the wall. The bullet hits and sticks in the
metal (!!!) and out pops four tiny transmitter panels that begin beeping. Umm...I
think that much kinetic energy would smash the bullet, and how could it have
stuck in the steel weight like that?
Anyway, we now have a quick five-second cut back to the Shibuya District in
Tokyo, where we see the egg is now resting underwater in the sewer system. The
smaller micro-eggs begin to pull away from the parent egg and drift away. This is
not going to end well.
Soon it is night again and water mains begin busting all over the Shibuya District.
At first it's just a few troublesome leaks but soon it will grow. In the dance club
area, we follow a young couple out walking the streets. They step into a deserted
construction area to have some time alone. The boy is hip, with leather pants and
a denim vest, the girl very hot with a short pink dress. She goes off to buy them a
beer and he sits alone, smoking a cigarette. Wow, he got his girlfriend to go buy
him a beer? Maybe he's underage.
Suddenly, a bug-like creature jumps at the boy, grabbing his face in its claws and
spitting some gooey sticky stuff in at him before munching him up real good. The
attack is quick and surprisingly brutal for a Godzilla movie. The girl comes looking
for him and is attacked by the creature as well. She's spit in the face, knocked
to the ground and dragged off screaming in even more surprisingly brutal fashion.
That's about as un-Godzilla movie-like a sequence as I've ever seen.
I'm going to fill you in here. The creature is one of what hatched out of the
micro-eggs in the sewer. It's a "Meganulon", a cicada-like bug the size of a horse
and it is a larva for a dragonfly-like creature. Fans of the genre will note the
similarities between these Meganulon and the Meganuron that attacked the
mining town in 1956's Rodan. Toho has a long
history of updating old monsters for the newer audiences and this one is done
quite well.
We now watch this bug crawl up the side of a nearby building and begin to molt.
Out of it emerges the dragonfly-like thing (like the one Kenny saw that night),
which takes to the sky and flies off. This winged version will be called a
"Meganula". The whole molting scene is completely CGI and impressive to watch.
And speaking of Kenny, we now see him watching out his balcony again. The
Meganula flies right over his building, scaring the pants off of him again.
Some time later, perhaps the next day, Kenny is meeting with Kiriko. Kenny knew
that the woman he talked to in the woods was with G-Grasper, so he probably just
went to G-Command's website and sent her an email. Kenny tells her all he has
done and rightfully feels ashamed and guilty for his actions. Kiriko assures him
that it's not his fault (hmm...yes, it is his fault.) and that it was G-Command's rush
to get the Black Hole device operational that created the mess.
Kenny then whips out a science book and shows Kiriko an entry on the Meganulon,
which grows into a Meganula. This tells us that these bugs are earthly creatures,
not some alien race of killer bugs. More on this later.
Back now to G-Command HQ, where satellites have picked up another radioactive
heat signature in the Japan Trench. They enhance the images to the point where
they can see it's Godzilla, and he's firing his Atomic Heat Breath at a Meganula!
Just a guess, but I assume that the lone Meganula that we just saw in Tokyo flew
out to find Godzilla. We will later learn that the Meganula are attracted to
nuclear energy sources just like a moth to a flame. More on this later, too.
And so crisis mode kicks in within the G-Command structure. With Godzilla
spotted in the neighborhood, the G-Grasper team rolls out its most powerful
weapon. The Griffon is a ultra-high-tech jet plane capable of vertical as well as
horizontal flight like a Harrier. It's no bigger than your average corporate Lear
jet and is shaped much like the MiG-31 FireFox from 1982's FireFox, which
isn’t a bad thing because that movie rocked. It's armed with "photon cannons"
and is crewed by three G-Graspers.
So the Griffon, with Kiriko aboard, flies off to the Pacific to where Godzilla was
spotted from space. They first sight the floating carcass of the Meganula that
Godzilla torched. Hovering in vertical flight, they drop an inflatable Zodiac
powered raft and Kiriko and another dude slide down a rope into the raft. They
pull up to the stinking carcass and take some skin and bone samples to analyze
later. They also put out an underwater microphone to watch for Godzilla.
