The Return of Godzilla
The VHS of Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla that I often rented from our town's video store had to have been the original New World Pictures home video release of it because before the movie started, it had an advertisement for Godzilla 1985, which they produced. I remembered that advertisement very vividly for years, even before I saw it again on YouTube. It started with lightning flashes and cut to a shot of Raymond Burr with his hand trailing down his face as a narrator said, "Thirty years ago, he thought it was over." Burr then said, "Troops, aircrafts, rockets, they were all used before," before it cut to a shot of a crowd of people fleeing with Godzilla's shadow looming over them and a shot of his tail smashing through a building, as the narrator chimed back in with, "Now, your favorite fire-breathing monster is back, like you've never seen him before! The legend is reborn in the all new Godzilla 1985!" As he said the latter part, it showed a close-up of Godzilla's mouth as he roared and that's when I new for the first time that this was actually an advertisement for a Godzilla film. Being so young at the time, I had not yet seen a Godzilla movie that looked like this, with American actors and modern special effects. The advertisement didn't make me say, "I must see that one!" but instead, just sort of made me go, "Huh, there's actually a new Godzilla movie. Cool." (Since I wasn't used to these movies taking place in what was then considered the modern age, it looked new to me at the time.) Little did I know that our video store actually had Godzilla 1985 to rent. It was the last of the five that they had and was always there amongst the others but I guess since my young eyes were immediately drawn to Godzilla vs. Monster Zero and Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla, I never noticed it. I don't know how I could have missed it since that poster art makes for a very striking cover. I did rent it a couple of times when I discovered it was there but, as much as I loved Godzilla when I was that young, I wasn't too impressed with it. I don't know if it was because I didn't like seeing him as a bad guy then, the film was much more serious and slower-paced than the ones I really liked at the time, or the modern, 80's setting, which I just didn't like in movies in general for some reason when I was a kid, but, whatever the case, it was kind of like Terror of Mechagodzilla in that it was one of the few Godzilla films that, at the end of the day, failed to grab my very young and easily distracted mind. In fact, when I bought my old VHS copy of Godzilla vs. Gigan back in the day, I chose it over the only other Godzilla movie the store had at the time, which was Godzilla 1985. Yeah, that's right. I was so blasé about this one that, like Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster, I actually felt I could live without owning it (albeit for different reasons than that film).
That attitude completely changed when I got the movie on VHS for Christmas in 1997 along with Godzilla vs. Biollante. This was when I had just recently gotten back into Godzilla after having been away from it for a while and I, in fact, had thought about renting Godzilla 1985 about a week or two before since I hadn't seen it in a long time. I actually watched Biollante first since I didn't know that it was a direct sequel to 1985, although I figured that out as soon as the movie began with some footage from that film. The next day was actually Christmas Day and since that gift was the one I picked to open on Christmas Eve that year (a family tradition when I was a kid), I watched Godzilla 1985 for the first time in years in the wee hours of the morning since I had been too excited to sleep. I remember actually being a little nervous upon starting the film, even though I shouldn't have been since, one, I had seen it before, and two, it was Godzilla, something I dearly loved and had no reason to be afraid of. But the film's ominous music, which greatly established the tone and mood from the start, had me shivering. And by the time the film was over, I was left with an enthusiasm for it that I never had when I was younger. It went from being one I didn't really care about to one of my very favorites in the span of that one viewing. I watched it many, many times that winter and I was very eager to introduce it to my step-cousin, who ended up loving it possibly even more than I did. It became a fixture for the remainder of my childhood and one of my absolute favorite movies, not just one of my favorite Godzilla movies. It also became a movie I felt the need to defend because, to my shock, it tended to get lumped in as one of the worst in the series (in case you didn't see it, I put it at the top of a list of movies that I like but everyone else hates). It now has a current IMDB score of 6.1, which is much higher than what it used to be (I remember back when it had a score in the 4- range) but back then, just about every review I saw of the film made fun of it and called it stupid. Even though he gave it a three out of five star rating in his Creature Features book, John Stanley didn't seem to have much use for the film, saying that the special effects were, "What you would expect," which I still find to be a strange observation since this film has much better effects than a good number of the past films, and that the movie had obligatory scenes of scientists talking about how to stop Godzilla. Other review books were even less kind on the movie, with one giving it a turkey symbol as a score, which was their lowest rating, and another one calling it a useless remake of the original movie, even though it wasn't a remake. I couldn't believe what I was reading. That's when I really started to learn that film criticisms and opinions are all subjective, that two people can be looking at the same film and yet, can see two different things. Since my childhood friend had the same opinion on the movie as I did, this realization, when it hit me, felt like a frying pan to the head.
I was especially disappointed when, in the following years, as more and more Godzilla movies made it to DVD, more often than not with both the Japanese and English versions (or at least a facsimile there of in the case of the former), this one got left out in the cold. To this day, due to legal entanglements, this is the only Godzilla movie to not be officially available on DVD in the U.S. in any form, be it the original Japanese version, the international dub version of that cut, or the New World Godzilla 1985 version, a fact I find that to be very, very disappointing. At least before 2012, it had company since Godzilla vs. Biollante wasn't available either but now you can get that movie on both DVD and Blu-Ray, making this one the only holdout. And for somebody who had long since learned that there were often major differences between the Japanese and American versions of these films, especially in the case of this and the original film, and had been able to experience the Japanese version of the original Godzilla, along with just about all of the others, in recent years, it was maddening to know that one of my absolute favorites still wasn't available and probably wouldn't be for a long time. Even so, I was able to satisfy my urge to see the original Japanese version of this film when in 2009, I came across a DVD-R of both it and the American version I was more familiar with on ioffer.com. I didn't think you could get something like that so easily and that you just had to be lucky and have a region-free DVD player to play a disc from Korea or somewhere. That's when I learned that, thanks to that and other sites like Sumo Gorilla and such, the original version of this film and others are actually not that hard to track down and that you can get them on great looking, region-free DVD-Rs. Needless to say, my mouth started watering when I saw that I could have that and, after quickly setting up a PayPal account, I immediately ordered it, receiving it the next week. Like those other movies, watching the Japanese version of this one was an amazing experience, like finding some new rooms in a familiar house as David J. Skal once said to describe watching Universal's 1931 Spanish version of Dracula. It was so great that it encouraged me to seek out the as yet unreleased original Japanese versions of some of the other films, like King Kong vs. Godzilla most notably, as well as other unreleased films and not be tied down by the legal BS of the official DVD companies. In any case, I still think this movie is a great Godzilla film in either version. Each one does have its own strengths and weaknesses and each also does some stuff better than the other, as we'll see when we get into the meat of both of them, but either way, I think it's an enjoyable, well-made flick and a nice return to first principles for the series.
Three months after a volcanic eruption at Daikoku Island, the Japanese fishing vessel the Yahata-Maru gets caught in a violent storm off its shores and is pulled towards it by very strong currents. As the ship nears the island, the volcano begins to erupt again, tearing the island apart, as young seaman Okumura looks on through a porthole. The force of the eruption knocks the ship around and causes everyone onboard to lose their balance. The following day, reporter Goro Maki is out sailing when he comes across the drifting fishing vessel. After getting no response upon calling towards it, Maki climbs aboard the seemingly deserted ship and investigates its interiors. As he does so, he finds all of the crew dead from having their blood drained... all, that is, save for Okumura, who he finds in a locker down below, unconscious but alive. Without warning, Maki is attacked by an enormous sea louse, which he tries to fight off but ends up almost losing his life to before Okumura awakens and kills it. Upon talking with Okumura, the young fisherman tells Maki that he saw an enormous creature, with fire blasting out of its mouth, rise up from the rocks during the island's eruption. The two men are then picked up by a coast guard chopper and eventually manage to get back to Japan. While recovering in a police hospital, Okumura is visited by his friend, bio-physicist Prof. Hayashida, who talks to him about the monster he claims to have seen and shows him some photographs taken during Godzilla's attack on Tokyo back in 1954. Upon seeing these, Okumura confirms to Hayashida that Godzilla was what he saw and once the prime minister is told of the monster's return, he enforces a temporary media blackout in order to avoid mass panic. When Maki's intended story on the matter is dropped as a result, he decides not to waste time and visits Hayashida to learn more about Godzilla, whom the professor lost his parents to during the first attack. While talking to the professor, Maki meets Okumura's sister, Naoko, who works at his institute. Finding out that she doesn't know that her brother has been rescued, Maki ultimately tells her, but uses their reunion in order to get a story. At that time, a Soviet submarine is attacked and destroyed by Godzilla near Japan and when the U.S.S.R., feeling that America was responsible, threatens to respond with a nuclear war, the prime minister has no choice but to lift the blackout. His secretary, with holds a press conference and reveals that Godzilla has returned, using a photograph taken from an airplane as proof. It's then not too long before Godzilla first appears, attacking and feeding off of a nuclear power plant before heading back out to sea. As the prime minister debates with the American and Soviet ambassadors about whether or not nuclear weapons are to be used against the monster if he returns to Japan, Hayashida comes up with a plan to lure Godzilla to Oshima Island and trap him in the heart of the island's volcano, Mt. Mihara. But, he and his colleagues must soon race against time to perfect the device with which to do so because Godzilla is soon spotted swimming in the direction of his old stomping grounds: Tokyo.
As I said in the previous review, while Godzilla may have been gone from Japanese movie screens for nine years after Terror of Mechagodzilla, Toho never intended to completely retire their biggest star. In fact, over the years there were many, many different scripts and story ideas suggested by both Toho and Henry G. Saperstein's United Productions of America as a means of bringing Godzilla back, some promising and others unfilmable because of how ridiculous and outlandish they were. However, despite all these propositions, as well as a petition that had over 40,000 signatures pleading for a new Godzilla movie, it wasn't until the early 1980's, when reissues of some of the past films like the original Godzilla, Mothra vs. Godzilla, and Godzilla vs. Monster Zero did remarkable business, in particular during a 1982 film festival celebrating the studio's 50th anniversary, where they out-grossed other movies like a reissue of Akira Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai, and also proved to be stiff competition for reissues of Disney's classic films like Bambi and Pinocchio, that Toho began to seriously consider reviving the King of the Monsters. At the same time, Tomoyuki Tanaka had, for the longest time, been hoping to not only bring Godzilla back but also to return him to his dark, destructive roots, feeling that making him a hero was responsible for the gradual decline of the original series, as well as to firmly reestablish his nuclear origins, which had become superfluous as the movies went on. The mid-1980's, with its prevalent Cold War tension between America and the Soviet Union and with how, by this point, other science fiction films like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Thing had been reimagined as much darker and grimmer stories aimed squarely at adults, seemed like the perfect time for Godzilla to return to his original adult-oriented, allegorical role (in fact, this film's Japanese title actually just being Godzilla, like the original film, would have you think that it is indeed a remake). To that end, Tanaka decided that the franchise needed to be rebooted and that the new film was to be a direct sequel to the original Godzilla, ignoring everything in-between and, by extension, the more flippant and fantastical 70's films that had driven away adult viewers. Ultimately, in December of 1983, with the following year being Godzilla's 30th anniversary, public interest in the character at a high, and a new script being commissioned, Toho announced that the Big G would be back by the following Christmas.
After Ishiro Honda refused to return to the director's chair for the new film, Tanaka ultimately chose Koji Hashimoto, a second-unit and assistant director who only had one movie as chief director under his belt: Sayonara Jupiter, which wouldn't be released until March of 1984 and would end up being a huge flop. Honda chose him because he proved with that film that he could at least handle a special effects-filled movie and also because he had served as Honda's assistant director on past films like King Kong vs. Godzilla, Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster, Frankenstein Conquers the World, Godzilla vs. Monster Zero, Latitude Zero, and Godzilla's Revenge. He had also been assistant director on the enormously successful 1973 film, The Submersion of Japan, which also didn't hurt his chances of getting the job to direct the film. Unfortunately, The Return of Godzilla would end up being Hashimoto's second and last film as director and, save for acting as producer on a couple of films in the mid-90's, he would never get another job in the film industry. I don't know what happened, since this film was quite successful when it was released in December of 1984 and he demonstrated a fair amount of talent in directing both the special effects scenes (for the most part, anyway) and the human drama scenes. I guess the enormous flop that was Sayonara Jupiter was too much for his directing career to endure. Whatever the case, Hashimoto ultimately died from a coronary disease in 2005 at the age of 68.
There are some interesting characters in The Return of Godzilla, some of whom are portrayed by actors from the series' past and others by established performers who had made their mark in other films. Unfortunately, the three main young leads, despite taking their roles and the film seriously, come across as pretty bland. As reporter Goro Maki (note that's the same name and profession as the character Akira Kubo played back in Son of Godzilla), Ken Tanaka probably has the most importance to the overall story since he's the one who actually puts it in motion by finding the Yahata-Maru and discovering that everyone except for Okumura has been killed and that Okumura himself saw an enormous creature that ultimately turns out to be Godzilla. However, once he makes it back to Tokyo, Maki has little to do in the plot, save for informing Okumura's sister, Naoko, that her brother is alive and being kept at a police hospital. While he does genuinely want Naoko to know this since he feels she has a right to, he's not above taking the opportunity to use their reunion as a story for his newspaper, which ultimately becomes part of the government's eventual revelation to the public that Godzilla is still alive. Other than that, though, he doesn't do much except hang around with Prof. Hayashida, Naoko, and Okumura as they study Godzilla and try to perfect the device that will lead him to Mt. Mihara. He and Naoko eventually get caught up in Godzilla's rampage when they're left behind after Hayashida and Okumura leave for Oshima Island and even though they're likable enough to where you don't want to see them die, it wouldn't affect the plot at all if they did get crushed by Godzilla. Speaking of which, there is a hint of a romance between him and Naoko late in the film but it never goes anywhere, which is typical for these types of movies (it was developed a little bit more in the manga adaptation of the film).
Even less important to the plot is Naoko Okumura (Yasuko Sawaguchi), the sister of the lone survivor of the Yahata-Maru. She's really cute and comes across as a loving and caring sister to her brother, who only have each other as family and are depending upon the money that Ken makes from his job on the fishing vessel to put themselves through college, and she also serves as Prof. Hayashida's part-time assistant but otherwise, there's not much to her. I guess you could say that she's important to the plot in that she helps Hayashida with his research and fine-tuning of the device meant to lure Godzilla away from Japan but that's kind of grasping at straws. Besides her implied romantic interest in Goro Maki near the end of the film, there's a moment much earlier on when she's upset with him for using her and her brother as fodder for his newspaper story, saying that she expected better from him (I don't know why, though, since she just met the guy), but it doesn't go much further than some indicated, silent tension in a later scene where she serves them coffee while they're going over the data they collected during Godzilla's first appearance. (The anger she feels toward Maki was greatly expanded upon in the manga version.) However, I do like that, while she is a bit disappointed with Maki, she's doesn't act like a complete bitch later on and resist his help whenever she falls or gets knocked down and plus, she also does help him when he badly injures himself while trying to drill through a locked door that leads to the roof of their building. And she does look to him for comfort near the end of the film when she begins panicking, saying that her brother and Hayashida may not reach Oshima Island in time and that Godzilla, who's currently unconscious from the effects of some cadmium shells, will probably wake up soon (which he does but not of his own volition), which leads into the hinted romantic interest between them. Ultimately, though, as much as I do like Naoko and am glad that she doesn't die, like Maki, it wouldn't have affected the plot if Godzilla did squash her.
Of the three young leads, Ken Okumura (Shin Takuma) probably has the greatest bearing on the plot of the film. For one, as the lone survivor of the Yahata-Maru, he's the one who's able to tell both Maki and later Prof. Hayashida, who happens to be a friend of his, about the monster he saw and confirm to the latter, and by extension, the government, that it was Godzilla. He's held in a police hospital for a little while as part of the news blackout but he eventually reunites with his sister, whom he's very close to, and when the blackout is lifted, he reveals to the press that the death of his friends has filled him with a bitter hatred towards Godzilla and that he wants him to be destroyed. He doesn't seem to be as angry towards Maki about the story concerning him and Naoko, since he's more torn up about how the news of Godzilla's return is making everyone crazy, but there is one short but tense moment between the two of them when they see each other for the first time since the pictures were taken. He joins his sister in helping Hayashida study Godzilla and is the one who realizes that, after attacking the nuclear plant during his first appearance, the monster suddenly turned and followed some birds out to sea, giving Hayashida the idea that he has the same homing instinct as birds and that this might be a way to lure him away from Tokyo. Hayashida also has Okumura go work with his old geologist friend, Prof. Minami, and get his opinion as to whether or not they can cause Mt. Mihara to erupt when they need it to in order to trap Godzilla. Okumura ultimately joins Hayashida when he departs for Oshima Island, having a near fatal accident as a result of his carrying the heavy briefcase full of the necessary equipment while being extracted from the professor's laboratory along with him via helicopter. And ultimately, he gets revenge on Godzilla at the end of the film by detonating the explosive charges that have been placed in the crater, causing Mt. Mihara to erupt and sealing Godzilla inside. Overall, while he may not have been the one who came up with the plan and method that ultimately stop Godzilla but he certainly has more of a role in the story than Maki and Naoko.
Alright, enough about them. Let's get into the much more interesting characters. The role of Prof. Hayashida was originally meant for series veteran Akihiko Hirata, who had actually been the one to make the announcement of Godzilla's return in December of 1983, doing so while wearing his trademark Dr. Serizawa eye-patch no less. Unfortunately, before production began, Hirata died of throat cancer and so his buddy Yosuke Natsuki, who had appeared along with Hirata as Det. Shindo back in Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster, took the role instead. Despite his lack of major association with the kaiju genre, Natsuki proves to be a good fit for Hayashida, bringing a sense of knowledge and, at the same time, a surprising feeling of respect and even sympathy towards Godzilla. You learn early on that Hayashida's parents were killed by Godzilla during the original attack in 1954 and that the man himself began studying the monster out of vengeance, as a way to figure out how to destroy him. However, Hayashida doesn't feel that way anymore, saying that he feels that Godzilla is a destructive product of mankind's atomic age, a warning about what happens when mankind becomes far too arrogant in regards to mother nature. One thing that I think is obvious from the outset is that Hayashida never believed that Godzilla was truly dead. The fact that he brings old photographs taken during Godzilla's original attack for Okumura to look at proves that to me. He's been expecting Godzilla to reappear at some point during the thirty years since his first attack and now that Okumura, whom he knows is a rational, honest young man, is claiming to have seen a monster during the destruction of Daikoku Island, he knows that this can only mean that the King of the Monsters has finally returned. But, like I said, he no longer harbors any of the hate that he once felt towards Godzilla. In fact, he feels that his responsibility is not to destroy Godzilla (he even admits that Godzilla won't die when he's sealed inside Mt. Mihara) but, as he puts it, "To send him home." I think what he means by that is Godzilla doesn't belong in the modern world where he'll only cause fear and destruction because of what he is and that he's hoping he'll be at peace within the volcano. He even asks Maki and Okumura if they felt anything for the monster when they watched him attack and destroy the nuclear plant several nights before. At the end of the movie, when Godzilla has been sealed within the volcano, Hayashida has a look of sadness and pity on his face for the monster but, personally, I think that he also knows this will only end up being a temporary solution and that sooner or later, Godzilla will rise again.
The best character in the movie by far is the prime minister (Keiju Kobayashi). He's the one who you feel the most sympathy for because he has to bear the brunt of the economic and diplomatic crisis that Godzilla's return creates for his country. When he first hears that Godzilla is the cause of what happened to the Yahata-Maru, a feeling of dread and grimness comes over him, as he says, "I was hoping I could finish my term peacefully." He wisely decides to cover up the story, knowing that it would cause a mass panic and that Japan's economy would be crippled as a result. However, when he hears of the destruction of the Soviet sub and that Russia is threatening to start World War III because they feel that America was the cause, the prime minister, once it's confirmed by a photograph that Godzilla destroyed the sub, has no choice but to reveal the truth in order to prevent a worse catastrophe. His biggest test is yet to come, though. After Godzilla makes his first appearance, the prime minister holds a meeting with the Soviet and American ambassadors and all the two of them can agree on is that nuclear weapons must be used to destroy Godzilla if and when he reappears near Japan. Both of them, especially the Soviet ambassador, rail at the prime minister, who silently sits there while listening to both of them and internally debating the situation. The pressure the poor guy is under is incredible and it only gets worse when he retires to a private meeting where his cabinet ministers weigh the options. As you might expect, there are no easy answers to this question: the particular type of atomic bomb that they plan to use would probably do less damage than Godzilla, who would destroy the Japanese economy as well, if it was fired at the monster while he's in Tokyo, and there would, naturally, be an evacuation but, at the same time, they can't guarantee that it will destroy Godzilla (doesn't it seem like everyone has forgtten that Godzilla gets his power from nuclear energy and that using nuclear bombs on him would probably make him more powerful?) What's more, even if it does work, there's no way to predict the long-term effects of nuclear fallout... and yet, they'll never know what will happen unless they take a leap of faith and try it. It's also suggested that, since nuclear weapons are hard to quantify, the other countries have not thoroughly tested them out on the battlefield and, therefore, they themselves really don't know what the damage will be, even though they claim that it will be limited, and want to use Japan as some sort of experiment. On top of everything else, if they refuse this request, Japan will be diplomatically isolated. Just try to put yourself in the prime minister's position in having to make a decision from all that. That's one job I'd never want. Ultimately, the prime minister decides that nuclear weapons will not be used, stating the country's principles on the matter and that they can't make an exception. He also admits that they're probably doing this out of national pride but tells both ambassadors, who are visibly frustrated by this decision, that they have no right to say that Japan must allow them to do this. When even this doesn't win them over, the prime minister then decides to speak directly to their respective leaders and while we don't see this ourselves, we do hear the prime minister tell his cabinet ministers what he said that ultimately convinced them: "If Godzilla appeared in your countries, and attacked Washington and Moscow, would you have the courage to use nuclear weapons, knowing that many of your people would be killed?" This rational answer that he gives to a very tough question in such a calm manner, plus the decision he makes to contact the Americans to help with destroying the Soviet nuclear missile that ends up being accidentally fired at Tokyo from a satellite and that everyone in the city must be told to take shelter in the subways in the meantime, I think proves that Japan couldn't have asked for a better leader in this time of crisis.
Some familiar faces pop up in this film and, amazingly, none of them are that of Kenji Sahara (although, don't worry, he'll be back)! Hiroshi Koizumi, whom we last saw as Prof. Wagura in Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla, has a very brief appearance here as Prof. Minami, Hayashida's old geologist friend who confirms to the government officials that Mt. Mihara can be prompted to erupt whenever they need it to in order to trap Godzilla within the volcano and he also assures everyone living in the villages around the volcano would not be in danger because the lava will stay within the crater, which it does. Kunio Murai, who played Takashi Shima in Godzilla vs. Gigan, is also here as a secretary, although I think he only appears during Hayashida's introductory scene. Another returning series veteran is Yoshifumi Tajima, last seen in Godzilla's Revenge, as the environmental director. You only see him a couple of times and he actually has only one line, where he questions the safety of the villages around Mt. Mihara if they do manage to cause the volcano to erupt (which is cut from the American version and led to me not realizing for the longest time that he was even in the film at all) but, for diehard fans like myself, it's nice seeing him again. This was the last movie he ever appeared in before his retirement from acting. There are many other government official characters present in the film but since they do little more than serve their respective roles of advising the prime minister on different matters, I'm not going to spend much time on them. I will say, though, that a couple of them do stand out, with the prime minister's chief cabinet secretary, Takegami (Taketoshi Naito), being his closest and most loyal advisor, holding the news conference revealing Godzilla's return to the public, and the finance minister (Eitaro Ozawa) coming across as a little arrogant and dismissive towards Hayashida's plan to lure Godzilla to Mt. Mihara, suggesting that it would be best to leave him to the military, and later on having to be told that he shouldn't be so gun-ho about using nuclear weapons against the monster, especially if he does manage to reach Tokyo.
The one comic relief character in an otherwise completely grim and humorless movie is this bum (Tetsuya Takeda) who takes advantage of the evacuation of Tokyo's Shinjuku district during Godzilla's attack by sneaking into a fancy restaurant and gorging himself on all of the food and wine there. I don't know if he's drunk or just plain stupid but either way, he often sees Godzilla as more of an annoyance to his free night on the town than a serious threat. When he's dining in the restaurant and Godzilla roars at him through the window, he actually yells for him to go away, saying, "You've got the rest of Shinjuku to play with!" Much later on, he suddenly shows up again, wandering around what's left of the town, and holds this fire-hose steady so Maki and Naoko can climb down it from inside the wrecked building they're in. Not too long after that, Godzilla destroys the Super-X and begins heading in their direction. I don't know why Maki and Naoko suddenly act really turned off by the bum because he not only was good enough to help them out of the building but when the two of them trip and fall while running, he offers to help them up but they, Maki especially, act as if he has leprosy. Of course, after they leave him behind, he takes a briefcase that he finds lying around, so he is still a thief who'll take anything he can get his hands on, but at least he proved himself to be a decent guy overall. Either way, what eventually happens to him is rather confusing in the Japanese version. He runs and falls, apparently bangs his head on something, and when he looks up, Godzilla is standing over him. The bum, again, being stupid, calls him an idiot (he was acting like he was going to throw a brick at him earlier) and Godzilla responds by roaring as he continues to loom over him. Then, without warning, the guy keels over. I don't know if he just passed out or somehow died, possibly from the head injury he sustained, but whatever the case, he slowly lays down on his back while holding his head, stops moving, and then we never see him again. In Godzilla 1985, they re-edited it to make it look as if Godzilla crushed him with his foot but in this version, I don't know what happened.
