| Godzilla
vs. SpaceGodzilla, along with All
Monsters Attack (1969) and Godzilla
vs. Megalon (1973), is one of those Godzilla
films that have garnered a pretty nasty reputation
among fans over the years, even though it’s
part of a film series in which coherency of plot
isn’t much of a strong point. Among those
four films, SpaceGodzilla is easily the worst;
the script is one of the messiest seen in the
series to date, the characters are paper thin,
the acting leaves much to be desired as do the
special effects, and the score is unmemorable.
G-Force, in an effort to get rid
of the King of the Monsters once and for all,
creates two projects, T- Project and M-Project,
the first of which will control Godzilla and the
second of which will kill him with Moguera, G-Force’s
latest mech. Miki Saegusa opposes both projects,
but agrees to be a part of T-Project when she
receives a warning from the Cosmos that a powerful
space monster is approaching Earth with plans
to kill Godzilla. If Godzilla is killed, the Earth
will fall to the monster. The T-Project experiment
is conducted on Birth Island, where Godzilla and
his adopted son reside.
Meanwhile, Moguera is sent into
space to intercept the monster. The mech fails
and the monster continues its advance toward Earth.
Back on Birth Island, the T-Project
experiment fails and the space monster, this bears
a strong resemblance to Godzilla lands on the
island and confronts the King of the Monsters.
Godzilla is defeated and Little Godzilla is trapped
in a crystalline prison. The monster, dubbed SpaceGodzilla,
leaves a wounded Godzilla on Birth Island and
flies to Fukuoka, turning the city into a fortress
of crystals.
A vengeful Godzilla and a newly
repaired Moguera converge on SpaceGodzilla’s
location in an effort to destroy the cosmic saurian
and save mother Earth.
The Godzilla series isn’t
known for strong scripts, but compared to this
film, the others are like works of Shakespeare.
In fact, calling it a script is giving it way
more credit than it deserves. It’s really
more of a series of underdeveloped subplots that
never really go anywhere. The T-Project is a good
example of this. In the end, what does the whole
thing amount to? Nothing. It’s just one
of the many “filler” subplots of the
film designed to keep the audience “entertained”
up until the final kaiju battle. It would have
made the script much more cohesive had the project
been responsible for luring SpaceGodzilla to Earth.
There’s also a subplot involving the yakuza,
who plan to use the T-Project to bring Godzilla
under their control. We never really get much
of an idea why. Do they want to use Godzilla to
take over the world; crush a rival gang? The subplot
itself is extremely tacked on and amounts to less
than the T-Project subplot. Then of course, there’s
the love story involving Koji Shinjo and Miki
Saegusa. The whole subplot is surprisingly devoid
of any development whatsoever, but of course,
by the end, Miki and Koji have all their differences
resolved although there was never a turning point
in the relationship.
The kaiju angle of the plot is
handled a bit better, but not much. For instance,
if SpaceGodzilla was so bent on destroying his
doppelganger, why did he leave him on Birth Island
when he could so easily have killed him right
there and then? As a kaiju though, SpaceGodzilla
is written pretty well. He’s given a unique
and cool display of powers and a very vicious
personality. It’s a shame such a great kaiju
had to be featured in such a bad movie. Godzilla
pretty much plays second fiddle to SpaceGodzilla
and isn’t given much personality other than
being protective of Little Godzilla. Speaking
of Little Godzilla, his role in the film is pretty
much acting cute; there’s nothing too memorable
about him at all. Moguera, last seen in The Mysterians,
makes an appearance and plays a fairly large role
in the final battle. However, the mech gets pummeled
by SpaceGodzilla rather easily and the moments
of dignity it gets are very few in number. Mothra
also makes an appearance in this film. However,
her role is almost completely nonexistent! She
plays no role in the film’s mess of a plot
whatsoever other than send the Cosmos back down
to Earth to warn Miki of the coming arrival of
Spacegodzilla.
