or Destroyah, or Destoroyah, or Desutoroia, or however the hell you want to spell it

• Directed by Takao Okawara
• Written by Kazuki Omori
• Starring
  • Tatsumi Takuro
  • Yoko Ishino
  • Yasufumi Hayashi
  • Kenpachiro Satsuma

Remember the episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where they killed off Tasha Yar? The character had been severely underused (even more so than all the others in the first season), and Denise Crosby wanted out of the role, so they killed her off violently. Sadly enough, they spent more time in character development in that one episode (so as to make it more tragic when she died, see) than they had throughout the entire season; for the first time, right before she died, she actually showed signs of getting interesting.

Godzilla vs. Destroyah is much like that, but infinitely cooler than stupid Tasha Yar.

We get down to business immediately after the curtain rises, as Godzilla rises out of the water to menace — Hong Kong?! Seems that Godzilla finally decided to go out for some Chinese. (What! What! Like you’ve never told a tasteless joke?) But this is not the same old Godzilla; his body shows red-hot patches, an the water steams as he exits and enters.

Since Godzilla always ends up in Japan no matter where he starts, the Japanese hurriedly have a Godzilla Summit Meeting, in which it is revealed, via a scrambled transmission from the States, that a Japanese college student has released on the Internet a study of Godzilla’s physiology that appears dead-on, from the current proceedings: That Godzilla’s heart is actually a fission reactor, and it’s running out of control, due to uranium contained in a volcanic eruption on the island he was frequenting. (An aside here about “scrambling” that message: Why the secrecy? It’s no secret that Godzilla levelled Hong Kong; it’s also not a big leap that a huge radioactive lizard who sprays irradiated beams from his mouth has a reactor inside. Sources say that the “scrambling” line was a change in the translated script; in the original, the Japanese characters were simply listening to a translation of the American commentator on-screen.)

And who is this young whiz kid? He’s Kenkichi Yamane, and he’s the son of Professor Yamane’s adopted son. Who’s Professor Yamane? Oh ye of short memory, he’s the professor from the original 1954 Godzilla. You remember, the one with the grey hair who stood at the front of the room while Raymond Burr stood in front of a blank wall and tried to look like he was in attendance. Kenkichi’s been doing Godzilla since he was in diapers, and he thinks he’s the world expert. (He’s a little old to automatically receive the deference usually paid a Kenny, but these are trying times.)

Meanwhile, Kenkichi’s newscaster sister Yukari interviews a Dr. Ijuin, a brilliant young scientist who’s discovered “micro-oxygen,” which has really tiny atoms. (At this point, I must insist: If you know more about chemistry, physics, or any other avenue of science than your average slice of toast, you must check this knowledge at the door. Honest. Or you’ll spend the next ninety minutes shouting, “What?!?” at every scientific pronouncement on the screen.) Perhaps, though, I should say “re-discovered,” as Ijuin’s research has been inspired by none other than the late Dr. Serazawa, the eye-patched scientist from the original movie who created the oxygen destroyer that did Godzilla in. (Are we sensing a pattern here?) Footage from the original movie is skillfully included, to bring the youngsters up to speed.

To round out the reunion, Emiko Yamane (Momoko Kouchi) also shows up. Remember her from the original? She was the Professor’s daughter, torn between the young heroic type and creepy Serazawa.

Anyway. As fortune would have it, workers in a tunnel on land reclaimed from Tokyo Bay discover the hard way that some prehistoric organisms in the soil, microbes predating the release of oxygen on land, were revived and mutated by the original oxygen destroyer (since this land was the part of Tokyo Bay in which Godzilla was originally dispatched). Basically, these critters are live oxygen destroyers — a fact they demonstrate by escaping into a nearby aquarium and dissolving the fish.

Godzilla, meanwhile, is still creating havoc, and Kenkichi is apparently the only one who can discover the real danger: Godzilla is heading for an internal nuclear explosion, one with enough power to ignite the atmosphere and scorch the entire earth. And to top it off, they can’t risk using conventional weapons on him, for fear of setting him off. (”Dang — we’ll have to find some new and inventive weapon to impact harmlessly on his skin!”) And I swear, if Kenkichi says “nook-yuh-lur” one more time…

Naturally, to keep our heroes divided, we’ve got more problems that just Godzilla: The oxygen destroyers have grown to roughly elephant size, and are roaming a construction zone. I’ll go out on a limb and say these are the most visually intriguing creatures Godzilla has ever fought. With their crablike legs and bizarrely-flared heads on extensible necks, they’re very alien and positively Lovecraftian (an impression reinforced by the fact that I just finished re-reading “The Whisperer in Darkness”).

