There's a certain amount of attraction to trying to successfully pull something off three times in a row. Let it ride, third time is the charm... even a non-gambler like me can see the thrill that would come from defying the odds and getting a win three consecutive times. It's that sort of mind-set that seems to have propelled -and ultimately doomed- Godzilla, Mothra, Mechagodzilla: Tokyo SOS.
Note: While Godzilla, Mothra, Mechagodzilla: Tokyo SOS is a terrific title I'm going to refer to the movie as GMM for the rest of the review for the sake of brevity.
The plot of MMG is... oh bother, I can't remember and I didn't take any notes while watching. There's something about Mothra wanting the help of Yoshito Chujo [Noboru Kaneko], his father Doctor Shinichi Chujo [Hiroshi Koizumi] and some kid they were both related to somehow [played by some kid.] Y'see, the spirit of the original Godzilla inhabits the current Mechagodzilla [which was christened Kiryu] and that shift in the natural order of things is going to eventually cause problems. It seems that the Chujo family was chosen for this request because Dr. Chujo met Mothra back in the original Mothra film and Yoshito works as a mechanic on Kiryu. The Mothra Twins must have thought they had a pretty good lead but Dr.Chujo's attempts to get the Kiryu program stopped fall on deaf ears while Yoshito spends most of the film getting picked on by his co-workers. Once again the faith that Mothra and the twins put in humans is miserably let down.
Part of my problem with the movie is that I didn't like the main characters. Dr.Chujo was fine but he was hardly the focus of the story. It was kind of cool that the kid spends most of the movie hanging out with his grandfather but he's a kid in a Godzilla movie so the best he can hope for is to be barely palatable. I've enjoyed that the past few Godzilla films have featured strong female characters so going back to a blah male lead like Yoshito is a disappointent. I guess I'm more interested in women than some guy who spends half the movie running around carrying a tool kit.
GMM is a direct sequel to Godzilla x Mechagodzilla but I have no idea why. Were there that many unresolved issues from GxM that it demanded a sequel? I liked GxM but this comes across as overkill. GMM could also be considered a tribute to Mosura tai Gojira [Godzilla vs. the Thing, Mothra vs. Godzilla Godzilla Fights the Giant Moth]. Well, it's either a tribute to MvsG or just plain lazy film-making that compelled GMM to lift a large number of it's Mothra fights straight from MvsG. The only thing GMM features that wasn't in GxM is Mothra, and her scenes are cribbed from an even older film; this is not a recepie for success.
So Godzilla comes storming into town the way Godzilla likes to and.. okay, normally I don't discuss the ending of a movie in as much detail as I'm going to get into here. Too often on-line movie reviews can devolve into nothing more than plot summaries with occasional comments and that is something I would like to avoid if at all possible. This ending, however, left me with such a strange feeling the only way I can make sense of it all is if I spell it out. Thanks for listening to me sort through all this, I appreciate it.
So anyway Godzilla is out doing his thing and eventually gets tag teamed by two generations of Mothra [it's a good thing there's always another Mothra larva waiting to hatch since they seem to go through those bugs in a hurry] and Kiryu. Godzilla's heart just wasn't in the fight or something because he ends up getting beaten badly. Normally portrayed in a manner that lives up to his billing as "King of the Monsters" Godzilla ends up getting cocooned by Mothra and tumbling inert to the ground. Nothing sucks the tension and excitment out of a Godzilla movie like having Godzilla lay there like a sack of potatoes.
At this point Kiryu decides it would be a dandy time to go berserk again. As if having a missle toting cyborg built out of an old Godzilla running loose isn't bad enough, Yoshito is trapped inside of Kiryu. It's at this point that Godzilla gets his second wind and, in an explosive burst of power, smashes through... no, wait, he's still laying there like a slug. I'm not sure what Mothra was going to do at this point but she was just a big larvae at that point and larvae don't really do much no matter what their size.
Kiryu picks up the still listless Godzilla and flies off, heading for the ocean. En route to the deep blue sea he manages to send a good-bye message to Yoshito and flings the mechanic out of the area he was working in and into the relative safety of the rest of his crew who were flying nearby. That accomplished, Kiryu and the zonked Godzilla rocket into the drink and sink to the ocean's bottom. It's a bizzare ending for a Godzilla movie, or any movie for that matter. The image of the two monsters sinking into the depths looks like some sort of weird double suicide of a pair of distraught lovers who chuck themselves into the ocean so they can be together in death since they can't be in life. Is the ending supposed to make us feel sympathy for Kiryu's plight at finding only one solution for his split loyalties? Was the ending supposed to show the love that can only exist between a robotic monster and his mechanic? I don't know, but it makes for an ending that is inexplicable and ridiculous- and not in a good way.
Truth is, it's been forever and a day since I decided I would review this movie and when I actually got around to writing the fool thing. If GMM had brought something new to the screen or at least had presented it's borrowed material in a way that felt like they were fond tributes instead of direct reproductions I might have enjoyed the film more. It's a real shame since I enjoyed the previous two Godzilla films by director Maski Tezuka. They were as full of energy as they were lacking in common sense, which seems like a fine mix if you are making a movie featuring giant monsters. With GMM, however, something went wrong. GMM ends up being the cinematic equivalent of leftovers; it was good the first time and there's nothing inherently wrong with it other than being a bit reheated but, man, you just don't want to eat it again.
Questions, comments, and discussion about movies that don't feature Godzilla fighting Mechagodzilla yet again can be sent to Main or Review page.