The acting is one of the better
aspects of the film, but it’s still pretty
mediocre. Hardly any of the actors have any charisma
whatsoever and play their roles pretty much by
the numbers. Akira Emoto portrays his character,
Akira Yuki pretty solidly, unlike most of the
cast. I do have to tip my hat to Megumi
Odaka though. Aside from getting kidnapped
by the yakuza and rescued, she does almost nothing
other than preach to Shinjo not to harm Godzilla.
She could have come across as annoying if acted
wrong, but Odaka manages to avoid for this and
get the audience to slightly feel for her dilemma.
The other performances are nothing to write home
about, but could have been better in the hands
of a better director.
Like most of the actors, the characters
they portray come across as pretty dull and flat.
Akira Yuki serves as the film’s most developed
character with his intense hatred of Godzilla
and his desperation to kill him so strong that
he’ll ignore his orders and mission in order
to do so. The character loses all credibility
however, when he does a complete 180 in regards
to his hatred for Godzilla. Miki Saegusa is confronted
with the dilemma of trying to keep the JSDF from
harming Godzilla so Earth will not fall to his
clone from the cosmos. Thanks to Odaka’s
performance, I was actually feeling for her and
hoping she’d succeed. Unfortunately, this
didn’t last long. After she’s rescued
from the yakuza, Miki and her dilemma fade into
the background until the end. As for the other
character, the audience only gets to learn a thing
or two about them and those things we learn aren’t
enough to make us feel for them. Koji Shinjo develops
some kind of attraction to Miki, Kiyo Sato’s
a happy-go-lucky guy and Chinatsu Gondo has a
thing for Yuki.
As with most of his work on the
Heisei series, Koichi
Kawakita’s special effects are quite
a mixed bag. This time around however, they’re
more awful than good. One of the worst offenders
is the asteroid field in the battle between Moguera
and Spacegodzilla, which is nothing more than
some immobile, styrofoam asteroids against a blank,
black background. For God’s sake, it couldn’t
have hurt to put a few stars here or there! The
most intolerable thing about the effects for me
though, was the beam wars. Even in the previous
two entries in the “Beam Wars Trilogy”
(Godzilla
vs. Mothra [1992], Godzilla
vs. Mechagodzilla II [1993]) had a bit
of tooth and claw fighting here or there. This
film however, is severely lacking in physical
fighting; the result is one of the dullest, most
unimaginative fights in the Godzilla series’
history. I only counted two instances where Godzilla
and SpaceGodzilla make physical contact. That’s
right, two. Kawakita does manage to sneak in some
good shots though, such as Godzilla advancing
toward Birth Island. As for the suits, Godzilla
looks no better or no worse than he has in the
past 5 films, SpaceGodzilla’ suit is a little
stiff and those crystals on his shoulders look
totally artificial, Little Godzilla looks like
an updated (and much less crappy looking) version
of Minilla and Moguera is a passable suit, although
he does look a little like a mecha Woody Woodpecker.
Yes I know that comment’s been done to death,
but it’s true.
One aspect of the film that’s
been the subject of much criticism is its score
by Takayuki
Hattori. Although unmemorable, it’s
certainly not bad. There are 3 themes that really
stick out in my mind. There’s SpaceGodzilla’s
theme, which sounds pretty badass, there’s
Moguera’s heroic theme, which is pretty
catchy and there’s that theme that plays
when Godzilla tears through the city to get to
Spacegodzilla, which gives the scene a real sense
of urgency. Other than those themes, the rest
are pretty unmemorable.
Godzilla vs. Spacegodzilla
for me is one of the worst Godzilla films, if
not the worst. The story is horribly written and
executed, the actors and the characters they portray
are extremely bland, the special effects are some
of the worst seen in the series and the score,
while decent, is almost entirely unmemorable.
This film could have been much better if it didn’t
try to take itself seriously. Much of the same
criticism could be applied to Godzilla:
Final Wars (2004), but what saved that
film was the fact that it just had fun with itself.
Nevertheless, director Kensho Yamashita was convinced
he could make a serious, emotional film and he
failed entirely.
|
(1.5/5)