G-Force has come up with yet another robotic super-weapon to destroy Godzilla, who now hangs out on an island with his frog-headed adopted son. They also have a second plan to control the monster with telepathy. However, their plans change when an “evil” double of Godzilla, with crystals on its shoulders, flies from some distant part of the solar system in order to abuse Baby Godzilla and kill the original big lizard.
A team of first-timers to the Godzilla franchise don’t inject fresh ideas, but instead slavishly repeat ideas from recent films while bringing back the mistakes of the past. An undisciplined movie where nothing is thought out, Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla is poorly conceived and chaotically executed. It is the worst of the giant lizard’s flicks in twenty years, and is the type of movie that gives the genre a bad reputation.
A bit of background: after seeing profits plummet in the ’70s, Toho studios, noting that they had devolved their star property from a terrifying force of nature to a noxiously cute savior of humanity, decided to put Godzilla on hiatus for ten years. When he returned, every film but the original had been stripped from the canon. Toho was now making semi-serious, monster/adventure movies that could be enjoyed by not only the young, but by anyone. That was the idea anyway. These “Heisei” films (1984-1996) were exciting, but had their own, new failings. Most contained overly complicated stories, with irrelevant subplots that often went nowhere, and chronicled the lives of poorly painted characters.
Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla combines the flaws of the Heisei series with those of the Showa series (1954-1975), making a film that does something wrong in almost every scene. The plot is a convoluted mess where things happen for no reason and most events don’t fit into the movie. Space Godzilla comes to Earth (why?), kidnaps Baby Godzilla (huh?), attacks Godzilla (why?), and then stops when he’s winning to go squat in the middle of a crystal fortress (that comes from nowhere). The government’s plan to stop Godzilla (telepathically controlling him) uses a commercial cruise ship to send their agents (soldiers?) to a monster-filled island (does the ship normally go by the monster-filled island? If so, this is the worst ticket ever.). When the one-and-only telepathy test fails, the whole project is dumped (so why is it in the movie?). A scientist defects to the mafia, kidnaps a girl, who is then rescued—all in five minutes (again, why is this in the movie since it goes nowhere and ends so quickly?). One member of G-Force, who apparently is never given orders and spends most of his time AWOL, runs around trying to kill Godzilla with a single bullet in a mid-caliber rifle (why are we watching him? Artillery can’t penetrate that hide, but this gun is going to?). Two fairies riding a moth warn a girl about things that the audience already knows and the character would find out about anyway within five minutes (so they are in the film because…?).
The characters are either scenery-chewing cartoons (the whiny psychic and the gruff, on-his-own-terms soldier), or undefined (everyone else). The psychic gets more screen time than in previous films (she is the one reoccurring character in the series) and she uses it to whine. Everyone babbles. The scientific theories fill up time, but have nothing to do with science (or even theories): “The cells of Godzilla and Space Godzilla are the same, so obviously, there are black holes, white holes, exploding stars, accelerated evolution, and crystal entities involved.” Yeah. Right.
While Heisei films may be packed with complicated nonsense, they normally look good. But Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla takes a huge step backward. Godzilla Jr., who only seemed mildly ridiculous in the previous movie, has reverted to his 1967 form: a cross between a warty Barney the Purple Dinosaur and a deranged smiley face. I suppose the change was to make him more appealing to two-year-olds afflicted with brain rot. And to keep it instructional for future anthropologists looking for the moment when the Great Cultural Decline began, he occasionally performs little hoppy dances. Space Godzilla isn’t a complete disaster, since he’s pretty much Godzilla with a meaner visage. That is, until you notice that he’s got two big globs of plastic on his shoulders. That’s gotta be tough on his spine. I hope he has a good chiropractor. When he flies, he is hung beneath a bunch of plastic shapes because…well, I guess it was cheap.
The third player in the three-way throw-downs is a metallic punk penguin with overlarge glasses. Why did the Japanese government feel the need to make their killer weapon in the shape of an unstable bird? Why did the makers of this film feel the need to repeat the giant robot angle that had been used a year before in Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II, and to make one that isn’t nearly as cool. There had been no reason for anyone to make a big tank in the general shape of Godzilla, but that doesn’t mean that the doors are open now for a WMD that looks like a flightless bird this time around (stranger since it flies with butt rockets).
The big mistake of the Showa films, the one that caused Toho to restart the franchise, was the emasculation of Godzilla, making him a hero and friend to children. Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla turns him into a protector once again, with the psychic saying how swell he is and how he must live. Since Toho didn’t make Godzilla a completely swell guy, this view is nuts. The big lizard is still happy to stomp on people, but psychic girl thinks this is OK, and, from the way the film is structured, we’re supposed to think so too.
Godzilla movies are about a big nasty monster ripping up Tokyo and other monsters. They shouldn’t be about pining for some lizard lovin’ or the fidgeting of a rejected Pokemon.