Like the original Godzilla, The Return of Godzilla addresses the issue of nuclear weapons but this time, it's bigger than just the dangers of atomic testing. Director Koji Hashimoto once described the film's theme as being about, "The risk of nuclear energy in all of its forms." More specifically, it comments on the nuclear tensions that were heightened by the Cold War and the uneasy relationship between the United States and Russia at the time. Tomoyuki Tanaka said that with the film, "We wanted to show how easily a nuclear incident could happen today." Indeed, not only do you have Godzilla almost causing a nuclear war between America and the U.S.S.R. when he destroys a Soviet submarine, leading to the Union immediately blaming America for the catastrophe, but there's a subplot during the film's second half where Godzilla's attack on Tokyo Harbor activates the launch program for a Soviet satellite containing a nuclear missile. The Soviet Union's deception of disguising the ship containing the missile controls as a normal freighter in Tokyo Bay makes them look particularly untrustworthy and shifty, especially when you think about how it has to have been there as soon as news of Godzilla's return broke out, even before the prime minister has his tension-filled conference with the American and Soviet ambassadors (the Soviet Union may have agreed to disarm the satellite but still...). As described earlier, that scene serves as the heart of the whole nuclear issue, with the prime minister having to seriously consider allowing the United States and the Soviet Union to use nuclear weapons within the vicinity of the mainland if and when Godzilla reappears. It's interesting to think how the only thing the two countries can agree on is that nuclear weapons are to be dropped on or near Japan, a country that was deeply scarred by this same action nearly forty years before. Even though the prime minister is advised that the type of atomic bomb they plan to use is not as powerful as the one that destroyed Hiroshima, and that refusing both countries' requests would have grave diplomatic consequences for Japan, he decides that he cannot allow nuclear weapons to be used in or around his country for any reason, not even in a situation like this. Of course, his decision is almost rendered moot when the Soviet nuclear missile is fired at Tokyo, threatening to turn the city into another Hiroshima. Speaking of which, that's the other issue the film tackles: the idea that Japan's prosperity, as massive as it has become, is quite fragile. Tanaka referred to the big skyscrapers that had come to dominate the Shinjuku district by the 1980's as, "The vain symbols of these abundant days," and felt that, like the 1932 earthquake, the firebombings of Tokyo, and the atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Godzilla is a force that could come in and destroy all of the prosperity and shallow materialism within an instant. The finance minister seeming more preoccupied with Godzilla's attack meaning the end of Japan's economy and gun-ho to be allowed nuclear weapons to be used, when he should also be concerned with the damage such an act could cause (the guy acts as if an atomic explosion in the middle of Tokyo wouldn't do anything to damage the economy he's so concerned with), is a prime example of what Tanaka described as everyone being "so concerned with the material." And incidentally, if you want a more recent, real-life example of this idea of "fragile prosperity," just look at how Japan was instantly brought to its knees by the massive 2011 earthquake.
In the past few reviews, I've made mention of a 1973 disaster movie called The Submersion of Japan, which became the most profitable Japanese film of the 1970's upon its release, but I think this is the best Godzilla movie with which to go a little in-depth into that film because there are many similarities between the two pictures. Like The Return of Godzilla, that movie, released in the United States as Tidal Wave, was a very somber and serious piece that discussed international politics and diplomacy and the effects that an enormous disaster, be it a monster attack or, in the case of Submersion, a movement of tectonic plates that threatens to, and eventually does, pull the country down into the sea, would have on them. Both films, which, I might add, feature some of the best work by effects man Teruyoshi Nakano, also make mention of less than satisfactory responses to these disasters, be they the Japanese military's inability to stop Godzilla from reaching Tokyo or from coming on land in the first place early on in the movie, or, in the case of Submersion, ineffective rescue attempts during the disaster. As I mentioned earlier, this film's director was an assistant on that one, which I don't think was a coincidence since that movie's enormous success in Japan, especially during the bad times the film industry was experiencing in the mid-70's, prompted Toho to try to replicate its formula for many years to come, in both disaster and science fiction films. And most tellingly of all, Keiju Kobayashi, the actor who plays the prime minister here, starred in The Submersion of Japan as the scientist who discovers that his country is living on borrowed time. Some, however, would say that The Return of Godzilla taking its cues from that film isn't exactly a good thing, since The Submersion of Japan has often been described as ponderous, self-important, and ultimately, a film that emphasizes spectacle over characterization. I personally can't say that the 1973 film doesn't deserve these criticisms (truth be told, its overwhelming hopelessness, lack of humor and deep characters, and long political discussion scenes make its near two and a half hour running time a little difficult to get through) or that The Return of Godzilla is subtle in its themes and discussion of them, especially with its grim tone, but I will say that I do think this movie is more successful in saying what it wants to say in an entertaining fashion than that movie was. It may do so in a more in your face way than was the case with the allegory in the original Godzilla but, for the most part, I still think it works in what it sets out to do.
The original series of Godzilla movies is commonly referred to as the Showa series since it corresponds to the era when Hirohito was the emperor of Japan, whereas the second series that begins with this film is known as the Heisei series because it was made in the period when Akihiko took over from his deceased father, a period that is still going on. However, The Return of Godzilla was produced during Hirohito's lifetime, so it's technically still part of the Showa era of movies whereas the next film, Godzilla vs. Biollante, was the first one made during the Heisei period (it was released the very year that period began, in fact). But, since the rest of these films stem from this one, it is often included as part of the Heisei series to avoid confusion. It's an interesting dilemma too because, for me personally, this film does indeed serve as the bridge between the first generation of Godzilla movies and the second generation when I look at in context. You've got new, young talent mixing in with some players from the series' past, such as Yosuke Natsuki, Hiroshi Koizumi, and Yoshifumi Tajima, some of whom would either never appear in another Godzilla movie or, at least, not for a long time; Teruyoshi Nakano would retire from filmmaking not too long after this film, making this the last Godzilla film he would be involved with; Godzilla in this film is played by a man who once sparred with Haruo Nakajima onscreen and would carry on the role for the entirety of this second cycle; and, most significantly of all, this is one of the last films that Tomoyuki Tanaka was very heavily involved with, seeing as how his advancing age and gradually deteriorating health would limit his participation up to the end of the Heisei series. Moreover, I think the fact that is a direct sequel to the original Godzilla, bypassing all the other films in the Showa series, also serves as a notice that this is the beginning of a new era for the Big G. Over the years, those who had helped shape him and his character had slowly departed the series and after this film, younger people would take over and his remaining "fathers" would all eventually leave.
Above everything else, Tomoyuki Tanaka hoped with this film to return Godzilla to his roots as a destructive, rampaging beast, stripping away all of the detours he felt the character had gradually taken in the years since the original movie. And, for better or worse, he succeeded. The Big G is back to being a terrifying force of destruction here and this is how he would remain for, more or less, the rest of the series. However, as scary-looking as he is and in spite of the massive destruction and loss of human life he causes, few of Godzilla's actions come across as out and out malicious to me. Most of what he does is more akin to an animal either acting on instinct (like when he attacks the nuclear plant during his first appearance in order to feed on the reactor), or becoming enraged at being fired on and retaliating (as he does to the military and the Super-X). And most of the destruction he causes when he enters Tokyo is akin to the destruction he caused during his first appearance in Mothra vs. Godzilla: his enormous size and girth, as well as his simply being present in an area that's tightly packed with so many buildings and other obstacles, is what results in the property damage, rather than any malicious intent on his part. During his big battle with the Super-X near the end of the film, he blows up a lot of buildings with his atomic blast, as well as with his tail and pure strength, resulting in much more destruction than he had already caused, but I think that was more due to his determination to destroy this flying armored vehicle that had rendered him unconscious earlier. The one time where he does seem to cause death and destruction out of malice is when he picks up this train car, looks at the screaming people inside through the window, roars at them, and takes a few steps forward before throwing the car to the side, killing everyone that was in there. Other than that, he just comes across like an enormous animal wandering around a place where it's impossible for him not to crush things, rather than like an angry god punishing mankind like in the original movie. It's important to note that this is the first time where we see that Godzilla does know in his own way that nuclear energy is something that he needs. I don't know if he completely understands it or if it's, again, a case of pure instinct but regardless, the fact that he goes straight for this nuclear plant upon making it to land for the first time, tears through it, and actually pulls the reactor out in order to feed on the radiation (and by "feed," I meant absorb it into his body), which is also why he went after the Soviet nuclear submarine, is proof that he's not just a mindless beast, that there is some intelligence to him. And then, there's the whole issue of Godzilla having a homing instinct, using magnetism as a type of radar, similar to how birds do so. It's why he seems to follow that flock when he leaves the nuclear plant: he felt the magnetism they were vectoring on. I'm not so crazy about this idea. I kind of understand why they came up with it, because it was a way to keep Godzilla's characterization as that of an animal, as well as to serve as a logical means to lure him to Mt. Mihara, but, I've never been a big fan of it, particularly in this version where it's not explained all that well for me. That's why my descriptions of it have kind of sucked. Maybe I'm just dumb but I didn't entirely get it. Other than that, though, I can get behind the characterization for Godzilla they were going for here.
One thing that I've always found curious is that, for a movie called The Return of Godzilla, they don't really explain how Godzilla returned; he just sort of shows up. The only explanation that we do get is Prof. Hayashida informing the government officials that the eruption of Daikoku Island awakened Godzilla and brought him to the surface. However, that does not at all explain how he's suddenly alive again after being disintegrated by the Oxygen Destroyer. Godzilla Raids Again at least made a point of saying that there's a second Godzilla and that there was no way to permanently kill him since the Oxygen Destroyer was gone; neither version of this film mentions that weapon or Dr. Serizawa and, in fact, they only mention the events of the original film in a vague, rudimentary manner. I would like to assume that this is a different Godzilla from the one in the original film, since there's no way he could have come back to life save by supernatural means, which we'll get in a later film, and the regenerative properties they mention in later films are out because, one, that wasn't an idea at this point, and two, there would be nothing for him to regenerate from. But, everyone acts like it's the same monster as in the original movie, with Takegami even stating in his press conference that, "Godzilla still exists." It's another tricky subject and while it doesn't really hurt the film for me, I'm sure it would confuse the hell out of most newcomers.
Also, I have to admit that the sympathy they try to make you feel for Godzilla when he falls into Mt. Mihara at the end of the movie is a bit much. It's handled much, much better in Godzilla 1985 but in the Japanese version, it feels rather forced. Of course, if you're as big a fan of Godzilla as I am, then you would feel something when he's dumped into the volcano, roaring all the way down to the bottom, especially with that sad music playing, but the fact that they show the prime minister almost in tears as he watches Godzilla descend down into the crater does not sit well with me. I get why they play the sad music and why Prof. Hayashida seems sad, since he was the one who understood that Godzilla was as much a victim of the atomic bomb as the hundreds of people he killed, but it doesn't seem at all right for the prime minister to be weeping for a creature that has left Tokyo in ruins and at least hundreds of people dead, almost caused World War III, prompted both the United States and the Soviet Union to contemplate using nuclear weapons on or near Japan, and almost got Tokyo turned into another Hiroshima when his rampage activated the satellite missile control aboard that freighter. Again, I get the sympathetic music that's meant for the audience and why Hayashida is almost on the verge of tears, but the prime minister should be acting the way Maki and Naoko do when they fly over the erupting volcano in a helicopter: happy that this thing that terrorized his country is gone. But, what really makes me cringe is this Asian pop song, Goodbye, Godzilla, that plays over the ending credits, where this female singer acts as if Godzilla is her very best friend and he's left her behind while he goes on some journey. No. Just, no. Now, you're overdoing it. Yes, I understand that like me, thousands of other people love Godzilla and are going to feel bad when something like this happens to him, and I also understand his characterization, but you can't end a movie about a rampaging monster that's caused a lot of death and destruction with this type of song. So, that's a major strike against the Japanese version for me. The pathos makes more sense and feels more genuine at the end of the later film, Godzilla vs. Destoroyah, but here, it feels about as genuine as a brick to the head.
As you can see, there's nothing cuddly about this Godzilla whatsoever. He was designed in this film to look like a threatening, hostile monster who projects strength and power and could very easily level a city, intentionally or not. You won't see this Godzilla do a karate-chop. The suit was made to look more massive and powerful than of the previous ones, including the original, with a very broad chest, wide legs, enormous feet, and what has to be the longest tail he's ever had (my step-cousin and I often joked that his tail looks bigger than he is here when it thrashes around). They also brought back the features that hadn't been seen since Godzilla Raids Again: the small ears, the four toes on each foot, the three rows of dorsal plates all being the same size, and the fans. Speaking of which, the most striking thing about the design of this Godzilla is the face. Not since Mothra vs. Godzilla had the Big G looked so menacing, with his always angry-looking face, furrowed eyebrows, reddish brown eyes, and those two intimidating fangs that are constantly poking out of his upper lip. Pneumatic tubes built inside the suit allowed the operators to not only control Godzilla's mouth and eyes but also enabled the upper lip to curl whenever he snarled and growled, adding even more menace to him. Taking over the role of Godzilla is someone who was no stranger to monster-suit acting: Kengo Nakayama, who had played Hedorah and Gigan before. Having now changed his name to Kenpachiro Satsuma, he was the one who would finally pick up the baton from Haruo Nakajima and continue playing Godzilla for the entirety of the Heisei series rather than being just another one-off suit actor. Unfortunately, like Nakajima during the filming of the original movie, Satsuma's first outing as Godzilla was hardly a walk in the park. The suit, which weighed 240 pounds, was originally built for another stuntman, one much bigger than Satsuma, but that guy backed out at the last minute, leading to Satsuma being chosen to replace him. And since it was so late in production, Satsuma was stuck with having to perform within this suit that was much bigger than he was. He himself described the thing as being a major pain in the ass to work in, once saying that it was more like the suit wore him rather than the other way around, and, despite his strength and endurance, could only withstand being inside it for ten minutes at a time and ended up losing twelve pounds during filming. I wish I could say that, as Nakajima did, Satsuma was able to persevere and create a flawless physical performance but that's not entirely true. For the most part, he does good but there are also times where Godzilla's movements are awkward, coming across as a little wobbly and clumsy. I'm not blaming Satsuma, since I understand that he was doing his best given the circumstances, but the problems he was having are noticeable at times. Also, while the suit itself does look really good from some angles, especially when it's lit well, there are other shots where Godzilla's girth makes him look... fat more than anything else, a feeling that's compounded when you add in the more awkward movements that Satsuma was unable to reign in. The eyes sometimes look like they're staring off in opposite directions as well. All in all, I do really like this Godzilla design and I commend Satsuma for giving it his all, despite the uncomfortable circumstances, but that said, the work wasn't entirely successful.
Teruyoshi Nakano and his special effects crew also constructed an 18-foot, animatronic Godzilla, which they dubbed the "cybot," to be used in some effects shots. In fact, they went the route that Dino De Laurentiis took with the enormous, robotic King Kong built for his 1976 film and said that the cybot would be used for most of the scenes involving Godzilla, even though that was hardly the case. You see this animatronic much more than you did the robotic Kong in that film but for the most part, Godzilla is portrayed by Kenpachiro Satsuma in the suit. And, like Rick Baker in the gorilla suit in the 1976 King Kong, I think it's a good thing they did use the suit more because the cybot, as impressive-looking as it is, especially you see some behind-the-scenes images of it being constructed and operated, its movements aren't the most realistic. They're very herky-jerky, especially when the head is being moved around (although it does look good when the lips curl back in a snarl, when the mouth opens whenever Godzilla roars, and especially how the chest rises and falls when he's breathing heavily at one point), and the arms that were built to the torso are quite stiff. It also doesn't help that, like the puppets used for close-ups of the monsters' heads during the early films, the head looks different from that of the suit, with a snout that's noticeably longer and narrower than the suit's short, broad one. Again, it's a cool feat of engineering and I like that, for the first time, animatronics were used in bringing Godzilla to life, but the cybot was ultimately better as a means of marketing the film rather than being used in the film itself. They also constructed a full-sized hydraulic foot for close-ups and in shots where it interacts with actors but, like the cybot, it doesn't move realistically. The slow, mechanical way in which it comes down gives the impression of a car compactor more than the foot of an enormous creature. That's why only one shot of it was left in when Godzilla 1985 was put together.
Obviously, the higher-pitched, screeching roar that Godzilla's vocalizations had become as the original series went on was not going to cut it for this darker and more serious reinterpretation, so they replaced it with a deep, threatening roar that was heard a couple of times in the original film and was also spouted a number of times during Godzilla Raids Again. That was another thing about this movie that turned me off the first time I saw it as a really young kid. I didn't like hearing this deep, snarling roar. I wanted the screeching one that I was more used to that, to me, was Godzilla's sound. It also didn't help that in Godzilla 1985, when the Super-X shoots the cadmium missiles down his throat, he actually does the traditional screech a couple of times before keeling over, which actually made me think he was going to have it for the rest of the movie when he woke up... and when he did, it was back to being that roar I didn't like. He does make that sound in the Japanese version as well but it's only at the end when he's falling into Mt. Mihara, which also happens in the American version. I never liked the idea they were suggesting that the screeching roar was what he sounds like whenever his voice gets messed up in some way or when he's in peril. In any case, in addition to that roar, they also bring back the other two main roars he had in the original Godzilla, especially the one that sounds like a booming snarl, which he uses quite a few times here. They also gave Godzilla some pretty menacing growls, especially the one he makes when he glares at the defense forces on the docks of Tokyo Harbor before utterly annihilating them, and his footsteps are very loud and thunderous, the most booming they've ever sounded since the first movie (I wish they'd used that particular sound for them again). And as for his atomic blast, I like how they imply, with his spines glowing as he does so, that the radiation he feeds on at the nuclear plant during his first appearance is how he got it, that before he simply had the atomic breath we saw before in the original film. The blast is much more powerful than it ever has been before, able to wipe out an entire defense force with a single sweep and Godzilla is able to focus it in a way that it can go right through the center of a building or blow off the side but leave the rest of it intact rather than just blow the whole thing up. It's also conceived very well, even if there are times where it goes off in a different direction than where Godzilla's mouth is positioned.
Godzilla may be the only monster in this movie (not counting the big sea louse) but technically, he does have an opponent: the Super-X, a military aircraft built to defend Tokyo, particularly from a nuclear attack. My step-cousin never liked the Super-X but I always thought it was cool-looking craft, reminiscent of an alien spaceship. It's the first of a line of noteworthy machines built to fight Godzilla in the Heisei series. Its titanium-alloy armor enables it to take a direct hit from Godzilla's atomic blast and it's also capable of fighting back against the monster with a lasers, missiles, and machine guns. It's mainly deployed against Godzilla in order to fire cadmium missiles down his throat, hoping that, as with a nuclear reactor, the cadmium will neutralize the atomic energy coursing through Godzilla's body and stop his heart. This does seem to work because Godzilla, after standing around in a daze for a bit after getting the missiles shot down his throat, collapses against a nearby building, apparently dead. However, when the Soviet nuclear missile that was accidentally fired at Godzilla is destroyed in the atmosphere by another missile, the resulting EMP not only weakens the Super-X's rotors, forcing the team to land the craft for repairs, but it also revives Godzilla, who is now out for revenge against the Super-X. While the craft is able to hold Godzilla off, they have no cadmium missiles left and the monster's wrath, with him chasing it throughout the city and blowing everything up around it while trying to destroy it, ultimately damages the Super-X's armor and rotors to the point where it slowly hovers down to the ground and comes to a rest. Godzilla then promptly destroys it by pushing a building on top of it!
Another reason I think I didn't care for this film when I was very little was the rather creepy scene in the beginning where Goro Maki investigates the apparently deserted interiors of the Yahata-Maru, coming across the bodies of the crewmen and eventually, the thing that killed them: a large sea louse that got so big from feeding off of Godzilla's radioactive blood. In Godzilla 1985, the scene where Prof. Hayashida explains what this thing is and how it killed the crew is completely removed, so I had no freaking clue what this big bug was or how it tied into Godzilla at all. All I knew was that it was a big creepy-crawly that I definitely did not want to see in one of these movies when I was real young. That said, there's nothing else to this creature. It's just a big parasite that killed the crew by sucking all of their blood and it almost kills Maki in the same way before it's offed by Okumura. I always wondered if this one louse had been able to kill the entire crew, all the while avoiding being killed itself, or if there are others aboard the ship that we don't see (the manga adaptation heavily implies that). The thing is quite well-designed and is very creepy-looking, especially under the green lighting in that scene, and it has the interesting detail of there being a harpoon rammed through its abdomen. It also leaves behind a milky secretion like a slug or a snail when it crawls along the ground. There are some instances during its encounter with Maki where it doesn't move all that realistically, particularly during one quick shot when it's crawling down his body towards his neck (it looks like a puppet that's being maneuvered from off-screen), but it still gets the job done and the shriek that it makes, which, in the Japanese version, is a modification of Ebirah's screech, helps to make it feel more alive and creepy.
This was the last Godzilla film to have Teruyoshi Nakano as the director of special effects (he only worked on three movies after it before he retired) and he's often said that this is his favorite, a statement I can certainly understand. Since he was working with a much bigger budget than he'd ever had before on a Godzilla movie ($6 million, to be precise), Nakano was really able to show off more than he had before and he's said that he considers the stuff he did here to be his best work in the kaiju genre. Besides the great-looking Godzilla suit and the impressive, if not exactly realistically executed, cybot Godzilla, the miniature sets here are the best the series has seen in a long time. When you see Godzilla standing amongst the large skyscrapers of the Shinjuku district, with some smaller buildings and overpasses here and there, it looks like he really is a gigantic creature in the middle of a big, modern city, rather than a suited actor on a set in a studio. Some have criticized the fact that, in order to keep Godzilla from being dwarfed by the huge buildings that now dominated downtown Tokyo, the model-makers had to build them on a smaller scale, which meant that they couldn't put as much detail to them as before and resulted in the effects here being less realistic. I, however, have always thought that the miniatures look just fine, especially when Godzilla crushes them and blows them up. Speaking of scale, Godzilla is often shot from very low-angles, helping even more so to make him come across as absolutely massive. This is the first film since the original where I feel it's very easy to believe that he's truly gigantic (let's face it, in a lot of the past movies, he often felt rather small). That feeling of mass is further helped by the use of high-speed photography to slow down Godzilla's movements and give him a feeling of weight and power when he stomps through town, a technique they'd often used before but had to abandon in the 70's due to budget reasons. There's not one shot of Godzilla in broad daylight in this movie, either. It's either at night, dusk, or early morning, helping to not only enhance the grim mood of his scenes but also to hide some of the imperfections in the models, which is probably why I've never thought they looked unrealistic. And, since Nakano, expect to see a lot of impressive pyrotechnics, especially during Godzilla's final fight with the Super-X where he pretty much turns what's left of the city into a sea of fire in his attempts to utterly destroy the aircraft. Also, the destruction of Daikoku Island at the beginning of the film harkens back to the stuff he did for The Submersion of Japan and are so realistic that it can make you think that you're actually seeing an island get ripped apart by a large eruption. The matting shots in the film are absolutely seamless, particularly during the section where Godzilla is rendered unconscious from the Super-X's cadmium shells and a big crowd of people gathers nearby to gawk at him. Aside from how unnaturally and mechanical the cybot and the life-size Godzilla foot move, the only other criticism I have for the effects is that there are too many moments where Godzilla is just standing around, doing nothing, sometimes before he actually does move. This happens several times, both with the suit and the cybot. In the case of the latter, it sometimes feels like they were so enamored with their creation that they forgot to actually operate it when the camera was on, like when it just stands there completely still for a couple of seconds before turning its head in a shot during the nuclear plant scene. It really interferes with the realism when he just stands there like a statue for a little bit and then moves. But other than those hiccups, the effects work in The Return of Godzilla is some great stuff and among the best the series had seen up to that point.
After the film's title, we see shots of some very restless lava, simulating the eruption of Daikoku Island that, according to Prof. Hayashida, awakens Godzilla. These shots, with the lava violently bubbling, flowing down like waterfalls, and spouting up in big geysers has to be real footage from some other source. If this is merely special effects, the Teruyoshi Nakano is even more of a genius than I thought he was. After this, we get into the opening scene where the Yahata-Maru is caught up in a storm near the island, which is reminiscent of the storm scene back in Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster. The miniature boat and the effects of the storm and the turbulent ocean are absolutely convincing, and would have you think that what you're seeing is real. As the storm intensifies, the vessel is caught up in a strong current and is pulled towards the island, with the radioman desperately trying to send an S.O.S. out. That's when Ken Okumura walks over to the window and sees the island beginning to erupt, which is another amazing bit of effects work and would also make you think that what you're seeing is the real deal. First, you see a bunch of flashes and explosions around the center of the island, following by the center of it rising up, which is a result of Godzilla pushing his way out from beneath the rock (you can kind of see him rising up if you look closely). We then hear him roar as the island is ripped to pieces in another spectacular shot and everyone on the boat loses their balance when it's rocked by the eruption.
The scene where Goro Maki finds the abandoned Yahata-Maru and investigates it could be the creepiest, most suspenseful sequence of any Godzilla movie, or Toho monster flick, for that matter. Maki is out sailing, listening to the radio, when he comes upon the ship just as a news report about it interrupts the song he's listening to. After getting no response from when he calls toward it, Maki, recognizing the name on the ship's side as being the very one that the news is talking about, takes a picture of it before bringing his sail in and climbing aboard. He sees the main deck is a complete mess, with stuff strewn everywhere, and that the ship appears to be abandoned. He enters the main cabin, discovers that it's a mess as well, and, upon finding a flashlight, heads down some stairs into the dark bowels of the ship. Upon reaching the bottom, he finds a pith helmet lying on the floor, just a foot away from a knife. He then opens the door to what is revealed to be the radio room, and he recoils from an apparent foul smell in there. He sees a figure sitting in a chair in front of him and when he turns the chair around and shines his flashlight, he discovers that it's the blood-drained, decaying corpse of the radioman. Thoroughly freaked out by this horrific discovery, Maki recoils and takes another look with the flashlight before backing out the room and making his way down the hall to another door, one that's ajar. Upon entering the room, which is the crew's quarters and locker room, he finds more dead bodies, including one laying face-down on a top bunk, and as he walks forward, trips on one corpse's leg, causing him to fall in the way where he gets this disgusting, milky liquid on his hands. After wiping them off on a nearby towel, he turns and sees more dead bodies, including one guy with a sharp, broken stick in his hands, in an obvious failed attempt to defend himself before he was killed, and there are splotches of blood on the walls. As Maki gets up, a dead hand swings into frame (this feels more like an 80's horror film than a Godzilla movie, doesn't it?), and when he walks forward, we get a shot of something crawling down the wall in another part of the room.
