G: minus 5 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 Destroyer (1995)
And so we come to the end of the Heisei-era of the franchise. Toho wanted to take a slight pause again in the production of the series. But they also didn’t want to end it with just a simple monster-match. No, they would do the unthinkable. They would kill off Godzilla!
Oh of course it’s not the first time he dies. But it’s also only the second time he dies in the whole franchise up until now at least.
But firstly. I have always heard that there isn’t much of a continuity between the films of the whole series. And while I see what they mean with the 84 reboot. But then again. There is a sort of continuity going through most of the Showa era. Then it’s reset in 84 and since then it was pretty much straight sequels all the way through with a cast of regular characters appearing in each new movie actually evolving as characters in between them. And though Space-Godzilla is a bit of an anomaly in this regard, it is explained in a entry of IMDB-trivia that the reason they changed out Mechagojira was because it would have proven to be too powerful in the first intended teamup between Gojira and MechaG vs SpaceG. “So it was changed to Mogera from The Mysterians instead” as a reference to the first TohoScope-picture and the first of the big flashy Toho films.
But back to the Destroyer-movie. The fact that Godzilla dies here isn’t that much of a spoiler. It was in the advertisements from the beginning. It is instead the way he dies that would make people see it. You see. After an insident on an island that Godzilla was on, it made it so that Godzilla lost control of the nuclear reaction going on steadily inside of him up to this point. Now he is in a near-meltdown phase and as the humans do the maths and predictions their faces whiten as the truth dawns on them. If Godzilla melts down uncotrollably. The resulting reaction will make the whole earth uninhabitable And then another foe rears it’s multiple heads.
No, it’s not Ghidorah that has returned. It is instead a kind of strange approach to the question “what would be able to kill Godzilla?”.
A scientist has stumbled over the formula to produce micro-oxygen. A type of matter that can be used to grow food on an unprecedented scale. Ending world hunger. But other scientists with contact with the older generation also realizes that the thing he is working on is dangerously similar to something else. Some incidents occur and this results in that his MicroOxygen gets mixed up with some MicroFossiles from a time-period before there were an oxygen-rich atmosphere on earth. The resulting creatures grow bigger and bigger and finally it reaches a size and strength that makes the scientist openly call it for what they look at it as. The “Oxygen Destroyer”. The substance that was used to kill the very first Godzilla back in 1954.
Through various means, some involving the Super X III aircraft, redesigned from the last version and now sports “CryoLazers” and Cadmium Missiles. All in an effort to lower Godzillas temperature to manegable scales. It proves to not be enough and as They lure a now adolecent (and not at all as annoying as his younger self) Minya back to Tokyo in order to make the Destroyer and Godzilla meet and hopefully get Destroyer to kill the king of monsters. Minya gets offed by use of gravity. And Godzilla destroys the Destroyer. And as he starts his meltdown the Super X III manages to cool the process off enough so that he could die without taking the whole of humanity with him. But this not before Godzilla manages to recharge Minya enough to make him pull through. (And there was much rejoicing)
I must say that this is probably my favorite among the Heisei films. Godzilla is a menace and out of control. For once the fear seems to be real. Godzilla himself spends all of the movie with glowing marks all over his body as a telltale sign that he is literally burning up from the inside. There is great pain shown in the acting there as Godzilla feels his body start to malfunction. I would even go as far as to say it is a sad movie. Yes yes. I am not blind. They made Minya older to get him into a stage that they could follow up on the franchise without changing the loved Godzilla-design too much.
The model-work continues to improve and most of the flaws are with the early Destroyer-iterations as they are still Cow-sized crabs. The motions of the legs never quite syncs up with the floor and ground beneath. And there were some wide shots with them that just looked like they took the action figure set and pulled them along the miniature sets on wires. But other than that there’s hardly any technical issues I can criticize.
So now we make a 4 year jump in time until the next film arrives. 1999’s Godzilla 2000 and the start of the Millenium-series for the last set of 6 films.
Be seeing you!
