Also known as: Gojira tai Kingu Gidora (original Japanese title)
Release Date: December 14th, 1991 (Japan)
Directed by: Kazuki Ōmori
Written by: Kazuki Ōmori
Music by: Akira Ifukube
Cast: Kōsuke Toyohara, Anna Nakagawa, Megumi Odaka, Katsuhiko Sasaki, Akiji Kobayashi, Yoshio Tsuchiya, Robert Scott Field
Toho, 103 Minutes, 88 Minutes (Chinese cut)
Review:
“You say that you feel Godzilla?” – Kenichiro Terasawa, “Yes whenever I close my eyes, I see him as clearly as if he was walking right in front of me.” – Miki Saegusa
While I wanted to revisit Godzilla Vs. Biollante before revisiting this picture, that movie is a hard one to track down nowadays. This is the direct sequel to it and the third film in the Heisei era of Godzilla movies. I’ll have to circle back to it though when I can find it streaming or if it is ever re-released on Blu-ray in the States.
This film sort of re-imagines the iconic kaiju monster and top Godzilla villain King Ghidorah. In this version, he is a monster created by evil humans from the future, as opposed to just being an alien that showed up one day and was later controlled by an evil alien race. In this, he evolved from three cute little creatures called Dorats. While most fans of the series hate the Dorats for being cute little monsters, I always kind of liked them, even if I’m not a fan of the way in which Ghidorah comes to be in this era of the Godzilla franchise.
The plot is about how these future Earthlings go back in time in an effort to stop Godzilla from ever existing but they are actually trying to get Godzilla out of the way for King Ghidorah. Once Ghidorah is established, he can destroy Japan and prevent it from becoming its future empire. There’s a lot of over the top “Japan is the greatest” propaganda in the movie but I loved it since just about every American action film wants to paint the United States as the savior of the universe.
The film gives us one of the coolest kaiju monster variants of all-time when the big final battle brings in Mecha-King Ghidorah. This plot point would also lead to a future sequel, Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II, which would come out just after the next film in the series, Godzilla vs. Mothra.
It is interesting to see how much gore is in this movie. There are several shots of kaiju getting assaulted in really violent ways. There are kaiju chunks blown off, kaiju blood and just a lot of brutality that wasn’t really seen in the original Shōwa era.
The film also has incredibly hokey effects. While that can and should be expected in any Japanese Godzilla movie that came out before 2016, some of the effects here are pretty good and some aren’t. There’s a large inconsistency with the quality of effects from scene to scene and from this and other Godzilla films from around the same time. While I’m okay with bad effects in these sort of pictures, the inconsistencies make them more noticeable.
Speaking of hokiness, the evil android character and everything about him and how his character worked on screen was terrible. The scene of him running like the Flash was cringe worthy and the fact that he is a future android with a head full of CDs was baffling. The Japanese are at the forefront of technology and CDs weren’t really something that they should envision to be inside of an android from 200-plus years into the future.
The time travel element was a big part of the story, as was the UFO that the Futurians arrived to present Earth in. The filmmakers sort of hammed it up and put what is assumed to be Steven Spielberg’s father in a scene, as well as a display in the time traveling ship that looks an awful like the one in the DeLorean of the Back to the Future movies. I did enjoy these little Easter eggs though.
Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah really takes some time before it gets going and it isn’t the best of its era but it is still packed of with some solid kaiju action, once Godzilla and King Ghidorah show up in the same place. I also liked the added mecha element to the film, which was a throwback to those ’70s films featuring Mechagodzilla and in some regard, that late ’60s King Kong picture with Mechani-Kong.
This is a fun and interesting picture within the Godzilla franchise. Far from perfect but also far from being a throwaway chapter.
Rating: 7/10
Talking Pulp 