By Joe Gibson
Godzilla vs Megaguirus
has an interesting place in the discourse surrounding the Godzilla series,
underappreciated and overshadowed by both what came before and after. This is
the second film of the Millennium series, produced as a response to Tristar’s 1998
Godzilla, and Godzilla vs Megaguirus is actually the only Millennium Era film
to actually come out in 2000. However, if someone were to say Godzilla 2000 or
Godzilla 2000: Millennium, they would be referring to the previous film titled
such from 1999. Godzilla 2000 overwrites Godzilla vs Megaguirus in that one
simple way, but also the Godzilla suit in both films is functionally the same
one, with a more exaggerated color scheme on the Megaguirus suit. When
discussing these suits, MireGoji summarizes both itself and the slightly
adjusted GiraGoji. Within the Godzilla series, Godzilla vs Megaguirus
represents director Masaaki Tezuka’s first attempt, but fans remember a lot
more fondly his later attempt, Millennium series films 4 and 5, fans focusing
on how he improved tropes from Vs Megaguirus for Against Mechagodzilla.
Megaguirus, herself, is a popular monster, but the discourse often surrounds
the potential of bringing her back to fight Rodan as her base form the
Meganulon originated in Rodan’s first film. I cannot say with certainty that
few people care about the film, but few people focus solely on the film itself
when discussing it in a way I find interesting.
Because of this, I find
it prudent to test out a new format, this Triple S review, on this film in
particular. The title of this article invokes Strengths, Stupidities and
Sophistry, and, so, my goal is to review the movie per my usual standards and
then experiment with some literary criticism to overwrite the film’s meaning
myself as is so uniquely popular to do with this Godzilla film.
I need to lay out a
couple terms to clarify what I am trying to achieve with this article before I
can get too deep into it. A review is a very odd thing to be as poorly defined
as it is within modern discourse. At its most basic, I am engaging with a text
to test if it functions properly, such as a peer review for an argumentative
essay. But at its most extreme, it can get quite messy.
When we review a film, we
are trying to encapsulate the entirety of it, its characters, plot, theme work,
shot composition, soundtrack, special effects, symbolism, etc, into a single
explanation of a score or rating. For someone as young and inexperienced as I
am, this is difficult to do effectively without a lot of time and space.
I have experimented with
different formats to do this; an article that leads with the conclusions and
brings in textual evidence to serve the argument is shorter, sweeter, simpler
and always reads (to me anyway) as a stronger and better organized rhetorical
appeal. That said, it is both substantially harder and a little more dishonest
to write that way. I end up forcing the art into a direction I set instead of
analyzing its aspects as they come about naturally. The other strategy I have
tried is to recap the text in as great of detail as necessary, putting special
emphasis on the most important aspects to the case I am trying to build for the
eventual conclusion. Depending on how meticulous each essay is, I am basically
participating in a close read when I do this, and I find that to be a better
form for a review to take than most of the alternatives.
I do not want to name
names since they almost exclusively have larger audiences than I do and still
do make good points with the format and framework adopted, but the general
trends I see with reviewing this movie is that the negative aspects of the film
and an overall disdain for it color their interpretation.
Few people tackle the
entire movie with each scene, subplot, flourish and blemish getting its own
consideration (and even I have some difficulty doing so). Though I am less
qualified than these other commentators, that is what I try to do, truly view a
movie again to chart the strengths and weaknesses of the entire movie to
hopefully feel confident in an argument about the overall quality that can
prompt a score out of 10 and also a discussion that better represents the art
going forward. Though I focus on the Strengths and Stupidities, I cannot merely
balance them. That would be more disingenuous, as it requires me to pretend
that both are equally valid and prevalent. Though every movie is a mix between
Strengths and Stupidities, some films genuinely are more stupid than good or
more impressive than idiotic, so my approach has to account for that. That
feels like enough preamble though, and this essay is difficult enough without
adding further goals, so let us just begin with the review section.
Strengths and Stupidities
This film begins with a
broadcast from Nichei News, explaining that in 1954, Godzilla attacked Japan.
