Kaiju Varan The sister of one of the dead, along with another of her rather cowardly brother, goes to find out what happened. In this they are helped by the main character of the film - a young scientist Kenji (Kozo Nomura, who will later appear more than once in kaiju films), who took leave of his mentor.
The monster will appear from the lake in the twenty-first minute, Varan, like Godzilla in his solo album, will not take long to wait. What's more, they're both giant lizards, and in general, Varana's roar is Godzilla's slightly processed roar. The Tohos clearly started exploiting the first film to somehow end this one, saving on different things. But Varan is presented as a four-legged monster, albeit rising at the right time on his hind legs. He does not have any atomic breath, but he knows how to soar and fly, however, this is not particularly disclosed, although the water from the scenes is hinted openly through a roar in the air, from the sky.
The monster has an excellent costume that allows him to be remembered against the background of many other monsters. He is at the same time and in some ways similar and does not look like the classic Godzilla, but very much resembles Godzi from Godzilla vs. King Kong - as if there was a redesigned suit Varana and used. In the scene with the village it seems that he is not so much destroying everything around as swirling in the frame, allowing you to see yourself from all sides. The monster is covered with a kind of shell and a number of sharp spikes, and its skin is, of course, not able to penetrate all modern weapons.
Honda is true to himself and shoots a lot of real military equipment. Moreover, here even miniatures of tanks, shot in incredibly successful lower angles, would look realistic if they did not stick out toy models of soldiers. In the rest, everything is done perfectly - the huts of the destroyed village and the city buildings in the end - everything is done in detail and in the highest category.
But Honda shoots not only about the monster, but also about people. Having again assembled a beautiful cast, where the bomb expert is played, for example, by Akihiko Hirata himself (Seridzawa from Godzilla, a participant of not a small number of Toho kaiju projects), and many participants in the filmography have a number of representatives of the genre of giant monsters, the director even at the early and frequent appearance of the monster shows us interesting characters.
A distinctive feature of this film from previous ones is the presence of humor. “Godzilla” and “Radon” were basically horror films, “Godzilla Attacks Again” and “Mysterians” – serious fantastic action films without a bit of self-irony. “Varan” is not a comedy, but it has this irony. The dialogue of the film itself rarely, but accurately, give out great jokes, and even some scenes, like an episode with fishermen saying “we are losers” in the absence of productive fishing just before the monster appeared next to them – well, they simply cannot but cause an approving smile.
The film has no problems with the script, the characters, or their communication. Each hero is decorated with a number of spectacular bright features, where a cowardly butterfly hunter or a depressed desperate professor stands out. However, the drama, as such, the film is almost devoid of drama. It’s more of a blockbuster entertainment, eating popcorn as another “gromazilla” is going to turn Tokyo into ruins. But this does not play the film in the negative, it is brilliantly good exactly as a simple kaiju-muvik, which can be watched with pleasure again and again.
Ishiro Honda at the same time serves on the screen a large number of spectacular and memorable scenes. "Varan" remains in the heart after watching, you remember the first awakening in the lake, and the episode in the plane, and the moment with a military ship, submarine bombardment, as well as the little that was good "Godzilla attacks again" - the view of flying around the monster from the 1st person of aerial military equipment - fighter aircraft.
However, with all the abundance of military equipment and even personnel, where people shoot from cannons, the film lacks exactly mashups with a monster and people on a single scale. In most cases, the monster is compared to the size of buildings or cars, but there are no running crowds against the background of the monster and something like that – there is simply no.
But at least not a few episodes of Varan’s interaction with a variety of objects. Including even swallowing sparkling missiles for reasons that are not entirely clear. This, in fact, becomes his Achilles heel. Invented powerful bomb detonates successfully, being only inside - for testing it, for example, buried in the rocks.
Even if there is no atmosphere of chaos, horror, inevitability, which reigned in Godzilla, there is no sense of the danger and tension from Radon, in Varan there is still a soul invested by the authors - the film is alive, high-quality and interesting. In terms of plot development, it even surpasses the concept of Godzilla, where the final act took place under water after the climax with the invasion of the city.
Akira Ifukube wrote wonderful music, giving the film the proper mood in all scenes. It is thanks to the lyrical notes that you can feel pity for the defeated monster, who first took all the food in the lake, destroying the fish, and then, when he came to revenge on humanity, killed him.
Maybe Ishiro Honda’s film isn’t as superficial as the previous ones. He may not be talking about war, the arms race, environmental disasters and the hydrogen bomb, but he is talking about the cruelty of human nature. A peaceful research mission for butterflies turns to the poison of the lake, the destruction of the indigenous village and the destruction of a prehistoric lizard, which, as the paleontologist said in the cult Godzilla, should not be killed, but studied.
Varan lived himself, was someone’s god, did not particularly touch anyone (otherwise the villagers would have left those places long ago). Some scientists came, died, and more came: they destroyed the entire ecological environment around them, angered the monster, which they themselves proudly and triumphantly blew up. The film is clearly not, for some time, about the power and potential of Japanese weapons. You should think about it if you really want to. In any case, “Varan” is an incredibly cool movie and a bright representative of the Kaiju genre! Tandem Tanaka-Honda-Ifukube based on the creativity of talented screenwriters again made a great film!
8 out of 10
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