Godzilla vs. Biollante (1989)

directed by Kazuki Ōmori

Japan

105 minutes

4 stars out of 5

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Last week, Kazuki Ōmori passed away. I wanted to post a review I did some months ago of vs. Biollante that I considered too long-winded to make public. Ōmori was a part of some of my favorite Godzilla films of the Heisei era and I know I'm not alone in saying that.

Picking up where Return of Godzilla left off in 1984, vs. Biollante begins with a newscast showing the scale of devastation that Godzilla left after the Super X and the military drove him into Mt. Mihara. The aftermath of a kaiju's visit to a populated area is something that doesn't always get shown onscreen, but here we get a taste of it and it's basically as bad as you might imagine: a near-total loss, just fathomless destruction, but still with survivors picking up the pieces. I particularly liked how we're shown that one building had its façade reconstructed into a skylight around a perfect Godzilla footprint that nearly destroyed it and has been renamed as "Godzilla Memorial Lounge". After the newscast, the first thing we see is some soldiers trying to loot cast-off Godzilla biological material from the scene to bring back to their country for use in nefarious scientific developments. This lays out humanity's incredibly short memory and outright refusal to learn from our mistakes - something that will become the main theme in this film.

Because this takes place in the same continuity as Return of Godzilla, this is a version of Japan that has only experienced two - soon to be three - confrontations with Godzilla: the first, in 1954, the second in 1984, and now the developing situation that starts off this film. I personally think this is one of the most interesting of the many Godzilla timelines because no one has fully had the time to get used to Godzilla. There's a heavy focus on scientific research and the preparation of advanced-warning systems in the event that Godzilla or another of the species comes ashore, but with only two previous encounters to go off of, the country is largely in a state of nail-biting. No one is quite sure what to do with Godzilla when he does appear, but they are certain that sooner or later, he will come back. It's also implied, in other films but here as well, that Godzilla's more frequent appearances herald some fundamental change in human society, that as newer and more devastating weaponry is invented by rapid advances in science, the fabric of society breaks down quicker and quicker, and the increasing frequency of Godzilla attacks is tied somehow to the oncoming collapse of civilization.

It's not directly stated, but the whole of vs. Biollante seems to find the country in a sort of twilight era where, despite superficially being able to recover from their two previous attacks, the lack of any unified learning from past mistakes is slowly sliding humanity into our ultimate downfall. No one seems to really grasp what they're supposed to be doing, and so instead are flailing around clutching at whatever they think can give them bigger, better guns to fend off imagined "enemies" who they assume to be doing the same thing simultaneously. The core principle of Godzilla is that you cannot keep inventing a superweapon over and over and expecting that this time, maybe, you'll be smart enough or good enough that the worst won't happen to you. You can't, like both the Japanese government and the fictional country of Saradia attempt to do in vs. Biollante, essentially recycle the worst manmade disaster ever created into a new weapon without the past repeating itself. Professor Shiragami also proves that you really just can't mess with that in general, for any reason - his motivations may have come from a place of sorrow and loss, but he ignores precedent as well, and makes the mistake of thinking he can somehow logic his way into eliminating the part of Godzilla that inevitably proves fatal for humanity. The professor isn't a bad person - the point of his story isn't to paint him as ignorant or uncaring; it's an example of how history isn't always changed for the worse by evil people, but by good people who don't recognize that they too bear the weight of mistakes made by those before them.

The relationship between Biollante and Godzilla is an interesting one. Artificially created, Biollante is a genetic chimera incorporating cells from a human, a rosebush, and Godzilla. In the film it's established that they are the same thing, that they see each other as the same thing, and have some fundamental connection because of their shared genetic material. This relationship between the two creatures as well as Biollante's nature in and of itself was something I was thinking about a lot on my third rewatch. I didn't realize until now how long it takes for Biollante to reach her final, monstrous form, and how anti-climactic the fight between her and Godzilla is when it finally does happen. Biollante isn't vicious like a lot of Godzilla's opponents have been; she seems to lash out mostly from fear and anguish rather than a genuine desire to hurt Godzilla. She begins life out in the middle of a lake and never approaches civilization, and the fight between her and Godzilla doesn't hit the same beats as a typical kaiju smash does. There's no real winner between the two, in the end. It's just a short, seemingly agonizing battle between two creatures who have humans to blame for their existence. It's morbid, really, when you think of it like that; like putting two beetles in a jar and making them fight to the death, except you're the one who created the beetles.

It's also really interesting how visibly bewildered Godzilla is when he sees Biollante for the first time. Is this, perhaps, because when Godzilla sensed Biollante calling out to him, he expected, upon arriving at her location, to find another Godzilla?

This film also introduces us to Miki Saegusa, who is one of my favorites out of the few recurring characters in the series. Psychic research seems to have arisen out of the wake of the 1984 attack - not specifically for the purpose of communicating with Godzilla, but that's how it ends up being used. Saegusa is a young but extremely powerful psychic whose presence I always appreciate because she's an alternative to the knee-jerk military response most typically seen in these films. In vs. Biollante, she provides one of my favorite scenes in the whole Heisei era, and I feel one of the most crucial moments in developing Godzilla as a character: when she attempts to confront him directly, standing on a dock only a short distance away as he wades through the sea, for a moment they each have the other's attention, observing each other directly, and when Saegusa establishes a psychic link with Godzilla she is immediately overwhelmed and loses consciousness. This is why, when people bring up the question of Godzilla's intellect relative to a human, I always say that I personally imagine him operating "at or above" a human level. Saegusa's physical response to linking up with him hints that there's an aspect to him that is incomprehensible to us. Also, that great scene where the kids in the psyonics institute are asked to draw what they dreamt about and they all simultaneously draw Godzilla - like Godzilla stirring inside Mt. Mihara is somehow sending out waves of psychic energy that blanket the surrounding area.

In general, this movie lacks a lot of the showiness that the franchise's other entries surrounding it have. It has an overarching feeling of slow decay for society, a dim premonition that we're going to continue down the path that leads to our own destruction because we keep our backs turned when we should be looking behind us to learn from the past. I think Saegusa is a ray of hope - a young person exploring alternative ways of communicating with the threat instead of just killing it - which is what makes her role in the later Godzilla vs. Destoroyah so heartrending. vs. Biollante is one of the best examples of why this franchise has remained so relevant throughout the years, and also an example of how it's survived for so long: by continually reinventing itself and playing off of the same themes to different ends.