And indeed, just then Godzilla is detected moving back into the area, perhaps
sensing the raft and the jet over where the Meganula attacked him before. The
Griffon returns to the raft and the other team member in the raft is winched
back up, leaving Kiriko still in the raft. For some reason she has a plan and it
involves staying down below. With her vengeance quest in mind, we wonder if she's
going to attack the beast with a knife in an honorable final fury of revenge-driven
blood lust.
Godzilla surfaces close by, upsetting the raft and tossing Kiriko into the water.
She comes up defiant, and swims towards Godzilla! Reaching the beast, she climbs
onto his exposed dorsal spikes and pulls herself up out of the water! Wow.
Thinking quickly, she pulls out her pistol loaded with Kudo's micro-transmitter
homing bullet and fires it into one of the spikes. She then jumps back into the sea
and swims away to safety. And so, Kiriko becomes the only human being to have
ever physically touched Godzilla and survived in the entire 46-year run of the
series. This is quite an amazing achievement and a testament to Kiriko's daring
and fortitude.
We do, however, wonder about her health. As we know, Godzilla is a nuclear
reactor that pumps out enough radiation and heat to boil water to levels
detectable by satellites and melt iron with his breath. Certainly, an exposed
human standing on his back would be subject to immeasurable amounts of
radiation, alpha, gamma and beta, and would be dead in a few hours. The heat
alone radiated from a beast with a nuclear furnace at its heart should be enough
to roast her. The scene does look unbelievably cool, however, so I'll quite griping.
So with the homing beacon on Godzilla, the Griffon drops a small robotic
submersible into the sea to follow Godzilla. This is called a SGS (Search Godzilla
System) and looks like a tiny A-Wing fighter from Star Wars. The SGS
carries a camera and a satellite uplink to send real-time images back to
G-Command HQ.
Back aboard the Griffon, Kiriko and her crew head back for Tokyo. Once there,
they can analyze where they think Godzilla is headed. He seems to be headed for
Tokyo, though no one can figure out why. There are no plasma and nuclear energy
sources in the country right? Well, we do wonder how all the research into the
Black Hole device was conducted, as it was said to have been born from research
with plasma energy. But that's not what's happening here.
What's happening here is that the Japanese Government, starting with the Prime
Minister on down to Secretary Sugiura, have been dabbling with plasma energy
research even though it has been banned. In fact, they have a working reactor set
up in a location in Tokyo right now, in clear violation of the law. Why? Mostly
because they are concerned about the energy crisis that Japan is facing, and also
because they want to make a lot of money by providing energy to the nation. More
on this later.
With Godzilla on his way to Japan, the Black Hole device is rushed into service.
We see in the lab Kudo and Doctor Yoshizawa making final checks on the device.
Showing the typical Japanese penchant for silly names, Kudo names the device
"Dimension Tide". He even takes a Sharpie and writes "DT" in English on the side
of the satellite. We also see that Kiriko is watching him from above, and smiling
that smile we know as "young love". At what point did Kudo become a suave lover
boy and not an annoying geek? Did we miss something?
The satellite is put on an H-2 heavy-lift booster rocket and launched from the
Tanegashima Space Facility on Tanega Island off the southern tip of the island of
Kyushu. This launch seems to take place in an awful hurry. I don't think that such
a thing can be done in so little time, unless it was already scheduled to launch and
it was just coincidence that Godzilla showed up at this time.
In space, we see the satellite, now deployed, unfurling it's solar panels. From this
angle it looks huge, but we must remember that it's just two meters wide and at
the very most weighs 3,900 kilograms (the max payload the H-2 lifter rocket can
put into a geosychronous orbit). The scale of the earth in the background makes
this hard to remember. Wow, think about this for a minute. They have created a
black hole gun that is only two meters across! This could be mounted on tanks,
ships and even planes and change the entire balance of power in the world and the
conduct of warfare. Imagine the possibilities...
Back now to G-Command, where the skin sample from the dead Meganula is being
analyzed. The lead scientist, some old guy with a bad Fu Manchu mustache,
declares that it "lived about 280 to 350 million years ago in the Carboniferous
Period." That may be the good news. The bad news is that the Meganula "breeds
in an aquatic environment", "makes clusters" and "it's a violent insect". How does
he know that they are violent? Isn't that assuming way too much?