Maki is examining the body with the stick when a nearby locker slowly opens and he sees a boot sticking out of it. Walking up to the locker, he finds Okumura, who has some cuts on his but who's also the only person aboard the ship not drained of blood. Upon touching his hand, Maki feels a pulse and then tries to pry loose the knife that his hands are clasping onto. When that doesn't work, he spots Okumura's wallet on the bottom of the locker and, upon opening it up, sees his identification card and a picture of him and Naoko. Slipping the wallet into Okumura's pocket, Maki then raises his camera for a photo when he hears a screech from behind. He then turns and sees the enormous sea louse hanging down from a wall on the other side of the room. The thing then jumps at him and Maki has to dive out of the way. He falls on the floor and has to get out of the way when the louse jumps at him again. It starts crawling along the floor towards him as Maki first throws something at it and then picks up a nearby harpoon to defend himself. He slowly walks up to the louse and attempts to impale it but it jumps up right before he does so. It grabs onto the ceiling and then jumps on Maki's back. He struggles with it a little bit and falls to the ground with it still on his back. He manages to roll away from it but it flies at him again and lands on his stomach. Maki grabs a nearby knife and tries to fend the louse off as it crawls down his stomach, even stabbing its underside, but it does no good. It seems like he's had it as it begins crawling towards his neck, with him being unable to hold it back or push it away. But, just as it's almost on him, it suddenly screams one last time and goes limp. Realizing that it's dead, Maki pushes the louse off of him and, after catching his breath, looks up to see Okumura standing there, gripping a meat cleaver, revealing that he was the one who killed the louse. Outside on the deck, Maki tends to Okumura's wound while the young fisherman tells him about the eruption and the enormous creature he said also saw. When a Coast Guard helicopter appears, Maki is able to flag them down and they both eventually manage to get back to Tokyo.
The next major scene involves the Soviet submarine that encounters Godzilla while exploring the ocean near Japan. As they cruise through the water, they become aware of a large object that's heading right towards them, prompting them to refer to it as an enemy. The captain then hears from sonar operator that they don't detect anything that sounds like an engine and that the sound the object is making can't be identified. They continue forward and the captain is then told that they just picked up an active sonar signature. His second-in-command wonders if it could be a whale but when the captain says that whales don't have active sonar, he then suggests that it's an American submarine. With that in mind, and the news that the object is still heading right for them, the captain orders the first and second portside torpedoes to be fired and for the submarine to be taken down further. The sub then shakes from both torpedoes hitting their target and when there's no return fire, they assume that they destroyed it. The captain then comments that if the Americans intend to destroy their submarines, they must have decided upon a nuclear war. However, his confidence melts when he's told that the target is still closing in on them. It gets right on top of them and even though the captain orders an emergency dive, it stays with them, hovering directly above them, which I find to be a creepy thought. Godzilla is obviously much more graceful and agile in water than he is on land. After a few moments of intense silence, the submarine is rammed and as the captain barks orders and the technicians try to get the situation under control, it's obvious, especially when water starts rushing in, that the situation is hopeless. After a quick shot outside of the sub (which is hard to see because of the darkness but if you turn up the brightness, you can make out that Godzilla is holding onto it), it then explodes in a blinding fireball.
With a Godzilla Emergency Counter-Measures Headquarters established, and the Japanese Self-Defense Force out looking for him with battleships, jets, and sonar makers, Godzilla makes his first appearance about 32 minutes in. We see a calm scene set at dusk in a countryside that's later revealed to be the Shizuoka Prefecture. The calm, however, is interrupted by a bunch of birds panicking and flying away. We then hear Godzilla growling but all we can see is a bunch of thick mist. You expect for the fog to clear and reveal him but instead, it slowly reveals an aerial view of a nuclear plant and when you hear Godzilla's thundering footsteps, you realize that what you're seeing is from his point of view. This is quite creepy and the music makes it even more so. As his footsteps continue, a security guard walks out of the plant, only for the ground in front of him to crack and when he looks up, he's so shocked by what he sees that he loses his balance and falls. That's when we get an over-the-shoulder shot and see Godzilla's enormous feet. The camera then pans up his body, ultimately revealing his angry-looking face as he roars. Scared out of his mind, the poor man desperately crawls back to avoid being crushed, as Godzilla walks past him (or over him, if the following up shot of Godzilla walking across the camera's POV is meant to be his). He slowly walks toward the main building of the plant, with people outside running in a panic, while the technicians inside try to shut down the reactor. We get a big close-up of Godzilla's face as he roars again and then a shot of his feet as he stomps toward some high-tension wires, smashing a bunch of cars in the plant's parking lot as he does. He takes a big sniff of the air as he looks over the plant and then walks forward again. After a shot of Maki, Okumura, and Prof. Hayashida flying toward the scene in a helicopter, we cut to the aforementioned counter-measures headquarters, where the prime minister and his staff arrive in time to see Godzilla attacking the plant on a video monitor. The prime minister is told that Godzilla wasn't spotted sooner because of the dense fogbanks (that must have been some fog if it was enough to hide him!) Cutting back to the actual scene, Godzilla stomps some fuel tanks and crushes a small warehouse as he continues marching forward. Reaching the plant, he smashes the smokestack down, as the helicopter Hayashida and the others comes down to land nearby. They get out and run to the outskirts of the plant, with Okumura and Maki taking pictures as Godzilla begins plowing through the heart of the plant. As he does so, he wreaks havoc with the main interior, shorting out the equipment and knocking the technicians around and off a large walkway. The wall of the place then caves and after taking another sniff, Godzilla continues smashing his way towards the reactor, forcing the technicians who are left to evacuate. As they do so, his foot crashes through the ceiling and, needless to say, not all of them make it out alive. He finally reaches the reactor core, tears through the funnel above it, reaches in, and pulls the entire thing out to begin feeding on the radiation, which results in his dorsal plates glowing. But, in the middle of doing so, he turns his head to the sound of a flock of screeching seabirds that are heading out to sea and abruptly drops the reactor core and slowly walks to the ocean, his enormous tail thrashing around as he does so.
Shortly after the prime minister's meeting with the American and Soviet ambassadors, Godzilla is spotted swimming in the direction of Tokyo Bay. Once hearing of this, Takegami holds another press conference in order to warn the public, prompting a massive evacuation that's shown to us through some editing involving split-screens, where we first see roads jammed with vehicles and then, people clamoring for plane tickets, people frantically trying to get their luggage stowed onboard monorails, said monorails operating, and airliners taking off. At the same time that's going, Prof. Hayashida and Naoko work to finish the device that will lure Godzilla at Mt. Mihara, while at that very location, military troops are busy planting the explosive charges meant to cause an eruption and seal him within the volcano. Back at Tokyo, night has fallen, and while helicopters patrol Tokyo Bay, the rest of the Japanese Self-Defense Force set up the first major line of defense at the harbor, moving in tanks, rocket launchers, command cars, and other vehicles. With no sign of Godzilla yet, not even from the anti-submarine sonars placed within the bay, all of the troops lie wait for him to appear. They don't have to wait long. Godzilla pops up right in front of one of the search helicopters far offshore, which sends the air force into action. The fighter jets come zooming in and launch their missiles at Godzilla, which, as usual, have no effect on him whatsoever. He angrily roars at the jets as they come in for another pass, hitting him with more missiles and bullets from their small machine guns. As they buzz around his head, Godzilla gives two a taste of his own firepower, hitting them with his atomic blast and sending them crashing into the water beside him. Godzilla roars as he's blasted by more missiles, at one point smashing the surface with his tail, which sends a tidal wave at the Soviet vessel containing the satellite missile controls. All hands frantically abandon ship but the captain knows he has to get down below and deactivate the missile control unit first. As Godzilla moves further into the bay, he wades right beside the ship and the water he displaces causes it to tip slightly. However, when he violently dives beneath the water, he sends the ship careening towards the docks, which it very roughly slams against, knocking the captain off his feet down below and activating the missile control's emergency mode. Godzilla then swims towards the military forces waiting for him in the harbor and explodes out of the water in front of them, prompting them to unload everything they have on him. He's hit with a massive amount of firepower that also creates enormous spouts of water, one of which explodes off to his side and is big enough to obscure him for a few seconds. As the smoke clears, Godzilla roars at the military and smacks the water with his tail again. The soldiers on the docks back up in panic since they now only have their rifles to defend themselves with. Godzilla glares at them and then, as the attack vehicles fire their last rounds, unleashes his atomic blast on them full-force, sweeping it down the docks and decimating everybody and everything in sight (one guy is briefly scene running around on fire). After everything is destroyed, it gets eerily quiet as Godzilla looks at the destruction he's caused and then roars in triumph of vanquishing his enemies before heading onto land. Back aboard the Soviet freighter, the injured captain tries to get into the control room and deactivate the missile controls but when he falls in the doorway, he's killed when some nearby circuitry explodes.
Back outside, Godzilla comes ashore, destroying a warehouse with his foot as he makes his way into the outskirts of Tokyo. After a brief bit at the HQ, where Takegami asks what's going on with the Super-X and is told that they're loading the cadmium shells at that moment, we cut back Godzilla, who's looming over some buildings before stomping down a street as he heads further into the city. While he's walking towards a monorail track, a helicopter gets too close and he hits it with a fireball of atomic energy. The helicopter falls down onto an overpass jam-packed with cars, creating a devastating chain reaction of explosions that reaches extremely far down the street, eventually curving around an enormous building as it goes (by the way, if you look carefully when the helicopter is falling, you can see a Ghostbusters logo on a nearby sign). As Godzilla continues stomping around, his foot goes right through the pavement at one point, causing him to lose his balance and slam against a skyscraper, the side of which he tears apart with his hand as he eventually regains balance and continues onward. A train comes down the monorail tracks and when the conductor sees Godzilla comes around the bend of a nearby building, he panics and hits the brakes, causing the train to stop on the section of track right in front of the monster. Seeing this, Godzilla bends over, grabs ahold of the train, and lifts it up into the air, managing to severe the front train car from the others. He brings it up to his eye and looks in at the panicking people inside through the window (one thing I don't like is how you see a woman who takes her glasses off and smiles at Godzilla; completely inappropriate for this scene). He then actually roars at them before taking a few steps forward while continuing to hold the train car, giving us a really cool shot of his reflection in the glass of a nearby building, and then, dropping it off to his left as he completely destroys the track and surrounding power-lines with his legs and feet. A news-reporter then warns all those who didn't evacuate that Godzilla is heading for the Civic Center in Kasumigaseki and that residents in the Nagatacho, Aoyama, and Akiosaka districts must get out immediately. At the same time, a police car drives down the streets, warning others that he's heading for the Yotsuya and Shinjuku districts and we see a bunch of people evacuating, probably heading for underground shelters. After a brief moment where Maki arrives at Hayashida's lab, where he and Naoko are still working on the device, we get a nice shot of Godzilla looming over some small buildings as he continues marching through the city, stopping at one point to roar at the camera. He even passes right above the command center where the prime minister and everyone else is, shaking it as he does so, and almost causing some of the men to run for it. Back on the street, another emergency announcement warns the public that Godzilla is passing through Nagatacho, on his way to Shinjuku. Everyone is warned to evacuate but the news comes a little too late because a group of people just barely manage to avoid getting crushed and we get a shot of Godzilla standing over some buildings in the background, roaring as more people run frantically in the foreground. Meanwhile, a plan is put in motion by the defense forces to divert Godzilla's attention with a couple of vehicles capable of firing lasers. One vehicle is told to head to the Sumitomo Building and the other for Central Park. Both vehicles then deploy, as we get a shot of Godzilla behind the Shinjuku skyline as he heads towards that district.
After that, we're introduced to that bum as he takes a bunch of food out of the kitchen of this fancy restaurant and heads for the dining area, asking himself if they should have a feast in honor of Godzilla. And after a shot of Godzilla continuing to march through Shinjuku, with the diversion vehicles in the foreground trying to get ahead of him to cut him off, we cut back to the bum, who decides that the wine he's taken isn't strong enough and as he gets up to go get something stronger, he sees Godzilla's head right outside the window. He actually roars at the guy and this is when all that idiot can do is yell at him to get lost, that he has the rest of Shinjuku to play with. Godzilla then reaches the Sumitomo building, which is where Maki, Prof. Hayashida, and Naoko are, and as he steps in front of it, they then do a test to make sure their device works. It takes a few moments and they have to turn the frequency up quite a bit but eventually, Godzilla turns around and faces them, growling calmly. Now knowing that the device works, all they have to do is pack up the equipment and wait for a helicopter that's meant to arrive and take them to Oshima Island. However, the situation gets complicated when one of the diversion vehicles fires a laser at Godzilla's head, causing him to turn and smack the side of the building with his tail. Hayashida's lab is damaged in the ensuing tremor but the vital equipment and the three humans are unharmed. They head for an elevator in order to get to the roof but another tremor shakes the building, disabling it in the process. Now, they have to take the stairs. They manage to get to the roof but both doors leading to it are locked and when Maki attempts to contact someone on the emergency phone, he gets no answer. Hayashida then tells Maki that the automatic door to the roof closes automatically when there's a tremor, meaning that they'll have to pry it open themselves. As Hayashida tries to lift it, Maki heads back downstairs to get something. Back outside, both diversionary vehicles have managed to lure Godzilla away from the Sumitomo building and into the central park. As he looks around, Godzilla takes a laser right to the face, which thoroughly enrages him. At headquarters, the prime minister asks about the Super-X and he's told that it's taking off at this very moment. Sure enough, we see the flying armored vehicle as it flies through the city, heading for the site of the action. Speaking of which, while still getting blasted in the head and chest by lasers, Godzilla turns and heads into the heart of Shinjuku, smashing an overpass as he goes, forcing a nearby crowd of people to flee. He stops amongst several skyscrapers and roars as he continues to get hit with lasers. Back in the Sumitomo Building, Maki heads upstairs with a crowbar and tries to pry the automatic door from beneath, with Hayashida pulling up on it at the same time.
As Godzilla stands amongst the skyscrapers (this is one of those moments I mentioned where he just stands there like a statue, doing nothing), the Super-X comes around a nearby building and reaches him. The aircraft turns around in order to face Godzilla, who looks at it with a very angry glare. With the cadmium shells ready, the crew fires a flare up into the air. This catches Godzilla's attention and he raises his head to look up at it. He then roars curiously, doing exactly what they wanted him to do, and they fire one of the cadmium shells straight down his throat. Godzilla clearly feels this and begins shaking, with smoke billowing out of his mouth and green drool coming out of the corner. He roars again and the Super-X crew takes the opportunity to put another cadmium shell down his gullet. They then wait for him to open his mouth again but when he doesn't, they fire another flare. This gets his attention and, when he roars again, he gets a third taste of cadmium. Godzilla then convulses a little bit, as more drool leaks out of his mouth, and his heartbeat becomes audible and gradually slows. His movements also slow down and it looks as if he's going into a catatonic state. Meanwhile, the countdown on the Soviet satellite missile control unit reaches zero and the nuclear missile is deployed, heading straight for Japan. Realizing what's happened, the control center as Zasimov contacts the foreign minister, who then tells the prime minister that the missile will hit the Shinjuku District in just thirty minutes, that there's no way for the Soviet Union to destroy it in outer space, and, worst of all, they realize that they can't evacuate Shinjuku in that short amount of time. The prime minister orders for all citizens to be told to head down into the subways for evacuation and tells the foreign minister to inform the American PM (I'm guessing he really means the president) of what's happened. Back to Godzilla, the cadmium continues to slow down his heartbeat and as it does, he fires his atomic blast at the Super-X but the aircraft holds up thanks to its titanium-alloy armor (and also probably because the blast was weakened by the cadmium), which is only slightly singed. While everyone back at HQ is shown the path of the Soviet missile, Godzilla apparently succumbs to the cadmium and falls to his right, smashing against the middle of a building. The crew of the Super-X congratulate each other on a job well done and outside, riot police have to hold back a crowd of people who gather in the nearby park to try to get a look at the seemingly dead monster. Prof. Hayashida, however, knows that Godzilla can't be killed so easily (you can see he's still moving as he laying against the building) and says that they have to alert Mt. Mihara. At that time, a warning announcement is broadcasted throughout the district, warning everyone of the oncoming missile. Everyone on the streets seeks shelter underground, in the subways and other such areas, while the foreign minister informs the prime minister that the U.S. has agreed to help them. A counter-missile is launched from Kadena and is set to hit the Soviet missile 70 kilometers above Tokyo in six minutes.
Maki uses a mechanical drill to try to get through the sealed shut automatic door but the drill snaps off in the process and stabs him in the left arm. As Naoko bandages his arm up, they hear the sound of an approaching helicopter. When they look out the window, they see a military helicopter with Okumura onboard, meaning it was sent from Mt. Mihara, obviously because they should have been there already (what happened to the helicopter that was supposed to have picked them up). Upon seeing them behind one of the windows, a soldier inside the chopper fires a small mine at the glass and after Okumura motions for the three of them to get back, it's exploded, destroying the glass. Okumura is then lowered down towards the window in a life vest, with Maki smashing a big section of remaining glass, and eventually reaches it. He then tells them of the Americans' plan to blow the Soviet missile up and then says that they need to hurry because the strong wind is making it difficult for the helicopter to maintain its position. Hayashida is the first one to be lifted up into the helicopter but when Naoko attempts to give him the case containing the equipment, he's pulled out the window prematurely but manages to make it up to safety. The vest is sent back down but when Okumura tells Naoko to go on ahead, she gives him the equipment since it's too heavy for her. Knowing that they won't have time to get Maki and Naoko onboard the helicopter with the winds getting worse, Okumura straps on the vest, takes the case, and tells Maki to take care of Naoko for him. Okumura is pulled up to the helicopter but the combined stress of the turbulence and the weight of the case he's holding onto almost prove fatal for him when the helicopter slips down a little bit and causes him to slam into the side of the building. He grabs onto a window ledge for a moment and is then pulled away, finally making it up to the chopper. Once inside, they close the door and reluctantly leave Maki and Naoko behind as they head back to Oshima Island.
There are now two minutes left until the American missile is set to hit the Soviet one and everybody in the command center, especially the prime minister, is sweating bullets as they tensely wait. While Naoko, who is starting to panic, is comforted by Maki, the two missiles meet in the stratosphere, with the American one scoring a direct hit and obliterating the Soviet one. Everyone in the command center breathes a sigh of relief but at the same time, the effects of the blast become apparent as the sky turns a bright red color (a stunning and eerily beautiful visual, I might add) and an electromagnetic pulse shuts down the power not only in Tokyo but for hundreds of miles as well. The Super-X's rotors are shut down as a result but the rockets are still working and they steadily bring the craft down for emergency repairs. Little does everyone know that all hell is about to break loose. The sky then goes from a red color to being filled with dark storm clouds and a barrage of lightning lights up the sky. Some of the bolts hit Godzilla, sending electricity coursing through his body, especially his dorsal plates, and it isn't long before his eyes open, he begins breathing again, and he stands back up with a growl. Roaring, he sends the crowd who had gathered to look at him (why didn't those idiots take shelter when they knew a nuclear missile was coming?) running for their lives as he stomps towards them. There are some pretty terrifying shots of Godzilla's shadow and, later on, his head looming over the people as they run over each other, trying to get out of the way. Incidentally, note how the riot police don't even seem to realize what's going on until they turn around and actually see Godzilla coming towards them. However, Godzilla then turns to his left and takes a few steps away from the crowd, turning his attention to the grounded Super-X. The crew has managed to get the rotors working again but without any cadmium shells to use against Godzilla again, they're forced to rely on regular ones and lasers. They lift off in front of Godzilla, who watches the Super-X as it maneuvers itself behind a building. He follows it and then, standing in front of the building they're taking cover behind, shoots his atomic blast right through the center, exposing the craft on the other side. Snarling upon seeing it, Godzilla heads right for it, with the Super-X unloading a bunch of firepower at him in response. He wades through the ammunition and lasers, stomping up to the building and tearing at it in order to get to the Super-X, sending more people running for cover down below. The Super-X comes around the side of the building and continues firing at Godzilla, who turns and chases after them. Hovering behind another building, the Super-X slowly flies into view and fires more rounds at Godzilla, prompting him to turn and fire his atomic blast. However, it misses and hits the side of the Sumitomo Building, knocking Maki and Naoko off their feet inside as they're taking the stairs down to the bottom. After getting to their feet, they continue down the stairs but find that there's an enormous hole in the middle of them, preventing them from going further.
While Hayashida and Okumura reach Oshima Island and begin hooking up the equipment, Godzilla is tearing the city pieces, trying to destroy the Super-X. His tail smashes through a building as he turns to face the aircraft, with a bunch of people running past his foot, as the Super-X unloads more shells onto him. Hovering backwards into an area made up of a bunch of small buildings and fuel tanks, the aircraft fires more ammunition, with Godzilla taking a step forward in response (more people have to avoid his foot when he does so) and firing his atomic blast, blowing up everything around the Super-X and reducing that section of the city into an absolute inferno. The Super-X is forced to continue facing the monster. Meanwhile, Maki and Naoko get help from that bum in making it down to the bottom of the Sumitomo Building, with the bum holding a fire-hose that they've tossed down firmly as they climb down it like a rope. At one point, Naoko sees Godzilla's feet through a hole in the building but, despite being freaked out for a second, she continues climbing down. Back on Oshima Island, Hayashida finishes connecting the equipment, activates it, and begins turning the frequency up. Back in Tokyo, Godzilla hits the Super-X with another atomic blast, managing to get through its worn down armor and cause major damage inside. The beleaguered aircraft slowly hovers backwards away from Godzilla, who slowly and methodically follows it, knowing that he's already won this battle. It goes behind the horribly damaged Sumitomo Building and very slowly comes down to rest on the ground. Seeing his chance, Godzilla pushes the building from the other side, causing it to fall right on top of the Super-X and destroy it completely. Standing beside the fallen building, Godzilla turns and, upon spotting Maki, Naoko, and the bum in front of the entrance to another building across from him, roars and snarls at them, immediately starting after them. Maki and Naoko go one way while the bum, taking a briefcase that he finds lying around, retreats down an alley. What follows is a rather laughable-looking shot of the bum running with Godzilla standing behind him (it's the cybot, in case you're wondering) and then, the bum trips and falls, hitting his head on the ground. Looking up, he sees Godzilla standing over him and very stupidly insults him again, calling him a stupid idiot. Godzilla then roars and the bum, as I described earlier, falls over, apparently dying from the head trauma he received from the fall. Elsewhere, Maki and Naoko try to make it to safety amongst the burning ruins of the Shinjuku District but run into a dead end of heavy rubble and with Godzilla heading right for them, they have no choice but to duck down behind a concrete planter. Godzilla gets closer and closer but then, just when he's only a few feet away from, he stops and begins quietly growling. We then see that Hayashida's device has triggered his homing instinct and, after a few more moments of standing there, he turns around and leaves, heading back into the ocean and swimming for Oshima Island.
With everyone waiting for him, Godzilla arrives on the island and begins following the signal up the side of Mt. Mihara towards the crater. He reaches the rim of the crater but then stops and looks around at his surroundings, as well as blinks curiously at the antenna that's projecting the signal towards him. However, he resumes walking forward and soon reaches the edge of the crater, which crumbles beneath his wait and sends him crashing down onto a ledge below. As Godzilla stands there, he seems to realize that he's been tricked, as he looks down at the lava below and then glares and growls at that antenna. Okumura then activates the explosive charges that have been placed around the crater, surrounding Godzilla by fire and extreme heat. He begins roaring as the volcano erupts around him and then screeches as the ledge gives away and he falls down towards the lava, vanishing from view. Hayashida heads outside and looks at the crater, watching as an explosion from within, which was probably Godzilla hitting the bottom, mixes with the ongoing eruption. Maki and Naoko then fly over the volcano in a helicopter, happy that the ordeal is now over. The last shots are of the volcano as it continues erupting and spewing forth smoke, ending with a far-off shot of the smoking island.
Like Ishiro Honda, Akira Ifukube wasn't keen on being part of Godzilla's resurrection, possibly for the reasons as Honda as well the fact that he'd retired from film-scoring by that point, feeling that he wouldn't be able to compete with the younger composers and their use of more advanced scoring methods. Supposedly, Ifukube also took issue with Godzilla's larger height of 240 feet in this film, saying that he didn't write music for monsters that big. Odd hang-up for a composer, don't you think? In any case, after Ifukube said no (although, unlike Honda, he would eventually return to the series), Tomoyuki Tanaka went with a newcomer to composing, Reijiro Koroku, who, according to his IMDB page, had only done work for TV series and a video short up to that point. While Koroku has worked steadily as a composer since then, with his last assignment being as recent as 2010, it looks as if he hasn't quite had the career he so richly deserves. His score for this movie is absolutely amazing and is one of its best aspects by far. It's definitely one of the best non-Ifukube scores the series has ever seen. Koroku got the tone that they were going for with this film and, with the help of the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, created a score that is often both beautiful and stirring and yet, powerful and doom-laden at the same time, and nowhere is that more evident than in the music he created for Godzilla himself. Like Masaru Sato before him, Koroku decided not to reuse the iconic theme Ifukube had created for Godzilla and came up with his own, which you first hear right at the beginning during the opening credits of both version of the film. It's an absolutely powerful bit of music, perfectly complimenting Godzilla's strength and capability of causing death and destruction, as well as having something of a somber sound that comments a bit on the tragedy of what he is and how he came to be. There's also a menacing, rumbling sound underneath the theme that adds another nice touch it. You hear many different variations of this theme throughout the movie, mostly during the second half and in sequences when Godzilla first appears in Tokyo Bay and fights the air force, when he causes that chain reaction of explosions with those cars and grabs ahold of the train a few minutes later and then throws it off to the side, and during the first part of his final battle with the Super-X (the latter two variations, in particular, have some nice sounds all their own, with very powerful beginnings and middles). The eerie, quieter version of his theme that plays when he's standing beside the fallen Sumitomo Building, after having destroyed the Super-X with it, makes the visual of him standing there in that particular lighting and growling at the leads quite unnerving. That's right, this music actually makes Godzilla scary at some points. The build-up to his first appearance at the nuclear plant very slowly ratchets up the tension, starting with low, menacing music as we hear him approaching, then rising with the pan-up of his body and finally, having a powerful finish with the reveal of his roaring face before moving on to compliment the terror and destruction he causes at the plant very nicely, with even more stirring and impactful music. I also like the freaky and creepy theme that plays when Maki battles the large sea louse, the frantic theme that plays when Tokyo is being evacuated and the military theme as they get ready for him after they hear that he's coming. Speaking of the military, the theme that you hear when they're searching for him and later on, preparing the explosive charges around Mt. Mihara, is a really nice, sweeping piece of music, and that's to say nothing of the theme for the Super-X. My God, is that one of the most stirring, amazing music themes I've ever heard in my life.
