MRMOVIESETC
REVIEWS:
“Godzilla: Planet
of the Monsters” (2017)
“Godzilla: City on
the Edge of Battle” (2018)
“Godzilla: The
Planet Eater” (2018)
Ah, anime – a medium that could take material like
Godzilla to places it has not yet gone before in its decades-long history. It could have, and based on that alone, I think you know what’s next.
***
It is redundant to even complain about what passes for
writing in a Godzilla film in 2019, right? As the series has moved along and
grown over the years, the general acceptance appeared to be that audiences
wanted to see Godzilla & Co. fight each other and destroy things while
having just barely enough bad narrative to get by. The results were often
silly, but hey, with continued advancements in technology and body suits, the
entertainment factor held up nicely.
Now, with this new trilogy from Toho Animation, imagine
roughly about ninety minutes worth of story stretched to nearly five total
hours with some of the briefest and blandest Godzilla encounters mixed in with missed
opportunities on top of missed opportunities. It is one thing for it to
essentially be a rehash of the 1954 original “Godzilla” story about how the
beast is a living embodiment of Earth’s revenge against the sins of humanity, except this time it is told through a newer, more colorful light. That’s completely fine with me, and
to the screenwriters’ credit, there are a few items checked off in the Weird category; such as, Mechagodzilla taking the shape of a city and yet is somehow
a living organism, and also, yes, really, an alien death cult. For a single
feature-length film, that is not half-bad. For three films, however, it takes
an eternity to reach its pinnacle with a finale you can see coming towards the
end of “Planet of the Monsters”.
To flesh this out a little, the overarching story focuses
on Haruo Sakaki – and Earthling that was forced to flee the planet as a small
child due to Godzilla’s murderous rampage. With the humans finding it
increasing difficult to sustain life on their ship and other planets, Haruo
pledges to go back to Earth and rid it of Godzilla, for whom he has a seething
hatred for and is his sole motivational arc throughout this entire trilogy, in
order to give humanity a fighting chance to “take back what is theirs”. One of
the only allies Harou has in this venture is Metphies, an alien priest whom
uses his calm demeanor and so-called truths of a higher power to spark the
spirits of what little military the humans have left to help exterminate
Godzilla. Metphies has an unmistakably shady demeanor from the get-go, and when
the battle with Godzilla finally starts to reach its breaking point, he adds a
whole new dynamic of mammoth proportions to the fray that is kind of awesome.
I could easily add a few more odds and ends to the
synopsis, but I’m not joking when I tell you that this is the main framework
built to sustain a trilogy. Sure, Metphies can be interesting on occasion when
he’s not spouting off the same religious lines over and over, but until
literally the last twenty minutes or so of “The Planet Eater”, there’s not much
for him to do other than to set brief plot devices in motion. It’s really kind
of a shame, because he easily could have been used to add some much needed
flavor to the first two installments.
Instead, we get to follow Haruo around the entire time –
lucky us. Let me just say that if a one-note rage machine that tries to yell at and fail at killing Godzilla multiple times while on his path to
pseudo-enlightenment, then by all means, get on the Haruo bandwagon. I may have
lost count at some point due to my rapidly shrinking ability to give a crap
anymore, but I’m fairly certain that at least twice during these three films,
it is literally told right to Haruo that “THIS is why Godzilla is here. THIS is
humanity’s fault”, and being the deductive being that he is, Haruo’s only
response, as was his response to everything - “Fuck Godzilla!” I’m paraphrasing
a little, but the dialogue could have used some F-bombs to keep the mood light.
There are of course other humans and characters in this
show, although, seeing that they were all nothing by exposition-spewing robots,
I am going to skip over all of that.
Moving on, let’s talk about the reason why anybody really
watches these movies in the first place – The King. The Myth. The Legend. The
One and Only GODZILLA. And the magnificent What-The-Fuck these films tried to
make him out to be.
I have no idea how an animated Godzilla could have been
created and approved to be this boring.
Not a single clue.
Allow me to paint the picture for you and save some time:
He’s massive (cool), barely defined outside of his basic shape (not cool),
never does anything outside of walking in a straight line slower than drying
paint (seriously), and occasionally blast things (cool maybe the first two
times). Should that not tickle you enough, he does engage in one Monster v
Monster battle with Ghidorah in “Planet Eater”, and I say “Ghidorah” loosely
seeing as he’s merely a three-headed hologram from a different dimension with
no body. In case you are still somehow possibly wondering at this point,
Ghidorah’s creature design is also about a dull as Godzilla’s, but hey, at
least Ghidorah glows. Hoorah.
Basically, in a nutshell, the Godzilla anime trilogy is
about humanity trashing the Earth and then getting pissed off and desperate that
the Earth fought back to restore balance in the form of Godzilla; an alien
death cult looking to destroy civilizations one-by-one with their Ghidorah
deity for some dumbass reason; and a human named Harou right in the middle yelling at things and being emo
in a way that’s supposed to tie up the first two points. Good God, er,
Ghidorah?
Lastly, to end this review on a high note, not even the animation
as a whole was much to write home about. It’s certainly nothing outside what the
“Final Fantasy” or “Dead Space” films have already done. I feel like a broken
record at this point, but how many synonyms are there for “bland”, “boring”, “listless”,
“lifeless”, etc.?
Hopefully some Godzilla fans out there were able to get
more out of this trilogy than I, but this has to be, without a doubt, one of
the biggest disappointments on my viewing list so far in 2019. To be fair, it
had moments here and there, and the whole occult vibe had something going for
it had it not been half-baked. I am truly and utterly amazed what little was
done with a palette of limitless possibilities like this. It’s damn near criminal.
“Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters”: 4/10
“Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle”: 3/10
“Godzilla: The Planet Eater”: 4.5/10
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