Review - Godzilla: Final Wars

It struck me as the movie started and the old familiar Toho logo came up that I haven't seen a Godzilla movie since I was a kid. Most people from my generation probably got our Godzilla fixes from the Saturday and Sunday matinees they'd play on local television. I remember it vividly, those endless smackdowns between Godzilla and Ghidra, Rodan and Mothra, the red radio towers, the tiny Matchbox-like cars being crumpled underfoot. And that roar! Can't forget that roar.

What I'd forgotten is the long stretches between kick-ass battles where we had to wade through something resembling a plot with human characters. In fact, I couldn't tell you for the life of me what any of those plots were from the old films; all I remember are STOMP ROAR BOOM. Which really is and always will be Godzilla's reason for being.

So, not having seen any of the Godzilla films since my childhood, and those ones having been the old school 50s and 60s films, I'm not sure when they turned the "human" stories into insane Power Rangers-type super-powered martial arts extravaganzas, but, well, it's a marked improvement.

From the crowd at the screening I went to I overheard lots of Godzilla-Geek info, like there are four specific dynasties to the Godzilla films (names of which I don't remember... thankfully), and that each time period had different things going on. My completely uneducated assumption after seeing the film is that it was mashing up all four of these periods into one bat-shit-crazy concoction. It apparently had everything - aliens with mind powers, super-powered mutants, tiny little singing twin girls, and every monster you can imagine - to sate the insatiable Godzilla fan.

For the rest of us, with only a general awareness of this world, the film is still a lot of fun. A lot wackier than the old films, that's for sure, but having seen my fair share of recent Japanese cinema I know it's no wackier than anything else they're putting out there. And I'd say the gonzo human stories outside the Godzilla smackdowns are a vast improvement over the old, forgettable ones.

But the real meat of what makes the Godzilla mythos keep on keeping on, the Godzilla Vs. Fill In The Blank Monster scenes, and they're here in spades, and seeing them on a big screen was a huge treat. I grew especially giddy once Ghidra appeared, since he was always my favorite as a kid. And the fight between old-school Godzilla (man in rubber suit) and American-created CG Godzilla is hugely entertaining.

The film is as it should be, that is EXTREMELY silly. Seeing it with the Godzilla-geeks was a great way to go, there were all sorts of shout-outs and applause and just a real general sense of enjoyment to be had. It could've been half an hour shorter, the martial arts battles between superhumans got a little redundant, but that's minor really. STOMP ROAR BOOM!