All of the score's themes aren't bombastic, though. There's some nicely done quiet pieces that are meant to compliment both mood and emotion. Some great examples of the former include the music when Maki discovers the first corpse aboard the Yahata-Maru (which begins with a sting of music meant to make you jump, no less), when Prof. Hayashida visits Okumura in the police hospital and shows him some old photos of Godzilla's first attack in 1954, when Hayashida is telling Maki, Okumura, and Naoko about how Godzilla was thought as being a legendary beast when he first appeared and that he's just trying to send him home, and when they first test the professor's device on Godzilla during his attack on Tokyo and he responds. One piece of score that I like is when we see Okumura working with Prof. Minami on Oshima Island, which starts out all nice and pretty but gradually grows more and more menacing, ending in a really bombastic bit when see the bubbling lava at the bottom of Mt. Mihara's crater. As for emotion, you have the music that plays when Maki talks to Naoko for the first time, the little bit you hear when she's hurt by how he used her reunion with her brother as fodder for a news-story, the music you hear when the two of them are left behind when Hayashida and Okumura depart for Oshima Island, and when Maki is comforting Naoko when she starts to panic. Of course, when talking about emotional music, there are no better examples than the pieces of music you hear during the film's last few minutes. When Godzilla first picks up on the signal being generated by Hayashida's device and leaves for Oshima Island, the music isn't exactly somber but rather, is more peaceful than anything else. It becomes downright epic as he heads up the side of Mt. Mihara towards the crater, making it sound as if he's heading for his destiny, that this is how it was meant to be. And, of course, there's the sad music that plays when the charges are exploded around Godzilla, causing Mt. Mihara to erupt and drag him down into the bowels of the volcano. Even though I do think they went a bit overboard in trying to make it seem like everyone is sad for Godzilla when they really shouldn't be, given what he's done, animal instinct or not, I have nothing bad to say about this piece of music. It's beautiful, emotional, and does give you a sense that Godzilla isn't entirely to blame for his actions, that he just is what he is. I've already talked about that bad song that ends the film so I don't think I need to say any more, except that I'm glad that Koroku himself apparently had nothing to do with that inappropriate way of ending the film musically. I don't mind the Asian pop song that Maki is listening to when he's out sailing at the beginning of the film but this ending one, again, is cringe-inducing. Other than that, though, the music for this film is absolutely brilliant, matching the images and emotion very well, and makes me wish that it had been used again down the road.
Aside from the American-produced Godzilla 1985 version of the film, there is an international dub of the movie, just as there has been for every Godzilla movie since the mid-60's, that retains the Return of Godzilla title. However, commenting on its very existence is all that I can do for it because I've only seen one clip from it, which is the scene with Hayashida telling the younger characters what he intends to do with Godzilla. The voices are pretty much what you expect: they're not bad and the actors, one of whom is the guy who dubbed the character of Keisuke in Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla, do sound like they're at least trying (somewhat) but, still, there's a flatness to them that could have been improved. I have, however, seen the trailer for the international version and was able to hear some more of the voices. The prime minister's didn't sound too bad but the voices for Naoko, Takegami, and especially the bum? Ho-ly crap! There must be a real shortage of good, English dub actors at the Hong Kong studios where they make these international versions. In any case, that's the extent of what I can say about this version and even if I did see it, I probably wouldn't have much else to say since it is exactly the same as the Japanese version, just with the dubbing.
All in all, The Return of Godzilla is a really good flick and is still one of my personal favorite Godzilla movies. There are flaws, yes, like the film's sometimes ponderous pacing, some of the characters not having much to them (but then again, what else is new in a Godzilla flick), too many still moments, sometimes involving Godzilla just standing around, that I think hurt the film's momentum a little bit, some hiccups in the effects department, most notably in the impressive-looking but hardly realistic-moving full-sized props of Godzilla's torso and foot, and an overdone push for sympathy towards Godzilla at the end, but that said, the film still has a lot to offer. The story is told quite well, there's an effective amount of menace and grimness put into it, the deeper themes and issues, while hardly subtle in the way they're handled, manage to get their point across, the effects work is some of the most impressive the series has seen at this point, Godzilla himself looks great, and even scary, for the most part, it's nice seeing him in a modern setting, as well as destroying stuff again, the Super-X is a really cool aircraft for him to contend with, and the music score, save for the song at the end, is absolutely amazing and works perfectly with the film. I would recommend it, especially for anyone who got tired of the campiness the original series went into, but you'll have to go to some special websites like sumogorilla.com or ioffer in order to get ahold of it if you live in the United States. Hopefully, both versions of this film will be released officially on DVD or Blu-Ray one day but for now, fans will just have to be content with their high-quality DVD-Rs, as I am.
Like Godzilla, King of the Monsters, for a very long time I thought that this was the only version of the film, that all of the footage with Raymond Burr and the other American actors was filmed by Toho and that this was how it was seen throughout the world, in both Japan and America. In fact, I actually thought that, due to Burr's involvement, this was the second Godzilla movie, that they didn't make another movie until thirty years after the original and that all of the others came after this one and Godzilla vs. Biollante, even though I could subconsciously tell that those films looked older than these did. As it was with the original movie, it wasn't until I got older and more able to understand the concept of there being multiple versions of certain movies, as well as when I got the internet, that I slowly began to realize that the film that I had grown up with and loved so much over the years was not the sole cut of this movie that existed and, for that matter, it wasn't even the original version that played in Japan, that it had been altered significantly when it was brought over to America. The apparent differences between the two versions really piqued my interest in seeing the original Japanese cut of not only this film but the others as well, since I heard it was the same for the majority of the series. It's why I became so excited when Classic Media began releasing the original cuts of many of the films on DVD and also why, when it became clear that this film was not going to be released on DVD any time soon in either version, I decided to seek out the original Japanese version and eventually found it on Ioffer.com. Now being able to look at both versions, I can understand why Godzilla 1985 isn't held in as high regard as The Return of Godzilla since, as it was back in the 50's with the original movie, the political climate of the period prompted the filmmakers to significantly alter the movie for America consumption and take out the really juicy stuff that people like about the Japanese version and make it a bit of a different type of movie altogether. But, at the same time, as much as I respect the Japanese version, I have to admit that I think there are some things that Godzilla 1985 does better. Some of it simply does have to do with nostalgia but some of it also has to do with pure opinion and I do feel that the New World Pictures made some improvements in their reediting of the film. Ultimately, it may not be everyone's cup of tea and, believe me, there are quite a few snags that this version runs into but, overall, like Godzilla, King of the Monsters is for the original film, I still think that this is a pretty good Americanization of The Return of Godzilla.
Just as Joseph E. Levine and company had hired an editor to turn the original movie into Godzilla, King of the Monsters, New World did the same in order to create Godzilla 1985. R.J. Kizer had been working as an editor and in the sound department for New World Pictures for quite a while, cutting movies like Up from the Depths, Battle Beyond the Stars, Galaxy of Terror, and Android. He'd done the same on pictures for other companies as well as in the sound department on stuff like Summerspell and The Philadelphia Experiment, and had even worked with John Carpenter as part of the visual effects department on Escape from New York. The insert footage for Godzilla 1985 was his first crack at directing, although he had served as a producer on Android as well. Unlike Terry Morse on Godzilla, King of the Monsters, Kizer wouldn't actually do the cutting on the film but I'm sure that he had input on it since, as was the case with Morse, his editing background was probably why they hired him to direct the new footage in the first place. Also like Morse, he would only direct two more movies after his involvement with Godzilla: Hell Comes to Frogtown, with Roddy Piper, and Death Ring, a direct-to-video movie with Mike Norris and Billy Drago. Kizer still works in the film business to this day, working in the sound department in various capacities on a number of big movies like a couple of the X-Men movies, the first two Alvin and the Chipmunks movies, Inception, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, The Dark Knight Rises, and, most recently, The Amazing Spider-Man 2.
Knowing that his role in Godzilla, King of the Monsters was merely an element inserted into that original movie in order to make it more accessible for American audiences at the time and, in fact, was far from a lead character, I think it's interesting and cool that they decided to bring Raymond Burr back thirty years later to have him reprise that same role, even if it was for no other reason than for the hook of him having been in that first film. As I mentioned back in my review of King of the Monsters, Burr was a really good actor who had a really good voice that was perfect for narration and he made the most of the role he was given, even if the character of Steve Martin was a spectator and didn't advance the plot at all. My feelings towards his performance in this film are pretty much the same: he's given the same inconsequential role that's incapable of advancing the film's story in any way but treats it with the same level of respect and gravitas that he had before. I've also learned that the reason he did it was because he himself liked Godzilla and had a lot of respect for what Ishiro Honda and the others had try to say with the creation of the character, even going so far as to write and narrate a nice soliloquy for Godzilla at the film. Needless to say, that made me respect the man even more than I already did once I found that out. However, all of the praise that I can give him aside, Burr's character, who's just referred to as Mr. Martin here in order to avoid references to the comedian Steve Martin, is not as effective or enjoyable in this film to me as he was before. I enjoyed him when I was a kid but now, I feel that he's even more inconsequential to the story here.
There are several reasons for this. One is that, in King of the Monsters, Martin was at least in Japan and in the middle of the action, even if he was just a spectator; here, he spends the entirety of the movie at the Pentagon, watching the action on a big video screen with everyone else. I understand why they went that route, so they could avoid the challenge that Terry Morse had in plugging Burr into the original Japanese film, but as a consequence, he's even more of an observer here than he was in that film. On top of that, the military officials brought him in because he's the only American who knows anything about Godzilla and might be able to give them some advice on what they can do. I like what they were doing this idea, going so far as to give the impression at the beginning of the film that he's still haunted by memories of Godzilla's first appearance three decades before. It gives him an interesting connection to Godzilla that no other American character in the series has ever had. However, that said, that goes completely nowhere because all he tells them when he first arrives is that weapons can't stop Godzilla and that he's more like a force of nature than a living creature. In other words, he proves to be completely useless to the military (who, as we'll see, don't do hardly anything) and you would think they would have sent him home once he said that. But, no, he sticks around for... some reason. It seems like it's mainly just to reinforce to them that nothing can stop Godzilla when they talk about helping the Japanese and to dash their hopes when they think he's been killed by the Super-X. Again, I like that he has a connection to Godzilla that none of the other American characters in this movie, or franchise, do and that he is indeed right when he says that but, due to the circumstances, nothing significant ever comes of it. In fact, a lot of the "advice" Martin gives, like when he suggests that they must understand, deal with, and possibly even try to communicate with Godzilla, or that Godzilla is going through Tokyo because he's looking for something and they need to figure out what it is, also goes absolutely nowhere. Also, his statement that a corpse was never found thirty years before is completely nonsensical when you remember the ending of the original film. Finally, I understand what Burr was going for with his performance and all but his grim seriousness (the guy never lightens up once in the entire film) not only wears thin after a while but it really clashes with the flippant attitude of one of the other American actors and makes the added footage feel disjointed in tone. Ultimately, I will forever respect Mr. Burr, God rest his soul, for taking the stuff seriously and respecting what Godzilla symbolizes but, still, I can't deny that his part in this film is mainly much ado about nothing.
In fact, that age-old phrase sums up the impact of all the added stuff in the film, not just Burr's role. Starting after Godzilla destroys the Soviet sub, we're constantly going back to the Pentagon where a general, a colonel, and an inappropriately funny major gradually find out what's going on over in Japan, call Steve Martin in for his "expertise" on Godzilla, and then just keep him around as they do nothing but watch the big video monitor in the room as Godzilla comes ashore in Tokyo and does his thing. It's like somebody keeps changing the channel and going to another movie for a few minutes while you try to get the remote back. Those scenes might as well be in another movie because they have no baring on the actual plot involving Godzilla. In fact, like some of Martin's advice, they're constantly making plans to help the Japanese and yet, nothing ever comes of it. In the scene where Martin first arrives at the Pentagon, they're talking about their options in attacking Godzilla, looking at footage from the original film and then talking about an airstrike, using an armored division in Korea, and calling up the Delta Force with heat-seeking missiles, saying that they can be in place in six-to-eight hours. And that's the last we hear of that. Later on, when they're seeing Godzilla's attack on Tokyo firsthand, the general says to the colonel, "Tell the Japanese we'll give them all the support they need." But then, Martin steps in to reiterate that no weapons whatsoever will be able to stop Godzilla, and that's the last we ever hear of them talking about supporting the Japanese. What, just because Martin chimed in to once again tell you that you can't do anything? Is that why we never see those other strategies you talked about earlier put into action? Don't you find it a little odd that you're letting this so-called expert talk you into doing absolutely nothing to help Japan? He's right, naturally, but still, at least make an effort to help the Land of the Rising Sun! In fact, the only major part these American officials take in the story is to destroy the Soviet nuclear missile that's fired at Tokyo and even that subplot was already in the Japanese version, so it's not much of a contribution on their part. Let's be frank, the only reason these American scenes were filmed, other than for the hook Burr provided for them, was for the product placement of Dr. Pepper, which you can plainly see in the form of a vending machine during the first scene at the Pentagon and at the end of the movie when the major is drinking directly from a can of the stuff. Their contribution to the actual story of the film was just an afterthought, if that.
Not only does the American footage feel like it's from a completely different movie but the other three main actors who come with it feel like they themselves are in a different movie than not only the Japanese actors but Burr as well. As General Goodhue, Warren Kemmerling really overacts with how he barks orders at his men, sometimes saying really silly stuff like, "14th grade, beaten the pants off an admiral!" (what?!) and, "Keep that happy code going to our subs!" He also curses a lot more than anyone else in either part of the movie: "Colonel, what hell is going on?!" "Well, if it wasn't US, who the hell was it?" "Damn!" "We've got to find somebody who knows something about what the hell we're dealing with." Trying to ensure a PG-rating there, guy? During the latter part of the movie, he kind of calms down when he realizes just how unstoppable of a force Godzilla is but, man, does he chew the scenery during his first couple of scenes! James Hess as the colonel is probably the best of the three actors. He comes across as the most sensible and calm one of the group, not being loud and silly like the general or being an inappropriate comic relief like the major. I like his voice and I like how he takes the situation seriously, saying, "My... God," upon seeing the destruction that Godzilla is causing. However, that line of his is completely undermined by Travis Swords as the young major. This guy is the epitome of an inappropriate and annoying comic relief. Everyone else is, at the very least, trying to be serious, but he's so flippant about the whole thing that I'm surprise he didn't get reprimanded for it. Everything he says is done in an over-the-top manner and just doesn't fit with what's going on. For instance, after the colonel says that aforementioned line while they're watching Godzilla tear apart Tokyo, the major chimes in with, "That's quite an urban renewal program they got going over there." When Godzilla appears to have been killed by the Super-X, he comments, "Wonder Lizard is down for the count!" Earlier on when they're talking about their options in battling Godzilla, Goodhue asks, "Anything else?" and the major says, "Maybe a mega-dose of horse tranquilizers." When they receive that computer-enhanced picture of Godzilla taken shortly after the destruction of the Soviet submarine, the major remarks, "Handsome little devil, isn't he? And he sunk a Russian sub single-handed, huh? I'd say put a uniform on him and sign him up." The uncomfortable exchange of looks between the major and the colonel after he says that perfectly sums up the general feeling on this whole situation. The guy is actually most awkward in dealing with Martin. Martin, in fact, shoots down his horse tranquilizer joke upon arriving at the Pentagon, stating, "Or failing that little horse sense," and there's a moment later on when they're seeing the aftereffects of the destruction of the Soviet missile and the major tells Martin that it's completely harmless. Martin, however, never once losing his grim tone, tells him of how in 1962, a nuclear test in the stratosphere shut down communications from Australia to California for forty minutes. The major then has a look of, "Alright, then," on his face and very quickly slumps away. Guy definitely should have been removed from the movie because all he brings are the lame wise-cracks.
To be fair, though, that unfunny comedy isn't entirely the fault of the actor or even the character but rather some last-minute changes to the script. Originally, New World intended for the American footage to be written so that it would come across as a send-up of Godzilla and they were reportedly even thinking about hiring Leslie Nielsen to appear in the newly shot footage. According to R.J. Kizer, this was before they realized that they could get Raymond Burr onboard but when that came to be, Kizer met with Burr and he told the director that they should take the material more seriously, that Godzilla was a symbol of the atomic bomb. Apparently, also according to Kizer, Burr's assertions influenced producer Tony Randel, who was originally all for the comedic approach but backpedalled away from that rather quickly after meeting with the actor. And with that, the script was re-written to be played more straight and for the major to now be the only comedic character in the film, an idea that apparently did not sit well with writer Lisa Tomei. If she didn't like the major being kept in as the only broadly comedic character, I agree. If they were going to follow Burr's advice on the matter, they should have either gone all the way and played everything straight or not gone with Burr and do their original comedy idea. This little bit of comedy in an otherwise grimly serious film just doesn't cut it.
The Japanese footage, for the most part, is handled much better than the newly shot American footage and, in fact, New World improved upon some of the inherent flaws of the Japanese version. For one, the dubbing is a lot better than it was in the international version. The words barely match the lip-movements, yes, but the voices sound better and more natural, with more emotion than there was in the rather flat line-readings of the international version. The editing around of the Japanese footage also improves some pacing and effects problems that the original version had. R.J. Kizer said that three of the four editorial mandates he was given for the film were, "Have Godzilla appear earlier in the story, eliminate any miniature effects that look hokey, and tighten up running time." The finished product definitely succeeds for the most part in those aspects. Godzilla does indeed get into the story much quicker than he did originally due to the moving around and deletion of certain scenes, a lot of the unconvincing special effects, most notably the shots of the full-sized Godzilla foot, save for a nice-looking one during the nuclear plant scene, were removed (although, they kept in nearly all the shots of the stiff-moving cybot), and the film certainly moves a lot quicker and, to me, often feels more exciting. I think that's the film's greatest asset. While there are plenty of good scenes in the Japanese version, some of them don't lead anywhere and come across as rather unnecessary to the plot, like the subplot with Goro Maki using Naoko's reunion with her brother to get a story and Naoko later being upset with him for it, as well as the scene near the end that emphasizes something of a growing attraction between the two of them. Removing them doesn't hurt the film in any way and it helps to trim some of the fat, so to speak. There were also a few too many slow and quiet spots in the Japanese version, including during the action scenes, and I think that either shortening or eliminating them altogether was in the film's best interest. Gone are the awkward moments where Godzilla is just sort of standing around, doing nothing for several moments and also gone are some interruptions in the action, like when we cut to the prime minister and company watching Godzilla's attack on the nuclear plant right in the middle of the scene (in my opinion, that entire scene is much more impactful and exciting in this version).
The film is also made more exciting by the rearrangement of some scenes and the adding in of sound effects. For instance, a shot of a video screen on a building that's playing Takegami's press conference about Godzilla's return is moved to later in the film when it's discovered that Godzilla is heading for Tokyo Bay and the dialogue is changed to Takegami warning residents of the oncoming danger and that they must evacuate immediately. In fact, that whole sequence feels more frantic and tense because it cuts from the evacuation to the military setting up at Mt. Mihara and then back to Tokyo, where you see the military preparing for Godzilla's arrival and see the evacuation still in progress, with the use of footage that originally happened later in the film when Godzilla had already arrived and when the Soviet missile was coming. I also like that, when Godzilla first appears in Tokyo Bay and the air force attack him, they move the part where he dives underwater to that section instead of after he damages the Soviet freighter. Here, it looks as if Godzilla smartly dove beneath the water in order to swim past the attacking fighter jets and then exploded out of the water when he got to the docks, where he's fired upon by the military. It also makes more sense to me because, when Godzilla hit the Soviet freighter in the original version, he was much further out in the bay and it was odd that the freighter was just sitting there. I guess you could say they were heading back to Russia when they got caught up in Godzilla's attack but still, it doesn't look like they would have been close enough to the shoreline in order to slam into it. By moving this bit to when he reaches the shoreline, it's more logical for the freighter to get caught up in his path and for it to slam into the edge of it due to the force of the waves he's creating. Another thing I like is that they move the shots of the crowd fleeing from Godzilla to when he first comes ashore. Okay, yes, the location of those shots don't match the following shot of Godzilla walking along the edge of Tokyo on the video monitor at HQ but, again, I think it cranks up the excitement when you have people screaming as Godzilla's foot smashes through a warehouse followed by a shot of a bunch of people running for their lives as Godzilla looms over them. The addition of some sound effects in certain scenes where they weren't originally, like Godzilla's roar echoing through a panning shot of the city at one point and the sound of his footsteps outside when the bum is messing around in that restaurant, helps to reinforce his presence in the film during scenes where he isn't onscreen and keep a sense of foreboding and dread rather than there just being moments of dead silence. Speaking of that bum, they make his death much more concrete by putting in low-angle shots of Godzilla approaching the camera and cutting to a shot of his foot crashing onto the ground to give the impression that he crushed the guy. Again, since that latter footage was taken from when Godzilla is approaching the crater of Mt. Mihara, the terrain doesn't match the scene he's in but, whatever. It serves its purpose.
Where Godzilla 1985 really shines, though, is in the opening credit sequence and the handling of the ending. The credit sequence is here a little bit longer than the one in the Japanese version and instead of using its shots of erupting lava, they had the credits appear over a black screen that's being burnt through here and there, with the openings revealing a raging fire behind them. Coupled with the menacing music by Reijiro Koroku, which is rearranged to come across as even more foreboding and frightening, these credits establish a tone of grim, almost apocalyptic, hopelessness right from the beginning, really making you realize that this isn't the campy Godzilla you're familiar with. But what I like the most is how the ending is handled. While they still leave in the inappropriate shot of the prime minister almost in tears as he watches Godzilla plunge into Mt. Mihara, this ending succeeds in making you feel more sympathy for the monster than the Japanese version's did. While Godzilla did screech when he fell into the volcano at the end of that version, it was mostly just a remixing of his classic screeching roar from the original series. Here, his roar stays the same as it has been throughout the film until he plummets to the bottom of the crater, where he lets out a scream that first sounds like the injured screech from before but turns into a very sad, mournful howl as he hits the lava. Godzilla has never made a sound like that before, so that, coupled with the sad music, succeeds in making you feel more sorry for him. It also doesn't hurt that, in the dialogue they wrote for both the newly shot scenes and the English dubbing, they emphasized a little more than the Japanese version that Godzilla is both a menacing monster and a sympathetic creature who just is what he is and, in fact, is a victim too in some ways. And it's all summed up wonderfully in the soliloquy by Steve Martin that closes the film: "Nature has a way sometimes of reminding man of just how small he is. She occasionally throws up the terrible offspring of our pride and carelessness to remind us of how puny we really are in the face of a tornado, an earthquake, or a Godzilla. The reckless ambitions of man are often dwarfed by their dangerous consequences. For now, Godzilla, that, strangely, innocent and tragic monster, has gone to earth. Whether he returns or not, or is never again seen by human eyes, the things he has taught us... remain." No matter how pointless his character was to the overall plot, I will always love Raymond Burr for that nice, thoughtful, and poignant speech, which he wrote himself. And, best of all, they remove the pop song from the ending of the Japanese version and instead have a symphony of themes from the film's score play over the credits, keeping the tone and feeling much more consistent.
Unfortunately, New World's editing of the Japanese footage wasn't completely successful. They did make some dumb decisions. Along with the unconvincing effects shots, they also stupidly removed some really good ones, including the nice one of Godzilla reflected in the windows of a nearby building when he picks up the train (although, I do like that they took out that silly shot of that woman taking off her glasses and smiling at him). They completely removed some material that originally took place after the sequence on the Yahata-Maru, including all instances where it's explained that the creature that attacked Maki and drained the crew of their blood was a sea louse that was mutated by feeding on Godzilla and being exposed to his radioactivity. Therefore, you're left wondering what in God's name that thing was, as I was when I was a kid (incidentally, they made the louse come across as even freakier in this version than it was originally due to some new, more disturbing sounds they gave it). They also inadvertently make several characters feel like less than what they were originally due to some changes of dialogue. In the Japanese version, when Maki is told that the monster that Okumura saw was Godzilla, he goes, "I knew it." In the American version, he goes, "I don't believe it." It's a minor change but one that made him look a little less intelligent as a reporter. Later on, when the Super-X crewmembers have managed to make their craft able to fly again after it was damaged by the electromagnetic pulse, one guy says, "Let's get out of here!" when he realizes that Godzilla has come to and the captain says, "Alright. Emergency power-jets, take off!"; in the Japanese version, the guy says that they don't have any cadmium shells left and the captain says, "Well then, we'll use regular shells!" So, they changed them from guys who, even though they're left with ineffective weapons, still decide to try to fight Godzilla off, to complete cowards who are like, "Screw this city. Let's get out here!" and end up fighting the monster anyway when he chases them while they're trying to escape! And Prof. Hayashida's theory about Godzilla having a homing instinct is completely bungled in this version. Here, he says that Godzilla has a "conditioned response" to the sounds of the birds, meaning that he is attracted to the sounds of their chirping. Now, that is just plain stupid. I didn't quite get the explanation in the Japanese version but, turning Godzilla into a giant bird-lover in this cut is inexcusable. Plus, when they test Hayashida's device when Godzilla enters Tokyo, they made it it look like it pisses him off rather than calms him by putting in a shot of Godzilla charging at the building with an angry look on his face (it's the same shot from when he does so at the Super-X later on). It makes you think, "Well, that didn't work! Why are they still trying to get this device to Oshima Island?" You could make the argument that it worked too well and that Godzilla was following the sound and about to plow through the building but that doesn't explain the nasty look on his face when he does so. And yet, when they activate the device at the end of the film, he does calmly follow the sound to Oshima Island. Uh, inconsistent much?