However, in this continuity, the creature in 1954 was in his spikier green
Giragoji look and did not die. That is the general understanding of the differences
between this universe and the standard Godzilla timelines, but upon a rewatch,
I am not exactly sure that is what this is saying. Likely, this is due to the
wonkiness of the translation, but the newscaster says that Godzilla “again”
attacked Japan, brought "back to life" by the advancement and threat of nuclear
weaponry. The monologue does not explicitly reference any previous attack from
Godzilla, but it also might not preclude the actual 54 events we are used to if
the Giragoji design is meant to be a regenerated 54 Godzilla in a similar vein
to GMK’s Godzilla. The sloppiness of the exposition in this movie is a major
weakness, so I want to emphasize it appropriately. But also, perhaps more
importantly, this exercise is to look very closely at this film and see what it
is trying to say, not what we expect to see. The organic unity of this story is
what will legitimize it, and that sentiment will guide us far later on, so
let’s get back into the film.
The film switches to a
nondiegetic narrator explaining that Godzilla attacked Japan’s first nuclear
power plant in 1966, so they replaced nuclear with renewable energy sources.
This narration includes other journalists on the field reporting the news as it
happens. In 1996, the government established the Bureau of Science and
Technology, and this organization will be dominant in the film, employing the
main cast and developing tools for the G-Graspers. The first diegetic dialogue
from a named character starts with the words “As you all know,” and that is the
third example of this sloppy exposition as Motohiko Sugiura, the man who is
going to go on to drive the entire plot is first written as a plot function to
catch the audience up on a plot point the narrator just explained in detail. In
the actual context of the scene, it makes sense as a cliche for Sugiura to say
on his podium to reassure the public about their new plasma energy, but there
are better ways to write that, and the scene itself is unnecessary as it is
redundant and wastes time getting to Kiriko Tsujimori and the inciting incident
of her journey.
The narrator trails off
and introduces us to Kiriko Tsujimori in the middle of a defense force
operation to stop an attacking Godzilla. Many commentators have criticized
these characters using mere bazookas against Godzilla as incredibly stupid,
and, in the past, I have defended this plot point with the argument that this
impotent effort in 1996 is meant to contrast the BST and G-Graspers’ tech in
2001. (Also, these bazookas are actually the same type of recoilless rifle that
Goro Gondo used against Godzilla to fan acclaim in Godzilla vs Biollante.) Two
things can be true however, and this is not exactly an unimportant cul-de-sac
of a scene; it will serve as the inciting incident and motivation for our
heroine, and it is the tragedy that will endear her revenge quest to us, a
revenge that the film lets her achieve even when later themes would indicate
she should not. So, a very important scene to get right. Because of our lead's takeaway of this mission, there is a theme here
about the utter powerlessness of humanity against Godzilla and also about the
importance of process. Tsujimori hesitates to respond to her commanding
officer, stares at Godzilla in fear, wastes her shot on Godzilla’s neck instead
of his legs to fell him, stays in position too long so her CO has to evacuate
her, and finally her CO gives his life to save her from falling rubble. She
retrieves his dog tag and fires his bazooka on Godzilla. Her resolution in this
film will include a very contentious decision, but the idea here is that while
their weaponry was insufficient to win, she specifically made a mistake and
thinks she needs to take on attributes of her CO, including the guilt and shame
for his death in order to win the day.
On a technical level,
this scene is very good. The Godzilla suit is gorgeous, the dark lighting and
low angles make him even more imposing, and the miniatures and composite shots
are sufficient for the budget. Some shots include an orange glow that could be
the result of his destruction or serve as foreshadowing for the manner in which
the plasma energy summons Godzilla, an aspect of the film that is sorely
lacking if we just focus on the script as I am prone to. Finally, Michiru
Oshima’s score for this movie is incredible and augments every scene of
Godzilla and the Meganula.
Finally, we get into the
main bit of the story in 2001 as Kiriko, now with the G-Graspers and wearing
sunglasses, tries to recruit inventor magician Hajime Kudo into the fight
against Godzilla. As he performs a trick using robots to mix ingredients under
a microwave shaped like a bowl (just go with it, it actually makes more sense
than the bazookas in context), Tsujimori immediately guesses the solution and
then proves it. I believe this is here to immediately contrast her more timid
nature and inform us more about what she believes the ideal type of leader
would do, how she is romanticizing her deceased commanding officer. This type
of plot point actually happens three times in Attack on Titan, so I do not have
to give any specific spoilers, but the idea of a character losing an authority
figure or friend and then trying to act like them in a way that ultimately
tells us more about the surviving character is a really interesting plot point
when done right, and it is the main difference between Tsujimori and the later
evolutions of her archetype Akane Yashiro and Koichi Shikishima. For that
reason, further discussion of Akane and Shikishima is mostly irrelevant, as,
outside of the obvious posturing in the story and a couple key scenes, they are
actually very different types of characters. However, again, you only realize
this difference when you let go of the noise and discourse and just focus on
the film, which can be done responsibly and irresponsibly as I hope to
demonstrate both in this article (though this transcript version will be two parts).