Just then, the meeting is interrupted by the news that the Shibuya District of
Tokyo (where the bugs are) is now completely flooded! The water level in the main
business part of the area, with all the skyscrapers, is probably about 50 feet or
so. This has got to mean that Shibuya sits in a valley or something, because it is
just this part of Tokyo that gets flooded so deeply. "Underground waterways"
seemed to have caused it, and we are sure that the bugs did it to create a lovely
aquatic environment for their hatching. Told you that Kenny dropping the egg in
the sewer was a bad idea...
They decide that they should check the flooded streets of Shibuya for any bad
things. Kudo presents them with his latest creation, a miniature SGS about the
size of a Nerf Flyer that's controlled by remote. How he managed to find the
time to make this while also working on homing beacon bullets, black hole guns, and
other gadgets is a mystery. This guy is a Japanese Da Vinci! As a side note,
Kiriko in this scene seems disgusted with Kudo, giving him a nasty look that might
say, "Arrogant bastard! Think you're so smart, eh? Then why don't you have a
girlfriend? Loser."
Out now to Shibuya for the evacuation and rescue of the trapped citizens. The
CGI effect of the streets flooded is wonderfully done. Army soldiers in small
boats relay people to the dry parts of town as the press and onlookers gawk from
the road. As well, the micro-SGS is being controlled by operators in another boat.
We follow the SGS as it cruises along under the water, it's infrared camera
sending back pictures. A peek at the bottom shows zillions of eggs! This doesn’t
look good. Where did all these eggs come from, anyway? Certainly not from the
original egg. Maybe the first generation of Meganulon that hatched laid more
eggs?
Anyway, we leave Tokyo to go back out to the Pacific Ocean to catch up with
Godzilla. In the Ogasawara Trench, we see that the larger SGS is still tailing
Godzilla. Wow, what kind of power source runs that robot? It has been operating
a very long time now.
We cut now back to the "Defense Bureau" in Osaka now, where Kiriko is briefing
the government on what has been happening. She is dressed up in her class-A
uniform here, looking very sharp. She's explaining that Godzilla is still at sea
southeast of Tokyo and the Dimension Tide is ready to go. The problem is that
they need to lure Godzilla onto dry land for the weapon to work properly. In
Godzilla's path there is a small island called Kiganjima, where they hope to coerce
Godzilla into coming ashore so the beam can zap him.
The politicians understandably have some concerns about the safety of firing a
black hole at the earth from orbit, as any rational human being would. Kiriko, still
in Captain Ahab mode, gets lippy with the ministers and that is not helping her
case out. Kiriko realizes the error of her ways and looks positively ashamed,
Secretary Sugiura pleads on her behalf and the ministers agree to alloy the plan
to proceed.
Back now to G-Command HQ, where we see that Kudo, being the all-around genius,
has even written his own operating system which he uses for controlling the Black
Hole satellite. He even has this little Nintendo-looking animated icon of Kiriko in
a sexy nurse's outfit that guides him around the computer screen, which shows his
frustrated love for her. He claims that his OS is "ten times faster" than anything
else out there, which is insane. If he could indeed create an OS that was that
much better, then he would be a multi-billionaire and living in Bill Gates' house and
sleeping with his wife. And his OS would be a hundred times faster if he would
run it from the command line prompt and not waste CPU resources on that goofy
Kiriko animation.
Kiriko and Secretary Sugiura arrive back from Osaka in the G-Grasper Honda.
Again, we find it funny to see the Secretary have to awkwardly climb out of the
back seat of the coupe. Not all is well with the staff, however, as we see the
Secretary accosted by Doctor Yoshizawa and Kudo. They're mad that he and
Kiriko pushed ahead the plan without allowing the scientists to test the weapon in
space. Kudo looses more ground in his wooing of Kiriko by yelling at her for being
so reckless.
Secretary Sugiura literally, and I mean freaking literally, waves off their valid
concerns with a wave and a little smile and walks away! Oh, this is a recipe for
disaster. Whenever you see in a movie some scientist's warnings being ignored by
politicians, you just know there's going to be some serious balls-up coming soon.