Godzilla 1985 is probably most notorious for how, given the political climate of the time, the material from the Japanese version involving the Soviet Union was re-edited to make them look like complete skunks, which R.J. Kizer has said was the fourth stipulation given to him in creating the film (editor Michael Spence, however, has denied that there was any political slanting on the part of the heads of New World). The Japanese version depicted both the United States and the Soviet Union as being very gun-ho about wanting to use nuclear weapons against Godzilla the next time he appears and there was even suspicions about whether both countries planned to use Japan as some type of testing ground. Moreover, the ambassadors from both countries were so unwilling to yield to the prime minister's decision not to permit the use of nuclear weapons that he had to talk to both leaders in order for the decision to be unanimous. While that may have gone over well in Japan, there was no way it was going to get an enthusiastic response in America at the height of the Reagan era and the tension going on with the U.S.S.R. Heck, 1985 was the year where you had Rocky IV, where Rocky actually ends the Cold War by defeating Ivan Drago and winning the admiration of the Russian audience in the boxing arena for it, so a movie where the United States and the Soviet Union are depicted as having the same lack of morals when it comes to nuclear weapons, and with an American ambassador verbally agreeing with a Soviet in his assertions, was not going to fly. Therefore, the film was reedited and the dialogue changed in order to make the U.S. seem like the moral ones and the Soviet Union a bunch of traitorous bastards. During the prime minister's meeting with the two ambassadors, the American one is depicted as being less aggressive in his desire to use nuclear weapons, although they did leave in his line, "You must agree to let us use nuclear weapons!", and when the prime minister states Japan's principles on the matter, the scene ends right there, without any behind-the-scenes discussion between the minister and the members of his cabinet or with the prime minister having to talk with the respective leaders in order to get their consent. You don't hear or see anything more of the American ambassador except for a quick shot of him talking with his colleagues, suggesting that they immediately agreed with the prime minister's decision. As in the original version, that scene is followed by the Soviet captain heading to the freighter in Tokyo Bay and going into the missile control room. In the Japanese version, he was going there to disarm their satellite since the Union had consented to the prime minister's decision; here, he says that he's been told to keep the nuclear option open, meaning that he's arming the satellite. He's not only double-crossing the Japanese but he's doing it on orders from the Union. And later on when Godzilla damages the freighter during his advance towards the shore, the captain, instead of trying to stop the missile from firing, is attempting to fire it. They even edited out the part where he gets killed by a small explosion and put in a newly-filmed shot of his finger pushing the firing button!
In fact, the Russians are depicted in this version as being rather trigger-happy even before the big conference with the prime minister. In the Japanese version, when the Soviet submarine encounters Godzilla, they eventually attack him because they believe that, given his size and how he's coming straight at them, he's an American submarine that's decided to attack them in act of war. Here, there's no mention of an American submarine and all they know that there's something big approaching them with active sonar. In fact, when they first spot Godzilla on the sonar, the captain's first mate immediately calls him an enemy craft and the captain orders him fired on when someone over the intercom says that whatever is coming at them is huge, whereas before it was simply because the object was still approaching them. Basically, they changed it from Godzilla targeting the sub in order to feed off its nuclear reactor to the sub firing on him without much provocation and him destroying the sub in retaliation. And as you can see in a couple of the images up above, they kept the Russian-language dialogue intact instead of dubbing it as they did with the Japanese, which enabled them to write the subtitles in any way they chose. Plus, I think it was also a way in making the Russians look even more foreign and untrustworthy in comparison to the American actors and even the Japanese ones. Speaking of the Americans, they're depicted as the heroes who must save Japan when the evil Soviets fire their nuclear missile at Tokyo, despite the prime minister's wishes. They don't do anything to help the Japanese fight Godzilla, but when it comes to the Ruskies, it's time for, "America, fuck yeah!" And incidentally, while we're shown the Soviet satellite with the nuclear missile, they delete the shot of the American one that was present in the Japanese version because the United States would never have such a thing orbiting the Earth, ready to fire once the word is given, unlike the big, bad Soviets. Ultimately, though, despite my making fun of how far the filmmakers went to make the movie more palatable for American viewers of the time, this issue with the Soviet Union doesn't affect my enjoyment of the film. I do think it's a fascinating example of the mindset that was prevalent in America at the time and is a great discussion piece but at the end of the day, as with all of these movies, I'm here to see Godzilla, so it ultimately just serves as an afterthought.
The filmmakers wisely kept the score by Reijiro Koroku more or less intact, albeit with a lot of rearranging of certain cues, but they also put in some music that Christopher Young had composed for an earlier New World release, Def-Con 4. I had heard throughout the years that there was some music added but I wasn't sure which themes were until I finally saw the Japanese version. I would complain about the added music but I think it fits very well with the original score. If I didn't know it was added in later, I would have sworn that these cues were composed by Koroku as well. While some of the music is nicely memorable and suspenseful, like the bits you hear during the first part of the submarine scene, during the latter part of the evacuation and military preparation sequence (I think its use does a better job in keeping the tone of that section consistent, unlike the three separate themes used throughout in the Japanese version), and when Okumura has a near-fatal accident when he's being hoisted up into the helicopter near the end of the film, some of it is downright creepy and moody. The music that plays whenever Steve Martin comes onscreen during the early-to-mid parts of the movie is very eerie and helps to both make Godzilla feel more mythical as well as reinforce Martin's interesting connection with him. And then there's the downright scary music that plays when Goro Maki investigates the Yahata-Maru, which was completely silent for the most part in the Japanese version. That music and those visuals can easily make you forget you're watching a Godzilla movie and make you think it's an 80's horror flick instead. I'm not sure which version of the scene I like better, though. The music-less one is moodier but the one with music creeps me out much more. It's a tough call. In any case, I like the music that was added into the movie. It fits well with the original sound that Koroku had created, actually helps some scenes be more effective, like the one with Okumura and the helicopter, and the pieces that you hear at the tail-end of the closing credits make for a much better sound to leave the picture on, especially the reprise of the part originally heard when the two missiles were about to hit. Good stuff.
Like Godzilla, King of the Monsters, Godzilla 1985 is often viewed as a mixed bag for fans. Some may find the political implications of the film difficult to get past and I, myself, can admit that the added American footage doesn't do anything for the plot, that, despite my respect for Raymond Burr, his character is a useless spectator yet again and doesn't fit quite right with the other American characters added in, and that in their reediting of the Japanese footage, the filmmakers did make some mistakes. But, on the other hand, I feel that the Japanese are depicted in a respectful manner, including when it comes to the dubbing, some of the reediting corrects some pacing, mood, and effects problems that the Japanese version had, it's more successful in eliciting sympathy for Godzilla at the end and is capped off with an awesome speech by Martin, and the added Christopher Young music fits in well with the score that was already there, has a sound to it that I really like, and, like some of the reediting, made certain scenes work better. Like King of the Monsters, it has more than its fair share of flaws and the political mindset of the time that is prevalent throughout it and influenced its conception may be an outdated thing of the past now, not to mention the fact that its bombing at the box-office ended Godzilla's American theatrical prospects for a long time, but still, I think it's an enjoyable film and, as I feel with its predecessor, for an Americanization of a foreign film, you could have done a lot worse. Again, hopefully one day both it and The Return of Godzilla will become available on DVD and Blu-Ray over here, making them more accessible to today's movie-watchers, but for now, all I can say is that I love this movie for all of the good times it gave me when I was a kid and I will always treasure it.
Three months after a volcanic eruption at Daikoku Island, the Japanese fishing vessel the Yahata-Maru gets caught in a violent storm off its shores and is pulled towards it by very strong currents. As the ship nears the island, the volcano begins to erupt again, tearing the island apart, as young seaman Okumura looks on through a porthole. The force of the eruption knocks the ship around and causes everyone onboard to lose their balance. The following day, reporter Goro Maki is out sailing when he comes across the drifting fishing vessel. After getting no response upon calling towards it, Maki climbs aboard the seemingly deserted ship and investigates its interiors. As he does so, he finds all of the crew dead from having their blood drained... all, that is, save for Okumura, who he finds in a locker down below, unconscious but alive. Without warning, Maki is attacked by an enormous sea louse, which he tries to fight off but ends up almost losing his life to before Okumura awakens and kills it. Upon talking with Okumura, the young fisherman tells Maki that he saw an enormous creature, with fire blasting out of its mouth, rise up from the rocks during the island's eruption. The two men are then picked up by a coast guard chopper and eventually manage to get back to Japan. While recovering in a police hospital, Okumura is visited by his friend, bio-physicist Prof. Hayashida, who talks to him about the monster he claims to have seen and shows him some photographs taken during Godzilla's attack on Tokyo back in 1954. Upon seeing these, Okumura confirms to Hayashida that Godzilla was what he saw and once the prime minister is told of the monster's return, he enforces a temporary media blackout in order to avoid mass panic. When Maki's intended story on the matter is dropped as a result, he decides not to waste time and visits Hayashida to learn more about Godzilla, whom the professor lost his parents to during the first attack. While talking to the professor, Maki meets Okumura's sister, Naoko, who works at his institute. Finding out that she doesn't know that her brother has been rescued, Maki ultimately tells her, but uses their reunion in order to get a story. At that time, a Soviet submarine is attacked and destroyed by Godzilla near Japan and when the U.S.S.R., feeling that America was responsible, threatens to respond with a nuclear war, the prime minister has no choice but to lift the blackout. His secretary, with holds a press conference and reveals that Godzilla has returned, using a photograph taken from an airplane as proof. It's then not too long before Godzilla first appears, attacking and feeding off of a nuclear power plant before heading back out to sea. As the prime minister debates with the American and Soviet ambassadors about whether or not nuclear weapons are to be used against the monster if he returns to Japan, Hayashida comes up with a plan to lure Godzilla to Oshima Island and trap him in the heart of the island's volcano, Mt. Mihara. But, he and his colleagues must soon race against time to perfect the device with which to do so because Godzilla is soon spotted swimming in the direction of his old stomping grounds: Tokyo.
As I said in the previous review, while Godzilla may have been gone from Japanese movie screens for nine years after Terror of Mechagodzilla, Toho never intended to completely retire their biggest star. In fact, over the years there were many, many different scripts and story ideas suggested by both Toho and Henry G. Saperstein's United Productions of America as a means of bringing Godzilla back, some promising and others unfilmable because of how ridiculous and outlandish they were. However, despite all these propositions, as well as a petition that had over 40,000 signatures pleading for a new Godzilla movie, it wasn't until the early 1980's, when reissues of some of the past films like the original Godzilla, Mothra vs. Godzilla, and Godzilla vs. Monster Zero did remarkable business, in particular during a 1982 film festival celebrating the studio's 50th anniversary, where they out-grossed other movies like a reissue of Akira Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai, and also proved to be stiff competition for reissues of Disney's classic films like Bambi and Pinocchio, that Toho began to seriously consider reviving the King of the Monsters. At the same time, Tomoyuki Tanaka had, for the longest time, been hoping to not only bring Godzilla back but also to return him to his dark, destructive roots, feeling that making him a hero was responsible for the gradual decline of the original series, as well as to firmly reestablish his nuclear origins, which had become superfluous as the movies went on. The mid-1980's, with its prevalent Cold War tension between America and the Soviet Union and with how, by this point, other science fiction films like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Thing had been reimagined as much darker and grimmer stories aimed squarely at adults, seemed like the perfect time for Godzilla to return to his original adult-oriented, allegorical role (in fact, this film's Japanese title actually just being Godzilla, like the original film, would have you think that it is indeed a remake). To that end, Tanaka decided that the franchise needed to be rebooted and that the new film was to be a direct sequel to the original Godzilla, ignoring everything in-between and, by extension, the more flippant and fantastical 70's films that had driven away adult viewers. Ultimately, in December of 1983, with the following year being Godzilla's 30th anniversary, public interest in the character at a high, and a new script being commissioned, Toho announced that the Big G would be back by the following Christmas.
After Ishiro Honda refused to return to the director's chair for the new film, Tanaka ultimately chose Koji Hashimoto, a second-unit and assistant director who only had one movie as chief director under his belt: Sayonara Jupiter, which wouldn't be released until March of 1984 and would end up being a huge flop. Honda chose him because he proved with that film that he could at least handle a special effects-filled movie and also because he had served as Honda's assistant director on past films like King Kong vs. Godzilla, Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster, Frankenstein Conquers the World, Godzilla vs. Monster Zero, Latitude Zero, and Godzilla's Revenge. He had also been assistant director on the enormously successful 1973 film, The Submersion of Japan, which also didn't hurt his chances of getting the job to direct the film. Unfortunately, The Return of Godzilla would end up being Hashimoto's second and last film as director and, save for acting as producer on a couple of films in the mid-90's, he would never get another job in the film industry. I don't know what happened, since this film was quite successful when it was released in December of 1984 and he demonstrated a fair amount of talent in directing both the special effects scenes (for the most part, anyway) and the human drama scenes. I guess the enormous flop that was Sayonara Jupiter was too much for his directing career to endure. Whatever the case, Hashimoto ultimately died from a coronary disease in 2005 at the age of 68. There are some interesting characters in The Return of Godzilla, some of whom are portrayed by actors from the series' past and others by established performers who had made their mark in other films. Unfortunately, the three main young leads, despite taking their roles and the film seriously, come across as pretty bland. As reporter Goro Maki (note that's the same name and profession as the character Akira Kubo played back in Son of Godzilla), Ken Tanaka probably has the most importance to the overall story since he's the one who actually puts it in motion by finding the Yahata-Maru and discovering that everyone except for Okumura has been killed and that Okumura himself saw an enormous creature that ultimately turns out to be Godzilla. However, once he makes it back to Tokyo, Maki has little to do in the plot, save for informing Okumura's sister, Naoko, that her brother is alive and being kept at a police hospital. While he does genuinely want Naoko to know this since he feels she has a right to, he's not above taking the opportunity to use their reunion as a story for his newspaper, which ultimately becomes part of the government's eventual revelation to the public that Godzilla is still alive. Other than that, though, he doesn't do much except hang around with Prof. Hayashida, Naoko, and Okumura as they study Godzilla and try to perfect the device that will lead him to Mt. Mihara. He and Naoko eventually get caught up in Godzilla's rampage when they're left behind after Hayashida and Okumura leave for Oshima Island and even though they're likable enough to where you don't want to see them die, it wouldn't affect the plot at all if they did get crushed by Godzilla. Speaking of which, there is a hint of a romance between him and Naoko late in the film but it never goes anywhere, which is typical for these types of movies (it was developed a little bit more in the manga adaptation of the film). Even less important to the plot is Naoko Okumura (Yasuko Sawaguchi), the sister of the lone survivor of the Yahata-Maru. She's really cute and comes across as a loving and caring sister to her brother, who only have each other as family and are depending upon the money that Ken makes from his job on the fishing vessel to put themselves through college, and she also serves as Prof. Hayashida's part-time assistant but otherwise, there's not much to her. I guess you could say that she's important to the plot in that she helps Hayashida with his research and fine-tuning of the device meant to lure Godzilla away from Japan but that's kind of grasping at straws. Besides her implied romantic interest in Goro Maki near the end of the film, there's a moment much earlier on when she's upset with him for using her and her brother as fodder for his newspaper story, saying that she expected better from him (I don't know why, though, since she just met the guy), but it doesn't go much further than some indicated, silent tension in a later scene where she serves them coffee while they're going over the data they collected during Godzilla's first appearance. (The anger she feels toward Maki was greatly expanded upon in the manga version.) However, I do like that, while she is a bit disappointed with Maki, she's doesn't act like a complete bitch later on and resist his help whenever she falls or gets knocked down and plus, she also does help him when he badly injures himself while trying to drill through a locked door that leads to the roof of their building. And she does look to him for comfort near the end of the film when she begins panicking, saying that her brother and Hayashida may not reach Oshima Island in time and that Godzilla, who's currently unconscious from the effects of some cadmium shells, will probably wake up soon (which he does but not of his own volition), which leads into the hinted romantic interest between them. Ultimately, though, as much as I do like Naoko and am glad that she doesn't die, like Maki, it wouldn't have affected the plot if Godzilla did squash her. Alright, enough about them. Let's get into the much more interesting characters. The role of Prof. Hayashida was originally meant for series veteran Akihiko Hirata, who had actually been the one to make the announcement of Godzilla's return in December of 1983, doing so while wearing his trademark Dr. Serizawa eye-patch no less. Unfortunately, before production began, Hirata died of throat cancer and so his buddy Yosuke Natsuki, who had appeared along with Hirata as Det. Shindo back in Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster, took the role instead. Despite his lack of major association with the kaiju genre, Natsuki proves to be a good fit for Hayashida, bringing a sense of knowledge and, at the same time, a surprising feeling of respect and even sympathy towards Godzilla. You learn early on that Hayashida's parents were killed by Godzilla during the original attack in 1954 and that the man himself began studying the monster out of vengeance, as a way to figure out how to destroy him. However, Hayashida doesn't feel that way anymore, saying that he feels that Godzilla is a destructive product of mankind's atomic age, a warning about what happens when mankind becomes far too arrogant in regards to mother nature. One thing that I think is obvious from the outset is that Hayashida never believed that Godzilla was truly dead. The fact that he brings old photographs taken during Godzilla's original attack for Okumura to look at proves that to me. He's been expecting Godzilla to reappear at some point during the thirty years since his first attack and now that Okumura, whom he knows is a rational, honest young man, is claiming to have seen a monster during the destruction of Daikoku Island, he knows that this can only mean that the King of the Monsters has finally returned. But, like I said, he no longer harbors any of the hate that he once felt towards Godzilla. In fact, he feels that his responsibility is not to destroy Godzilla (he even admits that Godzilla won't die when he's sealed inside Mt. Mihara) but, as he puts it, "To send him home." I think what he means by that is Godzilla doesn't belong in the modern world where he'll only cause fear and destruction because of what he is and that he's hoping he'll be at peace within the volcano. He even asks Maki and Okumura if they felt anything for the monster when they watched him attack and destroy the nuclear plant several nights before. At the end of the movie, when Godzilla has been sealed within the volcano, Hayashida has a look of sadness and pity on his face for the monster but, personally, I think that he also knows this will only end up being a temporary solution and that sooner or later, Godzilla will rise again. Some familiar faces pop up in this film and, amazingly, none of them are that of Kenji Sahara (although, don't worry, he'll be back)! Hiroshi Koizumi, whom we last saw as Prof. Wagura in Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla, has a very brief appearance here as Prof. Minami, Hayashida's old geologist friend who confirms to the government officials that Mt. Mihara can be prompted to erupt whenever they need it to in order to trap Godzilla within the volcano and he also assures everyone living in the villages around the volcano would not be in danger because the lava will stay within the crater, which it does. Kunio Murai, who played Takashi Shima in Godzilla vs. Gigan, is also here as a secretary, although I think he only appears during Hayashida's introductory scene. Another returning series veteran is Yoshifumi Tajima, last seen in Godzilla's Revenge, as the environmental director. You only see him a couple of times and he actually has only one line, where he questions the safety of the villages around Mt. Mihara if they do manage to cause the volcano to erupt (which is cut from the American version and led to me not realizing for the longest time that he was even in the film at all) but, for diehard fans like myself, it's nice seeing him again. This was the last movie he ever appeared in before his retirement from acting. There are many other government official characters present in the film but since they do little more than serve their respective roles of advising the prime minister on different matters, I'm not going to spend much time on them. I will say, though, that a couple of them do stand out, with the prime minister's chief cabinet secretary, Takegami (Taketoshi Naito), being his closest and most loyal advisor, holding the news conference revealing Godzilla's return to the public, and the finance minister (Eitaro Ozawa) coming across as a little arrogant and dismissive towards Hayashida's plan to lure Godzilla to Mt. Mihara, suggesting that it would be best to leave him to the military, and later on having to be told that he shouldn't be so gun-ho about using nuclear weapons against the monster, especially if he does manage to reach Tokyo. | This is the only halfway decent image I could find of this guy. |
Like the original Godzilla, The Return of Godzilla addresses the issue of nuclear weapons but this time, it's bigger than just the dangers of atomic testing. Director Koji Hashimoto once described the film's theme as being about, "The risk of nuclear energy in all of its forms." More specifically, it comments on the nuclear tensions that were heightened by the Cold War and the uneasy relationship between the United States and Russia at the time. Tomoyuki Tanaka said that with the film, "We wanted to show how easily a nuclear incident could happen today." Indeed, not only do you have Godzilla almost causing a nuclear war between America and the U.S.S.R. when he destroys a Soviet submarine, leading to the Union immediately blaming America for the catastrophe, but there's a subplot during the film's second half where Godzilla's attack on Tokyo Harbor activates the launch program for a Soviet satellite containing a nuclear missile. The Soviet Union's deception of disguising the ship containing the missile controls as a normal freighter in Tokyo Bay makes them look particularly untrustworthy and shifty, especially when you think about how it has to have been there as soon as news of Godzilla's return broke out, even before the prime minister has his tension-filled conference with the American and Soviet ambassadors (the Soviet Union may have agreed to disarm the satellite but still...). As described earlier, that scene serves as the heart of the whole nuclear issue, with the prime minister having to seriously consider allowing the United States and the Soviet Union to use nuclear weapons within the vicinity of the mainland if and when Godzilla reappears. It's interesting to think how the only thing the two countries can agree on is that nuclear weapons are to be dropped on or near Japan, a country that was deeply scarred by this same action nearly forty years before. Even though the prime minister is advised that the type of atomic bomb they plan to use is not as powerful as the one that destroyed Hiroshima, and that refusing both countries' requests would have grave diplomatic consequences for Japan, he decides that he cannot allow nuclear weapons to be used in or around his country for any reason, not even in a situation like this. Of course, his decision is almost rendered moot when the Soviet nuclear missile is fired at Tokyo, threatening to turn the city into another Hiroshima. Speaking of which, that's the other issue the film tackles: the idea that Japan's prosperity, as massive as it has become, is quite fragile. Tanaka referred to the big skyscrapers that had come to dominate the Shinjuku district by the 1980's as, "The vain symbols of these abundant days," and felt that, like the 1932 earthquake, the firebombings of Tokyo, and the atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Godzilla is a force that could come in and destroy all of the prosperity and shallow materialism within an instant. The finance minister seeming more preoccupied with Godzilla's attack meaning the end of Japan's economy and gun-ho to be allowed nuclear weapons to be used, when he should also be concerned with the damage such an act could cause (the guy acts as if an atomic explosion in the middle of Tokyo wouldn't do anything to damage the economy he's so concerned with), is a prime example of what Tanaka described as everyone being "so concerned with the material." And incidentally, if you want a more recent, real-life example of this idea of "fragile prosperity," just look at how Japan was instantly brought to its knees by the massive 2011 earthquake. In the past few reviews, I've made mention of a 1973 disaster movie called The Submersion of Japan, which became the most profitable Japanese film of the 1970's upon its release, but I think this is the best Godzilla movie with which to go a little in-depth into that film because there are many similarities between the two pictures. Like The Return of Godzilla, that movie, released in the United States as Tidal Wave, was a very somber and serious piece that discussed international politics and diplomacy and the effects that an enormous disaster, be it a monster attack or, in the case of Submersion, a movement of tectonic plates that threatens to, and eventually does, pull the country down into the sea, would have on them. Both films, which, I might add, feature some of the best work by effects man Teruyoshi Nakano, also make mention of less than satisfactory responses to these disasters, be they the Japanese military's inability to stop Godzilla from reaching Tokyo or from coming on land in the first place early on in the movie, or, in the case of Submersion, ineffective rescue attempts during the disaster. As I mentioned earlier, this film's director was an assistant on that one, which I don't think was a coincidence since that movie's enormous success in Japan, especially during the bad times the film industry was experiencing in the mid-70's, prompted Toho to try to replicate its formula for many years to come, in both disaster and science fiction films. And most tellingly of all, Keiju Kobayashi, the actor who plays the prime minister here, starred in The Submersion of Japan as the scientist who discovers that his country is living on borrowed time. Some, however, would say that The Return of Godzilla taking its cues from that film isn't exactly a good thing, since The Submersion of Japan has often been described as ponderous, self-important, and ultimately, a film that emphasizes spectacle over characterization. I personally can't say that the 1973 film doesn't deserve these criticisms (truth be told, its overwhelming hopelessness, lack of humor and deep characters, and long political discussion scenes make its near two and a half hour running time a little difficult to get through) or that The Return of Godzilla is subtle in its themes and discussion of them, especially with its grim tone, but I will say that I do think this movie is more successful in saying what it wants to say in an entertaining fashion than that movie was. It may do so in a more in your face way than was the case with the allegory in the original Godzilla but, for the most part, I still think it works in what it sets out to do.
