The anti-Godzilla force, G-Command, has developed a black hole weapon to defeat Godzilla. However, their first test lets an oversized, prehistoric dragonfly into our dimension. Soon, there are thousands of giant insects that want Godzilla’s radioactive blood to feed to their ever growing king. As the giants fight, Kiriko Tsujimori (Misato Tanaka) and her “G-Grasper” troops try to buy some time for Hajime Kudo (Shosuke Tanihara) to get the black hole weapon working.
There’s Godzilla looking cooler than ever, nice shiny breath-weapon attacks, a giant sinister bug, a military hover plane with plasma cannons, and an ultimate weapon. That’s what giant monsters flicks are all about. Godzilla vs. Megaguirus is mild fun for everyone that can suspend disbelief in 50 meter tall creatures, and it doesn’t hurt that it manages to avoid a majority of the problems that plagued the series over the years (though a few are still hanging around). Still, it never jells, and feels much longer than it’s 100 minutes.
Godzilla vs. Megaguirus eliminates the past, giving a clean start for the big lizard. Even the original film is ignored. Yes, Godzilla did attack Tokyo in 1954, as is explained in a series of news clips, but he survived and departed for the deep ocean, where he was not seen again until Japan put a nuclear reactor online in 1966. It seems he’s drawn to nuclear power, so Japan switched to wind and solar, and moved the capital to Osaka. In 1996, they tried out “clean” plasma energy, but apparently the gray-green giant likes that too, and cut a swath of destruction on his way to the reactor, countered only by foot soldiers with rocket launchers (gone are the days of laser weapons on trucks). All of this is great stuff (the recreations of scenes from the 1954 movie with modern effects should leave long-time fans drooling), and sets up Kiriko’s behavior for the rest of the film. She was a young ranger in ’96, running through the streets with useless weapons, when her commander (and father figure? Love interest? It’s vague) was crushed. Now she’ll do anything to kill the beast.
Unlike the Heisei era films (’84-’95), the characters are well differentiated, and there aren’t too many of them. And unlike the early Godzilla films, there are no irrelevant subplots dealing with thieves or greedy executives. This is a movie about a monster and that’s where the focus stays. This leaves the humans with little to do (there’s got to be a middle ground). They spend most of their time watching and describing what they see. I could have a friend sit next to me and do the same thing.
Unfortunately there is a Kenny: a precocious child in inappropriately short shorts that has unbelievable access to government and military leaders and has a connection to the monster(s). But this Kenny gets less screen time than most, and except for sneaking into a weapons test (Japanese security sucks) and transporting a monster egg to Tokyo, he doesn’t do much. I’ll have to learn a lot more about Japanese culture to figure out why any Kenny is necessary.
It would be easier to ignore the humans and their mainly exposition-filled conversations if the monster action was first rate. But all the effort went into our favorite lizard. The mini-bugs (well, mini from a giant monster perspective) aren’t too bad, but the huge Megaguirus looks exactly like what he is, a puppet on a string. Except for a couple of CGI wing-flaps (and those are rare—most of the time the wings are practical, stiff, and hardly moving), Megaguirus could be on stage at a marionette show. This is one lifeless gnat, which takes the bite, and most of the fun, out of the climactic battle. If all a film is going to offer is imaginative and exciting monster warfare, than the monsters have to be better than bargain basement. Godzilla, and the viewers, deserve a better opponent.