Tsujimori and Kudo
disagree about explaining the trick to the nearby kids, as the kids leave the
building in response, but Tsujimori justifies it, saying that the kids are old
enough to know the truth, and she will later on be able to have a healthy friendship
with another child, so it is merely a matter of perspective, not a trait of
alienating children on her part. I wonder how old she thinks is old enough to
know the truth. These were actual children, but this new stage of her life is
only 5 years old, younger than they appeared to be. She takes Kudo to the Self
Defense Corps Shibaura Base, and he criticizes the look of the warehouse turned
G-Grasper headquarters. Kiriko explains that even though, in theory, Godzilla
only responds to energy leaks, the only way to be sure they are safe “would be
to eliminate Godzilla once and for all.” It is worth mentioning at this point
that the subtitle for the film is The G Annihilation Strategy and that
Tsujimori, despite acting like the mentor character bringing Kudo into the
fight, is actually the protagonist, but this is again because she is acting
like what she thinks her CO was like. Still, he talked of saving lives, and she
talks of eliminating Godzilla. Keep this in mind for when she detonates a
highly dangerous superweapon in public to destroy Godzilla at the end of the
movie.
As she explains,
different sections exist in the workforce of their fight; the first searches
for Godzilla, the second studies his behavior, the third handles statistics for
evacuation scenarios, and the combat section are the G-Graspers. Tsujimori
introduces the small team she leads on the G-Graspers: Makoto Nikura, Kazuo
Mima, Seiichi Hosono, and Tomoharu Okumura. Our last main character, Professor
Yoshizawa, has a preexisting connection to Kudo, having taught his high school
physics class. This is a lot to cover in just a few minutes, and I will pose
the question of why the film allowed this exposition to play out in dialogue
between characters with complicated yet understandable relationships to each
other, when so much else was left up to dueling narration between newscasts and
a real narrator. I am not claiming one is better than the other, just that this
film is not purposeful with how it delivers exposition to the audience. People
would not criticize Tsujimori’s tragic backstory as much if we did not see the
types of weapons they were trying to use, and how irresponsibly everybody used
them. Similarly, the film has barely even hinted so far that plasma energy is
anything less than the magical clean energy source Sugiura told us it was, so
the later plot points concerning Godzilla and the illegal plasma energy are
going to seem to come out of nowhere.
Yoshizawa now asks Kudo
to join them, and his flippant response about not wanting to die young brings
still images of Yoshizawa’s own tragic backstory with Godzilla to her mind. She
lost her team before and has similar trauma to Tsujimori, just that she was the
one in charge, not cosplaying as her superior now. And this is what I was
talking about with how the film truncates some things and lets others play out
dramatically. The film effectively communicates Yoshizawa’s grief without
showing me a contrived setup to distract from it. It also works to characterize
Yoshizawa, since we just saw her flashback, but she cannot bear to remember it
as more than a series of still images, so that is all we get to see. Kudo
apologizes, and she states her desire to prevent such tragedies from ever
happening again with a plasma black hole gun. Let us table the obvious
stupidity for one second.
At this point in history,
Godzilla feeds on plasma energy. The film is a bit half-hearted as to whether
or not an energy leak is required to summon Godzilla because that was the
coverup response, and it certainly wasn’t the case for the nuclear power plant
attack in 1966. Plasma is a symbol of caution, at best, and a bad idea masquerading
as a viable replacement at worst. In other thematic considerations, an
ever-expanding void that swallows Godzilla fired from a gun by Tsujimori is
actually an excellent visual metaphor for her all-consuming grief. The issue is
that it is Yoshizawa’s idea and will be Kudo’s invention. And now we can talk
about how stupid it is. A black hole is obviously one of the most dangerous
cosmic events, quite literally uncontrollable destruction. Miniaturizing the
black hole does not fix the problem, and the logical leap from trying bazookas
to using a black hole is a chasm in the plot, especially as there is no hint of
satire here.
