G: minus 8 days
Gojirathon is me just writing up some thoughts about the movies I see while I conduct my little marathon of Godzilla-movies in anticipation of the new Hollywood retooling. Why Gojirathon and not Godzillathon? Well, because Rolfe already did his Godzillathon as part of his Monster Madness, and I don’t want to steal his work. I’ll be using the terms, G, Big G, Godzilla and Gojira somewhat interchangeably… since I can be a bit lazy at times, when it comes to these things.
Godzilla vs. King Ghidora (1991)
Oh you thought that the timeline of the Godzillafilms was hard to follow up until now? Well, here comes the new King Ghidora film and just throws everything out of the window leaving only a greatly chronologically confused mess.
First we had a semi-followable timeline from 1954 to up to the one that had all the monsters be inside the feverish daydreams of a kid. Then there were multiple timetravelers and a plethora of monsters. Even some movies were set in the far future of 1999. And the general reset of 1984. So, what now? Well…
A UFO arrives from the future to help us get rid of Godzilla before he completely destroys japan. So the futurists take a couple of present-day persons with them to the year 19544 so that they can stop the creation of Godzilla in 1955. They chose 1954 since there’s survivors who tell of a giant dinosaur that protected them while on an island during WWII. So they knew it would be there. So said and done, they capture it after it’s wounded by some american troops and teleport it to the Bering Sea. But one of the females of the futurists for some reason decides to release some furry little synthetic creatures from the future into the jungles of 1944. I mean, what could possibly go wrong? Oh…
As it turns out. The Dorats (as the furry future-creatures are called) react to the coming nuclear-testings of the fifties in much the same manner as the Dinosaur that made Godzilla… ahem… I just spotted a plothole. The one in 1954 was thouroughly destroyed by the OxygenDestroyer. The ones since then aren’t the same monster, are they?
Anyways. The Dorats therefore turns into King Ghidorah because of plot-convenience. Ghidorah does some rampaging as the present day people realize that the futurists always planned on this happening, because they totally lied before and Japan is actually going to become the supernation of the world so this was an elaborate ruse to take out a dictatorial government. But in order to save innocent lives today (that is, 1991) one of the futurists grows a conscience of her own and goes rouge. Recruiting the Cyborg M11 while he’s at it. Sssso…
The plan now turns into getting that dinosaur frozen in the Bering Sea into his Godzilla form. For that they need a nuke. Easy enough, the company that was founded by one of the survivors of the 1944 battle turns out to have built his own nuclear sub. So they use it to go there and kick-start history again. (by the way, time-paradox ahoy. If the Godzilla of 1954 now never happened, why would they know of Godzilla now? and… gah!!! Timeparadoxes are screwing with my head!) But it turns out that the dinosaur had done some passive inhaling of radioactivity from some downed subs from before and has already turned into Godzilla! Promptly crushing the privately owned nuclear sub. (This company is by the way the one that turned out to be the dictatorship of the future)
So! Godzilla appears. Going down to Japan and kicks the multiple asses of Ghidorah until it finally dies in the water. But now Godzilla himself starts rampaging through the city and the officials realize that “Oh, yeah. There was a reason we so readily gave the goahead to remove that monster!” The solution? Are you following me alright? Don’t worry, there won’t be any tests afterwards.
The solution is proposed. Let’s let the girl from the future go back to the future, revive Ghidorah, make it into a cyborg and return to present day to (This is about the time I just said “fuck it…” and accept anything they decide to do) kick Godzillas ass. But when the monster returns from the future the girl is inside the monster controlling it. And they have also made the cyborg M11 part of the Ghidorah Operating System. They fight for a while, and Godzilla and Ghidorah end up at the bottom of the ocean so that the girl now can reveal that one of the present-day-folk actually were her great great grand father, which probably made his feelings for her a bit awkward. So after thoroughly screwing the space-time continuum up it’s own orifice, she returns back, back to the future (Great Scott!)
Phew… While I have probably harked at the last two movies for their lack of outrageous elements, this one maybe took things a bit too far in the other direction. Or it could just be a simple problem of tone. Because. While a preposterous plot like this would be totally fine in something like the heyday of Adam West era Showa-films. The stonefaced seriousness really hinders the real enjoyment of this strange outing. So now I’ll try to let my mind simmer a bit before I go ahead and watch the next one, Godzilla vs. Mothra (hey, I remember that guy/gal!), but before that. There’s that man who has had the longest day of his life more times and at worse times than anyone else in television. Dammit! Dammit! Sonofabitch!
Be Seeing You!
