The Movie:
In celebration of Godzilla's 50th anniversary, Toho made an all out
monster-fest of a movie: Godzilla: Final Wars. The 28th film
in the series, this movie draws heavily from the films that proceeded it
and is filled with homages to the earlier works. It contains many
of the Toho monsters and long time fans will have a great time naming the
monsters and even identifying scenes that originally appeared in the other
Godzilla films. As a movie though, it's only mediocre at best.
With Godzilla and the other monsters off screen for much of the film and
taking a backseat to the 'people plot', this film doesn't feel like a monster
movie as much as a science fiction film that just happens to have Godzilla
making an appearance.
The film starts off strong with action right from the get-go.
The submarine/airship Gotengo engages in a very short battle against Godzilla
at the South Pole, trapping him underneath an avalanche of ice a la Godzilla
Rides Again. The credits roll and then we see an underwater fight
against the monster Manda. Pretty cool stuff.
Then the plot starts, and the movie commences it's down hill slide.
We are introduced to the "M Organization" a mutant filled squad in the
Earth Defense Force (EDF), and their spunky member Ozaki (Masahiro Matsuoka).
What sets these people apart from ordinary humans, aside from having a
certain gene, isn't disclosed, but these men and women practice Kung Fu
diligently, which is sure to help them in their battle against giant monsters.
Things start looking up when several monsters attack various cities
around the globe, just like in Destroy All Monsters. The M
Organization takes on Ebirah in Tokyo and manage to kill him with hand
held weapons. Other armies using tanks and war ships don't have as
much luck though, and things are looking bad until an alien space ship
captures all of the monsters and saves the Earth. These aliens (the
Xians, in a nod to the old Planet X) claim that they want to be our friends,
but in reality they just want to eat humans. They are able to control
all of the monsters because they have the M gene. They ordered the
monsters to attack the Earth just so they could save it. As the commander
says, it's better to do things peacefully if possible. I can only
assume that he thinks humans will be so grateful for being spared that
they'll cover their bodies in tasty sauces hoping to be the first ones
eaten.
That plan falls apart when, after a long and boring investigation, the
M Organization discovers some duplicity among the alien delegation that's
interacting with the UN. The alien "X" kills his leader and takes
control of the mission. No more peaceful solutions for him!
He takes control of all of M Organization with his telepathic powers (with
the exception of Ozaki) and releases the monsters that they've captured
on the world. The EDF's forces are totally wiped out, and it looks
like Earth is doomed.
Wiped out except for one ship that didn't fight the monsters for some
reason: the Gotengo. Ozaki and Captain Gordon (Don Frye, Ultimate
Fighting Championship star) take the ship and reawaken Godzilla.
The plan is to let G! fight the other monsters and aliens, and then bury
him in ice again. Will the newly awakened Godzilla be able to defeat
all of the other monsters in the world and an alien invasion force?
They don't call him king of the monsters for nothing.
This film was directed by Ryuhei Kitamura (Versus), who is described on Toho's
web site as "the hottest Japanese filmmaker in Hollywood." I'm not
sure what that means since he hasn't directed a Hollywood movie and none
of his movies have been made into Hollywood productions like Ringu.
It sounds like faint praise at best. In this film Kitamura loses
sight of what makes Godzilla movies so fun, namely Godzilla. The
monster fights at the end of the movie are painfully brief, with some of
the fights appearing on background monitors on the alien space ship.
Other monster scenes are interrupted by inane throw away scenes such as
the one where a pimp pulls a gun on a New York cop for towing his car.
(The cop's reaction? He doesn't take having a gun aimed at his face
seriously and tell the guy to put it away with a bored expression.
Riiiight.) I was happy that he included so many monsters, but none
of them had very much screen time. And why oh why did he have to
bring back baby Godzilla and give him more screen time than Gihdorah???
The focus during the whole film was the M squad and how they fought the
aliens, not on Godzilla. This is more of a SF movie than a Godzilla
film.
