aka Gojira vs. Mosura, aka Godzilla vs. Mothra

• Directed by Takao Okawara
• Written by Kazuki Omori
• Starring:
• • Tetsuya Bessho
    Satomi Kobayashi
    Takehiro MurataMegumi Odaka
    Kenpachiro Satsuma

In gearing up for the U.S. release of Godzilla 2000 this August (please let it be shown in my area, please let it be shown in my area, please let it be shown in my area), my son and I are watching a string of the 1990s Godzillas, or at least as many as we can find in the video store. We’ve already got our own copy of Godzilla vs. King Ghidora (1991), which I’ll be reviewing in the near future.

Godzilla and Mothra is the next movie in the series, and things pick up where they were left off, with Godzilla dormant in an undersea trench somewhere. What’s the best plot device to wake him up? Why, a 90-meter meteorite, of course! Not only does it get Big G up on the wrong side of the bed, but it causes tidal waves that wash over an island in Indonesia, exposing a giant egg. Bum ba ba bum…

Meanwhile, Indiana Jones wanna-be Takuya (Tetsuya Bessho) is doing that whole Raiders thing in an Indonesian temple, trying to get out with a gold figurine while the temple ingeniously collapses around him (or, as is common in these movies, right behind him). He stumbles right into the arms of the Indonesian army (or police, or whoever it is that wears uniforms and points guns in Indonesia) and into a waiting jail cell, where he is found by Mr. Tsuchiashi (Akiji Kobayashi), the distinguished looking government guy from GvKG. (A side note: Granted, Kobayashi lets his face get away from him when expressing dismay, but that’s no excuse for the dubber playing him like an elderly version of Shaggy.) Tsuchiashi has two people with him: Mr. Ando (Takehiro Murata, who went on to play different roles in two more Godzilla films), a young exec for the Maritomo Company, which has leased the mysterious island from Indonesia and is exploiting it in concert with the Japanese government; and Masako, the requisite spunky girl, whose position in government is unclear but whose plot necessity is: she’s Takuya’s ex-wife.

The deal is that Takuya can get out of jail free if he leads the mini-expedition (with Ando and Masako) to the island to check out the big round thing showing up on their satellite pictures. (They have to pull to get a felon released in a foreign country, but they can’t afford actual field personnel? I mean, Ando wears his business suit on the jungle hike!) He reluctantly agrees, and presto! They’re on the boat.

I should mention here that Tsuchiashi goes back to Tokyo and spends most of the rest of the movie in the headquarters of the National Environmental Planning Bureau (now there’s an overreaching government agency), staring at computer screens showing the action and basically, in tandem with another couple of government types, filling in for Raymond Burr. While sounding like Shaggy. Grrr…

The threesome reaches the island, slogs through the jungle, sees the terrible destruction waged by the Maritomo Company (I can’t be sure, but it might be strip-mining that they’re engaged in), crosses the requisite Acme Log Bridge which breaks with them in the middle, find some cave paintings depicting two mothlike creatures in conflict, and finally get to the giant egg — thereupon exclaiming, “It’s a giant egg!” That’s right, it’s hard-shelled like a chicken’s egg, and shaped like a chicken’s egg. Aside from the pastelly pattern on the outside, it could be a giant chicken egg. No, we have not just ventured into a Carnosaur movie…

… We can tell, because we also meet the two requisite Teeny-Weeny Girls. The eight-inch-tall duo introduce themselves as the Cosmos, some sort of environmental guardians who took over from a Cosmos called Mothra thousands of years ago, created by the Earth itself (shades of Gaia). It’s about to get a little convoluted, so hang on: Twelve thousand years ago, a human civilization created a climate controlling system which pissed the Earth off, and she created Battra, a big black flying bug (sort of Mothra’s darker alterego) to wipe out that civilization. Then Mothra defeated Battra, and apparently both (or their eggs) have been dormant ever since.

Naturally, now that Mothra’s egg has been uncovered, the larval Battra comes back too — and it’s just so unfortunate that the city of Nagoya lies directly in its path. You can fill in what happens here: Fighter planes fire ineffectively, crowds of Japanese extra evacuate the city (if you look close, you’ll be surprised by how many of them are smiling), and the mean-ass caterpillar crunches a bunch of buildings before burrowing and disappearing.

Meanwhile, the Moritomo Company has arranged for the Mothra egg to be transported back to the mainland, where it can hopefully be preserved and kept from hatching. The Cosmos come along for the ride, and thus get to see (it’s about damned time) Godzilla rise from the sea and attack the boat because, you know, it’s there. (I note that the whites of Godzilla’s eyes have gone back to white, instead of the mean red they were after the events of Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah.) Mothra chooses this time to hatch, but all it can do is hide behind the boat and fire silk. But just when Mothra’s on its last legs, Battra comes along and joins combat with Godzilla; their bout takes them underwater (where Battra exhibits the phenomenal power of directing electrical bolts through water), and the people manage to get their boat to safety. Godzilla and Battra’s battle open a volcanic rift, so apparently they get swallowed.

