Strap yourselves in guys, this is gonna be a long one.
Right off the bat things get rolling in this film. There is no recap of the previous films, there is no time to get what's going on, you just see a flying saucer flying in the skies over the world, we see our main characters talking about said flying saucer, and then we see a guy preaching in the museum about dinosaurs and how they'll save mankind or something. I'm going to get this out of my system right now, this movie is likely the most random movie of the entire era. Things happen...because reasons. For example, maybe five minutes into the movie, writer character is talking to old soldier character (I don't know their names) in which old soldier character tells writer character that a dinosaur saved his troops during a battle in WWII, but that none of them reported the event because they were the only garrison to survive, and that no one would have believed them. Well if that's the case, why is he preaching about the dinosaurs saving them in the museum? The pacing of this movie is so clunky at times, that I wonder if they even tried with the whole idea of a transition. When King Ghidorah is rampaging, we cut to a...slightly romantic scene? In which two of our characters are sharing their inner thoughts about the situation and whatnot, before it just immediately cuts to the destruction again. It's just very awkward. I might as well get the ball rolling on the characters of this movie. They're really....really bad. Stupidly bad. This might be the dub's fault, for not portraying them perfectly, but I can't blame everything wrong with this film on a language difference. The characters are just so forgettable, and bad. The only two that even made an impression on me were this Android character named M-11, and this guy who throughout the movie claims his garrison was saved by the dinosaur in WWII. M-11, gave me reason to laugh because of how poorly portrayed he is for an android. They pull every trope out of the book for him taking tips from the Terminator, Robocop, and other silly robot science fiction movies. He is ripe with bad special effects, and while I'm aware that Japanese filmmaking is highly budgeted, if budgeted things like Star Trek could actually give a good good portrayal of an android...EARLIER than this film, then this really should not have been difficult. There was an effect that stood out so embarrassingly bad at one point that I actually had to pause the movie to laugh it out (he was running through the jungle, and for a split second, you could tell he was on a coaster or something because his actual legs weren't moving). And then we have old soldier dinosaur man who does nothing in this film but be sad and depressed that his dinosaur savior is destroying Japan. His last scene is incredibly stupid. He just decides he's gonna die because movie. His exact words are "Let me have it my way." Someone play some Frank Sinatra for him.
I might as well talk about the dub problems of the film. The film is absolutely ripe with laughable lines and awkward lines that are read for these actors. I can tell that had this been the actual Japanese cut, I likely wouldn't have laughed so much at these bad lines. One moment I love comes when a jet is flying through the air in pursuit of Ghidorah, and he does a roll in the air. The guy providing the English dub for him decided it would be a good idea to straight up say "I'm...I'm spinning!" As if he were in some sort of peril. I can't take too many points off this film for dub flaws, so I'll just move along.
One thing I never liked, and the fan inside me actually kinda refuses to accept as canon is the ludicrous origin story of Godzilla in this era. I never really liked the idea of the Godzillasaurus. I understand that Godzilla is in fact a radioactive lost dinosaur...unless you're in the present era, in which case have fun with your radioactive lungfish, but the origin story that they present in this film is so absolutely ludicrous and laughable that it presents the weakest point in this era if you ask me. What I mean is, all the mystery, all the terror of what made Godzilla...well...Godzilla in 1954, is just wiped away when we see our heroes travel back in time to WWII in the Pacific. A concept again, I'd like to make perfectly clear, that I was open to. But the way it's executed is just pitifully stupid. We see the United States and Japan fighting in the war as our time traveling party keeps out of the danger, somehow watching the conflict from the safety of their time machine, and then we see the Godzillasaurus, in all its rubbersuited glory tromping through the forest. How did it survive? What does it eat to stay alive? Who cares? I'm still trying to figure out how the Japanese commander identified it as a dinosaur when he was in his bunker to begin with. (But this is the least of my gripes)
There are two major things I hate about this scene. Firstly, I gotta acknowledge the elephant in the room. The depiction of the Americans in this movie is a complete joke. Again, this movie was made when our nations were in an economical tension. I understand that we likely weren't hosting favorable views of Japan. But when Ishiro Honda says you've gone too far....then movie, you screwed up. While acting has never been impressing to me in these films, the Americans in this movie are laughable. Everything they do or say makes....little to no sense. Two officers see what I'd only see as a meteor, they watch it crash on the island and immediately say it came from another planet. But do they report it? No, they just say "Let's keep it a secret." ...WHY? If you're gonna claim you just saw a UFO, then screw you, I don't care who you are, I'm telling someone! Does the term national security not mean anything to you? Sure you could tell your son about it, but what good would that be if Little Green Men do indeed take over your planet? Fast forward to the Godzillasaurus attacking the troops and we see some horrible acting when they're reporting the dinosaur attack, in which little gunfire is working, even from a bazooka...I'll buy it I guess. The navy unloads on the Godzillasaurus, giving it quite a bombardment, a navy officer gives possibly the best worst line I've ever heard in my life ("Take that you dinosaur."), and then because movie, the Godzillasaurus gets up and just kills the American soldiers and leaves the Japanese soldiers alone in a storm of awful effects and stupid plot reasons. Then because movie the Americans just decide, fuck it, we're leaving. To hell with burial retrieval and no man left behind. Let's get the hell out of here. This is one of the most incompetent military forces I've ever seen in a movie. The military in Godzilla 1998 are BUTCH compared to this, and I gotta say they were pretty incompetent themselves. This was just a big slap to the face of America. Makes Biollante's American characters almost likable. Again, I understand that negative publicity was a thing during this time. But that isn't an excuse for me. I don't even like it when Hollywood does that kind of thing. It's just stupid.
