Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (1964)

Not rated, mainly because it actually probably shouldn't be watched.  It's more chaos than anything inappropriate.  For the sake of being really technical, there are assassination plots throughout the movie.  You know, nothing offensive.  Just an attempt to murder this woman, who gets shot in a completely nonfatal way.  Not rated.

DIRECTOR: Ishiro Honda

Whut?

Like, seriously.  What happened?  Most of us are aware of the idea that there is a steep decline in quality when it comes to the OG Godzilla franchise. The '90s teased these movies mercilessly.  But I seriously thought that I was still in the Golden Age of Godzilla.  Like, this is Ghidorah!  This is one of the big bads.  This is a movie that even me, a novice, knows about.  This is supposed to be one of the good ones and it is an incoherent mess.  Honestly, I'm a little flummoxed how I'm going to make it through the rest of this box set if this is the movie that already breaks me.

The frustration is that a Godzilla movie should be incredibly easy to make.  Honest to Pete, there is a low-bar to what would make an incredible Godzilla movie.  Again, I'm writing this from a place of comfort.  I have a cup of tea.  I have a blog.  I'm sitting with the windows open. The sun is shining.  My stress level is low.  Of course I can give you the formula of what makes an interesting Godzilla movie.  If you actually asked me to make the movie, then I would turn in a turd and blame it on society, Jerry-Seinfeld-style.   You want to know what makes a functional Godzilla movie.  You tell a grounded story about people. To them, their real-world problems seem like the end of the world.  Godzilla and crew show up, wrecking the place.  It doesn't matter if Godzilla is a good guy or a bad guy.  His fighting is going to throw everything into chaos.  The real world, grounded-folk, because of this shared trauma and displacement, realize that their problems, while valid, are ultimately moot given the sense of community that has been built around surviving a kaiju attack.  The end.  

What did Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster give us?  Besides telling us that he's the most rad monster of all time, nothing that was salvagable.  I'm going to try my best and piece this apart.  There's very little that can be analyzed besides some broad strokes at environmentalism, so please be patient at my criminal amount of summary.  There's a million plots all attempting to gain footholds, so I'm not sure what to start with.  The protagonists are a brother-sister team.  He's a cop who has just gotten word that there's going to be an attempt on a princess's life.  I don't know why he's ground zero for this news, but he is.  She is studying the supernatural beat for a news agency.  She's also got a so-so crush in a college professor who is interested in UFOs, even though all of his collegues treat her as subhuman. That's not a plot point.  They just do.  Anyway, cut to the princess.  Sure enough, there's an attempt on her life, but right before she's killed by explosion, a Venusian kidnaps her and takes over her body.  She tries warning civilization of the coming of Ghidorah.  

That should be enough to get the film going, right?  Nope.  The assassins, seeing that she's alive, keep trying to murder the Venusian.  In the meantime, brother and sister fight over whether she's from Venus or a royal dignitary.  Also, the Infant Island Mothra girls somehow interject themselves into the story to warn of the coming of Ghidorah.  That's the movie.  It's weird that when four giant kaiju are all duking it out, that's the most sane thing that happens in the movie.  You realize, there have been so many movies in the Godzilla spinoff series that people are just finding monsters wrecking Japan commonplace?  It's a weird take.  Also, as I've written with previous Godzilla movies, the franchise has already lost its thesis statement about nuclear war.  Honestly, Gojira was a story deeply critical about man's folly when it came to the use of nuclear weapons.  It was a punishment for what we had unleashed on this planet.  

But Ghidorah tries passing the buck to the monsters.  For absolutely no reason, Godzilla and Rodan fight.  It's not like Godzilla is protecting Japan from the Rodan attack.  Also, I didn't know who Rodan was. (I mean, I know from cultural knowledge.  But in-universe, Rodan had yet to show up.  Apparently, he had his own movie somewhere else that I would have to watch to be completely caught up on the franchise.) But at one point, King Ghidorah shows up and Mothra the slug (who gets wrecked in this movie, which is extra funny because we're reminded that Mothra isn't the Mothra we know; this one's a baby) tries to get the other two monsters to put away their vague emnity for the sake of the planet.  Now, the humans comment that the monsters are just as fickle and pig-headed as humanity is.  The bigger takeaway is that the kaiju are 100% sentient characters capable of complex morality and language.  That seems like a huge step backwards for what the series is trying to say.

Again, the theme for Godzilla is that if we keep destroying nature, nature is going to defend itself violently.  But then when we have to start talking to these characters with a mediator kaiju and translator tiny women, I think we missed the point.  That whole scenario and outline for a good Godzilla movie above?  It's supposed to somehow emotionally tie into the destruction happening all around them.  Man alive, there was no characterization in this movie.  There wasn't a human, non-plot element to be found in this movie. The protagonists didn't have to move into some uncomfortable zone where they learned to see the humanity in each other balances against the backdrop of nature.  Nope.  Instead, we had goofy assassins trying silly ways to kill this princess who had been possessed by a lady from Venus.  It's a lot of that.  By the grace of God(zilla), she keeps ducking these hairbrained schemes, like electrocution or sniper attack.  

Do you understand?  I have nothing to write about this movie. The movie is so vapid and devoid of soul that anything I write from here is something I fundamentally don't believe.  Here.  Here's something I don't actually believe about the film, but it gives me something to write about.  I suppose that I could write about how the entire film is an allegory for the complexity of faith.  Again, I don't believe this.  I think this is just a dumb movies about monsters punching each other.  But it's kind of amazing, in this world at least, how quick this Venusian is instantly raised up as some kind of prophet or Christ figure.  Listen, sometimes, this is the best I can do.  Sure, the Christ figure is killed by a bullet from her own people. Sure, there's almost a stigmata element to her wound.  But that's a read that I'm really forcing.  Round hole; square peg.

Anyway, this is...a fundamentally dumb film.  I mean, if you enjoy it, continue doing so.  I just was amazed by how seemingly little effort went into making a coherent plot.