Kudo, as our established
super genius, sees no issue with the plan, and his later Deus ex Machina levels
of plot importance and technical prowess means he again is not the subject of
satire. Somehow, working with black holes is enough to resolve Kudo’s “Refusal
of the Call.” Again, that does not really matter, as the Hero’s Journey is
Tsujimori’s, but it is interesting nonetheless.
Now, we jump three months
into the future, and insect obsessed child Jun Hayasaka enters the movie for
complicated reasons. We need him here to progress the plot and also humanize
Tsujimori. The movie does not need him through the entire runtime though, so he
will abruptly disappear eventually. He tries to enter the cordoned off
Dimension Tide testing zone because he is an easily impressed distractible
child and, more importantly, to me anyway, he looks old enough to know the
truth. (I say that partially because his knowledge of the Meganula is on par with or
possibly better than that of the scientist our heroes bring in to replace him,
because, unlike the scientist, Jun will directly identify the extinct Meganula
out of any of the thousands of types of insects he knows.)
In a conversation between
Sugiura and Yoshizawa, we learn that the Dimension Tide black hole is necessary
because they do not want to make the same mistake again and must make sure no
trace of him remains, so this feels like the Oxygen Destroyer did happen in the
universe, but he grew back within the same year. That would explain the
escalation, and, crap, that would have been a good Cult Film Curiosities video
idea. I won’t actually be able to use that for the Sophistry part of the essay for reasons you’ll eventually see, but uh, let me know in the comments if you
want that Cult Film Curiosity “What Really Happened to Giragoji in 1954?”.
Once again, the film
associates Yoshizawa with Dimension Tide even though the subtext only really
matches Tsujimori, and she launches a miniature black hole at an abandoned
building. The test works as intended, only it opens up a wormhole in the place
of the building. The wormhole dissipates for some reason, but it’ll be back
soon to facilitate some plot points. Wormholes are an odd scientific topic that
I understand even less than I do black holes, but as far as I know, a wormhole
needs to connect between two points of spacetime, insinuating a subject that
has been in both places at once. Again, it is possible I am wrong about this,
but this may be a major contrivance for Megaguirus’ egg to make it through the
wormhole, and it is at least a small contrivance that the wormhole appeared to
close for everybody except Jun later.
An agent catches Jun, and
Tsujimori tries to handle the situation, first by taking off her sunglasses and
then crouching down to his level. If my analysis of her taking on the role of
her CO is correct, then this is her relinquishing that identity for a moment,
showing Jun her eyes that we, the audience, have not seen since 1996. She
speaks more softly, and, in opposition to her previous sunglasses laden
attitude, she says that he should not tell anybody else about what he saw,
specifically his parents who would definitely be old enough to know. She picks
up his insect display and leaves, putting back on her sunglasses. This
connection between the humanity in the jaded, ashamed veteran and the innocence
of a young child is better handled in Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla, but you
can see many of the same building blocks in a different but equally interesting
package with Masaaki Tezuka’s first attempt here. I will continue to point out
the presence or lack of sunglasses or military equipment as masks, as it pertains
to this idea, sometimes shakily, but always at least a little bit.
Jun sees a Meganula fly
past his window, and he returns to the testing site, where the wormhole has
reopened so that the Meganula could fly through, lay an egg and fly back. Once
again, the darkness, camera angles (higher up this time to emphasize the small
stature of Jun) and the soundtrack show off the darker horror movie tone this
movie will dip its toe into soon. A small fog on the ground surrounding the egg
makes the scene somewhat dreamlike. Jun taking the egg back to Shibuya is a
massive mistake, but the far larger one is disposing of the egg in the sewers.
This one action will result in a flood that consumes the entire city. As it
stands, this feels arbitrary too, but it fits the motif of a small action, the
grief for one man that consumes Kiriko and a gun that can consume Godzilla.
Once again, the film does not associate it with Tsujimori until later.