But my other big gripe about this scene comes from the Godzillasaurus itself. How does it survive? Because the movies have me believe that it was radiated via nuclear testing in the 1950's. Yet the navy gave it quite the whooping. We aren't told how it managed to survive despite being on its near death bed, and what's even more stupid is that our protagonists are there to teleport it into the ocean in the future to prevent it from ever becoming Godzilla...AND THAT SHOULD KILL IT. This is my biggest issue with this story. What they're doing should thoroughly kill Godzilla. It has yet to be irradiated, mutated, or changed in any way. So their teleporting it to the ocean should just straight up drown Godzilla. Does it? Of course not. I guess dinosaurs don't have to worry about drowning, we see him just walking along the bottom of the ocean later on in the movie, as happy as a clam. But if that wasn't stupid enough, the origin they have for King Ghidorah was stupid on a whole other level. They introduce these little mini Ghidorah's with only one head, called Dorrats, which they replace the Godzillasaurus with in secret so that when the nuclear testing happens, King Ghidorah will be created. Couple questions here. Firstly how do the Futurians as they're called in this movie know that leaving three dorrats on this island, exposing them to radiation would create Ghidorah? They say that nuclear weapons and whatnot are banned where they come from, so they likely didn't have the resources to test this little theory. Ask me, these dorrats should have died, seeing as how they're barely the size of a tribble. Second question...I understand that Ghidorah is a three headed monster, but how does a little radiation mutate three little dorrats into this hulking monstrosity of Ghidorah? It made more sense with Godzilla, an already big beast. Here, they're stretching the already stretched suspension of disbelief to the breaking point, expecting me to believe that three small creatures somehow merged, giving up limbs, wings, body mass, and becoming one of the most iconic creatures of the franchise. I don't buy it. Not for a second movie! I understand that they wanted a different origin for Ghidorah, rather than just doing with the monster from space routine again, but sometimes, older is better. And I still haven't discussed my issues with how they rebirth Godzilla. It's way too instantaneous. They literally just send a nuclear submarine down to awaken him, they sink, and Godzilla is suddenly bigger and more violent than before. Okay, I'm guessing Godzilla doesn't work like a cup of noodles. You don't just add radiation, and get an instant King of Monsters. I think it would be a bit more complex than that. I can think of many things that could have fixed this right off the top of my head.
But none of this goes into my biggest issue with the movie. Time travel. The thing that should have been one of the coolest things this franchise ever attempted, is actually one of the things I wish they never even touched. Why? Well to quote Dr. Emmet L. Brown, this film doesn't "think fourth dimensionally". At all. Any interesting complex aspect that comes with Time Travel is completely absent in this film. There is no cause and effect, and there's no consequence. They go back in time, teleport Godzilla to the future to prevent his transformation, and they go back, and it is literally like none of that ever happened. They get back and the head Futurian literally said, "We just got the report, Godzilla has vanished from history." If that's the case, then why does EVERYONE STILL KNOW HIM?! I mean that too. EVERYONE knows the name Godzilla. Despite that Ghidorah supposedly took his place, everyone knows of the devastating past that Godzilla had. HOW?! If Godzilla vanished from history, that means that literally NOTHING of the past films would have happened, which means absolutely no one of that time period who didn't travel back to 1944 would know the name or the history. Hell, I can take this further. Plenty of people who died would still be alive. Japan likely could have built better and even stronger cities than before. The futurians may not even exist anymore. And who's to say that King Ghidorah didn't do any of the rampaging that Godzilla did? Why does literally no one know who Ghidorah is? Is any of this addressed? Absolutely not. Instead, Time travel is reduced to one's typical trip to the grocery store, and as soon as they come back, everyone is shocked that Godzilla is gone, but suddenly this Ghidorah is just devastating Japan after appearing "out of nowhere". Again. Not how it works. All the aspects that make Time Traveling a compelling, and even tense aspect of science fiction are gone. They weren't even touched. The first time I saw this, I was fuming. And I'm no more forgiving watching it now.