The original series of Godzilla movies is commonly referred to as the Showa series since it corresponds to the era when Hirohito was the emperor of Japan, whereas the second series that begins with this film is known as the Heisei series because it was made in the period when Akihiko took over from his deceased father, a period that is still going on. However, The Return of Godzilla was produced during Hirohito's lifetime, so it's technically still part of the Showa era of movies whereas the next film, Godzilla vs. Biollante, was the first one made during the Heisei period (it was released the very year that period began, in fact). But, since the rest of these films stem from this one, it is often included as part of the Heisei series to avoid confusion. It's an interesting dilemma too because, for me personally, this film does indeed serve as the bridge between the first generation of Godzilla movies and the second generation when I look at in context. You've got new, young talent mixing in with some players from the series' past, such as Yosuke Natsuki, Hiroshi Koizumi, and Yoshifumi Tajima, some of whom would either never appear in another Godzilla movie or, at least, not for a long time; Teruyoshi Nakano would retire from filmmaking not too long after this film, making this the last Godzilla film he would be involved with; Godzilla in this film is played by a man who once sparred with Haruo Nakajima onscreen and would carry on the role for the entirety of this second cycle; and, most significantly of all, this is one of the last films that Tomoyuki Tanaka was very heavily involved with, seeing as how his advancing age and gradually deteriorating health would limit his participation up to the end of the Heisei series. Moreover, I think the fact that is a direct sequel to the original Godzilla, bypassing all the other films in the Showa series, also serves as a notice that this is the beginning of a new era for the Big G. Over the years, those who had helped shape him and his character had slowly departed the series and after this film, younger people would take over and his remaining "fathers" would all eventually leave.
Above everything else, Tomoyuki Tanaka hoped with this film to return Godzilla to his roots as a destructive, rampaging beast, stripping away all of the detours he felt the character had gradually taken in the years since the original movie. And, for better or worse, he succeeded. The Big G is back to being a terrifying force of destruction here and this is how he would remain for, more or less, the rest of the series. However, as scary-looking as he is and in spite of the massive destruction and loss of human life he causes, few of Godzilla's actions come across as out and out malicious to me. Most of what he does is more akin to an animal either acting on instinct (like when he attacks the nuclear plant during his first appearance in order to feed on the reactor), or becoming enraged at being fired on and retaliating (as he does to the military and the Super-X). And most of the destruction he causes when he enters Tokyo is akin to the destruction he caused during his first appearance in Mothra vs. Godzilla: his enormous size and girth, as well as his simply being present in an area that's tightly packed with so many buildings and other obstacles, is what results in the property damage, rather than any malicious intent on his part. During his big battle with the Super-X near the end of the film, he blows up a lot of buildings with his atomic blast, as well as with his tail and pure strength, resulting in much more destruction than he had already caused, but I think that was more due to his determination to destroy this flying armored vehicle that had rendered him unconscious earlier. The one time where he does seem to cause death and destruction out of malice is when he picks up this train car, looks at the screaming people inside through the window, roars at them, and takes a few steps forward before throwing the car to the side, killing everyone that was in there. Other than that, he just comes across like an enormous animal wandering around a place where it's impossible for him not to crush things, rather than like an angry god punishing mankind like in the original movie. It's important to note that this is the first time where we see that Godzilla does know in his own way that nuclear energy is something that he needs. I don't know if he completely understands it or if it's, again, a case of pure instinct but regardless, the fact that he goes straight for this nuclear plant upon making it to land for the first time, tears through it, and actually pulls the reactor out in order to feed on the radiation (and by "feed," I meant absorb it into his body), which is also why he went after the Soviet nuclear submarine, is proof that he's not just a mindless beast, that there is some intelligence to him. And then, there's the whole issue of Godzilla having a homing instinct, using magnetism as a type of radar, similar to how birds do so. It's why he seems to follow that flock when he leaves the nuclear plant: he felt the magnetism they were vectoring on. I'm not so crazy about this idea. I kind of understand why they came up with it, because it was a way to keep Godzilla's characterization as that of an animal, as well as to serve as a logical means to lure him to Mt. Mihara, but, I've never been a big fan of it, particularly in this version where it's not explained all that well for me. That's why my descriptions of it have kind of sucked. Maybe I'm just dumb but I didn't entirely get it. Other than that, though, I can get behind the characterization for Godzilla they were going for here. One thing that I've always found curious is that, for a movie called The Return of Godzilla, they don't really explain how Godzilla returned; he just sort of shows up. The only explanation that we do get is Prof. Hayashida informing the government officials that the eruption of Daikoku Island awakened Godzilla and brought him to the surface. However, that does not at all explain how he's suddenly alive again after being disintegrated by the Oxygen Destroyer. Godzilla Raids Again at least made a point of saying that there's a second Godzilla and that there was no way to permanently kill him since the Oxygen Destroyer was gone; neither version of this film mentions that weapon or Dr. Serizawa and, in fact, they only mention the events of the original film in a vague, rudimentary manner. I would like to assume that this is a different Godzilla from the one in the original film, since there's no way he could have come back to life save by supernatural means, which we'll get in a later film, and the regenerative properties they mention in later films are out because, one, that wasn't an idea at this point, and two, there would be nothing for him to regenerate from. But, everyone acts like it's the same monster as in the original movie, with Takegami even stating in his press conference that, "Godzilla still exists." It's another tricky subject and while it doesn't really hurt the film for me, I'm sure it would confuse the hell out of most newcomers.
Also, I have to admit that the sympathy they try to make you feel for Godzilla when he falls into Mt. Mihara at the end of the movie is a bit much. It's handled much, much better in Godzilla 1985 but in the Japanese version, it feels rather forced. Of course, if you're as big a fan of Godzilla as I am, then you would feel something when he's dumped into the volcano, roaring all the way down to the bottom, especially with that sad music playing, but the fact that they show the prime minister almost in tears as he watches Godzilla descend down into the crater does not sit well with me. I get why they play the sad music and why Prof. Hayashida seems sad, since he was the one who understood that Godzilla was as much a victim of the atomic bomb as the hundreds of people he killed, but it doesn't seem at all right for the prime minister to be weeping for a creature that has left Tokyo in ruins and at least hundreds of people dead, almost caused World War III, prompted both the United States and the Soviet Union to contemplate using nuclear weapons on or near Japan, and almost got Tokyo turned into another Hiroshima when his rampage activated the satellite missile control aboard that freighter. Again, I get the sympathetic music that's meant for the audience and why Hayashida is almost on the verge of tears, but the prime minister should be acting the way Maki and Naoko do when they fly over the erupting volcano in a helicopter: happy that this thing that terrorized his country is gone. But, what really makes me cringe is this Asian pop song, Goodbye, Godzilla, that plays over the ending credits, where this female singer acts as if Godzilla is her very best friend and he's left her behind while he goes on some journey. No. Just, no. Now, you're overdoing it. Yes, I understand that like me, thousands of other people love Godzilla and are going to feel bad when something like this happens to him, and I also understand his characterization, but you can't end a movie about a rampaging monster that's caused a lot of death and destruction with this type of song. So, that's a major strike against the Japanese version for me. The pathos makes more sense and feels more genuine at the end of the later film, Godzilla vs. Destoroyah, but here, it feels about as genuine as a brick to the head. As you can see, there's nothing cuddly about this Godzilla whatsoever. He was designed in this film to look like a threatening, hostile monster who projects strength and power and could very easily level a city, intentionally or not. You won't see this Godzilla do a karate-chop. The suit was made to look more massive and powerful than of the previous ones, including the original, with a very broad chest, wide legs, enormous feet, and what has to be the longest tail he's ever had (my step-cousin and I often joked that his tail looks bigger than he is here when it thrashes around). They also brought back the features that hadn't been seen since Godzilla Raids Again: the small ears, the four toes on each foot, the three rows of dorsal plates all being the same size, and the fans. Speaking of which, the most striking thing about the design of this Godzilla is the face. Not since Mothra vs. Godzilla had the Big G looked so menacing, with his always angry-looking face, furrowed eyebrows, reddish brown eyes, and those two intimidating fangs that are constantly poking out of his upper lip. Pneumatic tubes built inside the suit allowed the operators to not only control Godzilla's mouth and eyes but also enabled the upper lip to curl whenever he snarled and growled, adding even more menace to him. Taking over the role of Godzilla is someone who was no stranger to monster-suit acting: Kengo Nakayama, who had played Hedorah and Gigan before. Having now changed his name to Kenpachiro Satsuma, he was the one who would finally pick up the baton from Haruo Nakajima and continue playing Godzilla for the entirety of the Heisei series rather than being just another one-off suit actor. Unfortunately, like Nakajima during the filming of the original movie, Satsuma's first outing as Godzilla was hardly a walk in the park. The suit, which weighed 240 pounds, was originally built for another stuntman, one much bigger than Satsuma, but that guy backed out at the last minute, leading to Satsuma being chosen to replace him. And since it was so late in production, Satsuma was stuck with having to perform within this suit that was much bigger than he was. He himself described the thing as being a major pain in the ass to work in, once saying that it was more like the suit wore him rather than the other way around, and, despite his strength and endurance, could only withstand being inside it for ten minutes at a time and ended up losing twelve pounds during filming. I wish I could say that, as Nakajima did, Satsuma was able to persevere and create a flawless physical performance but that's not entirely true. For the most part, he does good but there are also times where Godzilla's movements are awkward, coming across as a little wobbly and clumsy. I'm not blaming Satsuma, since I understand that he was doing his best given the circumstances, but the problems he was having are noticeable at times. Also, while the suit itself does look really good from some angles, especially when it's lit well, there are other shots where Godzilla's girth makes him look... fat more than anything else, a feeling that's compounded when you add in the more awkward movements that Satsuma was unable to reign in. The eyes sometimes look like they're staring off in opposite directions as well. All in all, I do really like this Godzilla design and I commend Satsuma for giving it his all, despite the uncomfortable circumstances, but that said, the work wasn't entirely successful. Teruyoshi Nakano and his special effects crew also constructed an 18-foot, animatronic Godzilla, which they dubbed the "cybot," to be used in some effects shots. In fact, they went the route that Dino De Laurentiis took with the enormous, robotic King Kong built for his 1976 film and said that the cybot would be used for most of the scenes involving Godzilla, even though that was hardly the case. You see this animatronic much more than you did the robotic Kong in that film but for the most part, Godzilla is portrayed by Kenpachiro Satsuma in the suit. And, like Rick Baker in the gorilla suit in the 1976 King Kong, I think it's a good thing they did use the suit more because the cybot, as impressive-looking as it is, especially you see some behind-the-scenes images of it being constructed and operated, its movements aren't the most realistic. They're very herky-jerky, especially when the head is being moved around (although it does look good when the lips curl back in a snarl, when the mouth opens whenever Godzilla roars, and especially how the chest rises and falls when he's breathing heavily at one point), and the arms that were built to the torso are quite stiff. It also doesn't help that, like the puppets used for close-ups of the monsters' heads during the early films, the head looks different from that of the suit, with a snout that's noticeably longer and narrower than the suit's short, broad one. Again, it's a cool feat of engineering and I like that, for the first time, animatronics were used in bringing Godzilla to life, but the cybot was ultimately better as a means of marketing the film rather than being used in the film itself. They also constructed a full-sized hydraulic foot for close-ups and in shots where it interacts with actors but, like the cybot, it doesn't move realistically. The slow, mechanical way in which it comes down gives the impression of a car compactor more than the foot of an enormous creature. That's why only one shot of it was left in when Godzilla 1985 was put together. Obviously, the higher-pitched, screeching roar that Godzilla's vocalizations had become as the original series went on was not going to cut it for this darker and more serious reinterpretation, so they replaced it with a deep, threatening roar that was heard a couple of times in the original film and was also spouted a number of times during Godzilla Raids Again. That was another thing about this movie that turned me off the first time I saw it as a really young kid. I didn't like hearing this deep, snarling roar. I wanted the screeching one that I was more used to that, to me, was Godzilla's sound. It also didn't help that in Godzilla 1985, when the Super-X shoots the cadmium missiles down his throat, he actually does the traditional screech a couple of times before keeling over, which actually made me think he was going to have it for the rest of the movie when he woke up... and when he did, it was back to being that roar I didn't like. He does make that sound in the Japanese version as well but it's only at the end when he's falling into Mt. Mihara, which also happens in the American version. I never liked the idea they were suggesting that the screeching roar was what he sounds like whenever his voice gets messed up in some way or when he's in peril. In any case, in addition to that roar, they also bring back the other two main roars he had in the original Godzilla, especially the one that sounds like a booming snarl, which he uses quite a few times here. They also gave Godzilla some pretty menacing growls, especially the one he makes when he glares at the defense forces on the docks of Tokyo Harbor before utterly annihilating them, and his footsteps are very loud and thunderous, the most booming they've ever sounded since the first movie (I wish they'd used that particular sound for them again). And as for his atomic blast, I like how they imply, with his spines glowing as he does so, that the radiation he feeds on at the nuclear plant during his first appearance is how he got it, that before he simply had the atomic breath we saw before in the original film. The blast is much more powerful than it ever has been before, able to wipe out an entire defense force with a single sweep and Godzilla is able to focus it in a way that it can go right through the center of a building or blow off the side but leave the rest of it intact rather than just blow the whole thing up. It's also conceived very well, even if there are times where it goes off in a different direction than where Godzilla's mouth is positioned. Godzilla may be the only monster in this movie (not counting the big sea louse) but technically, he does have an opponent: the Super-X, a military aircraft built to defend Tokyo, particularly from a nuclear attack. My step-cousin never liked the Super-X but I always thought it was cool-looking craft, reminiscent of an alien spaceship. It's the first of a line of noteworthy machines built to fight Godzilla in the Heisei series. Its titanium-alloy armor enables it to take a direct hit from Godzilla's atomic blast and it's also capable of fighting back against the monster with a lasers, missiles, and machine guns. It's mainly deployed against Godzilla in order to fire cadmium missiles down his throat, hoping that, as with a nuclear reactor, the cadmium will neutralize the atomic energy coursing through Godzilla's body and stop his heart. This does seem to work because Godzilla, after standing around in a daze for a bit after getting the missiles shot down his throat, collapses against a nearby building, apparently dead. However, when the Soviet nuclear missile that was accidentally fired at Godzilla is destroyed in the atmosphere by another missile, the resulting EMP not only weakens the Super-X's rotors, forcing the team to land the craft for repairs, but it also revives Godzilla, who is now out for revenge against the Super-X. While the craft is able to hold Godzilla off, they have no cadmium missiles left and the monster's wrath, with him chasing it throughout the city and blowing everything up around it while trying to destroy it, ultimately damages the Super-X's armor and rotors to the point where it slowly hovers down to the ground and comes to a rest. Godzilla then promptly destroys it by pushing a building on top of it! Another reason I think I didn't care for this film when I was very little was the rather creepy scene in the beginning where Goro Maki investigates the apparently deserted interiors of the Yahata-Maru, coming across the bodies of the crewmen and eventually, the thing that killed them: a large sea louse that got so big from feeding off of Godzilla's radioactive blood. In Godzilla 1985, the scene where Prof. Hayashida explains what this thing is and how it killed the crew is completely removed, so I had no freaking clue what this big bug was or how it tied into Godzilla at all. All I knew was that it was a big creepy-crawly that I definitely did not want to see in one of these movies when I was real young. That said, there's nothing else to this creature. It's just a big parasite that killed the crew by sucking all of their blood and it almost kills Maki in the same way before it's offed by Okumura. I always wondered if this one louse had been able to kill the entire crew, all the while avoiding being killed itself, or if there are others aboard the ship that we don't see (the manga adaptation heavily implies that). The thing is quite well-designed and is very creepy-looking, especially under the green lighting in that scene, and it has the interesting detail of there being a harpoon rammed through its abdomen. It also leaves behind a milky secretion like a slug or a snail when it crawls along the ground. There are some instances during its encounter with Maki where it doesn't move all that realistically, particularly during one quick shot when it's crawling down his body towards his neck (it looks like a puppet that's being maneuvered from off-screen), but it still gets the job done and the shriek that it makes, which, in the Japanese version, is a modification of Ebirah's screech, helps to make it feel more alive and creepy. After the film's title, we see shots of some very restless lava, simulating the eruption of Daikoku Island that, according to Prof. Hayashida, awakens Godzilla. These shots, with the lava violently bubbling, flowing down like waterfalls, and spouting up in big geysers has to be real footage from some other source. If this is merely special effects, the Teruyoshi Nakano is even more of a genius than I thought he was. After this, we get into the opening scene where the Yahata-Maru is caught up in a storm near the island, which is reminiscent of the storm scene back in Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster. The miniature boat and the effects of the storm and the turbulent ocean are absolutely convincing, and would have you think that what you're seeing is real. As the storm intensifies, the vessel is caught up in a strong current and is pulled towards the island, with the radioman desperately trying to send an S.O.S. out. That's when Ken Okumura walks over to the window and sees the island beginning to erupt, which is another amazing bit of effects work and would also make you think that what you're seeing is the real deal. First, you see a bunch of flashes and explosions around the center of the island, following by the center of it rising up, which is a result of Godzilla pushing his way out from beneath the rock (you can kind of see him rising up if you look closely). We then hear him roar as the island is ripped to pieces in another spectacular shot and everyone on the boat loses their balance when it's rocked by the eruption. The scene where Goro Maki finds the abandoned Yahata-Maru and investigates it could be the creepiest, most suspenseful sequence of any Godzilla movie, or Toho monster flick, for that matter. Maki is out sailing, listening to the radio, when he comes upon the ship just as a news report about it interrupts the song he's listening to. After getting no response from when he calls toward it, Maki, recognizing the name on the ship's side as being the very one that the news is talking about, takes a picture of it before bringing his sail in and climbing aboard. He sees the main deck is a complete mess, with stuff strewn everywhere, and that the ship appears to be abandoned. He enters the main cabin, discovers that it's a mess as well, and, upon finding a flashlight, heads down some stairs into the dark bowels of the ship. Upon reaching the bottom, he finds a pith helmet lying on the floor, just a foot away from a knife. He then opens the door to what is revealed to be the radio room, and he recoils from an apparent foul smell in there. He sees a figure sitting in a chair in front of him and when he turns the chair around and shines his flashlight, he discovers that it's the blood-drained, decaying corpse of the radioman. Thoroughly freaked out by this horrific discovery, Maki recoils and takes another look with the flashlight before backing out the room and making his way down the hall to another door, one that's ajar. Upon entering the room, which is the crew's quarters and locker room, he finds more dead bodies, including one laying face-down on a top bunk, and as he walks forward, trips on one corpse's leg, causing him to fall in the way where he gets this disgusting, milky liquid on his hands. After wiping them off on a nearby towel, he turns and sees more dead bodies, including one guy with a sharp, broken stick in his hands, in an obvious failed attempt to defend himself before he was killed, and there are splotches of blood on the walls. As Maki gets up, a dead hand swings into frame (this feels more like an 80's horror film than a Godzilla movie, doesn't it?), and when he walks forward, we get a shot of something crawling down the wall in another part of the room. Maki is examining the body with the stick when a nearby locker slowly opens and he sees a boot sticking out of it. Walking up to the locker, he finds Okumura, who has some cuts on his but who's also the only person aboard the ship not drained of blood. Upon touching his hand, Maki feels a pulse and then tries to pry loose the knife that his hands are clasping onto. When that doesn't work, he spots Okumura's wallet on the bottom of the locker and, upon opening it up, sees his identification card and a picture of him and Naoko. Slipping the wallet into Okumura's pocket, Maki then raises his camera for a photo when he hears a screech from behind. He then turns and sees the enormous sea louse hanging down from a wall on the other side of the room. The thing then jumps at him and Maki has to dive out of the way. He falls on the floor and has to get out of the way when the louse jumps at him again. It starts crawling along the floor towards him as Maki first throws something at it and then picks up a nearby harpoon to defend himself. He slowly walks up to the louse and attempts to impale it but it jumps up right before he does so. It grabs onto the ceiling and then jumps on Maki's back. He struggles with it a little bit and falls to the ground with it still on his back. He manages to roll away from it but it flies at him again and lands on his stomach. Maki grabs a nearby knife and tries to fend the louse off as it crawls down his stomach, even stabbing its underside, but it does no good. It seems like he's had it as it begins crawling towards his neck, with him being unable to hold it back or push it away. But, just as it's almost on him, it suddenly screams one last time and goes limp. Realizing that it's dead, Maki pushes the louse off of him and, after catching his breath, looks up to see Okumura standing there, gripping a meat cleaver, revealing that he was the one who killed the louse. Outside on the deck, Maki tends to Okumura's wound while the young fisherman tells him about the eruption and the enormous creature he said also saw. When a Coast Guard helicopter appears, Maki is able to flag them down and they both eventually manage to get back to Tokyo. With a Godzilla Emergency Counter-Measures Headquarters established, and the Japanese Self-Defense Force out looking for him with battleships, jets, and sonar makers, Godzilla makes his first appearance about 32 minutes in. We see a calm scene set at dusk in a countryside that's later revealed to be the Shizuoka Prefecture. The calm, however, is interrupted by a bunch of birds panicking and flying away. We then hear Godzilla growling but all we can see is a bunch of thick mist. You expect for the fog to clear and reveal him but instead, it slowly reveals an aerial view of a nuclear plant and when you hear Godzilla's thundering footsteps, you realize that what you're seeing is from his point of view. This is quite creepy and the music makes it even more so. As his footsteps continue, a security guard walks out of the plant, only for the ground in front of him to crack and when he looks up, he's so shocked by what he sees that he loses his balance and falls. That's when we get an over-the-shoulder shot and see Godzilla's enormous feet. The camera then pans up his body, ultimately revealing his angry-looking face as he roars. Scared out of his mind, the poor man desperately crawls back to avoid being crushed, as Godzilla walks past him (or over him, if the following up shot of Godzilla walking across the camera's POV is meant to be his). He slowly walks toward the main building of the plant, with people outside running in a panic, while the technicians inside try to shut down the reactor. We get a big close-up of Godzilla's face as he roars again and then a shot of his feet as he stomps toward some high-tension wires, smashing a bunch of cars in the plant's parking lot as he does. He takes a big sniff of the air as he looks over the plant and then walks forward again. After a shot of Maki, Okumura, and Prof. Hayashida flying toward the scene in a helicopter, we cut to the aforementioned counter-measures headquarters, where the prime minister and his staff arrive in time to see Godzilla attacking the plant on a video monitor. The prime minister is told that Godzilla wasn't spotted sooner because of the dense fogbanks (that must have been some fog if it was enough to hide him!) Cutting back to the actual scene, Godzilla stomps some fuel tanks and crushes a small warehouse as he continues marching forward. Reaching the plant, he smashes the smokestack down, as the helicopter Hayashida and the others comes down to land nearby. They get out and run to the outskirts of the plant, with Okumura and Maki taking pictures as Godzilla begins plowing through the heart of the plant. As he does so, he wreaks havoc with the main interior, shorting out the equipment and knocking the technicians around and off a large walkway. The wall of the place then caves and after taking another sniff, Godzilla continues smashing his way towards the reactor, forcing the technicians who are left to evacuate. As they do so, his foot crashes through the ceiling and, needless to say, not all of them make it out alive. He finally reaches the reactor core, tears through the funnel above it, reaches in, and pulls the entire thing out to begin feeding on the radiation, which results in his dorsal plates glowing. But, in the middle of doing so, he turns his head to the sound of a flock of screeching seabirds that are heading out to sea and abruptly drops the reactor core and slowly walks to the ocean, his enormous tail thrashing around as he does so. Shortly after the prime minister's meeting with the American and Soviet ambassadors, Godzilla is spotted swimming in the direction of Tokyo Bay. Once hearing of this, Takegami holds another press conference in order to warn the public, prompting a massive evacuation that's shown to us through some editing involving split-screens, where we first see roads jammed with vehicles and then, people clamoring for plane tickets, people frantically trying to get their luggage stowed onboard monorails, said monorails operating, and airliners taking off. At the same time that's going, Prof. Hayashida and Naoko work to finish the device that will lure Godzilla at Mt. Mihara, while at that very location, military troops are busy planting the explosive charges meant to cause an eruption and seal him within the volcano. Back at Tokyo, night has fallen, and while helicopters patrol Tokyo Bay, the rest of the Japanese Self-Defense Force set up the first major line of defense at the harbor, moving in tanks, rocket launchers, command cars, and other vehicles. With no sign of Godzilla yet, not even from the anti-submarine sonars placed within the bay, all of the troops lie wait for him to appear. They don't have to wait long. Godzilla pops up right in front of one of the search helicopters far offshore, which sends the air force into action. The fighter jets come zooming in and launch their missiles at Godzilla, which, as usual, have no effect on him whatsoever. He angrily roars at the jets as they come in for another pass, hitting him with more missiles and bullets from their small machine guns. As they buzz around his head, Godzilla gives two a taste of his own firepower, hitting them with his atomic blast and sending them crashing into the water beside him. Godzilla roars as he's blasted by more missiles, at one point smashing the surface with his tail, which sends a tidal wave at the Soviet vessel containing the satellite missile controls. All hands frantically abandon ship but the captain knows he has to get down below and deactivate the missile control unit first. As Godzilla moves further into the bay, he wades right beside the ship and