Last nite I stayed in and Pod came by to watch my second Godzilla movie with me.
Godzilla vs. Megaguirus. This one came out only a couple years ago in Japan only. I opted again for English dubbing as reading a movie is just a major pain in the ass. The voice acting in this one was almost as good as the one I wrote about last week. It’s obvious that the people behind it actually give a shit about doing a good job for the English speaking fans of big green.
The story of this film is that Japan, having been attacked a couple times by Godzilla, has outlawed all nuclear power and has converted to only using “clean” energy. Nuclear power, and “dirty” energy, is what brought Godzilla to Japan in the first place. It wasn’t clear to me if G was after the nucleation because it makes him powerful and he feeds on it, or if he is pissed off that the Nucleage is fucking up his hood. Either way, on top of being bad for the people, that shit is a monster magnet!
So the people of Japan have been living peacefully for a number of years when all of a sudden, Godzilla is detected underwater, moving towards the land. They are detected by the G Graspers, an army like group of soldiers, and scientists, whose job it is to get rid of Godzilla. This group is led by a woman who has it in for Gojira because years ago, her leader was killed by our large friend, and she has vowed revenge.
The G Graspers, knowing that all of the human’s known weapons are no match for Godzilla, devise a new weapon to take him out, a black hole gun. This creates an actual black hole that sucks everything it touches into darkness forever! I questioned the logic in creating something that, in theory, could suck up the entire planet, but then again these G Grapsers are very smart, and went to a lot more school than I did. They decide to test out their nifty new weapon in a forest that they have quarrantined. This keeps out most people, except a young boy who wanders in the forest to see what’s up and witnesses them testing the device.
After the initial test seemed successful, they decide they’ll try it on big green. As they are packing up, they notice a distortion in the area around where the black hole was. It was a worm hole (think Star Trek). Worm holes can lead to all kinds of trouble, and serve as a gateway into another time, or place, or dimension. As the worm hole is closing up, a strange looking creature, that resembles a dragonfly, flys in from the worm hole and takes off.
The following day, the little kid who saw the test wanders into the forest again and finds a strange looking egg and decides to bring it home and not tell anyone about it. When the egg starts leaking goo all over the place, he figures he better get rid of the egg as it only leads to trouble. He searches around the city for a good place to dump it, and decides on the sewer! I guess he never saw Alligator or he’d know that dumping living things into the sewer is a recipe for disaster. As you may have guessed, the shit water and waste, causes the egg to grow, and hatch, and out comes the strage dragonfly creatures.
These creatures need to absorb energy to bring back to Megaguirus so he can grow. They do this by killing some people. They then bring this energy back, insert it into Megaguirus and then die, as Megaguirus grows bigger and stronger. Megaguirus is finally fully grown after a swarm of his minions attack Godzilla and suck up some of his energy and deliver it to Megaguirus, takes off to fuck up Japan.
At this point, Godzilla has been lured to a part of Japan by the G Graspers so they can try and kill him with the black hole gun Their first attempt fails and they have to wait for the gun to cool down before they can try again. This gives a very pissed off and annoyed King of the Monsters ample time to lay the smackdown on Japan. It is interesting to note here that while Godzilla is very much in his heel persona during this film, there is no face persona for him to battle, Megaguirus is every bit the heel that Godzilla is, if not more. It isnt’ long before Megaguirus shows up and has visions of being the sole destructor of Japan, and he attacks our large lizzard like friend.
The battle begins, all the while the G Graspers are stuck waiting and watching the battle. Megaguirus gets the upper hand early by working Godzilla’s midsection, and piercing him, thus sucking up some of his energy, the energy that G uses to blast the electricity from his mouth! Megaguirus really goes to town on Godzilla, always working the midsection during the match and sticking that power sucker in every chance he gets. Godzilla goes down but is not out. It is around this time that Godzilla realizes how Megaguirus fights, and proceeds to make a big comeback. G manages ot rip off one of Megaguirus’ pinchers and also wises up to Megaguirus’s almost teleportation like ability, and uses his tail to deny a sneak attack. At the apex of the battle, Megaguirus is flying full speed, tail spike/energy sucker out, heading straight towards Godzilla’s head. Godzilla appears to get spiked right in the face, but as the camera rotates to show what happened, Godzilla stopped the creature’s spike by catching it is his mouth! He then bites it off! A couple energy blasts by big G finish off Megaguirus once and for all and Godzilla once again proves that he is “that damn good” and “the whole F’n show”. He is the “showstopper, the main event”.
So once agian the sole monster, Godzilla proceeds to fuck up some more of Japan, but the G Graspers malfuncitoning black hole weapon has one more chance to fire as it is falling to earth, about to burn up in the atmosphere. You can guess what happens here, yep, they succeed and it appears they eliminated Godzilla. However, watching the scene after the end credits will make you think twice about whether or not they were really that successful!
While not as good as the one I saw last week, this was still a very enjoyable movie. It was slower paced than the other one as well, but more on par with the pacing of most Godzilla movies. The picture was very sharp and widescreen adn the sound was Dolby 5.1, though not quite as powerful sounding as the other film. I hope these movies continue a trend of releasing more widescreen versions of some of the older films, with good sound. I know another one is being released at the end of this month and I can’t wait. This is the 50th anniversary of Godzilla, so I hope there is a lot more to come.
Are you getting paid to endorse this movie?
Nope, I just have an appreciation for monster movies and giant robot shows too like Ultraman and Johnny Sokko.