All these problems plague this movie for the first two thirds. So...how about the third act? Well despite a few film contradictions which I'll get to, I actually like the third act of this film. The action, true to the Hensei spirit, is a wonderful treat to see, and I gotta say that the battles that Godzilla and Ghidorah have are incredibly violent, even if they're not as bloody as those between him and Biollante. It's all a marvelous treat to watch, and even when Ghidorah is out of the picture, Godzilla's city rampages of this era continue to be a marvelous destructive treat to enjoy. Almost to the point where i can forgive a few of the faults of the third act. They say that no two of the same beings may be in one area of time as the other (I don't know why, since we saw that in Back to the Future and Star Trek, but whatever), yet once Mecha-Ghidorah comes into play, it thouroughly places two Ghidorahs in the same time period. You got one on the bottom of the ocean, and one doing the fighting. And that mecha Ghidorah falls into the ocean, which would mean that there are actually two Ghidorah's on the bottom of the sea now? They completely ignore this plot hole, but I don't care too much. Another thing is that they don't really bother explaining how a mortally wounded Ghidorah managed to stay alive for two centuries on the bottom of the ocean to become revived. But when you're seeing the battling going on, you just don't care. The third act of this film is very solid, despite the few faults it does have, and it's what I enjoy most about this movie. I just wish I didn't have to sit through two thirds of crap just to watch it.
At the end of the day, I likely take this film much too seriously, but I think I have a small right to. I'm sure a lot of you don't like what I have to say about this film. And if you enjoy it for whatever reason, I can certainly see why. That third act is wonderful, and even when the film is bad, it's not un-entertaining. I can see many of you labeling this film in the so bad that it's good territory. In a lot of ways it is. But the lack of competent storytelling to me is just a bit insulting now. Don't even bother trying to say that it's not as big a budget as hollywood, you don't need a budget to write a competent story. This is a clear example to me when I say that Toho at times just doesn't care about their Godzilla stories. The reason I'm being as harsh as I am with this movie is because I want to give you the idea that I want a good story for these films. I'm not asking for a best picture. I'm not asking for better looks. I'm asking for a story to care about. Something that makes me really root for our heroes as they struggle against one or two monsters. Two monsters that mind you, are easily amongst the most iconic monsters of the franchise. Godzilla himself, and Ghidorah...arguably his biggest Nemesis. I wanted something to really give these two monsters justice. This movie is not that movie. We may laugh at silly dubbed lines, or awkward acting at times, you can spend all day laughing at a turd. At the end of the day, it's still a turd. And that's how I feel about this movie.
Godzilla VS King Ghidorah gets a one star rating out of four. I almost gave it the initial one and a half star rating, but I can't be too generous. I want to send the message that I want quality. This is another reason I was so harsh with Godzilla Resurgence earlier this year. I want Toho to care about their films. I want them to care about their audience. And I want them to care about Godzilla. I didn't see that care in this film as I have in other films. And it is for that reason, I cannot in my right mind say this is one of the best of the franchise. One or two good monster fights do not make a good movie for me. And when it comes to things like Time Travel, unless you explicitly lay out your rules for how you play it, I will not take too many rule breaks. I have seen worse films of this franchise, but I did include this on the list of the worst monster movies I've seen back in the day for a reason. And watching it again, I'm genuinely sorry to say, that I hold to that stance. I know a lot of you may enjoy ripping me a new one for that stance, but I do expect better from Toho, and I am thankful to say that we have gotten better films since then.
Please feel free to suggest any films you'd like me to review down below. Leave a comment explaining your own thoughts or feelings of the film down below, and as always, thanks for reading.
Final Verdict: 1/4
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