So Godzilla is a reptile? His crinkly black hide made me assume he was more like a whale. Like if you touched Godzilla, his skin would feel like that of a shark or ray. He’s shaped mostly like a dinosaur, but I thought he was mutated from some sort of sea life, perhaps mixed with a reptile. In past articles, I have referred to him as an amphibian, and I will continue to do so. Godzilla is lizard-like, but he’s more than that. He’s Godzilla. Also to clarify: Godzilla does not breathe fire. Godzilla breathes blue blasts of radiation. Godzilla is not a fire-breathing lizard. That’s a dragon. Godzilla is a nuclear amphibian. He could kick any dragon’s butt. There’s a movie coming out later this year called The Desolation of Smaug, all about a giant dragon. I’ll have to wait and see, but I’m willing to bet that Godzilla could take down that dumb ol’ dragon any day of the week.
Welcome back to CraveOnline‘s The Series Project! At this juncture in my epic Summer of Godzilla (now 23 films along) I find myself in a weird state. I have been enjoying the Godzilla films so much, that I regret that there are only seven films remaining, and this from someone who ordinarily winces when someone says the phrase “only seven films.” Seven movies would make for a decent Series Project in itself, and yet that’s the downhill slope for a project of this size. I suppose it’s fitting that The King of Monsters should warrant the King of Projects. I was worried, though, that one of two things would happen in this Project. Either I would become so inured to and bored with the constant monster fights and building crumblings, that I would cease to be able to tell these films apart, and my essays would devolve into shorter and shorter descriptions of films that I was struggling to get through. Or the films themselves would begin to shift tone so drastically that I would find myself looking at a film about giant monsters fighting, and be seeing a dark and ultra-violent tragedy each time, expected to weep for the victims of disaster, even though the disaster was a giant nuclear amphibian.
So, yeah, I’m having a grand old time watching monsters fight. There are parts of me that are still ten years old, and those parts are having the best summer vacation ever.
When we last left Godzilla, we were three films into Heisei era of films, and Godzilla was just beaten up by a robotic Mecha-King-Ghidorah from the future. It was looking for a second that the Heisei films would be darker and more serious than the Showa films, but the time traveling robot monsters handily put the kibosh on that. We’re well into the 1990s now, and even though the expertise in special effects has only increased, the tone of these films has remained remarkably consistent. Even the James Bond movies aren’t at this even a keel. This week, I’ll be finishing off the seven-film Heisei era, revisiting old friends like Mothra and Mechagodzilla, meeting Godzilla’s new son (!), and, rather tragically, discussing Godzilla’s death. He’ll be back, of course, in the rebooted Millennium era (not to mention, in the 1998 American remake, which I’ll get to next week), but Godzilla vs. Destroyah was intended to be the end of Godzilla.
Let’s start off this week with…
Godzilla and Mothra: The Battle for Earth
Release Date: 12th December 1992
Monster: Battra
Description: First, an evil spiky horned caterpillar, then an evil Mothra
Origin: Once created by Mother Gaia to destroy an ancient weather-control machine, released from its underground cave by a meteor.
Destruction: Godzilla blasts him constantly in the face while he carries Godzilla out to sea.
Actor(s): “Hurricane Ryu” Hariken (Battra), Kenpachiro Satsuma (Godzilla)
This film was released in 1992, and the special effects show that. This was before CGI was used, and monsters had to be achieved with either puppets or men in suits. Explosions all had to be real explosions, and major attack vehicles were all miniatures. Effects like nuclear breath and Mothra powder were done with in-camera effects and regular cel animation. The special effects in the Godzilla movies to date are, I openly declare, better than anything that could be achieved with CGI. Sure, it looks like a guy in a suit, but realism in not my concern in this instance. I’m concerned with what looks good aesthetically, and its ultimate effect. The special effects are fun. They have weight and reality that just can’t be achieved with CGI. I recently saw Guillermo Del Toro’s giant monster film Pacific Rim, and all the monsters and monster fights were animated in CGI. The fight scenes in that movie were all at night, in the rain, half-submerged in water. As such, I could barely tell what was happening on the screen for most of the fights. CGI has allowed the camera to become too dynamic in such instances. Some things the camera needs to stay totally still for, and needs to keep a good distance away from the action. Dance sequences are one thing. Kung-fu fights are another. And monster fights are most certainly in there. These Godzilla films from the 1990s know how to film copious monster destruction.
So we’re back with Mothra in this film. The two fairy girls that Mothra usually tools around with are back, only this time they are not twins and are calling themselves “The Cosmos” (they are played by Keiko Imamura and Sayaka Osawa, who are actually a pop duo called The Cosmos). If they ever put Mothra in an American remake, then the fairy twins ought also to be played by a two-girl pop duo. Garfunkel and Oats would be fun, but I would prefer Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson from The B-52’s. This is the first film in which we’ll see Mothra actually transform from its little brown larval form into a full-fledged moth over the course of a single film. Mothra makes a giant cocoon and gestates overnight.
We also meet the spiny larval version of Battra, who is, in effect, Mothra’s evil twin. Battra emerges from the Earth as a giant spiny caterpillar, after being released by meteor. The Cosmos explain that Battra is a spirit of vengeance, created by Mother Nature to kill off any human foolish enough to try and change the weather. I suppose the message here is that pollution and climate change has become so bad, that Battra came to life to stop them. And where was Battra in Son of Godzilla, when a scientist was actually trying to change the weather? Battra wasn’t invented yet. Battra, unlike its namesake, is not a bat, but a bat-like moth monster with big muscular legs, and power blast powers.
Godzilla is, in the Heisei era, not the noble defender of the Showa era. Godzilla shows up to destroy cities and kill monsters and has no concern for human life. Sometimes Godzilla just rampages for no good reason. In the Showa era, Godzilla eventually became Japan’s bouncer, kicking out any lowlifes who snuck into the club. In this era, he’s the drunk biker dude who storms into the bar, and who is too big and mean for anyone to kick out. It’s up to humans and the occasional benevolent monster to deal with Godzilla. The Big G has no plan in this film. He just like the way buildings feel as he puts his foot down on them. He does fight Battra, and a winner would mean one less giant killer monster in the world, but the fight is not a noble one. It’s up to Mothra, always so peaceful and benevolent, to talk some sense into these two.
Eventually both Mothra and Battra pupate, Mothra convinces Battra to work for good, and the two moths team up to carry Godzilla out to sea. Foolishly, the two moths carry Godzilla out to sea facing up, so his nuclear mouth can blast Battra as they go. As a result, Battra dies. Just when he learned to be good.
Miki (Megumi Odaka) is in this film as well, and she continues to serve as the human face of these stories (Miki appears in six out of the seven Heisei films). She was 20 when this film was made, but she still looks like she’s 14, thanks to the little girl hairdo the filmmakers gave her. Miki is psychic and runs a psychic institute, and while she does communicate with The Cosmos in The Battle for Earth, and can intuit where giant monsters might be at any given moment (is it really that easy to lose a giant monster?), she often doesn’t serve any sort of vital plot function. Miki is the witness to Godzilla. The Watcher to Godzilla’s Marvel.
The next film will have the return of everyone’s favorite robo-pimp…