For her part, Kiriko understands the concerns, but she's bound and determined to
see Godzilla killed now and not later. She's torn by her emotions.
We cut now out to the aforementioned Kiganjima Island (and, yes, I know that
"jima" means "island", so the second Island is superflurious, but I don't care what
you say...), the Japanese Air Force is about to give it a go. The air attack with be
backed up by the Griffon, though there seems to be no coordination between the
Griffon and the attacking jets, in fact, quite the opposite. There will be nine Air
Force jets, all are F-15J Eagles, and they come in three waves of three each. The
first six jets strangely seem to be armed solely with one big torpedo each. The
torpedoes are rather large, silver with a red nose cone, and called "Dragon
Arrows".
The torpedoes are intended for Godzilla, who is now just offshore. Coming in at a
way-too-fast airspeed, the Eagles drop their torpedoes. Ok, follow along here.
We see two torpedoes underwater and follow them both to impact on Godzilla.
Then we see the three Eagles zooming off and all three have clean mounts. So
where did the third torpedo go?
The second flight of three jets now attacks. We get another shot of three more
torpedoes coming at Godzilla from underwater, two of which smack into his left
side. The first six jets now fly off back home.
Some other questions. I could find no reference anywhere of an Eagle carrying a
torpedo in real life, though it seems possible to do. Why did they use Eagles to
deliver the torpedoes? Was it because they worried that larger, slower
dedicated torpedo planes like the P-3 Orion would be easy targets? Did they
need to conduct the raid in such a hurry that the fast jets were the only ones to
do it? As, by the time the attack started, Godzilla was already just offshore of
Kiganjima Island, perhaps this was the case. And these torpedoes seem to have
actually impacted on Godzilla's skin, which is not how real torpedoes work, they
explode next to their target and the pressure bulb does all the real damage.
The Eagles leave, and the Griffon enters the scene. Godzilla rears up out of the
water, seemingly standing in waist-deep water even though he is clearly some ways
out to sea. The Griffon and Godzilla square off. We see the mixture of awe, fear
and determination in Kiriko's eyes.
The Griffon opens up with its photon cannons, scoring two hits on Godzilla's right
neck. Curiously, the control stick of the Griffon has "PH LB" in English on the
trigger. Perhaps this is for "Photon Laser Battery"? Godzilla is now pissed and
heats up his spines. The Atomic Fire Breath shot is aimed at the Griffon, but it
viffs out of the way at the last second. The blast instead smacks the last of the
three Air Force Eagles coming in to attack. The three jets, strangely have no
torpedoes, just under-wing missiles. The blast blows up two of the jets, but the
third comes miraculously through the fireball to launch two missiles at Godzilla.
Both hit the beast and the jet flies off. It is unbelievable that the jet managed
to avoid being destroyed by either the Fire Breath or the exploding jets. It is
also weird that the Griffon didn't warn the approaching jets about Godzilla about
to fire. There were at least three seconds there when it was clear that the beast
was about to let loose.
Hmmm...just a thought. The Griffon is covered, inside and out with English words.
Is it possible that the plane was built in America? It's never stated where and
who built the machine, so it is possible. I can see how the computer graphics were
made in English for the American market, but did they make two models of the
Griffon, one for each market?
Anyway, back to the film. All these attacks apparently work and Godzilla lumbers
up on shore, pursuing the Griffon. Why did he come ashore when he could have
easily swum around it? Was it to chase the Griffon? He sure didn't seem too
interested in the Griffon once he was ashore, so why did he bother?
Back now to G-Command HQ for a quick look, where the rest of our cast watches
the action on a big screen. The view is coming from a camera set up on the island
by "Unit 3". BTW, we see that Kudo is now wearing a jersey that says "Vikings"
across the front. He oh-so wants to be American...
We now head back into the flooded Shibuya District, where we see that the Army
is planning on ridding the "square" of eggs. They're doing this by sending down
divers from Zodiac boats with crates of TNT. We join one of the boats as it
cruises the flooded streets. Several soldiers sit on guard, their rifles ready.
