Godzilla Final Wars: First Thoughts

Even the digital magic of DVD hasn't much changed the fuzzy nature of advance bootleg screeners -- instead of peering through fuzzy VHS degradation, I was trying to penetrate blocky MPEG compression. The more things change, the more they stay the same, right?

Godzilla: Final Wars, the "last" in the fifty-year series of Godzilla movies (how many times has Godzilla "retired" now?) is directed by Ryuhei Kitamura, auteur of high-octane wire-fu films like Versus, Azumi, and Alive. Final Wars is exactly how you'd expect a Godzilla film directed by Kitamura to be: gritty, clad in black latex, and filled with monochrome cinematography. The plot isn't difficult to decipher, even without a translation from the Japanese, though it does help that one prominent character speaks exclusively in English. Aliens invade Earth and, as promised by the producers, use (almost) the entire menagerie of past villains from Toho's monster library to trash its cities.

The monster scenes are well done, though I was a bit surprised to see that Godzilla has picked up some kung fu over the last five decades. There are perhaps a few too many scenes in which the outcome of the plot is dependent more upon the actions of the puny humans as opposed to the actions of the giant monsters. However, since people are cheaper to film than lumbering beasts and they can recite expository lines of dialogue as well, it is not all that surprising.

I don't want to say too much more for fear of spoiling the Stomp Tokyo review of the film (we'll likely end up cannibalizing some of this material for the review, I don't doubt), but I'm kind of glad they're wrapping things up now. The Godzilla franchise has, for the last few years, been ruled by a "hit director of the week" syndrome in which prominent young Japanese directors are given their shot at the Godzilla franchise regardless of their actual vision of the character. (Yes, I'm aware that there's some irony in talking about the "character" of a giant fire-breathing dinosaur, but I maintain that there are right ways and wrong ways to "do" Godzilla.) Perhaps a hiatus will allow Toho to back off for a bit and find a new generation of producers and directors to revive the giant monster franchise without slavishly conforming to whatever style is currently hot in Hollywood and Japanese action cinema.