Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (1974)

directed by Jun Fukuda

Japan

84 minutes

4 stars out of 5

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This year is the 50th birthday of one of my favorite Godzilla films, which also means it's the 50th birthday of Mechagodzilla itself. I used to talk about how I didn't particularly like Mechagodzilla, but somehow I've come around to it, to the point where I think it's genuinely one of the most fascinating aspects of the series to think about. Pitting something created artificially against something created by accident brings a new angle to the "man vs. nature" question that often comes up within the narrative of a Godzilla film.

In fact, thinking about "man vs. nature" provides an interesting lens through which to examine Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla, because it's really man and nature tag-teaming it in this one. Mechagodzilla looks insurmountable at some points: that final battle where the real Godzilla and King Caesar are up against it and it's firing off weapons from every single part of its body is one of the most breathtaking battles in the series - yes, from any era, even beating out some Heisei stuff, IMO - because it's a moment where there's really nothing Godzilla can do, save for standing there and enduring the constant barrage of missiles and hoping to outlast it. But, all of this being said - and this is something I really only realized on my fourth rewatch - Mechagodzilla, and by extension its creators, the Black Hole Planet 3 aliens, were defeated by our friendly local irradiated dinosaur and a big guy who lives in a mountain who can only be summoned by a lady singing a song.

It's the chthonic vs. the invasive species. The whole "defenders of Earth" theme would be more explicitly developed in Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack, but Godzilla and King Caesar being guardians of the Earth is the de-facto backbone of Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla. 

There's ongoing debate - and probably always will be - about which Godzilla movie best balances its human story with its kaiju business. I don't see this one brought up to argue for the merits of its human characters, but personally (and this could just be because I've seen it four times and I know everything I can expect out of it) the mix between human/kaiju storylines feels totally satisfying here. It's not like the human characters have any depth, or relatable backstories that make me root for them as people, but they're still fun and interesting to watch. You don't want to see them get killed by aliens, which is, honestly, the bare minimum standard for any given character in fiction. Everybody's also dressed really nice all the time. Nobody looks like they woke up that day and just threw something on. I admire how put-together the whole cast of characters looks throughout the entire film.

You can't not talk about this one without talking about the practical effects. Teruyoshi Nakano's fingerprints are all over the thing. Even if you're a new fan who isn't familiar with the team behind the movies, you would easily be able to tell a Nakano movie apart from something else based on the sheer quantity of explosions. It's because of him that that final battle looks so unique; it's because of him that Mechagodzilla's entire body being a weapon is executed so flawlessly onscreen. There's a quote from him about how he wanted to blow the roof off one of Toho's soundstages but Toho didn't let him, and I gotta say I think they should have let him cook.

Another thing I realized on this rewatch is how jarring the Fake Godzilla scenes are. At this point they'd really perfected the "friendly Godzilla" design, and seeing that chubby, affable, cartoonishly-proportioned version of Godzilla break Anguirus' jaw so badly it starts spewing blood and limps away (and out of the series for the next 30 years) feels wrong. I think it was kind of a bold move to have a character who'd become pretty much explicitly a children's superhero look like it was committing brutal acts of violence. With Eiji Tsuburaya's death, they went to some weird places with this one, and I do love it. I do.

I don't really have much to say about this that other people haven't said better. I like this one more with every rewatch. There's something so pitch-perfect about it. I love every Godzilla movie, but I will admit that some of them do have moments where it feels like nothing is happening. This isn't one of them: I'm always either focusing on the wacky artifact-stealing/INTERPOL/ancient prophecy/ferry ride/kidnapping stuff or on the fieriest kaiju battle ever put to film. I wouldn't cut anything from this. It's all good.

Twenty-Four Eyes (1954)

directed by Keisuke Kinoshita

Japan

156 minutes

5 stars out of 5

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Even before meeting her, Miss Ôishi's class have already given her a nickname ("Miss Koishi", or "little pebble", a play on her surname, which means "large stone"). The children love her just because she's there; a kind, friendly face; the only person who's willing to let them be children for a while in the middle of the harsh island life that requires them to grow up much too fast. This is shown by Miss Ôishi's reaction to a prank that trips her in the sand and causes her to tear her Achilles' tendon, taking her out of her job for several months: kids will be kids. She'd be within her rights to be frustrated with her class, but they had no way of knowing what would be the result of their innocent joke, and if she were to punish them simply for being children, the innocence they had such a tenuous hold on would be further damaged.

For the first part of this film, the focus is mainly on the children, and they're portrayed as a group. It's not that they don't have their individual lives, but they're united for a brief time by the experience of being children and facing the hardships that all young children face. The theme of unity is something that comes up very often in this film: not unity in a political or ideological sense, but in a sense of just being a human, being alive in a difficult world. When the children sing their school songs, which they remember throughout their lives, and which are a thread that continues to connect them well after leaving school, they're together not in motivation or outlook but as a family of individual souls connected by a shared humanity. One could watch the more lighthearted first act of this film forever, because the performances Kinoshita elicits from the children are so wonderfully authentic that it feels like watching real children go about their lives. One of the most endearing parts is when they learn where Miss Ôishi is staying while recuperating from her injury, and somehow, as a group, manage to catch a bus to her hospital, but they don't plan it very well, so by the time they arrive, they're just a band of miserable, dusty, crying, hungry children. The unwavering loyalty the kids show to their teacher remains constant throughout the timeline of the film, no matter the strife that they all endure.

This is a beautifully shot film, incredibly expansive in its scale but at the same time enclosed. It doesn't restrict itself to the school or the homes of the children, but instead involves what truly feels like the entire island. And that's because it literally is: the film was shot on Shôdoshima, the island that it depicts. I don't think any studio sets were used here, so the scenery is utterly breathtaking. It may have been deliberate that as the world of the children gets smaller and is defined more by societal pressures, there are less sweeping nature shots, and characters are more commonly shown in towns and houses. But for a little while, Twenty-Four Eyes reminds us like very few things do of what it's like to be a child in a vast and new world.

Eventually the war comes even to a small secluded island. Despite being beautiful, tender, and softspoken, this has to be one of the most brutally effective anti-war films I've ever seen. Even before the events that would lead to Japan's official entrance of the war, it rapidly becomes dangerous for Miss Ôishi to go on teaching the same way she had been before. One of the school's other teachers is arrested on suspicion of being a communist simply because another teacher he was friends with was reading a book rumored to have communistic or at least anti-war messages to his students. Miss Ôishi pipes up: she's taught the same book to her kids, and has it in her classroom at that moment. (The principal burns it upon this revelation.) Suddenly, practically overnight, Miss Ôishi can no longer teach her students material just because it's well-written and sounds good and talks about the value of life. Now, her job is as an extension of the Empire, to teach her students to become nothing more than soldiers whose only value lies in their ability to die for their country.

This is when the film takes its inevitable turn towards being completely devastating. Miss Ôishi is driven right out of her job by her newfound restriction from teaching her students anything that might lead them to appreciate being alive. With a new and growing family, her time is now taken up with caring for her own children, and the love of teaching is beaten out of her - but not her love of her students. Her class is decimated by the war. Her male students are drafted and only two of them come back, one permanently injured. Her husband dies in the war as well. Even before the war, life takes its toll on her children almost from the minute they can walk: several of her girls are required to stay at home and care for younger siblings, or to earn money doing jobs for their family. Again, Miss Ôishi's role as the one refuge for these children where they can learn about a world bigger than their island and experience wonder and care is crucial to their lives and hers. Despite narrowly escaping censure or worse for "communist sympathies" (the appreciation and protection of human life), Miss Ôishi remains staunchly anti-war. When it ends, she doesn't care that Japan lost, she's just happy it's over.

I believe that this film is something that needs to be paid attention to now because of the change in curriculum that comes when the government begins to intervene in Miss Ôishi's school. When the children were young and war wasn't on the horizon, being taught how to live in the world, how to appreciate just being alive in nature with your friends, seemed as or more important as being taught actual book knowledge. But that doesn't make for a good soldier. Indoctrination with a message espoused by the government or a miscellaneous ruling party, for ends that ultimately serve the larger structure at the cost of the lives of individuals, is occurring now, in the US, in what is occasionally referred to as "peacetime". Teachers aren't - and haven't been - free to teach children how to live. They can only teach them how to be citizens.

Despite the overwhelming amount of suffering the children and Miss Ôishi undergo, the end of the film remains - although bittersweet and emotionally raw - still lit up with hope. After 18 years, the children still haven't forgotten their teacher, although their number has been greatly reduced - by war, disease, circumstance, and the simple process of growing up. I think the end message of this movie is that the only real way to live a life is to be there for other people who are also trying to live their lives, no matter how much it might hurt when things separate you. Watching this just cements my feelings about cinema even further, that movies like this have to be seen and remembered, because even though it is fiction, it's still crucial to the human experience to tell stories that are a lot like real life, but a little more beautiful. Also, I knew I recognized Hideko Takamine from somewhere, and I realized that I first saw her in Naruse's A Wanderer's Notebook, in which she played a character who underwent changes in response to her circumstances over some span of time in a similar way to Miss Ôishi. Her performance as the lead (if one wants to define "the lead" as her, not the children) in this movie makes it what it is.

- "Are you against soldiers, Miss Ôishi?"

- "No, but I prefer fishermen and rice merchants."

- "So you're a coward?"

- "Yes, I'm a coward."

Godzilla Raids Again (1955)

directed by Motoyoshi Oda

Japan

82 minutes

2.5 stars out of 5

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Of every Godzilla movie, this was the last one I'd only watched once since I saw it for the first time four years ago. I don't think I'm alone in considering it possibly the worst Godzilla movie (certainly, if I may get on my soapbox, worse than the Heisei movies that people tend to deride, like vs. Megaguirus or 2000), which was an opinion I'd had ever since I first watched it, but enough time had passed that I wanted to see if maybe I liked it better this time. As it turns out, the opposite happened: I think I actually like it less. But I do, at least, have more to say about it now.

I think the most obvious area where Raids Again is lacking is in the human story. There are human characters there, but they don't have the kind of depth to them that the human cast in the '54 film did; however, I don't dislike the characters in this one, because even if they aren't fleshed out on a personal level, they're interesting for the position that they occupy. All of the main players in this are military pilots who are actually fighting Godzilla up close and personally. Many Godzilla movies following this one have focused on members of the military or of a defense team, but usually when this happens in later films it's because there's something special about the team itself: maybe they're a newly-formed splinter operation with a unique superweapon and skills specifically created to combat Godzilla, or they work closely with an outsider scientist/psychic to come up with the best possible strategy to defeat Godzilla. Not the guys in Raids Again. These are just JADF pilots, and god damn, they're good pilots. It took the most frightening weapon the world had yet seen to kill Godzilla in the first film, and this crew buries - not kills, but buries - Godzilla by shooting at it with a bunch of normal planes. It's been interesting post-Minus One to go back through the franchise and appreciate all the things that influenced MO, of which I think this movie was one.

The other thing I really like about this movie is the way the kaiju fights are filmed. Raids Again introduces fan favorite (if not Toho favorite) Anguirus for the first time, and the scuffles Anguirus and Godzilla get into are remarkably violent and animalistic. This is because, while kaiju scenes are usually slowed down in post to give a sense of enormous scale, the fight scenes in Raids Again are instead either at normal speed or actually sped up. I don't know if it's true or not, but I've heard that this was an error on the part of the camera operators that got left in because the crew thought it looked cool. And it does! It's possibly the only interesting and unique part of the film.

There are other moments, too, where this feels like it gets close to capturing some of the magic of the first movie. Mostly these moments come when individual characters are focused on. I really enjoyed the scenes when Hidemi (Setsuko Wakayama) is alone with the radio on, listening to radio coverage of Godzilla and Anguirus' fight and the JSDF's attempts to stop it, and she looks out her window and sees a massive cloud of dust and debris out over the sea where the fight is happening in real life. That was a really neat trick of perspective and made the action feel massive but also real and close to home. The aerial combat scenes are also very well done, but Eiji Tsuburaya was special effects director, so "well done aerial combat scenes" are basically a given.

All in all, though, this is just not a great movie. It's a decent movie, but it's not great. I honestly think a lot of this might be down to Motoyoshi Oda as a director. I like his other movies, but he mostly did either lighthearted comedies or slightly scandalous horror-mysteries. Oda seemed like a cool guy personally and I think he's a good director, but Honda's direct experience with war gave the '54 Godzilla a weight and direness that's totally lacking in Raids Again. And it's a shame, because this is the only one of his movies to have any kind of release outside of Japan. His most internationally-famous film and it's the one that reflects the most poorly on him as a director. Someday we will see A Texan in Tokyo. I bet it's better than this.

The storyline also just faffs around a lot. The prison-break subplot is flat-out bizarre and I forgot it was in here. Like almost every Godzilla fan, I bought a copy of the novelization of Shigeru Kayama's Godzilla/Godzilla Raids Again story treatments, and I'm really curious to read it and see if the prison break is there.

I'll end this by saying that it's essentially impossible for me not to like a Godzilla movie. I just love Godzilla and everything it represents so much that if you stick Godzilla in a movie I will watch that movie and enjoy it, no exceptions. But there's just something off about Raids Again. It's absolutely, undoubtedly an attempt to cash in on the popularity of the first film - I mean, this came out six months after the first one, six months - which doesn't inherently doom it; the same crew were working on it, for the most part, so it comes from the same talented hands as the first movie. But it still comes out lacking. The first Godzilla was an allegory, and an incredibly sober, haunting one. Raids Again is a monster movie. I love monster movies with my whole heart, and they can be as deep as the '54 Godzilla if they want to be, but this rushed, awkward sequel does not seem like a "wants to be" situation.

I revamped my vs. Biollante review.

Just can't get enough of that big plant beast.

All Monsters Attack (1969)

directed by Ishirō Honda

Japan

70 minutes

3.5 stars out of 5

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I was lucky enough to catch a screening of the '54 original Godzilla on a nice big screen at my city's art museum last week. It's a masterpiece, a defining moment in 20th century cinema, and one of the best movies ever made. Watching it again cemented my feelings on this. I came home and I found that I wanted to do nothing but watch another Godzilla movie before sleep overtook me, so I obviously chose one that would go well with the dour, almost hopeless tone of the original...

...All Monsters Attack.

In all seriousness, it's easy to make fun of this movie, and I'll admit I do it sometimes too, but I'm strongly with the camp that advocates for the film's redemption and critical re-examination. Yes, it's the one that uses probably 15-20 minutes of stock footage (in a film that's only 70 minutes long). Yes, it got one of the most infamously horrendous English dubs of any Godzilla movie, which is largely responsible for people thinking the Godzilla series as a whole is stupid and juvenile. Yes, the suits look bad. But for every point All Monsters Attack has against it, I would argue that it should not be viewed as anything less or "separate" from Honda's filmography, because it retains the same moral and emotional core that all of his films share. In fact, Honda - notoriously hard on his own work - considers this one of his favorite Godzilla films that he made.

It's hard for me to imagine anybody could watch this and not immediately catch on to the depressing undertones of it. The happy, oblivious fantasies the main character Ichiro (played by Tomonori Yazaki, who's great in this but didn't continue acting past childhood) engages in throughout the film distract from a harsh reality, but that's exactly the point. Ichiro is a latchkey kid growing up in a heavily industrialized, polluted area, whose parents both work and who spends much of his time either getting bullied by other children or daydreaming about his favorite monsters. Hell, the theme song that plays over the opening credits - written by Shinichi Sekizawa, who wrote the film itself - talks about how the Earth is a hard place to live. Maybe we don't notice so much today because we're more used to it, but seeing Ichiro and all the other kids playing among piles of coal and a landscape of concrete and smog gets a little more upsetting every time I watch it. The kids themselves are totally unaware of the increasingly dangerous landscape and their disconnection from the natural world, but as adults, we get a better sense of what they're missing.

As other people have noted, you can't even really say the film ends on a high note, because while Ichiro finally gets into his bullies' good graces, he does it by accepting a mean-spirited dare. The implication seems to be that Ichiro is going to grow up to be an even more poorly-adjusted little boy than he already is if his parents don't start paying attention to him. If there's anything optimistic about this whole story, it's that Ichiro has kind of a "cool uncle" neighbor, a toymaker (Hideyo Amamoto playing severely against type) who is the only character to actually treat him like a person instead of as a child to be dismissed and dealt with.

I always like to use this movie as an example of how widely varied all of the different continuities within the Godzilla series are: no two Godzilla movies agree about much of anything - look, there's even one where Godzilla doesn't actually exist. Honda always used Godzilla films as a vehicle to talk about social issues of the time, and this is no exception. Although Godzilla itself isn't used as an allegory for anything really dark and dire this time (if anything it's an allegory for just... being a good dad), the socially relevant message is still present in Ichiro's real life and the world around him.

I'll admit that this is definitely not a perfect film. The kaiju battles feel incredibly low-stakes. The mishmash of stock footage means the appearance of the Godzilla suit is not consistent, and none of them are Godzilla at its best. Minilla, on the other hand, looks a tiny bit better than in Son of Godzilla, and is almost cute (or at least not hideous) from some angles. And I've always liked the appearance of Gabara, although on my most recent rewatch I've realized not having a tail makes it look really weird and unbalanced. But this is probably one of the only Godzilla movies where I've felt a little bored during the action scenes, just because they're trying so hard to be kid-friendly. I think this movie could have been a lot better if the odds hadn't been stacked against it (poor budget resulting in the reluctant decision to use stock footage, an ailing Eiji Tsuburaya's absence from the production, a studio increasingly choosing profit over creativity, etc). That being said, though, I just don't get the real hate so many people feel towards this. I like it. It's good. It's not my favorite, but I get what it's trying to say and I take it at face value.