since June 16, 1999.
Welcome to the Monster Mania, where we'll review the exploits of some of the world's best-known monster movies.
This review does not represent the opinions of the general public. It reflects my personal thoughts and opinions on the movie.
That said, on to the review!
A terrible storm devastates a coastal industrial construction site, but it has a second, more unexpected effect on Japan: it brings a giant egg floating to its shores. No one knows where it came from, no one knows who it rightfully belongs to, but sharp entrepreneurs step forward to take advantage of it as best they may. For the newspaper reporters sent to cover both the devastated construction site and the appearance of the giant egg, the entrepreneurs cause no end of trouble, especially when the real owners of the egg--the Fairies of Mothra's Island--arrive to press their claim for the egg and are instead ignored and, moreover, treated as priceable attractions.
Then comes news that the construction site was actually the resting place--not grave, but resting place--of Godzilla, who's now awake and moving about Tokyo. In hopes of somehow stopping Godzilla, the reporters fly to Mothra's Island to beg the Thing for help, but not really expecting it after the way the Fairies were treated. The Fairies refuse at first, but Mothra herself agrees to assist. But Mothra is old and is actually waiting in the temple to die. If she flies out to do battle with Godzilla, she will never return. The reporters are in a quandry now: Mothra is possibly the only thing in the world capable of stopping Godzilla's rampage, but will she be strong enough to do it?
This isn't the first movie where humans depended one monster for assistance against another: King Kong vs. Godzilla holds that honor. It is, however, the first one where the human race actually calls upon another monster. I suppose it might also count as a monster team-up (yeah, I know I said otherwise in the Ghidrah review) but I prefer to think that it is actually the three Mothras--one dying adult and two recently hatched larvae--are actually somehow the same being. Don't ask me to refine this, because I can't exactly explain. Just take my word for it.
As far as favorite scenes go, I'd have to say that one of them was when, after dissension in the ranks, one of the entrepreneurs winds up on the floor of his hotel room and looks out the window to see Godzilla looming larger and larger as he draws closer and closer. The scene is really effective, because now everyone sees--especially the entrepreneur--that there are more important things to worry about than making money. Of course, the entrepreneur doesn't agree and he tries to take his money with him. Fortunately, Godzilla is an equal opportunity destroyer, killing the rich and the poor alike.
One other scene that especially sticks is when Mothra (the adult) shows up to battle Godzilla. Up until that point I had a difficult time with the scale, especially when comparing the original Mothra with this dying one. I hadn't realized she was so large, but you can see--plainly see--how much large she is. And I'm not talking how big her wings make her. She looms over Godzilla, her body at least as wide and as long as his (not counting the tail). And the wings just make her that much larger. Of course, after their big battle something happened to the scale again because it looked like Godzilla was somehow larger when he went to stomp on Mothra. I don't know why that happened, but it did, more's the pity.
Now, you got to see Godzilla die (yeah, right) in his debut movie. Likewise, Varan and Rodan. No explanation was ever given for how those movie monsters made it back from the dead. This time, however, we get to see how the cycle of life goes on. In Mothra we saw the egg hatch, the larva spin its cocoon, and the moth emerge. Now we get to see the moth die, the egg hatch, and the larvae emerge. This "continuity"--I'm not sure that's the right word--makes Mothra one of the best daikaiju because it doesn't rely on miracle resurrections to appear in new movies. Of the original movies, only Son of Godzilla comes close to offering anything similar.
Mothra--one of them anyway, no one ever explained what happened to the other one--won't return until Ghidrah, the Three-Headed Monster, but watch for it to put on a repeat performance of what it did to Godzilla in this film, and all by itself, too!
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