At this point, Kudo
visits Tsujimori while she is working out with her platoon members. Trying to
flirt, he diminishes her pursuit but then gives her Chekov’s micro transmitter
that she can use to ask for his help. He strolls over to her personal effects
and picks up her CO’s dog tag; we learn his name is Miyagawa. She snatches it
back and storms off. Now, in this scene, for practical reasons, she was not
wearing the sunglasses, and she also was not warm to Kudo, mainly because he
insulted her discipline and then implied he could save her. But, as soon as she
grabs the dog tags, she composes herself and tests off his micro transmitter
with a dead shot on a large weight across the room, basically winning the
phallic measuring contest, and that only makes sense because she is embodying
her dead CO, a man. For this project, I sort of married myself to the imagery
of clothing as symbols, but I would ask you upon a rewatch to look out for her
hair as well as the other symbols, how rigid in her beliefs and process she is
when it is tied up and what other emotions she shows when it is done.
Deep below Shibuya, the
egg breaks off into multiple, and this is as good a time as any to explain the
lifecycle of these beasts. So, Meganulon is an insect that originated in the
original Rodan film, sort of a bait and switch monster that attacks the cast
before we realize that the true threat is Rodan, who feasts on the Meganulon.
In this film, Meganulon is what we will call the nymph or larval form of the
creature, and, once it sprouts wings and flies, it is the dragonfly Meganula.
Megaguirus is their queen, who probably would be special on her own in the
past, but she bears reptilian facial features because Godzilla’s DNA and energy
winds up inside of her. Jun sees the initial sewer overflow and immediately
recognizes his mistake. This is a sort of Telltale Heart situation, but Jun’s
mistake has not killed anybody…yet.
So anyway, two city
ordinance workers also spot the flooding, and a Meganulon perches on the wall
above them. In Hitchcockian suspense, the two workers are talking about their
job, and nobody cares because there is a violent murderous bug above them that
they haven’t noticed yet. It starts to move, and then we meet a couple out on
the town nearby. The man sits, smoking, and the soundtrack kicks into high gear
with the shrill string noises that accompany the Meganulon as it creeps closer.
The movie even puts us in Meganulon’s perspective for part of the kill, because
there is a very effective horror movie somewhere in here. The girlfriend is
next, and much of it is offscreen. Following the kill, the Meganulon sprouts
wings and becomes a Meganula, leaving its original skin behind.
In the past, I have
likened that scene to the hospital scene in Spider-Man 2, because it is the
same kind of idea. This superhero movie suddenly became an Evil Dead film for a
few minutes just because the director wanted it that way, and almost everyone agrees
that was the right choice. What makes it strange here is that I cannot find any
evidence that Tezuka directed any horror films, and he served as assistant
director mainly on Toho kaiju films, samurai films, and political crime dramas.
One of the films he was assistant director on, in particular, was Godzilla vs
Mechagodzilla II, which could inform the similarly confused morality that we’ll
get into later, but I have no idea why he directed the film this way,
especially as it was his first directorial feature and his later Kiryu duology
does not include this same talent for horror on display.
A guilty Jun meets with
Tsujimori, who again has taken off her glasses to address the child. She takes
full responsibility for the tragedy, claiming that the test must have mutated a
nearby insect. Because Jun will leave the movie very soon, we do not get as
much to follow up on this as in Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla, but Tsujimori
is able to try and absolve Jun of the blame in a way she is not willing to do
for herself in either personality. Still, Jun then shares his knowledge of the
Meganula life cycle.
The G-Graspers discover
through their sensors that near the Ogasawara islands, Godzilla is emitting
heat rapidly and strangely against an enemy, which turns out to be a Meganula,
and the soundtrack gives a sneak peak of its evolved version of the Meganulon
theme that adds a vibrato and dissonance to the downward violin strokes. The
G-Graspers take off in the Gx-813 Fighter Griffon ship, and this is probably
the best time to talk about the film’s advanced “present day” technology. I
refuse to believe that the monorail and the Griffon are plasma powered, because
I noticed nothing in the film to indicate such, and the emissions should summon
Godzilla wherever they go. Still, plasma power is the easy answer for the
futurism on display, and there still is plasma power tied into industry,
underground as it is, in this movie.
This is an abrupt
stopping point, but the video version of this essay has debuted alongside this post (Godzilla vs Megaguirus: Strengths, Stupidities and Sophistry). You can watch the full thing there, but if you would rather read this argument, the second part of this essay will go up on this blog in a
couple days.
