Godzilla: Fiftieth Anniversary Known for his horror films, Ryuhei Kitamura made a kind of anniversary film for Toho for the fiftieth anniversary of the main kaiju. A film with an incredibly inflated budget, overloaded with characters, not giving all the glory to unfold all the abundance of monsters with which it is saturated, and even sometimes overstepping the stick with comedies and parody, while it turned out to be one of the best Godzilla films ever to see the light.
A group of screenwriters this time decided to walk through the Hollywood stamps, providing in the plot very caricatured and template characters in a conditional setting, mixing in this story and “X-Men”, and “The Matrix”, and “Star Wars”, weaving among the monsters even Zilla from Emerych, but also bowing in homage to old paintings about Godzilla, where there was an invasion of aliens, and the monster acted as the protector of the Earth.
The atomic lizard here is still not a positive character, even in the prologue it is walled up in the ice of Antarctica with the help of the cult flying submarine Atragon, aka Gotengo, equipped with a drill and all sorts of steep weapons. But saved humanity does not celebrate for long. The planet is defenseless without Godzilla, so many other monsters under the control of invading alien invaders begin to wreak havoc in all parts of the world.
There are a lot of parallel storylines in the plot. This is the story of the chromosome-M, which appeared in superhumans, which are born more and more, about the cyborg Gaigan found at the excavations, who lay underground for several thousand years, being defeated by Motra in ancient times, as well as the story of his grandfather and grandson, who found Minilla in the forest - Godzilla's son, who is in a hurry to meet his relative.
The characters are quite bright, but revealed quite conventionally and mediocrely. Despite the fact that the film has a huge timekeeping, all parallel stories go too quickly and impetuously, jumping from point to point. Talk in a minimum, even when there are no giant monsters in the frame - fights, chases and shootouts unfold on the screen.
A few clever thoughts are invested in quite simple dialogues, but the picture itself is a kind of languish under a typical Hollywood blockbuster with a typical antagonist - charismatic, shocking, spectacular, but at the same time according to tradition without a single drop of motivation and character.
There are, however, a couple of really catchy moments relating directly to the heroes and their relationships, which gives meaning to the very existence of so many micro-plots within a common, rather simple story about the Xylians, threatening the Earth meteorite Horace and Godzilla, which can stop all other monsters.
The monsters here, by the way, are just a huge number. The film clearly aimed to collect a Kaiju parade even larger than in the best Shova-era film “Destroy all monsters”. Even the fight of the Manda snake with Gothengo from Atoragon made a wonderful homage at the beginning of the picture.
All sorts of references and quotes here can not be counted, they exist side by side with parodies, humorous banter scenes and various cameos, ranging from the actors of the Kaiju films recognized by fans, ending with all sorts of athletes, singers and even the director himself in a small role.
The last time Godzilla played Tsutomu Kitagawa, dressed as a cult monster. Special effects master Eichi Assad has done a tremendous job on the appearance of the monster and modernizing all other cult monsters Toho – the costumes look great, although some monsters in the Haysay period still looked even better.
But of all the old monsters on the return to the screens, all were surpassed by a huge lobster Ebira, the fight with which is conducted by a special unit of mutants with the gene-M. The battle is exciting, diverse and simply magnificently staged. Never before in Kaiju movies has the struggle of people and monsters looked so spectacular and exciting! Usually this is after all the shootouts of military equipment with the impending impenetrable giant, Kitamura offers something radically new.
Some monsters aren't so lucky. Kumonga/Spiga is a giant spider made too archaic with its rope yellow web, but appears for the film several times. But with Hedora, the situation is more sad - the mud monster is made well, but appears on the screen of nothing, the scene cut with him can be observed at least in the final credits.
Surprisingly, even Godzilla’s most annoying and lousy enemy, cyborg Gaigan, looks really cool and believable for the first time in its existence! There's two copies. One, as mentioned above, dug out of the bowels of the Earth, and the second appears for the final fight so that we can witness an exciting two-on-two battle: Godzilla and Motra united against New Guygan with chainsaws on his feet and the mysterious Monster X, which then turns into the main stunning surprise of the picture!
As for Monster X, the only new giant monster showed itself magnificently, being one of the most serious opponents of Godzilla. Even the first fight was protracted and extremely tense, but then the transformation into something truly amazing began! And soon before the atomic lizard flaunts an epic epic epic! Kaiser-Hidora! The greatest monster ever to fight Godzilla!
Not so often, when in Kaiju pictures people really mean something, influencing the disassembly of monsters among themselves. “Final Wars” is just such a special case when Godzilla would not have coped without people, like it was in “Godzilla against the Destroyer.”
Human action watching for the most part is also very cool. The staging of fights is entertaining, and the chase on motorcycles even ends with one of the brightest scenes of the picture. Well, of course, the captain of Atragon - an American Douglas Gordon with a mustache of Comrade Stalin, an outfit of Bayson from Street Fighter and armed in anime only with a katana - is a character for centuries! Almost all of his scenes cause delight and applause.
Definitely Toho in “Final wars” decided to play a pretty fool, as a result of which mixing in the picture so much all sorts of things that it may seem confused or too crumpled. Humor and ridicule coexist here with a serious mine of wisdom about human nature and the environment. Too many characters hardly fit into pauses between protracted action scenes.
The picture is true to its own traditions of the genre. So everything that was present in large numbers in the most important and most famous representatives of the Kaiju is included here. The picture, however, is still far from the origins of the type of horror and metaphorical disaster film, making a bias towards adventure, action, fiction and even comedy, but still retaining a number of key features of such tapes. Including Godzilla's signature departure into the ocean. This time for a long time, but not forever. He'll come back, he'll always come back.
Toho made at the end of the Millennium era magnificent homage Shova-period, with all its conventions and follies, old-school charm and an abundance of old monsters, modernized, but almost unchanged. Ryuhei Kitamura’s Final Wars turned out to be spectacular, catchy and extremely memorable, becoming perhaps the second best film of the Shinsei Kaiju era after 2001’s MMC. Happy fiftieth birthday, Godzilla!
10 out of 10
Original