Say what you will about the series but for
a franchise which is best known for mindless wanton violence the Godzilla films are far from unwilling to
attempt the unusual. While the premise near constantly came down to “monster
vs. monster” the writers really seemed to go out of their way to spawn some
weapons grade insanity for the big green fire-snortin’ lizard to beat up.
So instead of the giant god month or gold three headed dragon, what’s he fighting this time? A radioactive
homicidal plant made from his cells! … It’s better than it sounds, trust me.
The plot for this one actually starts from
the unique position of Godzilla already having been defeated. As he was taken
down by a grand plan involving the military and sealing him a volcano in the
last film Japan
is relatively at peace. While rebuilding efforts have largely controlled the
damage he did in his last rampage, the JSDF still fears the monster’s potential
return and with good reason as it turns out. With tissue samples having been
recovered from the irradiated ruins of Tokyo
several factions are fighting to gain control of any genetic information which
might be used for their own benefit. These range from a US genetic research corporation to
a mad scientist grieving over the death of his daughter, trying to bring her
back and obsessed with both genetics the psychic energy of roses.
Guess which
one makes the monster.
Well, before long
there’s a hundred meter tall killer weed lurking in the middle of a lake, semi-docile
but far from contained. After which the corporation drops threats that Godzilla
will be released and you can guess where this is going.
As with the last review of an instalment of
this franchise the titular monster doesn’t show up in the flesh for a long time.
Unlike Final Wars though this one
actually makes good use of his absence. The film preceding this one, Return of Godzilla, had no monster for
him to fight – only the JSDF which he utterly reamed with very little effort.
He was only beaten by foresight and more luck than any scientific team should possibly
possess, and even then it was by the skin of their teeth. Japan has only just been rebuilt
and countless people are still dead – As such the scenes where they realise
there’s another monster loose and Godzilla might be released again help to
raise the tension prior to the creature’s attack. They’re still extremely ill
prepared to face any sort of threat on such a scale and the tactic they used
last time won’t work again. This is something the films rarely did, usually
just having Godzilla show up without much build-up because hey he’s what the
audience wants to see; but here it works.
Sticking with Japan rather than the monsters for
a moment, the film did introduce one of the more popular aspects of the Heisei
series: The advancing technology. In the previous Showa era there was no real
sign of anyone getting better at combating kaiju and the Millennium series’
near constant reboots prevented there being any sign of the military adapting.
Here though there’s constant signs of the
JSDF improving and trying to match the giant monsters, building upon what they
previously had. The previous film showed Japan sending a Cold War era
superweapon and a pair of prototype laser cannons on trucks to fight the
radioactive lizard. In this one an upgraded version of the superweapon is
deployed alongside detachments of maser tanks. They fail to halt either monster
but it was the start of developments which would became an underlying seriestheme
even resulting in a few robotic monsters the big G would end up fighting. The
battles in this case stand out really well due to this with large lightshows
and explosions to the point where you almost begin to ignore the film’s big
flaw – Biollante is barely in it.
The monster only has two major appearances
and for much of the film it seems to be outside of events. It seems to be more
used as a plot device than a plot focus with the items of its creation serving
as both the reason for the early conflict and Godzilla’s release. However once
he finds the plant and they initially fight, Biollante withdraws and goes
missing for a big chunk of the film; in terms of total screen time I think the it
only appeared for ten minutes tops. In addition to this while the creature’s
design is original and fairly menacing, it’s hard to ignore it’s literally
rooted to the ground. Each time they brawled the film relied almost entirely
upon the editing to give any degree of manoeuvrability or halfway decent pace. Even
then they end up being a cluster of close-ups and semi-coherent actions.
Actually when it comes down to it the
cinematography tended to have quite frequent dips in quality. Most of the time
it’s at least passable but it felt like whenever the film got to a fight which
didn’t feature Godzilla vs the military the director was determined to use as
many awkward shots as possible. It just ended up making the film as a whole
feel much cheaper than it really was and that wasn’t helped by some of the
lighting choices. This might seem a really odd criticism to make but in many of
the shots at night had this odd backlit effect which just made it look all the
more clear the monster fights were on a sound stage. What’s more is there
seemed to occasionally be this odd vaguely blue/green tint which simply comes
off like some pointless half-hearted day for night effect.
Now, some of you might be wondering why, if this is the second in the series and I keep mentioning the first so frequently, i've not made an effort to review the Return of Godzilla. Well the truth of the matter is I don't have much to say about it which hasn't already been said by another far more knowledgeable reviewer, Greg of Poparena. As such if you want to get an opinion of that film's quality i'd suggest watching his video here.
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Godzilla vs. Biollante and all related characters and media are owned by Toho.
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