the water he displaces causes it to tip slightly. However, when he violently dives beneath the water, he sends the ship careening towards the docks, which it very roughly slams against, knocking the captain off his feet down below and activating the missile control's emergency mode. Godzilla then swims towards the military forces waiting for him in the harbor and explodes out of the water in front of them, prompting them to unload everything they have on him. He's hit with a massive amount of firepower that also creates enormous spouts of water, one of which explodes off to his side and is big enough to obscure him for a few seconds. As the smoke clears, Godzilla roars at the military and smacks the water with his tail again. The soldiers on the docks back up in panic since they now only have their rifles to defend themselves with. Godzilla glares at them and then, as the attack vehicles fire their last rounds, unleashes his atomic blast on them full-force, sweeping it down the docks and decimating everybody and everything in sight (one guy is briefly scene running around on fire). After everything is destroyed, it gets eerily quiet as Godzilla looks at the destruction he's caused and then roars in triumph of vanquishing his enemies before heading onto land. Back aboard the Soviet freighter, the injured captain tries to get into the control room and deactivate the missile controls but when he falls in the doorway, he's killed when some nearby circuitry explodes. Back outside, Godzilla comes ashore, destroying a warehouse with his foot as he makes his way into the outskirts of Tokyo. After a brief bit at the HQ, where Takegami asks what's going on with the Super-X and is told that they're loading the cadmium shells at that moment, we cut back Godzilla, who's looming over some buildings before stomping down a street as he heads further into the city. While he's walking towards a monorail track, a helicopter gets too close and he hits it with a fireball of atomic energy. The helicopter falls down onto an overpass jam-packed with cars, creating a devastating chain reaction of explosions that reaches extremely far down the street, eventually curving around an enormous building as it goes (by the way, if you look carefully when the helicopter is falling, you can see a Ghostbusters logo on a nearby sign). As Godzilla continues stomping around, his foot goes right through the pavement at one point, causing him to lose his balance and slam against a skyscraper, the side of which he tears apart with his hand as he eventually regains balance and continues onward. A train comes down the monorail tracks and when the conductor sees Godzilla comes around the bend of a nearby building, he panics and hits the brakes, causing the train to stop on the section of track right in front of the monster. Seeing this, Godzilla bends over, grabs ahold of the train, and lifts it up into the air, managing to severe the front train car from the others. He brings it up to his eye and looks in at the panicking people inside through the window (one thing I don't like is how you see a woman who takes her glasses off and smiles at Godzilla; completely inappropriate for this scene). He then actually roars at them before taking a few steps forward while continuing to hold the train car, giving us a really cool shot of his reflection in the glass of a nearby building, and then, dropping it off to his left as he completely destroys the track and surrounding power-lines with his legs and feet. A news-reporter then warns all those who didn't evacuate that Godzilla is heading for the Civic Center in Kasumigaseki and that residents in the Nagatacho, Aoyama, and Akiosaka districts must get out immediately. At the same time, a police car drives down the streets, warning others that he's heading for the Yotsuya and Shinjuku districts and we see a bunch of people evacuating, probably heading for underground shelters. After a brief moment where Maki arrives at Hayashida's lab, where he and Naoko are still working on the device, we get a nice shot of Godzilla looming over some small buildings as he continues marching through the city, stopping at one point to roar at the camera. He even passes right above the command center where the prime minister and everyone else is, shaking it as he does so, and almost causing some of the men to run for it. Back on the street, another emergency announcement warns the public that Godzilla is passing through Nagatacho, on his way to Shinjuku. Everyone is warned to evacuate but the news comes a little too late because a group of people just barely manage to avoid getting crushed and we get a shot of Godzilla standing over some buildings in the background, roaring as more people run frantically in the foreground. Meanwhile, a plan is put in motion by the defense forces to divert Godzilla's attention with a couple of vehicles capable of firing lasers. One vehicle is told to head to the Sumitomo Building and the other for Central Park. Both vehicles then deploy, as we get a shot of Godzilla behind the Shinjuku skyline as he heads towards that district. After that, we're introduced to that bum as he takes a bunch of food out of the kitchen of this fancy restaurant and heads for the dining area, asking himself if they should have a feast in honor of Godzilla. And after a shot of Godzilla continuing to march through Shinjuku, with the diversion vehicles in the foreground trying to get ahead of him to cut him off, we cut back to the bum, who decides that the wine he's taken isn't strong enough and as he gets up to go get something stronger, he sees Godzilla's head right outside the window. He actually roars at the guy and this is when all that idiot can do is yell at him to get lost, that he has the rest of Shinjuku to play with. Godzilla then reaches the Sumitomo building, which is where Maki, Prof. Hayashida, and Naoko are, and as he steps in front of it, they then do a test to make sure their device works. It takes a few moments and they have to turn the frequency up quite a bit but eventually, Godzilla turns around and faces them, growling calmly. Now knowing that the device works, all they have to do is pack up the equipment and wait for a helicopter that's meant to arrive and take them to Oshima Island. However, the situation gets complicated when one of the diversion vehicles fires a laser at Godzilla's head, causing him to turn and smack the side of the building with his tail. Hayashida's lab is damaged in the ensuing tremor but the vital equipment and the three humans are unharmed. They head for an elevator in order to get to the roof but another tremor shakes the building, disabling it in the process. Now, they have to take the stairs. They manage to get to the roof but both doors leading to it are locked and when Maki attempts to contact someone on the emergency phone, he gets no answer. Hayashida then tells Maki that the automatic door to the roof closes automatically when there's a tremor, meaning that they'll have to pry it open themselves. As Hayashida tries to lift it, Maki heads back downstairs to get something. Back outside, both diversionary vehicles have managed to lure Godzilla away from the Sumitomo building and into the central park. As he looks around, Godzilla takes a laser right to the face, which thoroughly enrages him. At headquarters, the prime minister asks about the Super-X and he's told that it's taking off at this very moment. Sure enough, we see the flying armored vehicle as it flies through the city, heading for the site of the action. Speaking of which, while still getting blasted in the head and chest by lasers, Godzilla turns and heads into the heart of Shinjuku, smashing an overpass as he goes, forcing a nearby crowd of people to flee. He stops amongst several skyscrapers and roars as he continues to get hit with lasers. Back in the Sumitomo Building, Maki heads upstairs with a crowbar and tries to pry the automatic door from beneath, with Hayashida pulling up on it at the same time. As Godzilla stands amongst the skyscrapers (this is one of those moments I mentioned where he just stands there like a statue, doing nothing), the Super-X comes around a nearby building and reaches him. The aircraft turns around in order to face Godzilla, who looks at it with a very angry glare. With the cadmium shells ready, the crew fires a flare up into the air. This catches Godzilla's attention and he raises his head to look up at it. He then roars curiously, doing exactly what they wanted him to do, and they fire one of the cadmium shells straight down his throat. Godzilla clearly feels this and begins shaking, with smoke billowing out of his mouth and green drool coming out of the corner. He roars again and the Super-X crew takes the opportunity to put another cadmium shell down his gullet. They then wait for him to open his mouth again but when he doesn't, they fire another flare. This gets his attention and, when he roars again, he gets a third taste of cadmium. Godzilla then convulses a little bit, as more drool leaks out of his mouth, and his heartbeat becomes audible and gradually slows. His movements also slow down and it looks as if he's going into a catatonic state. Meanwhile, the countdown on the Soviet satellite missile control unit reaches zero and the nuclear missile is deployed, heading straight for Japan. Realizing what's happened, the control center as Zasimov contacts the foreign minister, who then tells the prime minister that the missile will hit the Shinjuku District in just thirty minutes, that there's no way for the Soviet Union to destroy it in outer space, and, worst of all, they realize that they can't evacuate Shinjuku in that short amount of time. The prime minister orders for all citizens to be told to head down into the subways for evacuation and tells the foreign minister to inform the American PM (I'm guessing he really means the president) of what's happened. Back to Godzilla, the cadmium continues to slow down his heartbeat and as it does, he fires his atomic blast at the Super-X but the aircraft holds up thanks to its titanium-alloy armor (and also probably because the blast was weakened by the cadmium), which is only slightly singed. While everyone back at HQ is shown the path of the Soviet missile, Godzilla apparently succumbs to the cadmium and falls to his right, smashing against the middle of a building. The crew of the Super-X congratulate each other on a job well done and outside, riot police have to hold back a crowd of people who gather in the nearby park to try to get a look at the seemingly dead monster. Prof. Hayashida, however, knows that Godzilla can't be killed so easily (you can see he's still moving as he laying against the building) and says that they have to alert Mt. Mihara. At that time, a warning announcement is broadcasted throughout the district, warning everyone of the oncoming missile. Everyone on the streets seeks shelter underground, in the subways and other such areas, while the foreign minister informs the prime minister that the U.S. has agreed to help them. A counter-missile is launched from Kadena and is set to hit the Soviet missile 70 kilometers above Tokyo in six minutes. Maki uses a mechanical drill to try to get through the sealed shut automatic door but the drill snaps off in the process and stabs him in the left arm. As Naoko bandages his arm up, they hear the sound of an approaching helicopter. When they look out the window, they see a military helicopter with Okumura onboard, meaning it was sent from Mt. Mihara, obviously because they should have been there already (what happened to the helicopter that was supposed to have picked them up). Upon seeing them behind one of the windows, a soldier inside the chopper fires a small mine at the glass and after Okumura motions for the three of them to get back, it's exploded, destroying the glass. Okumura is then lowered down towards the window in a life vest, with Maki smashing a big section of remaining glass, and eventually reaches it. He then tells them of the Americans' plan to blow the Soviet missile up and then says that they need to hurry because the strong wind is making it difficult for the helicopter to maintain its position. Hayashida is the first one to be lifted up into the helicopter but when Naoko attempts to give him the case containing the equipment, he's pulled out the window prematurely but manages to make it up to safety. The vest is sent back down but when Okumura tells Naoko to go on ahead, she gives him the equipment since it's too heavy for her. Knowing that they won't have time to get Maki and Naoko onboard the helicopter with the winds getting worse, Okumura straps on the vest, takes the case, and tells Maki to take care of Naoko for him. Okumura is pulled up to the helicopter but the combined stress of the turbulence and the weight of the case he's holding onto almost prove fatal for him when the helicopter slips down a little bit and causes him to slam into the side of the building. He grabs onto a window ledge for a moment and is then pulled away, finally making it up to the chopper. Once inside, they close the door and reluctantly leave Maki and Naoko behind as they head back to Oshima Island.
While Hayashida and Okumura reach Oshima Island and begin hooking up the equipment, Godzilla is tearing the city pieces, trying to destroy the Super-X. His tail smashes through a building as he turns to face the aircraft, with a bunch of people running past his foot, as the Super-X unloads more shells onto him. Hovering backwards into an area made up of a bunch of small buildings and fuel tanks, the aircraft fires more ammunition, with Godzilla taking a step forward in response (more people have to avoid his foot when he does so) and firing his atomic blast, blowing up everything around the Super-X and reducing that section of the city into an absolute inferno. The Super-X is forced to continue facing the monster. Meanwhile, Maki and Naoko get help from that bum in making it down to the bottom of the Sumitomo Building, with the bum holding a fire-hose that they've tossed down firmly as they climb down it like a rope. At one point, Naoko sees Godzilla's feet through a hole in the building but, despite being freaked out for a second, she continues climbing down. Back on Oshima Island, Hayashida finishes connecting the equipment, activates it, and begins turning the frequency up. Back in Tokyo, Godzilla hits the Super-X with another atomic blast, managing to get through its worn down armor and cause major damage inside. The beleaguered aircraft slowly hovers backwards away from Godzilla, who slowly and methodically follows it, knowing that he's already won this battle. It goes behind the horribly damaged Sumitomo Building and very slowly comes down to rest on the ground. Seeing his chance, Godzilla pushes the building from the other side, causing it to fall right on top of the Super-X and destroy it completely. Standing beside the fallen building, Godzilla turns and, upon spotting Maki, Naoko, and the bum in front of the entrance to another building across from him, roars and snarls at them, immediately starting after them. Maki and Naoko go one way while the bum, taking a briefcase that he finds lying around, retreats down an alley. What follows is a rather laughable-looking shot of the bum running with Godzilla standing behind him (it's the cybot, in case you're wondering) and then, the bum trips and falls, hitting his head on the ground. Looking up, he sees Godzilla standing over him and very stupidly insults him again, calling him a stupid idiot. Godzilla then roars and the bum, as I described earlier, falls over, apparently dying from the head trauma he received from the fall. Elsewhere, Maki and Naoko try to make it to safety amongst the burning ruins of the Shinjuku District but run into a dead end of heavy rubble and with Godzilla heading right for them, they have no choice but to duck down behind a concrete planter. Godzilla gets closer and closer but then, just when he's only a few feet away from, he stops and begins quietly growling. We then see that Hayashida's device has triggered his homing instinct and, after a few more moments of standing there, he turns around and leaves, heading back into the ocean and swimming for Oshima Island. With everyone waiting for him, Godzilla arrives on the island and begins following the signal up the side of Mt. Mihara towards the crater. He reaches the rim of the crater but then stops and looks around at his surroundings, as well as blinks curiously at the antenna that's projecting the signal towards him. However, he resumes walking forward and soon reaches the edge of the crater, which crumbles beneath his wait and sends him crashing down onto a ledge below. As Godzilla stands there, he seems to realize that he's been tricked, as he looks down at the lava below and then glares and growls at that antenna. Okumura then activates the explosive charges that have been placed around the crater, surrounding Godzilla by fire and extreme heat. He begins roaring as the volcano erupts around him and then screeches as the ledge gives away and he falls down towards the lava, vanishing from view. Hayashida heads outside and looks at the crater, watching as an explosion from within, which was probably Godzilla hitting the bottom, mixes with the ongoing eruption. Maki and Naoko then fly over the volcano in a helicopter, happy that the ordeal is now over. The last shots are of the volcano as it continues erupting and spewing forth smoke, ending with a far-off shot of the smoking island. Like Ishiro Honda, Akira Ifukube wasn't keen on being part of Godzilla's resurrection, possibly for the reasons as Honda as well the fact that he'd retired from film-scoring by that point, feeling that he wouldn't be able to compete with the younger composers and their use of more advanced scoring methods. Supposedly, Ifukube also took issue with Godzilla's larger height of 240 feet in this film, saying that he didn't write music for monsters that big. Odd hang-up for a composer, don't you think? In any case, after Ifukube said no (although, unlike Honda, he would eventually return to the series), Tomoyuki Tanaka went with a newcomer to composing, Reijiro Koroku, who, according to his IMDB page, had only done work for TV series and a video short up to that point. While Koroku has worked steadily as a composer since then, with his last assignment being as recent as 2010, it looks as if he hasn't quite had the career he so richly deserves. His score for this movie is absolutely amazing and is one of its best aspects by far. It's definitely one of the best non-Ifukube scores the series has ever seen. Koroku got the tone that they were going for with this film and, with the help of the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, created a score that is often both beautiful and stirring and yet, powerful and doom-laden at the same time, and nowhere is that more evident than in the music he created for Godzilla himself. Like Masaru Sato before him, Koroku decided not to reuse the iconic theme Ifukube had created for Godzilla and came up with his own, which you first hear right at the beginning during the opening credits of both version of the film. It's an absolutely powerful bit of music, perfectly complimenting Godzilla's strength and capability of causing death and destruction, as well as having something of a somber sound that comments a bit on the tragedy of what he is and how he came to be. There's also a menacing, rumbling sound underneath the theme that adds another nice touch it. You hear many different variations of this theme throughout the movie, mostly during the second half and in sequences when Godzilla first appears in Tokyo Bay and fights the air force, when he causes that chain reaction of explosions with those cars and grabs ahold of the train a few minutes later and then throws it off to the side, and during the first part of his final battle with the Super-X (the latter two variations, in particular, have some nice sounds all their own, with very powerful beginnings and middles). The eerie, quieter version of his theme that plays when he's standing beside the fallen Sumitomo Building, after having destroyed the Super-X with it, makes the visual of him standing there in that particular lighting and growling at the leads quite unnerving. That's right, this music actually makes Godzilla scary at some points. The build-up to his first appearance at the nuclear plant very slowly ratchets up the tension, starting with low, menacing music as we hear him approaching, then rising with the pan-up of his body and finally, having a powerful finish with the reveal of his roaring face before moving on to compliment the terror and destruction he causes at the plant very nicely, with even more stirring and impactful music. I also like the freaky and creepy theme that plays when Maki battles the large sea louse, the frantic theme that plays when Tokyo is being evacuated and the military theme as they get ready for him after they hear that he's coming. Speaking of the military, the theme that you hear when they're searching for him and later on, preparing the explosive charges around Mt. Mihara, is a really nice, sweeping piece of music, and that's to say nothing of the theme for the Super-X. My God, is that one of the most stirring, amazing music themes I've ever heard in my life.
All of the score's themes aren't bombastic, though. There's some nicely done quiet pieces that are meant to compliment both mood and emotion. Some great examples of the former include the music when Maki discovers the first corpse aboard the Yahata-Maru (which begins with a sting of music meant to make you jump, no less), when Prof. Hayashida visits Okumura in the police hospital and shows him some old photos of Godzilla's first attack in 1954, when Hayashida is telling Maki, Okumura, and Naoko about how Godzilla was thought as being a legendary beast when he first appeared and that he's just trying to send him home, and when they first test the professor's device on Godzilla during his attack on Tokyo and he responds. One piece of score that I like is when we see Okumura working with Prof. Minami on Oshima Island, which starts out all nice and pretty but gradually grows more and more menacing, ending in a really bombastic bit when see the bubbling lava at the bottom of Mt. Mihara's crater. As for emotion, you have the music that plays when Maki talks to Naoko for the first time, the little bit you hear when she's hurt by how he used her reunion with her brother as fodder for a news-story, the music you hear when the two of them are left behind when Hayashida and Okumura depart for Oshima Island, and when Maki is comforting Naoko when she starts to panic. Of course, when talking about emotional music, there are no better examples than the pieces of music you hear during the film's last few minutes. When Godzilla first picks up on the signal being generated by Hayashida's device and leaves for Oshima Island, the music isn't exactly somber but rather, is more peaceful than anything else. It becomes downright epic as he heads up the side of Mt. Mihara towards the crater, making it sound as if he's heading for his destiny, that this is how it was meant to be. And, of course, there's the sad music that plays when the charges are exploded around Godzilla, causing Mt. Mihara to erupt and drag him down into the bowels of the volcano. Even though I do think they went a bit overboard in trying to make it seem like everyone is sad for Godzilla when they really shouldn't be, given what he's done, animal instinct or not, I have nothing bad to say about this piece of music. It's beautiful, emotional, and does give you a sense that Godzilla isn't entirely to blame for his actions, that he just is what he is. I've already talked about that bad song that ends the film so I don't think I need to say any more, except that I'm glad that Koroku himself apparently had nothing to do with that inappropriate way of ending the film musically. I don't mind the Asian pop song that Maki is listening to when he's out sailing at the beginning of the film but this ending one, again, is cringe-inducing. Other than that, though, the music for this film is absolutely brilliant, matching the images and emotion very well, and makes me wish that it had been used again down the road.
Aside from the American-produced Godzilla 1985 version of the film, there is an international dub of the movie, just as there has been for every Godzilla movie since the mid-60's, that retains the Return of Godzilla title. However, commenting on its very existence is all that I can do for it because I've only seen one clip from it, which is the scene with Hayashida telling the younger characters what he intends to do with Godzilla. The voices are pretty much what you expect: they're not bad and the actors, one of whom is the guy who dubbed the character of Keisuke in Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla, do sound like they're at least trying (somewhat) but, still, there's a flatness to them that could have been improved. I have, however, seen the trailer for the international version and was able to hear some more of the voices. The prime minister's didn't sound too bad but the voices for Naoko, Takegami, and especially the bum? Ho-ly crap! There must be a real shortage of good, English dub actors at the Hong Kong studios where they make these international versions. In any case, that's the extent of what I can say about this version and even if I did see it, I probably wouldn't have much else to say since it is exactly the same as the Japanese version, just with the dubbing.
All in all, The Return of Godzilla is a really good flick and is still one of my personal favorite Godzilla movies. There are flaws, yes, like the film's sometimes ponderous pacing, some of the characters not having much to them (but then again, what else is new in a Godzilla flick), too many still moments, sometimes involving Godzilla just standing around, that I think hurt the film's momentum a little bit, some hiccups in the effects department, most notably in the impressive-looking but hardly realistic-moving full-sized props of Godzilla's torso and foot, and an overdone push for sympathy towards Godzilla at the end, but that said, the film still has a lot to offer. The story is told quite well, there's an effective amount of menace and grimness put into it, the deeper themes and issues, while hardly subtle in the way they're handled, manage to get their point across, the effects work is some of the most impressive the series has seen at this point, Godzilla himself looks great, and even scary, for the most part, it's nice seeing him in a modern setting, as well as destroying stuff again, the Super-X is a really cool aircraft for him to contend with, and the music score, save for the song at the end, is absolutely amazing and works perfectly with the film. I would recommend it, especially for anyone who got tired of the campiness the original series went into, but you'll have to go to some special websites like sumogorilla.com or ioffer in order to get ahold of it if you live in the United States. Hopefully, both versions of this film will be released officially on DVD or Blu-Ray one day but for now, fans will just have to be content with their high-quality DVD-Rs, as I am.
Godzilla 1985
Like Godzilla, King of the Monsters, for a very long time I thought that this was the only version of the film, that all of the footage with Raymond Burr and the other American actors was filmed by Toho and that this was how it was seen throughout the world, in both Japan and America. In fact, I actually thought that, due to Burr's involvement, this was the second Godzilla movie, that they didn't make another movie until thirty years after the original and that all of the others came after this one and Godzilla vs. Biollante, even though I could subconsciously tell that those films looked older than these did. As it was with the original movie, it wasn't until I got older and more able to understand the concept of there being multiple versions of certain movies, as well as when I got the internet, that I slowly began to realize that the film that I had grown up with and loved so much over the years was not the sole cut of this movie that existed and, for that matter, it wasn't even the original version that played in Japan, that it had been altered significantly when it was brought over to America. The apparent differences between the two versions really piqued my interest in seeing the original Japanese cut of not only this film but the others as well, since I heard it was the same for the majority of the series. It's why I became so excited when Classic Media began releasing the original cuts of many of the films on DVD and also why, when it became clear that this film was not going to be released on DVD any time soon in either version, I decided to seek out the original Japanese version and eventually found it on Ioffer.com. Now being able to look at both versions, I can understand why Godzilla 1985 isn't held in as high regard as The Return of Godzilla since, as it was back in the 50's with the original movie, the political climate of the period prompted the filmmakers to significantly alter the movie for America consumption and take out the really juicy stuff that people like about the Japanese version and make it a bit of a different type of movie altogether. But, at the same time, as much as I respect the Japanese version, I have to admit that I think there are some things that Godzilla 1985 does better. Some of it simply does have to do with nostalgia but some of it also has to do with pure opinion and I do feel that the New World Pictures made some improvements in their reediting of the film. Ultimately, it may not be everyone's cup of tea and, believe me, there are quite a few snags that this version runs into but, overall, like Godzilla, King of the Monsters is for the original film, I still think that this is a pretty good Americanization of The Return of Godzilla.
Toho had offered major Hollywood studios the American rights to The Return of Godzilla at an asking price of $5 million but they got turned down because those studios didn't see the profit in paying so much, and then spending more money on the advertising and prints, for a movie they felt would only appeal to kids and exploitation, drive-in audiences. They then decided to go with a smaller, independent company, which was a logical choice since such companies like American-International Pictures and United Productions of America had successfully distributed Godzilla and other Japanese sci-fi flicks in the past. The one that eventually got the film was Roger Corman's New World Pictures, which was now under the management of Larry Kupin and Harry Sloan, with Robert Rehme as CEO. They managed to talk Toho into giving them the film for just $500,000, which was even smaller than the $2 million the bigger studios had offered. Not only did they manage to get it for a steal but they found that they ended up with a film that proved to be very easy to sell since the Japanese release in 1984 had gotten a lot of international press since it was the 30th anniversary of the original film and also because the following year was going to be the 30th anniversary for Godzilla, King of the Monsters. They got lucky again when they heard of a Dr. Pepper campaign that involved Godzilla and managed to convince them to finance their reediting of the movie in exchange for some product placement in the new footage, as well as when Raymond Burr returned to the role of Steve Martin, which got them publicity not only because of his involvement with the American version of the original film but also because at around that same time, Burr was slated to return to the role of Perry Mason for an NBC movie, which also got a lot of press coverage and had mentions of Godzilla 1985 as well. Despite what you think of the film's content, there's no denying that New World got quite a bargain when they bought the film in terms of free publicity. Plus, even though the film didn't do at all well at the box-office, its home video release in 1986 did bring in profits thanks to more free publicity with it being the anniversary of Godzilla's debut in America, the film being mentioned in the press coverage of more Perry Mason movies, and the video release coinciding with those of Godzilla, King of the Monsters, Godzilla vs. Mothra, Godzilla vs. Monster Zero, and Terror of Mechagodzilla.
