Godzilla vs. Megaguirus (2000)

directed by Masaaki Tezuka

Japan

105 minutes

3 stars out of 5

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As its full title ("The G Extermination Strategy") suggests, this is one of those Godzilla films in which the goal is simple eradication - not finding a way to live with Godzilla through psychic mediation, not putting him somewhere where he can never be a problem again, just killing him dead, no nuance. This straightforward approach reflects Godzilla's role in the film as well. However, even though he is a cut-and-dry villain here, this is one of the more comedic Godzilla iterations. I was actually surprised by how comedic he is on my most recent rewatch; some of the fight scenes are Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster-level goofy.

Some of these movies give Godzilla a real "jealous boyfriend" attitude: on the one hand, when humanity does anything he doesn't like - such as developing nuclear weapons - he comes to put us in our place. But on the other hand, if any other kaiju emerge to threaten humanity, he'll also come and dispatch them. Not to protect us, but because Godzilla can only ever be the sole arbiter of humanity's fate, and no potential usurpers will be tolerated. This film in particular takes place in a neatly explained timeline in which the original Godzilla was the beginning of a series of attacks, where any time a milestone of scientific development was reached, Godzilla would appear and destroy it. There is a human villain at the end who is unscrupulous enough to risk getting Japan stomped in favor of financial gain, but humans on the whole are not the bad guys per se. Still, the human characters are too thinly developed to really root for: the protagonist is given the most predictable of backstories (her mentor was killed by falling debris during a Godzilla attack in front of her, now she swears vengeance), and Godzilla is just doing what he usually does in knocking humanity down a peg when they get too high and mighty.

I really don't like bug kaiju. Not because I'm afraid of bugs but because I think "thing, but huge" is a really silly and uninteresting format for a monster (this is also why I dislike King Kong). Megaguirus is no exception. I appreciate the level of detail put into her (her?) design, and the puppetry was so good I kept forgetting it was puppetry, but as a character she doesn't compel me nearly as much as other Godzilla antagonists, especially considering this movie was sandwiched between Godzilla 2000 and GMK, which - and you can dislike 2000 as much as you like, but Orga was a cool idea - both have great kaiju casts.

This kind of feels like a Godzilla movie for people who don't particularly want to watch a Godzilla movie. It is good, and I enjoy it whenever I watch it, but it's a movie I watch and then don't think about very much, whereas every other Godzilla movie occupies a permanent spot in my brain. The black hole gun is an interesting idea but it becomes almost laughable when Godzilla repeatedly shrugs it off almost every time they fire it at him. Killing Godzilla for real at the end of the film was basically not ever going to happen, so even the big moment where they seemingly blast Godzilla into the crust of the Earth has its impact dulled by the final scene implying the Dimension Tide didn't work so well after all.

This is not my favorite Godzilla movie, but I rewatched it on New Year's Eve, and - without timing it at all - it hit midnight almost exactly as they fired the Dimension Tide for the last time, and let me tell you, it got me hype as hell.