Sunday, December 6, 2009

Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah

Hello, Space Monkies.

Godzilla is a series that has made nothing but absolute shit for fifty years. The movies are absolutely terrible: the plots are horrible, the effects are cheesy, and when you start to think about it, nothing about them makes any sense. Worst of all is the English voice dubbing, which is literally the worst dubbing you'll ever hear this side of Dragonball Z's first season. In fact, quite a few Godzilla movies are easily worth counting as some of the worst movies ever made, and are wonderful "Mystery Science Theatre 3000" bait.

And yet, I absolutely love it.

To me, there is really only one defining factor between what makes a Godzilla movie good or bad: does Godzilla kick enough ass? Basically, the division is a simple one, does he win or lose? If your movie has the misfortune of having Godzilla killed off in the end, then God help you from my wrath. Godzilla is the King of all Monsters, blessed be His name, and may he breath fire and be badass for all eternity. I love the horrible man-in-a-suit effects, I love the bad dubbing, and I love watching Japanese cities with funny names get destroyed. Every single bit of it is 100% pure classic.

The best movie of the franchise has to be "Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack", since Godzilla does nothing from beginning to end but totally destroy all his greatest villains. He even beats MOTHRA! Godzilla never beats Mothra! However, the movie is ruined in the last five minutes by Godzilla getting punked-out by a submarine to the throat. But no matter, I just stop the DVD right there and pretend it didn't happen. Doublethink saves the day once again.

However... This movie: "Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah"... This is just garbage. This is a waste of my precious college time. This is easily the worst Godzilla movie ever made. And for a franchise that has made nothing but movies so bad that they're good, how can one movie in particular be singled out as being just plain bad?

Here's how. Right here, two words: "ITS BORING". An hour of this movie could have been cut out without the loss of the anything. At least half its running time is just Japanese people spouting out technobabble. That's the formula for most Godzilla movies, but there has to be a proper ratio. 60% is the limit that I'll take of silly Japanese nobodies. At least 40% of your movie has t0 be Godzilla doing his Godzilla thing. Here its something like 85% annoying Japanese people whose names and motivations are just a waste of my sweet time, and barely 15% of it Godzilla. Okay, its just inexcusable.

The plot is stupid and complicated even for a Godzilla movie. Travelers from THE FUTURE (where putting belts on your shoulder for no reason is all fashion rage) come to our time (1992) to stop Godzilla from destroying THE FUTURE. To do so, they recruit some Japanese nobodies and go back to WWII to stop Godzilla from being born from the nuclear radiation created from nuclear tests. But they leave behind some really creepy looking baby puppets, who are then transformed by that said radiation into King Ghidorah, Godzilla's greatest foe. Yes, the FUTURE people are evil. But one is good, a Japanese elf-woman named Emmy, and she has a Terminator. But somehow Godzilla is born anyway, but is even stronger. He kills King Ghidorah, goes on a rampage. Emmy defeats her evil FUTURE bosses, goes back to THE FUTURE, finds King Ghidorah, and turns him into Mecha-King Ghidorah. Then she returns to the past, uses her robot to defeat Godzilla, and saves the day.

Got all that? I certainly didn't.

Honestly all that wouldn't be so bad if only for the fact that A) Godzilla fucking loses, and B) Godzilla doesn't even appear until the very last act, if you can even claim that there are acts in this jigsaw puzzle of a plot. You can't have a Godzilla movie where the title character doesn't show up until the last half hour. Even the goofy kids movie Godzilla movies from the 70s were better than this disaster.

There are a few good scenes (one is actually rather touching), and some of the effects are so hilarious that you'll get some laughs, but this movie really started to drag on me. By the last fight, I just wanted it to end. I knew Godzilla was toast, I knew whatever ending they had would be bullshit, I just didn't care. My friend who was watching this with my called it "the worst movie I've ever seen". I can't blame him. This movie is just bad. Nothing more to say, nothing more to do.

Rent "Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack" instead. That's awesome dope right there!

4 comments:

  1. Heh, nice.

    Yeah, I've been meaning to watch some of those old-school Godzilla movies. Sadly the only one that i've seen was the one with that lobster-thingo. starts with a "g", i think...or maybe a "b"...i dunno.

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  2. I haven't seen a Godzilla movie since I was 5, and I'm currently 16. Maybe that's a good thing.

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  3. You seem to be in to EVERYTHING from Japan, Blue. Just think: if we bombed Japan to hell like we planned in WWII, there would be nothing. No Zelda, no Cowboy Bebop, no Evangelion.....

    That's some kind of hell.

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  4. It isn't anything planned, it just so happens that Japan makes entertaining mental junk food. I commented on just how much Japanese stuff I like in a FFWiki Tale. "Thinking back to my childhood, with exceptions of Star Wars and Batman, my entire life has been shaped by the land of the rising sun."

    At the very least I hate J-horror. So there's that.

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