Godzilla: The Planet Eater

You done ****ed it up Netflix!

To squander an opportunity like this, a Godzilla trilogy made by Toho itself, and make it this boring, heavily and needlessly religious, unsatisfying, and so fundamentally not a Godzilla movie is beyond me. It honestly feels like if a Godzilla movie was mixed with The Matrix but focused 90% on the philosophy of a religion that we have no standing in. This is the entire trilogies fatal flaw. Worldbuilding is hard, creating new original religions is even harder, in fact I can't think of a singular religious organization in any movie that actually worked. So why focus so much on it in a Godzilla movie of all things? Now sure philisophical and even religious aspects have been brought to the series multiple times but it wasn't the overall theme or focus. It's just a severe case of misguided priorities. It seriously drags a promising and interesting movie to an absolute slog. I really, really did not want to review this movie after the second one. It's not an interesting movie in the slightest bit, it's the same old thing every time which is funny because a lot of people would say the Godzilla series is much of the same thing. Evil aliens, less than interesting human characters, ineffective military, and monster battles that border on ridiculously awesome. But you know what the difference is between that and this? IT DIDN'T SUCK!! It was fun, sometimes cheesy and boring, but great fun with sometimes very emotional and thoughtprovoking moments. In this I'm just counting down the minutes until it's over and try not to blow my brains out from the incessant religious talk. Now I have nothing against religion, regardless of what it is, Christianity, Judaism, Scientology, even flippin' Satanism I get. It's nice to have your core set of beliefs as the basis for something bigger than yourself, faith is something important in everybody's life whether it's a symbol, a memory, or even something as simple as a friend. This is padding. And shock of all shocks! They waste the potential of not only Mothra but King Ghidora who is without a doubt Godzilla's true nemesis. Mothra isn't seen beyond a silhouette, and Ghidorah is literally 3 infinitely long necks that spawn from a black hole that does nothing but bite Godzilla and slowly sap his energy for 20 odd minutes. No wings, no twin tails, no gravity beams, no nothing. I'm having such a crisis here because if Toho did everything, the writing, animation, and overall story I'm gonna need a long break from them. Because Netflix has had the absolute shittiest track run with bringing japanese media to their service, I mean they royally screw every series they get their hands on from Death Note to possibly this. This seems like some asshat american writing. This cannot be Toho. It's impossible. They can't have wrote this bullshit. And if they did, ohhh God please no! It's terrible, do not ever watch this series, Godzilla fan or not. This could potentially be the second raping of a beloved character by american hands. And I honestly do not want to know who was behind the story. Let me live a lie if it means my trust and love in Toho will not be tarnished. I can't guys. Next week, maybe. 2019 is going to kill me.

Godzilla: City On The Edge Of Battle

And all the title does is remind me of City On The Edge Of Forever, a pretty dang good Star Trek episode.

Well in this one they build the world a bit more but it's essentially the same movie. After waking up the big daddy of all Godzilla's, our heroes try desperately to create a new plan to defeat an even more overpowered and fearsome foe while also discovering more about their previous home. I think I'm getting used to the animation style cause it really didn't bug me that much and in some scenes looks downright excellent, I'm pretty sure I've come to the conclusion that Godzilla should have this animation style but not the humans, it just works better because he isn't a character that moves all that much! But in it's stead I'm split on the discovery of possible human descendants, that have a subterranean kingdom. Now I'm fine with a new twist on the twin fairies and Mothra, though you don't see her at all, but the intrigue quickly stops and their more often than not shall we say cryptic dialogue feels more like needless padding. This movie is almost 2 hours long and for a movie that has an almost identical plot to the last that was a bit over an hour and a half I fail to see why you couldn't trim this a bit. Now the new stuff that is introduced is interesting....on the page. A new subspecies is discovered and has ties to Mothra, it leads nowhere and becomes padding. The humans construct a Mechagodzilla, it spins off into a deus ex machina that doesn't even work. Now I got to go on a brief tiny smidge of a tangent here. These have been out for awhile, several years in fact, and not long after this hit on Netflix I heard about this films Mechagodzilla. As a city. Now that already is the stupidest ****ing thing I ever did hear, but the movie doesn't help with it's explanation. So let me get this straight, humans build a Mechagodzilla and on top of that a Mechagodzilla we never actually see....okay. It gets blowed up by Godzilla, then we fast forward 20,000 years where apparently it turns into the T-1000 because it's made of liquid metal, absorbs other creatures, and fashions a city and I guess just twiddles it's thumbs until humans turn back up. Whaaaaat?? My God that seems very haphazardly slapped together doesn't it? Oh and apparently they had to tease the next movie and talks about a greater evil from beyond the stars so Yuuzhan-Vong confirmed for the next movie I guess! And I gotta say though I of course take it with a grain of salt, the ratings for the next movie does not fill me hope for a saving finale. But we shall see.

Godzilla: Planet Of Monsters

Well that was different.

Not bad by any means but certainly a novel approach in many aspects to the Godzilla series. The first thing I gotta bring up is, this animation style is something I have a hard time putting my finger on. It's this weird pseudo-3D animation, like imagine if the CG Clone Wars series was animated like it was still 2D, this animation style is relatively new and the first instance I knew of it was the Tron Uprising show. It's stilted like it's drawn but looks nicer, it's such a mixed bag and I'm really not sure if it works regardless of subject material or context. But beyond that how's the movie? Well it might have the most futuristic and original story of the whole series and that's actually saying a lot, kaiju erupt across the world like in Pacific Rim and they royaly screw the Earth over to the point where the humans literally have to GTFO of the whole planet, they build this makeshift spacecraft so they can escape. 20 years pass but if Interstellar has taught us anything, time is a bit fluid in space so 20 years for them, is 20,000 years on Earth so our heroes must attempt to reclaim the world from the King Of The Monsters in his most powerful and monstrous form ever. Like seriously Final Wars and Shin Godzilla are absolute wimps compared to this Godzilla, he looks like it's really been over 20,000 years with his massive build, he looks like if a mountain aspired to be Godzilla or like a giant gnarled rainforest tree, dude looks seriously old and yet so powerful and it's pretty rad. There's not much in terms of story or character, but hey this is the basis for a series so they had to focus more on world building than intricate plots and complex characters, so I can totally understand it. But the characters aren't bad, more or less imagine if you will, if the buisnessman and politicians in older Godzilla movies were in their 20s and actually went out to fight. And granted our main character does have a serious rage boner vendetta aginst Godzilla but the reasoning is kinda weak, just oh he stole our world from us so I want to kick his ass. Good luck with that son.  So yeah, very different from our usual gaggle of various monsters, kaiju battles, and boring human scenes but they never go too far, it's still a Godzilla movie straight from Toho but with more creative and risk taking ideas. I do really think though the best part of the whole movie is the undeniable fact that Godzilla is a full fledged god of destruction, the way people talk about him, the way he is potrayed in both his design and incredible show of power really does solidify this hopeless, dread filled, absolute friggin' no win scenario for these people and it is great! It does bring to mind a certain quote or more a story from one J. Robert Oppenheimer when confronted with his own mass destructive creation, "....most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture the Bhagavad-Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.'". I suppose it was inevitable to think that.