Just as Joseph E. Levine and company had hired an editor to turn the original movie into Godzilla, King of the Monsters, New World did the same in order to create Godzilla 1985. R.J. Kizer had been working as an editor and in the sound department for New World Pictures for quite a while, cutting movies like Up from the Depths, Battle Beyond the Stars, Galaxy of Terror, and Android. He'd done the same on pictures for other companies as well as in the sound department on stuff like Summerspell and The Philadelphia Experiment, and had even worked with John Carpenter as part of the visual effects department on Escape from New York. The insert footage for Godzilla 1985 was his first crack at directing, although he had served as a producer on Android as well. Unlike Terry Morse on Godzilla, King of the Monsters, Kizer wouldn't actually do the cutting on the film but I'm sure that he had input on it since, as was the case with Morse, his editing background was probably why they hired him to direct the new footage in the first place. Also like Morse, he would only direct two more movies after his involvement with Godzilla: Hell Comes to Frogtown, with Roddy Piper, and Death Ring, a direct-to-video movie with Mike Norris and Billy Drago. Kizer still works in the film business to this day, working in the sound department in various capacities on a number of big movies like a couple of the X-Men movies, the first two Alvin and the Chipmunks movies, Inception, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, The Dark Knight Rises, and, most recently, The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Knowing that his role in Godzilla, King of the Monsters was merely an element inserted into that original movie in order to make it more accessible for American audiences at the time and, in fact, was far from a lead character, I think it's interesting and cool that they decided to bring Raymond Burr back thirty years later to have him reprise that same role, even if it was for no other reason than for the hook of him having been in that first film. As I mentioned back in my review of King of the Monsters, Burr was a really good actor who had a really good voice that was perfect for narration and he made the most of the role he was given, even if the character of Steve Martin was a spectator and didn't advance the plot at all. My feelings towards his performance in this film are pretty much the same: he's given the same inconsequential role that's incapable of advancing the film's story in any way but treats it with the same level of respect and gravitas that he had before. I've also learned that the reason he did it was because he himself liked Godzilla and had a lot of respect for what Ishiro Honda and the others had try to say with the creation of the character, even going so far as to write and narrate a nice soliloquy for Godzilla at the film. Needless to say, that made me respect the man even more than I already did once I found that out. However, all of the praise that I can give him aside, Burr's character, who's just referred to as Mr. Martin here in order to avoid references to the comedian Steve Martin, is not as effective or enjoyable in this film to me as he was before. I enjoyed him when I was a kid but now, I feel that he's even more inconsequential to the story here.There are several reasons for this. One is that, in King of the Monsters, Martin was at least in Japan and in the middle of the action, even if he was just a spectator; here, he spends the entirety of the movie at the Pentagon, watching the action on a big video screen with everyone else. I understand why they went that route, so they could avoid the challenge that Terry Morse had in plugging Burr into the original Japanese film, but as a consequence, he's even more of an observer here than he was in that film. On top of that, the military officials brought him in because he's the only American who knows anything about Godzilla and might be able to give them some advice on what they can do. I like what they were doing this idea, going so far as to give the impression at the beginning of the film that he's still haunted by memories of Godzilla's first appearance three decades before. It gives him an interesting connection to Godzilla that no other American character in the series has ever had. However, that said, that goes completely nowhere because all he tells them when he first arrives is that weapons can't stop Godzilla and that he's more like a force of nature than a living creature. In other words, he proves to be completely useless to the military (who, as we'll see, don't do hardly anything) and you would think they would have sent him home once he said that. But, no, he sticks around for... some reason. It seems like it's mainly just to reinforce to them that nothing can stop Godzilla when they talk about helping the Japanese and to dash their hopes when they think he's been killed by the Super-X. Again, I like that he has a connection to Godzilla that none of the other American characters in this movie, or franchise, do and that he is indeed right when he says that but, due to the circumstances, nothing significant ever comes of it. In fact, a lot of the "advice" Martin gives, like when he suggests that they must understand, deal with, and possibly even try to communicate with Godzilla, or that Godzilla is going through Tokyo because he's looking for something and they need to figure out what it is, also goes absolutely nowhere. Also, his statement that a corpse was never found thirty years before is completely nonsensical when you remember the ending of the original film. Finally, I understand what Burr was going for with his performance and all but his grim seriousness (the guy never lightens up once in the entire film) not only wears thin after a while but it really clashes with the flippant attitude of one of the other American actors and makes the added footage feel disjointed in tone. Ultimately, I will forever respect Mr. Burr, God rest his soul, for taking the stuff seriously and respecting what Godzilla symbolizes but, still, I can't deny that his part in this film is mainly much ado about nothing.
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| Get that can nice and close to the camera, buddy. That's paying your salary. |
In fact, that age-old phrase sums up the impact of all the added stuff in the film, not just Burr's role. Starting after Godzilla destroys the Soviet sub, we're constantly going back to the Pentagon where a general, a colonel, and an inappropriately funny major gradually find out what's going on over in Japan, call Steve Martin in for his "expertise" on Godzilla, and then just keep him around as they do nothing but watch the big video monitor in the room as Godzilla comes ashore in Tokyo and does his thing. It's like somebody keeps changing the channel and going to another movie for a few minutes while you try to get the remote back. Those scenes might as well be in another movie because they have no baring on the actual plot involving Godzilla. In fact, like some of Martin's advice, they're constantly making plans to help the Japanese and yet, nothing ever comes of it. In the scene where Martin first arrives at the Pentagon, they're talking about their options in attacking Godzilla, looking at footage from the original film and then talking about an airstrike, using an armored division in Korea, and calling up the Delta Force with heat-seeking missiles, saying that they can be in place in six-to-eight hours. And that's the last we hear of that. Later on, when they're seeing Godzilla's attack on Tokyo firsthand, the general says to the colonel, "Tell the Japanese we'll give them all the support they need." But then, Martin steps in to reiterate that no weapons whatsoever will be able to stop Godzilla, and that's the last we ever hear of them talking about supporting the Japanese. What, just because Martin chimed in to once again tell you that you can't do anything? Is that why we never see those other strategies you talked about earlier put into action? Don't you find it a little odd that you're letting this so-called expert talk you into doing absolutely nothing to help Japan? He's right, naturally, but still, at least make an effort to help the Land of the Rising Sun! In fact, the only major part these American officials take in the story is to destroy the Soviet nuclear missile that's fired at Tokyo and even that subplot was already in the Japanese version, so it's not much of a contribution on their part. Let's be frank, the only reason these American scenes were filmed, other than for the hook Burr provided for them, was for the product placement of Dr. Pepper, which you can plainly see in the form of a vending machine during the first scene at the Pentagon and at the end of the movie when the major is drinking directly from a can of the stuff. Their contribution to the actual story of the film was just an afterthought, if that. Not only does the American footage feel like it's from a completely different movie but the other three main actors who come with it feel like they themselves are in a different movie than not only the Japanese actors but Burr as well. As General Goodhue, Warren Kemmerling really overacts with how he barks orders at his men, sometimes saying really silly stuff like, "14th grade, beaten the pants off an admiral!" (what?!) and, "Keep that happy code going to our subs!" He also curses a lot more than anyone else in either part of the movie: "Colonel, what hell is going on?!" "Well, if it wasn't US, who the hell was it?" "Damn!" "We've got to find somebody who knows something about what the hell we're dealing with." Trying to ensure a PG-rating there, guy? During the latter part of the movie, he kind of calms down when he realizes just how unstoppable of a force Godzilla is but, man, does he chew the scenery during his first couple of scenes! James Hess as the colonel is probably the best of the three actors. He comes across as the most sensible and calm one of the group, not being loud and silly like the general or being an inappropriate comic relief like the major. I like his voice and I like how he takes the situation seriously, saying, "My... God," upon seeing the destruction that Godzilla is causing. However, that line of his is completely undermined by Travis Swords as the young major. This guy is the epitome of an inappropriate and annoying comic relief. Everyone else is, at the very least, trying to be serious, but he's so flippant about the whole thing that I'm surprise he didn't get reprimanded for it. Everything he says is done in an over-the-top manner and just doesn't fit with what's going on. For instance, after the colonel says that aforementioned line while they're watching Godzilla tear apart Tokyo, the major chimes in with, "That's quite an urban renewal program they got going over there." When Godzilla appears to have been killed by the Super-X, he comments, "Wonder Lizard is down for the count!" Earlier on when they're talking about their options in battling Godzilla, Goodhue asks, "Anything else?" and the major says, "Maybe a mega-dose of horse tranquilizers." When they receive that computer-enhanced picture of Godzilla taken shortly after the destruction of the Soviet submarine, the major remarks, "Handsome little devil, isn't he? And he sunk a Russian sub single-handed, huh? I'd say put a uniform on him and sign him up." The uncomfortable exchange of looks between the major and the colonel after he says that perfectly sums up the general feeling on this whole situation. The guy is actually most awkward in dealing with Martin. Martin, in fact, shoots down his horse tranquilizer joke upon arriving at the Pentagon, stating, "Or failing that little horse sense," and there's a moment later on when they're seeing the aftereffects of the destruction of the Soviet missile and the major tells Martin that it's completely harmless. Martin, however, never once losing his grim tone, tells him of how in 1962, a nuclear test in the stratosphere shut down communications from Australia to California for forty minutes. The major then has a look of, "Alright, then," on his face and very quickly slumps away. Guy definitely should have been removed from the movie because all he brings are the lame wise-cracks. To be fair, though, that unfunny comedy isn't entirely the fault of the actor or even the character but rather some last-minute changes to the script. Originally, New World intended for the American footage to be written so that it would come across as a send-up of Godzilla and they were reportedly even thinking about hiring Leslie Nielsen to appear in the newly shot footage. According to R.J. Kizer, this was before they realized that they could get Raymond Burr onboard but when that came to be, Kizer met with Burr and he told the director that they should take the material more seriously, that Godzilla was a symbol of the atomic bomb. Apparently, also according to Kizer, Burr's assertions influenced producer Tony Randel, who was originally all for the comedic approach but backpedalled away from that rather quickly after meeting with the actor. And with that, the script was re-written to be played more straight and for the major to now be the only comedic character in the film, an idea that apparently did not sit well with writer Lisa Tomei. If she didn't like the major being kept in as the only broadly comedic character, I agree. If they were going to follow Burr's advice on the matter, they should have either gone all the way and played everything straight or not gone with Burr and do their original comedy idea. This little bit of comedy in an otherwise grimly serious film just doesn't cut it.
The Japanese footage, for the most part, is handled much better than the newly shot American footage and, in fact, New World improved upon some of the inherent flaws of the Japanese version. For one, the dubbing is a lot better than it was in the international version. The words barely match the lip-movements, yes, but the voices sound better and more natural, with more emotion than there was in the rather flat line-readings of the international version. The editing around of the Japanese footage also improves some pacing and effects problems that the original version had. R.J. Kizer said that three of the four editorial mandates he was given for the film were, "Have Godzilla appear earlier in the story, eliminate any miniature effects that look hokey, and tighten up running time." The finished product definitely succeeds for the most part in those aspects. Godzilla does indeed get into the story much quicker than he did originally due to the moving around and deletion of certain scenes, a lot of the unconvincing special effects, most notably the shots of the full-sized Godzilla foot, save for a nice-looking one during the nuclear plant scene, were removed (although, they kept in nearly all the shots of the stiff-moving cybot), and the film certainly moves a lot quicker and, to me, often feels more exciting. I think that's the film's greatest asset. While there are plenty of good scenes in the Japanese version, some of them don't lead anywhere and come across as rather unnecessary to the plot, like the subplot with Goro Maki using Naoko's reunion with her brother to get a story and Naoko later being upset with him for it, as well as the scene near the end that emphasizes something of a growing attraction between the two of them. Removing them doesn't hurt the film in any way and it helps to trim some of the fat, so to speak. There were also a few too many slow and quiet spots in the Japanese version, including during the action scenes, and I think that either shortening or eliminating them altogether was in the film's best interest. Gone are the awkward moments where Godzilla is just sort of standing around, doing nothing for several moments and also gone are some interruptions in the action, like when we cut to the prime minister and company watching Godzilla's attack on the nuclear plant right in the middle of the scene (in my opinion, that entire scene is much more impactful and exciting in this version).
The film is also made more exciting by the rearrangement of some scenes and the adding in of sound effects. For instance, a shot of a video screen on a building that's playing Takegami's press conference about Godzilla's return is moved to later in the film when it's discovered that Godzilla is heading for Tokyo Bay and the dialogue is changed to Takegami warning residents of the oncoming danger and that they must evacuate immediately. In fact, that whole sequence feels more frantic and tense because it cuts from the evacuation to the military setting up at Mt. Mihara and then back to Tokyo, where you see the military preparing for Godzilla's arrival and see the evacuation still in progress, with the use of footage that originally happened later in the film when Godzilla had already arrived and when the Soviet missile was coming. I also like that, when Godzilla first appears in Tokyo Bay and the air force attack him, they move the part where he dives underwater to that section instead of after he damages the Soviet freighter. Here, it looks as if Godzilla smartly dove beneath the water in order to swim past the attacking fighter jets and then exploded out of the water when he got to the docks, where he's fired upon by the military. It also makes more sense to me because, when Godzilla hit the Soviet freighter in the original version, he was much further out in the bay and it was odd that the freighter was just sitting there. I guess you could say they were heading back to Russia when they got caught up in Godzilla's attack but still, it doesn't look like they would have been close enough to the shoreline in order to slam into it. By moving this bit to when he reaches the shoreline, it's more logical for the freighter to get caught up in his path and for it to slam into the edge of it due to the force of the waves he's creating. Another thing I like is that they move the shots of the crowd fleeing from Godzilla to when he first comes ashore. Okay, yes, the location of those shots don't match the following shot of Godzilla walking along the edge of Tokyo on the video monitor at HQ but, again, I think it cranks up the excitement when you have people screaming as Godzilla's foot smashes through a warehouse followed by a shot of a bunch of people running for their lives as Godzilla looms over them. The addition of some sound effects in certain scenes where they weren't originally, like Godzilla's roar echoing through a panning shot of the city at one point and the sound of his footsteps outside when the bum is messing around in that restaurant, helps to reinforce his presence in the film during scenes where he isn't onscreen and keep a sense of foreboding and dread rather than there just being moments of dead silence. Speaking of that bum, they make his death much more concrete by putting in low-angle shots of Godzilla approaching the camera and cutting to a shot of his foot crashing onto the ground to give the impression that he crushed the guy. Again, since that latter footage was taken from when Godzilla is approaching the crater of Mt. Mihara, the terrain doesn't match the scene he's in but, whatever. It serves its purpose.
Where Godzilla 1985 really shines, though, is in the opening credit sequence and the handling of the ending. The credit sequence is here a little bit longer than the one in the Japanese version and instead of using its shots of erupting lava, they had the credits appear over a black screen that's being burnt through here and there, with the openings revealing a raging fire behind them. Coupled with the menacing music by Reijiro Koroku, which is rearranged to come across as even more foreboding and frightening, these credits establish a tone of grim, almost apocalyptic, hopelessness right from the beginning, really making you realize that this isn't the campy Godzilla you're familiar with. But what I like the most is how the ending is handled. While they still leave in the inappropriate shot of the prime minister almost in tears as he watches Godzilla plunge into Mt. Mihara, this ending succeeds in making you feel more sympathy for the monster than the Japanese version's did. While Godzilla did screech when he fell into the volcano at the end of that version, it was mostly just a remixing of his classic screeching roar from the original series. Here, his roar stays the same as it has been throughout the film until he plummets to the bottom of the crater, where he lets out a scream that first sounds like the injured screech from before but turns into a very sad, mournful howl as he hits the lava. Godzilla has never made a sound like that before, so that, coupled with the sad music, succeeds in making you feel more sorry for him. It also doesn't hurt that, in the dialogue they wrote for both the newly shot scenes and the English dubbing, they emphasized a little more than the Japanese version that Godzilla is both a menacing monster and a sympathetic creature who just is what he is and, in fact, is a victim too in some ways. And it's all summed up wonderfully in the soliloquy by Steve Martin that closes the film: "Nature has a way sometimes of reminding man of just how small he is. She occasionally throws up the terrible offspring of our pride and carelessness to remind us of how puny we really are in the face of a tornado, an earthquake, or a Godzilla. The reckless ambitions of man are often dwarfed by their dangerous consequences. For now, Godzilla, that, strangely, innocent and tragic monster, has gone to earth. Whether he returns or not, or is never again seen by human eyes, the things he has taught us... remain." No matter how pointless his character was to the overall plot, I will always love Raymond Burr for that nice, thoughtful, and poignant speech, which he wrote himself. And, best of all, they remove the pop song from the ending of the Japanese version and instead have a symphony of themes from the film's score play over the credits, keeping the tone and feeling much more consistent.
Unfortunately, New World's editing of the Japanese footage wasn't completely successful. They did make some dumb decisions. Along with the unconvincing effects shots, they also stupidly removed some really good ones, including the nice one of Godzilla reflected in the windows of a nearby building when he picks up the train (although, I do like that they took out that silly shot of that woman taking off her glasses and smiling at him). They completely removed some material that originally took place after the sequence on the Yahata-Maru, including all instances where it's explained that the creature that attacked Maki and drained the crew of their blood was a sea louse that was mutated by feeding on Godzilla and being exposed to his radioactivity. Therefore, you're left wondering what in God's name that thing was, as I was when I was a kid (incidentally, they made the louse come across as even freakier in this version than it was originally due to some new, more disturbing sounds they gave it). They also inadvertently make several characters feel like less than what they were originally due to some changes of dialogue. In the Japanese version, when Maki is told that the monster that Okumura saw was Godzilla, he goes, "I knew it." In the American version, he goes, "I don't believe it." It's a minor change but one that made him look a little less intelligent as a reporter. Later on, when the Super-X crewmembers have managed to make their craft able to fly again after it was damaged by the electromagnetic pulse, one guy says, "Let's get out of here!" when he realizes that Godzilla has come to and the captain says, "Alright. Emergency power-jets, take off!"; in the Japanese version, the guy says that they don't have any cadmium shells left and the captain says, "Well then, we'll use regular shells!" So, they changed them from guys who, even though they're left with ineffective weapons, still decide to try to fight Godzilla off, to complete cowards who are like, "Screw this city. Let's get out here!" and end up fighting the monster anyway when he chases them while they're trying to escape! And Prof. Hayashida's theory about Godzilla having a homing instinct is completely bungled in this version. Here, he says that Godzilla has a "conditioned response" to the sounds of the birds, meaning that he is attracted to the sounds of their chirping. Now, that is just plain stupid. I didn't quite get the explanation in the Japanese version but, turning Godzilla into a giant bird-lover in this cut is inexcusable. Plus, when they test Hayashida's device when Godzilla enters Tokyo, they made it it look like it pisses him off rather than calms him by putting in a shot of Godzilla charging at the building with an angry look on his face (it's the same shot from when he does so at the Super-X later on). It makes you think, "Well, that didn't work! Why are they still trying to get this device to Oshima Island?" You could make the argument that it worked too well and that Godzilla was following the sound and about to plow through the building but that doesn't explain the nasty look on his face when he does so. And yet, when they activate the device at the end of the film, he does calmly follow the sound to Oshima Island. Uh, inconsistent much?
Godzilla 1985 is probably most notorious for how, given the political climate of the time, the material from the Japanese version involving the Soviet Union was re-edited to make them look like complete skunks, which R.J. Kizer has said was the fourth stipulation given to him in creating the film (editor Michael Spence, however, has denied that there was any political slanting on the part of the heads of New World). The Japanese version depicted both the United States and the Soviet Union as being very gun-ho about wanting to use nuclear weapons against Godzilla the next time he appears and there was even suspicions about whether both countries planned to use Japan as some type of testing ground. Moreover, the ambassadors from both countries were so unwilling to yield to the prime minister's decision not to permit the use of nuclear weapons that he had to talk to both leaders in order for the decision to be unanimous. While that may have gone over well in Japan, there was no way it was going to get an enthusiastic response in America at the height of the Reagan era and the tension going on with the U.S.S.R. Heck, 1985 was the year where you had Rocky IV, where Rocky actually ends the Cold War by defeating Ivan Drago and winning the admiration of the Russian audience in the boxing arena for it, so a movie where the United States and the Soviet Union are depicted as having the same lack of morals when it comes to nuclear weapons, and with an American ambassador verbally agreeing with a Soviet in his assertions, was not going to fly. Therefore, the film was reedited and the dialogue changed in order to make the U.S. seem like the moral ones and the Soviet Union a bunch of traitorous bastards. During the prime minister's meeting with the two ambassadors, the American one is depicted as being less aggressive in his desire to use nuclear weapons, although they did leave in his line, "You must agree to let us use nuclear weapons!", and when the prime minister states Japan's principles on the matter, the scene ends right there, without any behind-the-scenes discussion between the minister and the members of his cabinet or with the prime minister having to talk with the respective leaders in order to get their consent. You don't hear or see anything more of the American ambassador except for a quick shot of him talking with his colleagues, suggesting that they immediately agreed with the prime minister's decision. As in the original version, that scene is followed by the Soviet captain heading to the freighter in Tokyo Bay and going into the missile control room. In the Japanese version, he was going there to disarm their satellite since the Union had consented to the prime minister's decision; here, he says that he's been told to keep the nuclear option open, meaning that he's arming the satellite. He's not only double-crossing the Japanese but he's doing it on orders from the Union. And later on when Godzilla damages the freighter during his advance towards the shore, the captain, instead of trying to stop the missile from firing, is attempting to fire it. They even edited out the part where he gets killed by a small explosion and put in a newly-filmed shot of his finger pushing the firing button! In fact, the Russians are depicted in this version as being rather trigger-happy even before the big conference with the prime minister. In the Japanese version, when the Soviet submarine encounters Godzilla, they eventually attack him because they believe that, given his size and how he's coming straight at them, he's an American submarine that's decided to attack them in act of war. Here, there's no mention of an American submarine and all they know that there's something big approaching them with active sonar. In fact, when they first spot Godzilla on the sonar, the captain's first mate immediately calls him an enemy craft and the captain orders him fired on when someone over the intercom says that whatever is coming at them is huge, whereas before it was simply because the object was still approaching them. Basically, they changed it from Godzilla targeting the sub in order to feed off its nuclear reactor to the sub firing on him without much provocation and him destroying the sub in retaliation. And as you can see in a couple of the images up above, they kept the Russian-language dialogue intact instead of dubbing it as they did with the Japanese, which enabled them to write the subtitles in any way they chose. Plus, I think it was also a way in making the Russians look even more foreign and untrustworthy in comparison to the American actors and even the Japanese ones. Speaking of the Americans, they're depicted as the heroes who must save Japan when the evil Soviets fire their nuclear missile at Tokyo, despite the prime minister's wishes. They don't do anything to help the Japanese fight Godzilla, but when it comes to the Ruskies, it's time for, "America, fuck yeah!" And incidentally, while we're shown the Soviet satellite with the nuclear missile, they delete the shot of the American one that was present in the Japanese version because the United States would never have such a thing orbiting the Earth, ready to fire once the word is given, unlike the big, bad Soviets. Ultimately, though, despite my making fun of how far the filmmakers went to make the movie more palatable for American viewers of the time, this issue with the Soviet Union doesn't affect my enjoyment of the film. I do think it's a fascinating example of the mindset that was prevalent in America at the time and is a great discussion piece but at the end of the day, as with all of these movies, I'm here to see Godzilla, so it ultimately just serves as an afterthought.
The filmmakers wisely kept the score by Reijiro Koroku more or less intact, albeit with a lot of rearranging of certain cues, but they also put in some music that Christopher Young had composed for an earlier New World release, Def-Con 4. I had heard throughout the years that there was some music added but I wasn't sure which themes were until I finally saw the Japanese version. I would complain about the added music but I think it fits very well with the original score. If I didn't know it was added in later, I would have sworn that these cues were composed by Koroku as well. While some of the music is nicely memorable and suspenseful, like the bits you hear during the first part of the submarine scene, during the latter part of the evacuation and military preparation sequence (I think its use does a better job in keeping the tone of that section consistent, unlike the three separate themes used throughout in the Japanese version), and when Okumura has a near-fatal accident when he's being hoisted up into the helicopter near the end of the film, some of it is downright creepy and moody. The music that plays whenever Steve Martin comes onscreen during the early-to-mid parts of the movie is very eerie and helps to both make Godzilla feel more mythical as well as reinforce Martin's interesting connection with him. And then there's the downright scary music that plays when Goro Maki investigates the Yahata-Maru, which was completely silent for the most part in the Japanese version. That music and those visuals can easily make you forget you're watching a Godzilla movie and make you think it's an 80's horror flick instead. I'm not sure which version of the scene I like better, though. The music-less one is moodier but the one with music creeps me out much more. It's a tough call. In any case, I like the music that was added into the movie. It fits well with the original sound that Koroku had created, actually helps some scenes be more effective, like the one with Okumura and the helicopter, and the pieces that you hear at the tail-end of the closing credits make for a much better sound to leave the picture on, especially the reprise of the part originally heard when the two missiles were about to hit. Good stuff.
Like Godzilla, King of the Monsters, Godzilla 1985 is often viewed as a mixed bag for fans. Some may find the political implications of the film difficult to get past and I, myself, can admit that the added American footage doesn't do anything for the plot, that, despite my respect for Raymond Burr, his character is a useless spectator yet again and doesn't fit quite right with the other American characters added in, and that in their reediting of the Japanese footage, the filmmakers did make some mistakes. But, on the other hand, I feel that the Japanese are depicted in a respectful manner, including when it comes to the dubbing, some of the reediting corrects some pacing, mood, and effects problems that the Japanese version had, it's more successful in eliciting sympathy for Godzilla at the end and is capped off with an awesome speech by Martin, and the added Christopher Young music fits in well with the score that was already there, has a sound to it that I really like, and, like some of the reediting, made certain scenes work better. Like King of the Monsters, it has more than its fair share of flaws and the political mindset of the time that is prevalent throughout it and influenced its conception may be an outdated thing of the past now, not to mention the fact that its bombing at the box-office ended Godzilla's American theatrical prospects for a long time, but still, I think it's an enjoyable film and, as I feel with its predecessor, for an Americanization of a foreign film, you could have done a lot worse. Again, hopefully one day both it and The Return of Godzilla will become available on DVD and Blu-Ray over here, making them more accessible to today's movie-watchers, but for now, all I can say is that I love this movie for all of the good times it gave me when I was a kid and I will always treasure it.
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This movie though it was somewhat slow is a good revamp of the Godzilla series considering that it brings Godzilla back to his roots! Add to the fact that it's got some memorable scenes (i.e. Godzilla's introduction, his confrontation with the Super-x) makes this one a good if somewhat slow movie. If there's one thing i don't like about this movie is the end credits song in the japanese version. The song that plays in the end credits is too happy and light-hearted for such a dark and gloomy Godzilla movie. In fact that song sounds like it belongs in a goofy Godzilla movie considering that song sounds too happy and lighthearted! That said not a bad movie.
ReplyDeleteGodzilla's back as a terrifying monster instead of a goofy kid's hero! That said i think this movie could've been better considering that it was somewhat slow-paced and not much happens. Other than that not a bad movie and a perfect start to the heisei series!
ReplyDeleteI don't know if you are aware of this, but did you hear that teruyoshi nakano passed away on june 27th, 2022 from sepsis at the age of 86?
ReplyDeleteI knew he'd died recently but I didn't know it was last year, and not too long before G-Fest, which I was at.
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