The plot was pretty incoherent and full of holes. The aliens could
control all of the monsters except Godzilla and Mothra? Why?
They could control all of the mutants too, except for Ozaki because he
was a "kaiser" whatever the hell that means. Okay.... And what
was that hunter doing wearing a badger skin, and where was he taking Minilla?
Why? If the aliens wanted to use humans as food why did they try
to kill everyone on the planet? The list goes on and on.
The dialog was horribly poor too, and I don't think you can just chalk
it up to a bad translation. Nothing that came out of anyone's mouth
sounded like a sentence a real person would say. Ozaki
once asks someone: "Are you really a biologist? You look more
like a model to me." Smooth talker that one is. The alien commander
gets a good laugh when he says "He who relies solely on power soon finds
that power turned against him." Okay old wise master. Just
what in the hell does that mean??
Ryuhei Kitamura also lifts a lot from a movie not in the Godzilla cannon.
It's a rare and little scene film, so he probably thought that no one would
notice. He was wrong though, there are a few people who have seen
The Matrix, and they will instantly recognize several scenes.
I could let the 'camera spinning around a couple fighting in the air' go
(although it's a very trite and dated technique now) and I only smiled
as slow motion bullets whizzed past people who were able to dodge them,
but when Ozaki stops laser blasts in mid air (the more I think about that
the more stupid it becomes) I had to laugh. What was he thinking??
On the plus side there were some entertaining fights, though they were
often brief. I didn't mind when the American Godzilla (a CGI creation
that looked pretty bad by the way) was trashed in under a minute, but when
Godzilla faces Rhodan, Anguirus, and King Caesar all at once, you want
the battle to last more than two or three minutes.
When all is said and done, this movie had too much wire-fu and not
enough monster-fu.
The DVD:
Audio:
This disc has both the original Japanese and an English dub of the movie,
both in 5.1. The audio for both tracks was outstanding. Though
I didn't care for the background music, the quality of the sound reproduction
was excellent as was the use of the soundstage. This was a film that
really worked all of the speakers, even in the scenes that didn't involve
fights. Sound effects an music come from all corners of the room,
and really immersed the viewer. The sound was crisp and tight and
added a lot to the movie.
I didn't really care for the dub job on this film though. I'm
not a subtitle snob, and I have enjoyed the dubs on other Godzilla movies
and in anime, but this one was only mediocre. The voice talent didn't
really act as well as I was hoping, and the voices didn't really fit the
actor's faces. The whole dub track just seemed a little more cheesy
than the movie did in Japanese.
Video:
The widescreen (2.40:1) anamorphic video was also very good. There
were a lot of scenes that played with color and lighting, opening the camera
lens a little bit more than it should to give the image a washed out look
and applying various gels to the lights, that gave the film a unique look.
These were all reproduced nicely, with the colors being strong and the
flesh tones accurate. The blacks were solid, and the level of detail
very good. Digital defects were at a minimum with nothing really
worth mentioning. This is a very good looking disc.
Extras:
There is only one bonus item, but it's a very good one: an 18-minute
reel of raw B unit footage. This was really entertaining and showed
what it looks like when they film the guys in the rubber suits fighting.
They intercut the raw footage with the finished film. It was interesting
to hear the director yell "On your mark" in English before the filming
starts, something that I didn't know they did.
Final Thoughts:
As a science fiction movie, this wasn't too bad. A little cheesy
and with a lot of plot holes and bad dialog, but there was still a lot
of fun parts to it. As a Godzilla movie though, it doesn't make the
mark. Godzilla is almost an afterthought in this film, and there
is way too much time spent with the M Organization fighting the aliens.
Toho has stated that this is going to be the last Godzilla film (we've
heard that before though, haven't we) and I was hoping for more from this
final effort. The monster fights are brief, but good, and it is a
lot of fun picking out the various monsters and trying to name the movies
that they've appeared in. For that reason, this disc is Recommended
for fans of the franchise. Casual viewers are advised to rent it
tough, or better yet check out Tokyo
SOS.
Buy: