Gamera: Guardian of the Universe (1995)

directed by Shusuke Kaneko

Japan

96 minutes

4 stars out of 5

----

I've been watching the Gamera movies in chronological order, which I have heard for some reason is not the ideal way to go about doing that. But I continue anyway, which means this is the first of the Heisei Gamera movies I've seen, and the first after the lackluster Gamera: Super Monster. Maybe I answered my own question there - maybe the reason why it's not great to watch these chronologically is because it makes certain movies look great by comparison to others. But, frankly, this is a good movie any way you choose to watch it.

There's something so special about franchise films that arrive many years after the last installment and take a fresh approach to their subject matter. It had been 15 years since a Gamera movie, if you can even count Super Monster as "a Gamera movie", so people that were children when they watched their last giant turtle adventure were now young adults. It is definitely palpable that the intended audience for Gamera had shifted during that absence, as Guardian of the Universe doesn't have any really young kids in it the way all the previous entries had. But youth is still presented as something important and unspoiled, a vital source of input in a country full of adults too concerned with bureaucracy and self-defense to stop for a minute and look at what's in front of them, and realize the whole planet doesn't just belong to them.

We start off watching a ship hauling plutonium run aground on a mysterious floating atoll, which piques the interest of (of all people) an insurance representative, who begins an investigation and thus kicks off the whole film. We're also quickly introduced to the film's main antagonist, in glimpses: It's Gyaos, and not just one but a whole clutch of them, much smaller than Gamera but making up for it with their numbers and sheer viciousness. Gamera's perennial enemy is given some very interesting characterization here, and I especially enjoyed the ambiguity of them as a species that comes into play later; the way they're sometimes referred to as birds for simplicity's sake, but also that it's made very clear that they're not birds. They're something much worse.

There is a real sense of adventure to the beginning of this and actually to the whole of the film from start to finish, and I think that makes it appealing to people of all age ranges. By shifting up in maturity a little, it doesn't exclude any of the feeling of wonder that the previous entries had. This is a timeline where no one knows what Gamera is, and it's interesting to observe how different it is from the very first Gamera film released, in which none of the characters knew what Gamera was, but neither did the viewers. The first Gamera was quite bleak despite ultimately being a story of a creature who was confused, scared, and too big for its own good; possibly this owes a little to the stark black-and-white it was filmed in, so Guardian of the Universe being in color inherently makes it feel different, but I also think it just reflects the ongoing march of kaiju cinema and the growing familiarity of the filmgoing public with giant monsters that the initial reaction to Gamera in this film feels so much different.

As usual, the human characters are not too important compared to the kaiju. Some may find it hard to suspend their disbelief or find the whole "inexplicable psychic teenager" plot a bit wishy-washy, but it's a good representation of the need to learn about and explore the things you don't understand instead of rejecting them. The plot concerning an ancient civilization and a predestined battle between Gamera and the Gyaos legions is somewhat unoriginal but still, I felt, really engaging somehow, with its message about science run amok and doom that can be learned from. The human characters that are there are very good - it's especially nice to see a scientist who is a young woman be taken seriously throughout the whole film, and that she has basically the second-most important role behind another very young woman who happens to be psychically connected to Gamera. Having both a scientist and a psychic here feels like it represents the marriage of an intuitive and a rational viewpoint on nature, and the way that it doesn't always have to be one over the other.

I was surprised at how much this film tackles the same kind of bureaucratic running around in circles that is done in response to a national catastrophe that Shin Godzilla did. I particularly liked when a newscaster reports to the terrified public that a bill has been introduced to designate Gamera as a threat to the nation and assures them that "it will be debated with utmost importance". I can think of no less comforting words to hear during a disaster than "your government is thinking it over". The military response in kaiju films is usually misinformed at best and malicious at worst, but they really make you think the JSDF are jerks here. Gamera is quickly decided to be the enemy and all hell is unleashed upon it while it's trying to help us in our hour of need. The strike on Gamera in front of Mt. Fuji is deeply upsetting because of the truly wounded cry it lets out when fired upon, and there really is no more succinct image of helplessness than a turtle flipped over on its back. This is what we do to our savior in our ignorance and ineptitude: Even an 80-meter (that's 262 feet) creature trying to help us momentarily gets knocked back by human weaponry. Having that one point where humans actually manage to hurt Gamera felt like a crucial inclusion to the film because it shows that despite being small creatures, singularly, humans can come together as a powerfully destructive force if we go down the wrong path.

I have to talk about the suit design. Of course. I don't know much about Gamera and have been deliberately keeping it that way so I can be surprised by these movies as I watch them, and as such I'm really only familiar with the Showa-era Gamera suit. The updated design is very nice indeed. They have abandoned all pretense of making Gamera look even slightly like it could be quadrupedal - something achieved perhaps not on purpose thanks to how the suit actors bend and struggle under the weight of the shell, looking like at any minute Gamera could drop back down to all fours - but honestly the suit does an incredible job of hiding any trace of the human form inside it. I was not focused on where the actor's head might be the way I unconsciously am during other kaiju media. Gamera really looks like a creature here as opposed to a fabricated object. And Gyaos, my god, they really made them into disgusting little things. Covered in slime and brainlessly violent, replicating at speed, and did I mention slimy? Some of the smaller ones are puppets, but the Super Gyaos that Gamera fights at the end is played by Yumi Kameyama, who was the first (known) woman to play a kaiju*.

This really is everything you could want out of a kaiju movie. The pacing is good, a lot better even than many Godzilla films, and there's a satisfying balance between plot and pure action. I kept feeling like this movie was way longer than 95 minutes because so much goes on during it that it just feels like something you would sit and watch for 2+-hours, and I mean that in a very good way. The franchise may have stumbled a bit after Super Monster, but I don't think I can say it was fully a bad thing that it took such a long hiatus (due in part to Daiei's bankruptcy) because this is a breath of fresh air. I can only imagine watching this with a distance of 15 years between it and the last Gamera film, as opposed to just a few days the way it's been for me.

*technically, Jennie Kaplan as Pigmon (!) in Ultraman Powered was the first woman to play a kaiju, but as a non-Powered fan that fact makes me mad and I don't like to acknowledge it.