Suddenly, one of the men notices that a side of a tall building is completely
covered with Meganula! Damn, there must be thousands of them. Why are they
only on this one building? What are they doing there? We never find out as the
soldiers decide to plink away at the bugs with their rifles.
Several boats of soldiers start blazing away, and we see perhaps one Meganula
fall to their bullets. The rest of them, however, sprout wings and fly away. They
first buzz one of the boats, knocking a hapless soldier overboard. The Meganula,
now a massive swarm of many thousands, heads off immediately to sea. They are
headed for Godzilla.
Back now to HQ, where Godzilla is now on dry land and fair game. The Dimension
Tide is powered up and the cross hairs on set on Godzilla. Apparently, it takes
exactly, 300.00 seconds to prep for firing, which seems strange. Just as the
finger is hovering over the trigger, the Griffon is suddenly rocked by the swarm
of Meganula from Tokyo. They have arrived to suck on Godzilla, thinking him a
"tank of energy".
The swarm of dragonflies around Godzilla messes up the satellite's ever-so
delicate "auto-sensing system", causing them to wait for the swarm to leave
before they can fire.
But first the swarm has some dealings with our mutant lizard. Attracted to his
nuclear physiology, they attack to him like a cloud of mosquitoes on a naked man
in Louisiana. They stick their stingers into his flesh and "suck out his nuclear
energy", or something like that. Godzilla is understandably pissed and tries
everything to get them off. He swings his tail around like a horse, he smacks and
rubs up against a cliff face, he roars and flails around but they still assail him.
Ok, we have so far been told that these creatures are actual real-life animals
from earth's distant past. So what kind of evolutionary design allows them to
suck radioactive blood and survive? Was there radioactive monsters back in
Earth's ancient past? These are more extraterrestrial alien bugs than Paleozoic
earth creatures.
He finally gets so mad that he heats up his spines to never-before-seen heats,
melting and roasting the dragonflies still attached to him, and lashes out at the
sky with a massive, sustained Atomic Fire Breath. This burst lasts a long 15
seconds of time, much longer than any other fire breath we have seen in the entire
series. Hundreds of the bugs are toasted, falling around him in flames. The
swarm is greatly reduced.
The air clearer, the Dimension Tide locks onto Godzilla and fires. The swirling
black hole ball flies through the air to implode seemingly over Godzilla's head. As
it was supposed to actually go off "inside" him, we know that something didn’t
work quite right. Indeed, as the Griffon comes in to check the area, we see the
ground give way and Godzilla emerge, seemingly intact and unhurt. I have a hard
time seeing how a weapon can be calibrated so wrong as to only miss by a few
dozen meters over a firing path of many, many miles. And the display clearly said
it was "locked on", so somebody messed up the numbers on that one. Whose going
to loose their job here?
The Dimension Tide has to cool down for one hour, so says the scientists, and so
Godzilla escapes this time. The swarm of Meganula decides to take off for Japan
again. Why? Did they have enough blood? Godzilla goes off swimming towards
Tokyo after them, "Hey, give me back my blood!" The Griffon returns to Tokyo as
well. But first we get this weird little bit where Godzilla and Kiriko lock eyes and
glare at each other for a few seconds.
Hmmm...since the last time the black hole was fired, it created a ripple that let in
all sorts of nasty bugs, don't you think they would be concerned that this shot
would do the same? Maybe they fixed the problem since they realized what
carnage the first experiment caused? Hey, and don't you think the freezing
vacuum of space might cool the weapon down a little faster than one hour?
Ok, now we get a little X-Files type of scene, where Secretary Sugiura sits
in a dimly lit room talking on the phone with the "Prime Minister". The gist is that
Sugiura is sure that Godzilla will be headed for Tokyo, to the "National Institute
of Chemistry" in Shibuya. This is where the Government, with the approval of the
Prime Minister, has been conducting banned experiments in neutron power.
Hmm...somebody's not going to get re-elected here...
