Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (2001)
Who will be the last monster standing?
Let me tell you what, this title is a mouthful. Like, holy cow man, the title’s as long as ‘zilla is tall. Makes for some crazy nice box art though! Anyways, we are continuing our Millennium arc today, and of course we have to up the ante by making Godzilla have not one contender but three! Grab your popcorn and get ready for a ride, tonight we check out Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack.
I’m going to be real with you, this is a weird one. We had a chain going with a plot that follows along one after another, but it seems after the big G’s defeat at the hands of the black hole gun, the only thing we will reference continuity wise for this entry is the original - despite as far as I know it still being consider part of the arc. It ends up feeling a little bit weird, like it’s trying to soft reboot what’s already been soft rebooted you know? Anyways, the big G is back and Japan is once again in danger. If it makes you feel better, you can use a little head cannon to make it fit smoother by saying Godzilla got sent to a hell dimension via the black hole gun and is now possessed by the thousands of souls done dirty during the great war 50 years ago (in the movie). The later half of this is an explanation used in the movie, the first part is me just making a fun movie a bit more dumb fun. Godzilla isn’t the only one to show up though, as various disturbances happen all over, and although Godzilla is being blamed on it first, it doesn’t take long to realize as the watcher that it very much isn’t the case. Three new monsters enter the field, proclaimed to be the “guardian monsters,” whose souls have been awakened by a mysterious old man to do battle against the evil that is Godzilla.
There’s a lot in this thing that isn’t really the main plot but rather commentary type stuff. You have those ever present threads of war is bad. You get the idea that the youth is out of touch buttholes, given how out of the first three groups it shows setting up monster appearances two of them are just a bunch of punks. I mean, the second set is even looking to drown a dog - good thing Mothra is around to set that straight. You get a little bit of chatter on women in the workplace, getting shot down because they are a woman (although that isn’t necessarily the case, but our lead lady protag makes a comment about it as such). You get the ineffectiveness and slowness of the government being shown, as well as the unfortunate ineffectiveness of the army and it’s weapons. You have the drive of human spirit in there as well as some more religious style beliefs in the myths of the guardian spirits and potential ghosts floating about. There’s a lot for something that doesn’t really delve super deep into any of it.
The actors do good with their body language, but once again I’ve got nothing on original line deliveries since it was a dubbed version. That being said, the dubs seemed a bit more off this time than in the previous one. A bunch of the line deliveries are fine, but some of them just feel a little clunky or off - and the lip sync is much more noticeably off this time, be it for some reason I’m more looking for it or it actually is just worse. Plenty of the characters are much more… characters this time as well. Part of it might be because the punk kid groups, part of it might be the (as a character says) “bargain basement” news team being more wacky as well. Most the military types do a good job of being played straight though, including a bit character whose pretty much only there long enough to get laser-ed by Godzilla, but has balls of steel that’ll make you nod in respect.
Doesn’t he just look so excited to be here?
The monsters are a bit mixed as well. For the most part, there is a lot more emoting from the monsters, making them theoretically better in the actor category than in some of the others. On the other hand, Mothra suffers a bit from the mega-bug syndrome of the last movie where it’s just not as flexible and active when in it’s “suit” form. Ghidora when he shows up also has a bit of this problem, despite being an actual suit - perhaps it’s because the lengths of the necks, or the fact that some of the heads feel more like hand puppets then they do anything capable of massive amounts of emoting. Godzilla and Baragon have plenty of good facial expressions over the course of it, with some nice interactions that infer some different emotions during the fight.
The fights themselves are also somewhat mixed. There are a ton of them in this, but it’s less big battles and somewhat more quick skirmishes between the monsters. It works fine, but it seems weird given how much more flexible the main G suit is in this one. Of course, there’s still some really sweet parts in the fights here and there, including a particular great freeze frame that really makes the big G look like an absolute menace when fighting Ghidora. That said, there’s a few moments of silliness in there - whether intentional or not - like when Mothra is essentially sitting on the back of Godzilla’s head in what I assume is supposed to be a scratching attack.
Don’t worry though, things look really good even if the fights aren’t necessarily the most impressive blow-by-blow choreography. The suits themselves as mentioned all look pretty good - even if motion can be pretty limited on some of them. They are all pretty detailed, and quite different from each other. Minor details - like Godzilla’s soulless eyes - can add quite a bit to it, and the CG is still pretty decent this time around - with really the worst part of it probably being Mothra’s emergence from the cocoon. Explosions, miniatures, and various layering effects all come out looking pretty well done - with the normal bit of hiccups here and there like some slightly off lighting for an element placed in to a shot. A good example of the hiccup in that reference is when Mothra is sweeping around Godzilla and lining up an attack, and the little Godzilla in the background is lit quite differently from the rest of the screen. There’s also a slight issue with the more flexible Godzilla suit, wherein you can see a separation of the back ridges where it connects to the tail. It’s not quite as bad as seeing a zipper, but my eye caught it regardless.
Demon Godzilla, bringer of chomps and rage.
Although this one wasn’t bad, and it added three extra monsters to the mix over the one before it, I feel that this one is a bit of a step back in some ways. Demon-mode Godzilla is neat and has absolutely no chill, but most the fights against him feel so shortly one-sided that you don’t believe anything is going to even really hurt the big mean lizard machine this time around. On the one hand, that can make you want to see how it ends, and the fact that it kind of just ignores the ones right before it does make it easy to just watch without the others being involved. Acting is a bit more over-dramatic then in the other’s of this set so far, but the higher mobility of the Godzilla suit is nice and it gives plenty of different themes to pick out of it if you the kind of person who likes to get meanings from movies that exist or don’t.