Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (1974)

Rated PG for a surprising amount of blood for a Godzilla film.  Sure, people die in droves because giant kaiju end up smashing up buildings all willy-nilly.  But also, like, we get some gore.  Godzilla himself loses a lot of blood. But, also, these aliens spew out black goo that is clearly blood for them.  And that scene happens a lot with a lots of aliens.  It's more gnarly looking than I'm probably describing and it oddly is more than a little upsetting.  Still, it's a PG movie and kids could probably handle most of it.

DIRECTOR:  Jun Fukuda

I didn't think that these movies would get this bad.  I really didn't.  I thought that I had crossed the crap stuff and I was actually looking forward to Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla.  I thought this was one of the ones that was kind of revered.  I mean, we still get Mechagodzilla in a bunch of the newer adaptations.  But I don't think I've ever been so thankful to be near the end of a box set as I was after having finished this borderline abomination of a story.

I have to backpedal on some of the stuff I was saying about the Godzilla movies earlier.  In other Godzilla blogs, I complained that, sometimes, the movies relied too much on kaiju fighting instead of putting character first.  I still mostly believe that.  There's only so much of guys in monster suits punching each other before you get really tired of it.  I was all about the human component.  Well, Jun Fukuda --again! --wanted to prove me wrong.  This movie barely has any kaiju fight sequences and, besides the blood, they seem to be on par with the previous films in terms of trying to do anything innovative.  Nope, this is a movie that really embraces what the people of Japan are doing while these monsters promise to level the country.

The problem lies with the fact that the story might be the most incoherent story yet.  I genuinely believe that, for most of these films, the biggest hurdle that these movies have during the production is the attempt to make the movie long enough to excuse being in theaters.  To do that, the guys who write these movies --Fukuda included! --have to try to fill ever second with plot because there is no consistency of character in these films.  (Maybe that might be one of the only positive things about the modern American adaptations of Godzilla.  I like that we're following the same heroes as they interact with this weird and wacky world of monsters.) 

Because we don't care about any of these characters, every single beat has to be plot driven.  I hate to tell you, but I've now blogged about a lot of these movies.  (I don't the energy, both physical or mental, to walk downstairs and count how many Godzilla movies I've watched from my Criterion box set.  I'm sorry.  I'm really trying to knock this blog out before I go to bed because my wife fell asleep on the couch and I didn't want to watch the newest episode of Lanterns without her.) The thing is, I don't think those guys give a crap about the plots.  Like, at all?  They almost seem to hate the idea that they have to write something creative.

Now, I'm imbuing my thoughts on this. For all we know, these guys are regular Ed Woods out there, throwing the most bananas crap at the screen and thinking that its gold.  But, holy crap, Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla --beyond all expectations --is the most incomprehensible Godzilla movie yet.  Like, I'd almost forgive it if the point was to be obtuse.  I've now watched enough avant garde cinema to understand that sometimes we're not quite supposed to get it.  That's not what is happening here.  (I don't think that anyone thought that was happening, but I'm just covering my bases.)  

This movie is brow-beating its audience into shutting its brain off.  There are so many hats stacked upon hats stacked upon hats stacked upon hats that you kind of forget what the point of this movie is beyond the fact that we're going to have a final act where two actors in rubber monsters suits punch each other near model buildings.  And the thing is, I'm not asking for greatness.  This is 1974.  We're in the Roger Moore era of 007 movies.  I'm pretty open to some wild storytelling swings.  (Note:  I couldn't help but notice that some of the production choices seemed to mirror the stuff going on at EON productions while watching this.)  And it's not like I wouldn't hate any one of the beats if it was just stretched out to make the story make sense.  Instead, it's all these disparate ingredients and none of them has the opportunity to stand by itself.

If this was a movie about aliens, I probably would roll my eyes.  I don't know what aliens want to do with a Mechagodzilla outside of their standard "take over the world" bit that we've seen with the last half dozen entries in the franchise.  I supposed I could take my medicine if it was just aliens.  But then there's the prophecy of two monsters fighting a monster that was going to bring about the end of the world.  Okay, I can even feel like I could weave a tale of scientists / archeologists trying to discipher a cryptic message from a Western perpsective.  But then there's the need to wake up this ancient kaiju named King Caesar (what a choice!).  And then there's this whole story of Interpol, with agents who keep showing up and shooting the bad guys when the time is needed for a heroic guy to get out of a scrape.  And then there is a whole separate team who is investigating the aliens?  Why?  Why do all of this when you could have done any one of these with a degree of subtlety and grace.

And maybe it's because this movie annoyed me so much that I feel like being flippant about it all.  I feel like the answer comes down to laziness.  I've now watched a lot of these movies and I keep typing the name "Jun Fukuda."  He directs a lot of these and his name is attached to a lot of the writing credits for these films.  These movies are churned out quickly.  That's something I'm kind of having to adapt to.  I buy these massive Criterion box sets where every movie of a long running franchise is cleaned up and released as a fancy-pants edition and these movies were not given time to gestate and solve problems.  Instead, these are movies that seem to be made by the seats of their pants.  The reason that we have a million plots thrown into the stew is because it takes time, effort, and crafting to actually use one idea to its greatest potential.  It's like Fukuda knew what the bargain was.  He'll fill in the splash and the plot point knowing that everyone just signed up to watch monster fights.

The thing that's going to drive me mildly insane is the knowledge that this might be one of the entries that people absolutely adore.  I mean, I mentioned earlier that Mechagodzilla is beloved.  Does he get an alternative origin later on?  Maybe he gets an origin that makes a moderate amount of sense at some time down the line, after we leave the Showa era of Godzilla?  I want to believe that there's something that people find attractive about elements of this film because I was just put out by this movie.  Like, I know I'm not completely crazy.  The next entry is named Terror of Mechagodzilla.  It implies that audiences were so on board Mechagodzilla that they had to bring him up.  I love the idea of a Mechagodzilla.  I love the obvious idea that Mechagodzilla was built in response to the fact that Godzilla was an unconrollable threat.  Heck, I'm writing this right now, but I also like the idea that man's hubris caused them to lose control of this Promethean fire and that humanity had to turn to Godzilla, the very creature that they were trying to destroy, for help.

But instead we got this hot trash.  It's so bad, guys.  Maybe someone out there loves this and I hope you continue loving this.  This was such a bridge too far.  I can't wait to knock this box out.  I'm probably going to keep watching the Godzilla movies post-Showa era in the hopes that these movies actually get good.  But, boy-oh-boy, this one was a stinker.