By Last Caress.
KAIJU! (and goodnight)
It’s the third and final day in my Kaiju Marathon Weekender (check out Day One HERE and Day Two HERE) and, far from being sick of the sight of them, I’m going to miss them on Monday. I’d like to think my wife feels exactly as I do about them too. I’d like to think it; I bloody don’t think it, though. What I DO think however is that my bowl of Shreddies tastes suspiciously like Redex this morning. Hm. Let’s finish this before she finishes me, eh?
GODZILLA, MOTHRA AND KING GHIDORAH: GIANT MONSTERS ALL-OUT ATTACK
Every bit as fantastic as it is ludicrously titled, Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (2001) is in all probability my favourite Godzilla movie. For this picture, Toho brought in Shusuke Kaneko, the genius director of the Gamera trilogy in the 1990s, and he brought them exactly what they would’ve hoped from him. Here, Mothra and Ghidorah (along with second tier beastie Baragon) are reimagined as Gamera-style “Guardian Monsters” who exist to defend Japan from the terrifying Godzilla who, this time, is on a revenge mission: He’s been reimagined too, see, as carrying within him the souls of the fallen Japanese WW2 soldiers, all of whom require Godzilla to get them some retribution for Japan’s failure to win the war. Smart new twist or needlessly distracting lapse in taste? It certainly could have been a bit of an own goal but Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack is far too much fun to dwell on whatever McGuffin Toho have employed to haul the big guy out of the Pacific this time.
GAMERA 3: THE REVENGE OF IRIS
And from Kaneko-san’s triumphant spin on Godzilla we move straight to the brilliant conclusion of his equally triumphant Gamera trilogy: Gamera 3: The Revenge of Iris (1999). Predating the present superhero movie trend for forcing the good guys to face the consequences of their deadly approach to global security by a good couple of decades, Gamera 3: The Revenge of Iris places Gamera in the path of a creature driven entirely by the hatred felt for Gamera by the girl who raised it, a hatred which began when Gamera inadvertently killed the girl’s parents during the climactic battle with the Gyaos in the first picture of the trilogy, Gamera: Guardian of the Universe. In fact Gamera is losing friends and alienating people all over: An early brouhaha with the returning Gyaos in this movie sees Gamera once again emerge victorious but at the cost of 20,000 innocent lives, causing the Japanese government to declare Gamera an enemy of the Empire. From a genre as daft, light and fun as Kaiju usually is, Gamera 3: The Revenge of Iris has balls like grapefruits. It doesn’t even give us a happy ending, concluding as it does with Gamera about to charge into an insurmountable amount of Gyaos. Exhausting stuff, and not just because it’s the tenth Kaiju pic I’ve seen in three days.
PACIFIC RIM
It’s a dumb movie, Pacific Rim (2013, del Toro). From start to finish, it’s beset by some of the most shamelessly cheesy dialogue and cornball characterisations ever heard or seen in a picture house outside of the 1980’s. But where Pacific Rim delivers, it delivers BIG, and where Pacific Rim delivers BIG is with its Kaiju. And when you’re after as much Kaiju action as you can crack into a three day binge, Pacific Rim‘s plus points far outstrip its shortcomings. From the very start of the movie, the Kaiju are front and centre, as awesome as Kaiju have ever looked or will ever look, and they just keep on coming. Do we get three monsters? Five? Six? Eight?? Pfft. Pacific Rim pulverises us with no less than fifteen of them. Fifteen! Bloody hell. And, given the way in which Charlie Hunnam and Idris Elba chew the scenery to pieces in every single scene, you could even argue that they qualify as two more.
GODZILLA
And nooow, the end is neeeear, and so I face, the final Kaiju… (sorry)
I suppose it was always going to be right and fair that I conclude my Kaijuthon with the Elvis Presley of the monster world, the King of Kaiju: Godzilla. And it would of course be properly right and fair if the Godzilla pic I’d placed in the headline slot had been Godzilla (Honda, 1954), the pic which introduced us to the big guy in the first place.
But I’m not watching that one this weekend. No, my son and I will be sitting down to that gem at Christmastime. It might not seem a particularly festive treat but, honestly, ALL films are festive if you watch them on 24th/25th/26th of December. Playing us out today is Godzilla, the 2014 US reboot from Gareth Edwards, in which Godzilla lays waste to the west coast of America battling another couple of Kaiju while the US Navy attempt to exterminate all three monsters. It’s a decent picture, this; I was fairly ambivalent towards it upon its release but it’s grown on me. Yes, it could definitely have done with a bit more of Bryan Cranston, and personally I could have done with a whole lot LESS of Aaron Taylor-Johnson, but having to put up with Kick-Ass is a small price to pay for getting to see Godzilla really kick ass. And, as with Pacific Rim before it, the cgi and the effects for the monsters is outstanding.
So, that’s that! Twelve Kaiju movies in three days, and I’m cross-eyed with exhaustion, but in the good way. The wife however has been looking ready to garotte me for several hours now. I reckon I’ll leave it a couple of days before telling her I’m going to watch thirty spaghetti westerns in thirty days, all through November. Spiritu Sancte!
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