Released: 2000
Length: 99 min. approx.
Rated: PG
Gojira Movie Number: 24
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Cast: Takehiro Murata (as Yuji Shinoda), Hiroshi Abe (as Mitsuo Katagiri),
Naomi Nishida (as Yuki Ichinose), Mayu Suzuki (as Io Shinoda)
This is a typical Toho movie. When my brother first wanted to go see it, I admit that I was a little leery of it. Most Toho films are odd at best. This one is no exception.
It has absolutely no connection with the previous set of films that were all about the G-Force and their battle to rid the earth of the lizard known as Godzilla. They don’t even include Miki (Mickey?), the cute ESP chick in this flick!
Instead, Godzilla is an interesting animal that is being tracked and studied by a group of scientists in their spare time. They’ve formed a kind of underground network to update one another. They are supposed to be the good guys because they don’t want to destroy whatever they don’t understand. The bad guy is a jerk who works for the government. I’m not sure what his position is, but he wasn’t a general and yet he seemed to be able to order around the armed forces. We’ll call him the Jerk because I don’t remember his name and even if I did I don’t know how to spell it.
So, it all begins with a stupid news lady (kind of like the Tri-Star one…hmmm) who wants to get ahead in her career. Of course, the only way to do that is get some good pictures of Godzilla. So she finds a scientist and his daughter and gets them to take her to the animal. The way the kid acts, you’d think she was the boss, and if you manage to watch the entire film, you’ll see that she pretty much is. Anyway, they get too close to the G-man and the radiation ruins the film in the camera but somehow it doesn’t affect the people.
Thus, she must go back to these people of the underground network to get more pictures…this time, she won’t get so close!
In the mean time, the Jerk has found a large rock under water and they decide to raise it. Instead, it floats to the surface and after the Jerk leaves, it tilts up onto it’s edge and follows the sun like a sunflower. Eventually, we discover that it’s not only a good bouy, but it can float (ie. fly) in the air too! It’s a spaceship!
As always, spaceships don’t like big lizards and this one is no exception. It zips over to where Godzilla is wreaking havoc and blasts him once or twice. Gojira takes exception to this turn of events and gives the spaceship some of its own, thus disabling the stupid thing for a little while and knocking off some of it’s rock shell.
Later on, the spaceship lands on a building and uses some invisible tentacles to hack into Japans internet and thus it can hack into every computer in Japan, whether it’s connected to the web or not! The Jerk doesn’t like this one bit, so he tries to blow it up. This is all fine and good, but the scientist good guy decides he needs to go into the building that they’re going to blow up because the stupid news lady is in there. You’d think that the military wouldn’t be so incompetent as to leave civilians within a building that’s set to be destroyed, but they are. Even worse, they do little to stop the scientist and his daughter from entering the building too.
Suffice it to say, the news woman and girl get out, but the dad decided to stay and find out what these aliens are up to. The Jerk is notified that there’s people still in the building and that they ought to delay the blast, but he just thinks that sending flowers will assuage his guilt. After the building blows with the scientist in it, we get all wound up wondering if he made it. What do you think happened? He’s alive, of course!
The space ship then attacks Godzilla again and eventually traps him under a building. Then it takes some of Gojira’s cells and makes its own monster. This new monster is UGLY! It mutates during the entire fight. Every time Godzilla blasts off some of it, it grows back in a new more disgusting way. The creature wants to bite Godzilla and clone him. He bites his arm and eventually, after much mutating, it opens a huge mouth with which to engulf Godzilla. Strangely enough, the G-man thinks that mouth looks enticing and races forward to stick his head in. The next thing you know, Godzilla is glowing and the other monster explodes as Godzilla’s fiery breathe flows through its body.
Then Godzilla walks over to the building where the Jerk is. The Jerk just stands there sucking nicotine and looking tough. Godzilla doesn’t like other people smoking, so he smashes him.
I think this movie was pretty good. However, there is no real plot so don’t expect to have to think during this movie, other than to wonder why everyone is so dumb. If you like to see cool rubber monsters and some interesting mutation effects, then this is the movie for you!