Back over Shibuya, the Meganula swarm dive into the water. They gather around a
huge pupa that somehow has come to rest on the bottom. Where did this pupa
come from? The Meganula stick their tails into the husk, pumping it full of the
nuclear blood. This causes the pupa to gestate out a massive "King Meganula",
which will be called a "Megaguirus". Once they have poked the pupa, the Meganula
apparently die and float off limply.
Megaguirus the big-ass mutant dragonfly will have stats of 50-meters long, a
wingspan of 80 meters and a weight of 15,000 metric tons. Basically a scaled-up
version of the smaller Meganulas, he is physically large, but is giving up nearly
10,000 tons to Godzilla. Superficially similar to an Earth dragonfly, Megaguirus
has some interesting morphological characteristics, including a mouth filled with
rows of sharp teeth and eyes that are not multi-faceted. His flying motion is
Mothra-like stiff and unnatural. His most powerful feature is the long tail ending
in a nasty stinger, this will prove to also be his greatest weak point.
Now, back to HQ. The Griffon has landed and Kiriko is pissed off. She points her
anger at Kudo, who seems like a likely target as he designed the DT weapon. Kudo
gets defensive, and the two actually have some fisticuffs! Well, really Kiriko just
does some Akido on him, which really makes him look like a wimp. The lovefest is
broken up by Doctor Yoshizawa. They decide to use the SGS to search the sea
lanes between the island and Tokyo, sure that Godzilla will be found.
That night, Kudo goes down to the edges of the flooded Shibuya District with a
micro-sized SGS that he has just built. Where does he find the time??? He gets
the soldiers to use it to search beneath the flooded streets. BTW, the area is
cordoned off by soldiers and warning signs. The signs all read "Keep Out" in
English only. Where was this movie filmed? Was it in Hong Kong?
Anyway, now the big bad Megaguirus pops out of the water as Kudo watches in
amazement. The monster hovers low for a minute, allowing us a glorious
360-degree look at it. Man, that is one dull, lifeless rubber monster. Very little
on it actually moves, nothing to suggest that it's supposed to be alive. When it
flies it does so simply by moving its wings up and down and gliding along. There's
nothing natural about any of its movements. This is where CGI would have saved
this movie.
Megaguirus flies off, apparently headed somewhere to find Godzilla for some
reason. On his way out of town, the dragonfly clips some buildings. One wing
slices through the top of a building, cutting it completely off. Wow, that's one
strong wing! And the impact of hitting that building with its wing didn’t even
effect the flight of the beast at all! How fake is that? As well, it's clear that
the Tsutaya company paid some coin from some free press, as we see a Tsutaya
billboard about ten times in this short scene.
All I got right now...sorry. At this point in my review process, my two-year old
First Born scratched the hell out of my disk while trying to use it for a frisbee or
something. Since I don't feel like paying more cash for another copy, I will wait
until I can rent it from Blockbuster. Which, knowing Blockbuster, might be
2018...
Document written in September 2004 by Nathan Decker
Awesome remix of
classic footage.
The Diet and the
Imperial Palace in Osaka.
Ground-level
shots of the monster make for impressive scenes.
Rah!
Kiriko with her
rocket.
Rage!
The G-Graspers.
Seriously.
Kudo.
"My hair is perfect."
Sugiura.
Doctor Yoshizawa.
Kudo accepts the
offer, and then insults everyone in the room.
Kenny.
I see you.
Japanese people
love helmets with chin straps.
"No, Kenny, you can't
touch them."
Damn brave kid.
Kenny is
propositioned by one of Tokyo's less-appealing hookers.
Kudo's homing
bullet.
Oh no.
Icky.
Meganulon!
Meganula!
"I told you last time,
Kenny, you can't touch them until you turn 18."
The Griffon.
Excellent move by
the producers, a truly memorable scene.
The Dimension Tide
weapon.
The scientist
explains all.
The flooded
streets.
Kiriko gives the
briefing.
Bad taste.
Kiriko, unsure of
her path in life anymore.
An F-15J with a
torpedo.
Godzilla under air
attack.
Godzilla, viewed
from the Griffon.
Covered with bugs!
Godzilla wonders
just what the hell is going on.
Flame!
Grrr...
Fire this dude.
The
Megaguirus Boss!
"Dude, that's
some serious processing power."