Godzilla is back! After the end of the Shova era, on the anniversary of Godzilla to 1984, Toho decided to throw all thirty years of the monster’s history on film screens, starting a new era and shooting a sequel to the first picture. At the same time, the film tries to repeat it in many ways. Not under the blueprint and not even by the characters of the story, but by the general spirit and concept.
It all starts with accidents at sea. Volcanic activity awakens a dormant evil creature, and sailors are attacked by giant fleas that cover the decks with bloodless corpses. The picture returns to the horror genre as atmospheric as never before.
Waiting for the first appearance of the monster on the screen has more than half an hour, while the frame scares with a terrible look of corpses, aggressive insects-parasites and escalates increasing tension before the coming panic. But how spectacular is Godzilla's exit from the fog and his first attack!
The more surprising that the film director Hashimoto shot before this only the fiction “Goodbye, Jupiter” – the last role of the great Akihiko Hirata, who was supposed to play in this film, but died of cancer in the same 1984. Ishiro Honda refused the offer of directing, being busy assistant to Akira Kurosawa, and composer Akira Ifukube was outraged by the increased size of the monster from 50 to 80 meters and refused to write music for the picture.
The composer was Reijiro Koroku, who, I must say, brilliantly coped with his task, skillfully combining formidable and pathos melodies with the signature electronic beat of the 80s, and under the final credits even inserted the cult masterpiece “Goodbye Godzilla” from The Star Sisters.
Godzilla himself here fully returned to the gloomy and evil appearance, representing a punishment to humanity and a kind of symbolic natural disaster, the consequences of atomic tests and at the same time the embodiment of the horrors of war, because the main theme of the film is the confrontation between the USSR and the United States, which even selfishly compete for the right to launch a nuclear strike on Japan.
Teriyoshi Nakano took up special effects again, but this time he finally succeeded. Thanks to the redesign of the monster by Noboyuki Yashimaru, a magnificent and naturalistic image of the atomic lizard was created, with a mobile facial expression of the face, moving eyes, terrible teeth and sharp claws. Godzilla no longer resembled a rubber suit, but appeared as a monster in which you believe with all your heart.
The growth of the lizard was increased due to the overgrown Tokyo skyscrapers. Fifty-meter monster would look on the streets of the metropolis of the eighties is not so formidable. So now the Monster King is 80 meters tall, and that doesn't make him taller than all the buildings.
But the city is just perfect. It is impossible not to believe in a giant monster walking through the streets, seeing a high-quality study of all details - this applies to military equipment, which no longer looks like models and miniaturks, and the thorough detailing of all buildings, including in the process of their destruction - stones, glass, all the smallest elements are made with hurrah.
The film makes a huge homage to the first film in the scene with the train, but does not fixate on the repetition of all the brightest scenes – there will be no melting power plants under atomic breath, no episode with the tower, no scenes with bridges – all of them are completely new, but no less memorable.
Godzilla was finally given a craving for radiation. What the monster has always lacked is the added motivation to ravage Japan’s cities. Yes, it is like an unstoppable tornado, yes – a metaphor for the nuclear bomb, warfare, human hatred and the harmful effects of radiation on nature. But this time, Godzilla was given a goal, and not just a walk that turned Tokyo into ruins.
The monster absorbs radiation, pulls out nuclear reactors, feeds on energy, again attracts and absorbs lightning discharges after the explosion of two warheads in the air - in this you can even see echoes of the positive image of Godzilla, he is now not just a punishment, but also a kind of natural keeper, forbidding people to use nuclear energy. Not from “heroic” motives, of course, but such a multifaceted interpretation of the image of the monster came out the most integral and impressive.
The head, equipped with chic animatronics, seems to live in the frame with its own life - even the inner part of the mouth is worked out, including saliva. There are episodes of Godzilla's breathing, completely natural tail movements, no fishing lines and cables, a monster as alive! Unless the eyes themselves are not the most believable of the images of Haysey and Millennium, but they are still perfectly made!
The film amazes with its special effects at every step, whether it is the movements of the monster, the destruction he caused or even lasers. It was originally planned that Godzilla would fight another monster, but then limited only to the confrontation of the atomic lizard with the technique of Super-X - an aircraft in the spirit of a submarine or a tank equipped with the latest technology. Lasers, explosions, atomic beam - all light effects are made to the highest level!
Godzilla’s sequel reboot is a chain of serious government meetings that address a variety of issues – whether to announce the existence of the monster in the press even before Godzilla appeared off the city coast, evacuation plans, the use of weapons, and the idea of using magnetic fields that migratory birds navigate to force Godzilla to fall into a volcano.
Moreover, the professor, one of the main characters of the film, is convinced that it is unlikely to destroy the monster, repeatedly repeating the phrase “Godzilla cannot die” as the film progresses. Instead of the classic trinity on the screen, there are usually four key characters - a journalist, a military man, his sister and, in fact, a scientist.
The characters came out good and quite bright, except that the love line looks rather strained, and in general the director is more puzzled by the presentation of the action and the serious political component of the scenes and meetings than by the attention to the disclosure of the main characters of the tape.
The Americans specifically changed the film, releasing under the title "Godzilla 1985", removing and reducing a bunch of scenes, supplementing with their gatherings and radically remaking the episode with the Russian colonel - in the Japanese original version he tries to stop the launch of a nuclear missile, in the American, of course, specifically launches it by pressing a button. And also brought back the fattened Raymond Burr.
The harsh atmosphere of the picture does not interfere even with ironic scenes with a homeless man hanging around empty restaurants. It is rather an evil irony, demonstrating human nature. It could have been taken more crudely - with raids by looters on shops and all the like, but they cost funny notes somehow discharging the general gloomy tone.
Impressive extras, episodes with military and all kinds of equipment, for the first time in Kaiju films a truly believable moment with a ship, mashups with people and scenes of panic, evacuation, people against the background of an impending monster - all this is done wonderfully.
"Godzilla Returns" 1984 leaves behind a lot of bright positive impressions. The film has petty flaws and you can make a number of controversial faults, but the presentation of the material and its quality are simply colossal! The most outstanding and masterpiece era in the history of the Monster King's cinematic procession on screens began. Welcome back, Godzilla! Long live Haysay!
9 out of 10
Original