Once ashore, Ando steals the Cosmos for his corporate bosses (sort of to make up for the egg hatching halfway home), who think they’ll make great company spokespersons. Despite the pleas of the National Environmental Planning Bureau types, and offers of large sums of moolah, Maritomo Co. refuses to return them. (Odd that everyone assumes implicitly that the Cosmos can be treated as chattel, rather than, I dunno, kidnapped people.) But then Takuya steals the Cosmos himself — not to return them, but to exploit them for his own gain. I’m sure that half the city of Tokyo would have traded them back and forth like Pokemon cards except for the Cosmos themselves, who start singing for Mothra to come and rescue them. (And yes, it’s the very same “Mosuraaa-ya!” riff from the original.)

Masako brings sixish-daughter Midori along, and tries to find the Cosmos with the help of Miki (Megumi Odaka), one of the NEPB types who had up until this point been part of the Raymond Burr contingent. She helpfully manifests some kind of psychic power, allowing her to home in on the Cosmos’ singing. (She’s been in every Godzilla film from Biollante through Destroyah, and I don’t recall her showing any such abilities in King Ghidorah; if she had them in Biollante, I probably don’t remember because it’s been almost ten years since I’ve watched it, and it was in Japanese with no subtitles at the time). Thus Masako, Midori, Miki, and Takuya come together in an evacuated hotel in Tokyo as Mothra comes through the sea blockade and mows a path through the city to rescue the Cosmos, and it’s only Midori’s pleading with the Cosmos that causes them to turn Mothra away. Of course, Mothra’s hit “that time of the month,” and chooses a large structure to moor itself as it weaves a cocoon.

There are signs, though, that the announcement of the deaths of Godzilla and Battra are premature. Eventually, Mothra emerges as a big fuzzy moth, complete with gold glitter raining down on the watching crowd. But it’s not alone; Battra also leaves its larval stage — and no damned cocoon here; one second, it’s an ugly caterpillar swimming, then BAM there’s a flash of light, and it’s transformed Hedora-like into a black flying thingie, which promptly meets Mothra in the skies over Yokohama and begins jousting.

Naturally, if Battra’s alive, then Godzilla is too, so he comes to the same place, and the showdown takes place around the famous ferris wheel that is a landmark of Yokohama Bay.

Without detailing the denouement, I’ll leave it right there and get to some criticisms. First, the minor annoyances:

- Too bad Mothra’s and Battra’s wings can’t fold back like real moths’.

- The National Environment Planning Bureau’s got this incredible steel-and-plexiglas control room that looks like the bridge of the Enterprise. Get real — like any environmental agency is budgeted for more than two desks and a Goodwill file cabinet!

- Somehow both the miniature sets (especially that of Nagoya) and the Godzilla costume itself are less convincing than they were in Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah.

And now, onto some major complaints:

As far as I’m concerned, Godzilla and Mothra is was a huge step backwards for the series after Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah (my favorite Big G film, for reason I shall enumerate soon in a review). While the new Godzilla series is touted as being much less goofy than the original series got, it’s only a relative assessment; by any objective standards, this is a seriously goofy-ass movie.

Perhaps my single biggest complaint is that Godzilla himself is peripheral here. The plot (such as it is) revolves around Mothra and Battra; Godzilla is shoehorned into the middle of the conflict just to give him something to do.

On top of that, the whole film is informed with a naive New Ageism that dulls the edge of the fun considerably. Not only are both Mothra and Battra manifestations of a Gaia-like Earth consciousness, but Mothra’s scenes are scored with harp-filled ambient music for that meditative feel. Mothra and Battra even come to an agreement, healing the rift between the dualism of their existence (while being covered with the glitter that Mothra somehow exudes, and I wish I were kidding).

This leads to a surface-level environmentalism in which everybody shakes their head at the problems humans have created, but no one volunteers to give up their cars. The Raymond Burr contingent, for example, goes on and on about how we’ve mucked up the planet while standing protected in a room of polished steel and processed plastic. Corporations are evil, as represented by the Maritomo Company (we first see the CEO as he drives his car to the site of a new golf course, pushing through “Save Our Trees” protesters). It simply becomes a thoughtless screed, no deeper than the “Save the Earth” song in Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster.

And to top things off, Mothra is just plain fuzzy. It’s cuddly. The cutesie influence is so profound that we’re saddled with Midori, Takuya and Masako’s little girl, who utters such lines as, “Battra, thanks for saving Mothra!” It’s not quite a descent to the level of Gamera, Friend to All Children, but it’s certainly a step down that road. (It’s interesting to note that, since this movie, there have been three Mothra movies made in Japan [two of which have had video release stateside], all aimed squarely at juveniles.)

I’m glad to say that apparently the powers that be at Toho realized the precedent they were setting, and counteracted it with harder-edged monsters in the follow-ups: Mechagodzilla, Space Godzilla, and Destroyah. No fuzzy plush critters to be seen. (All right, they did reintoduce a Godzilla Jr, but he quickly grew into a mean ugly feller himself.)

The best I can say about Godzilla and Mothra is that it’s safe for children (except for a single “shit” in the dubbed script).

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 0 (that is, none on screen, but there are battleships and fighterplanes destroyed, plus large sections of semi-evacuated Nagoya, Tokyo, and Yokohama, so you’d better assume at least a few dozen casualties)
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 90 (give or take a dozen)
• ominous thunderstorms: 1
• “homages” to Indiana Jones movies: 3
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0