Godzilla: Final Wars

If there's a movie monster that needs no introduction, it's Godzilla.  He's been a pop culture phenomenon for 60 years.  He first showed up in the Japanese original film, Gojira, or Godzilla to the rest of the world.  He essentially invented the whole Kaiju movie genre.  Kaiju is the Japanese word for "strange creature" or "monster."  Kaiju movies involved creatures that where at least 500 feet tall or larger, and generally involved destroying cities.  Godzilla was known for regularly leveling Tokyo to the ground.  Strangely enough, the original film wasn't just a monster movie.  It was also a cautionary tale about the dangers of nuclear power.  The film was released 9 years after the Hiroshima bomb, so it really had an effect on Japanese audiences.  The film was re-released in the States as Godzilla: King of the Monsters! with new footage starring Raymond Burr.  For the next 60 years, Godzilla would appear in 31 movies including the recent Godzilla reboot starring Bryan Cranston.  Hell, one of those movies had Godzilla going up against another legendary movie monster: King Kong.  The famed movie reptile also inspired a number of offshoots and other monster movies such as Gargantua and Mothra.  Guillermo Del Toro himself made a movie as a love note to the Godzilla movies of yore, Pacific Rim.

Godzilla: Final Wars starts off with a bang with an airship/submarine engaged in battle with Godzilla.  Godzilla eventually ends up getting trapped under a glacier and it appears that the world is free from giant monsters....for a while.  Years later, giant monsters start popping up all over the world and only one organization can deal them, The Earth Defense Force with it's special mutant soldier unit.  With one creature nearly defeated, it vanishes.  Soon, a mysterious planet-shaped ship appears over the city with mysterious beings called Xillians.  They apparently want to partner with the human race to destroy a giant object that apparently is heading towards Earth.  Little do the earthlings know, the Xillians have ulterior motives.....and giant monsters.  If that sounds extremely cheesy to you....it is.  This movie is one big cheese-fest.  Giant monsters, mutants AND aliens?  Oh, come on.  Really?   Yep.  However, one does not simply watch Godzilla for the story.  We are here for the mayhem, and it delivers in spades.  There are few moments in the film were cities aren't getting smashed, stuff exploding, or mutants engaged in super-acrobatic hijinks.  There is also Don Frye.

Final Wars was released in 2004 as the last of the Toho Godzilla movies.  The original plan was to put the big guy on hiatus for about a decade so they could just let it be for a while.  However, the rights to Godzilla were bought from Toho by Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros. shortly after Final Wars was released.  When I said this was still a Toho Godzilla movie, that means this is a man-in-the-suit monster.  Not CGI.  A lot of the visual effects in this picture involve miniatures.  Most of the monsters seen in the film are men in suits, with the exception of Mothra and Zilla(the creature from the 1998 film).  This film is packed to the brim with monsters.  It doesn't have all of them, but a good number of Godzilla's foes show up, including Rodan, Gigan, Kumonga, Hedorah and King Ghidorah.  For a two-hour film, this thing is loaded with action.  Big explosions, cities being ripped to shreds and general monster mayhem make this a really over-the-top affair.  The visual effects and miniatures really add to the whole cheese factor.

One of the Godzilla movies that people really didn't like was the Roland Emmerich film from 1998 which starred Matthew Broderick.  It took the design of the Godzilla and threw it out the window in favor of a 500-foot tall........iguana.  So when that version goes up against the beast that we all know and love, it doesn't stand a chance and gets obliterated in a confrontation that will make most Godzilla fans stand up and cheer.  It's awesome.  In fact, most of the monsters in this movie are just cannon fodder for the big guy.  His real confrontation comes in the form of the three-headed dragon, Ghidora.  Yeah, the cgi effects are pretty substandard, but they are functional.  In fact, I would argue that the cgi effects are part of the charm in this movie.  So, what about the actors and their....acting?  Don Frye.  This guy steals the show as the gruff American, Captain Gordon, who's original ship was responsible for trapping Godzilla in a glacier years ago.  His performance is perfectly dead-pan, and it's hilarious at times.  The acting is pretty much way over-the-top as you would expect from a Godzilla movie.  The villains are just plain ridiculous, with Kazuki Kitamura taking the lead as the black leather-clad Xillian leader.  He's fun to watch when he goes ballistic.  For the fans of the original film, Akira Takarada plays the UN Secretary General.  For people who don't know Akira is, his first movie was the 1954 Godzilla.  Also showing up is Kane Kosugi, the son of legendary martial arts actor Sho Kosugi.

As far as Godzilla movies go, Final Wars is quite possibly the craziest of the bunch.  It's just plain silly, but it works.  The whole cautionary message about nuclear power has been thrown out the window.  This is a movie about mayhem and destruction.  There are very few movies that are as straight-forward about what they want to deliver as Godzilla: Final Wars.  If there's a really negative aspect to this film, that I noticed personally, it's Minilla.  He's basically Godzilla's Mini Me.  He didn't really add anything to the film at all.  He was just.....there.  But at least he wasn't as irritating as Jar Jar Binks.  Minilla gets brownie points for that.  The action is exactly as I was expecting in a movie featuring Godzilla and it's one of the most spectacular movies of 2004.  Godzilla Final Wars is the only Triple-M movie that I've seen.  By Triple-M, I mean:  Monsters, Mutants and Mayhem.  If you're a fan of Godzilla like I am or of giant monster movies in general, you owe it to yourself to check out Godzilla: Final Wars.  It's awesome.  9.5/10.

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