What follows is almost a tribute to Aliens, as a SWAT team crawls through the building, beset upon by critters that don’t respond as desired to gunfire. (To make sure the comparison doesn’t escape us, the uglies have tongues with fanged mouths on the ends.) Naturally, newsgirl Yukari gets herself trapped in the middle of it, only to be saved by Dr. Ijuin.

Hey, have I mentioned jug-eared Miki yet? Thank goodness her hair’s grown back from the rotten ‘do she had in Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla, but other than that she’s still Counter G’s ineffectual psychic girl; her current project is discovering the whereabouts of “the little one,” i.e., the juvenile godzillasaur that’s been hanging around with Godzilla for the past couple of movies. She finally discovers him, and he’s no longer a Pokemon-like butterball; no, he’s right in the middle of those awkward teenaged years, with a neck and nose that he’s yet to grow into. Apparently, he’s just wandering around the shorelines, and Godzilla’s following him.

The military comes up with a novel solution: Freeze Godzilla before he can expode! They try, with all manner of freezing lasers (don’t even try to explain that one), but the best it can do is ice him for about six hours; his reactor’s just too out of control for more.

Then, of course, the brainstorm: What if the Oxygen Destroyers fought Godzilla? Since the original oxygen destroyer did in the original Godzilla — Great Scott, it just might work! (By the way, mention is indeed made here of the creature in the original Godzilla being “the first one,” implying that the monster in later continuity is a separate beast entirely. Of course, we already knew this from the second and least-seen Godzilla film, Gigantis the Fire Monster — but then, the new heisei continuity supposedly leaves behind everything between the original and Godzilla 1985. And what does this do to the origins of Godzilla expounded in Godzilla vs. King Ghidora? My head hurts.) And how do we get Godzilla to come to Tokyo and fight the Destroyers? By having Miki and her apprentice psychic girl telepathically directed Godzilla Jr. to the area, of course.

I think you can see where this is going…

For the climactic battle, the multiple Destroyers combine into a single aggregate Destroyer (or Destroyah or etc.), somewhat disappointingly played by a man in a suit. However, this is a big monster, shown to be about four times the mass of Godzilla himself. And we get a wonderful three-way bout, showcasing a Godzilla far more savage and destructive than in the past.

As is no secret, Godzilla dies in this one; but the government plan involves firing their freezing weapons at him just as he reaches meltdown, thus keeping the chain reaction from destroying the earth. (I also think it’s no secret that Destroyer isn’t coming back for any sequels either.) Godzilla Jr., however, is left alive, which gives a perfect avenue for connecting this continuity (loosely so labeled) to Godzilla 2000 if one postulates that the youngster matured and stepped into his adoptive father’s shoes in the intervening five years.

All in all, this is one of the best Godzilla outings ever, rivalled perhaps only by Godzilla vs. King Ghidora. The action scenes are more than just casually destructive, and Godzilla is very distinctly portrayed as a beast losing control of himself. Given the finality of the situation, the filmmakers allowed themselves to break from the episodic mold and give us a tale which actually has repercussions — both the projected ones which don’t come to pass (the obliteration of all life on earth), and the actual one (Tokyo is declared in the conclusion to be “a ghost town” — certainly a reasonable outcome of having a huge radioactive monster melt down in the middle of downtown).

There are many of the standard flaws — military brass whose main qualification seems to be the restatement of the obvious, a genius kid who needs a good boot to the head, and too damned much time spent with Miki without her doing much of consequence — but it’s still a fitting capstone to a wildly uneven but enjoyable series and franchise.

In fact, it was so good, is it any wonder that they had to bring him back from the cinematic grave by any means necessary? Just like in the Star Trek universe, there’s no such thing as a permanent death.

Some Notable Quotables:

“I’m not a mad scientist!”

- Dr. Ijuin, repeatedly (yeah, sure)

“I can’t believe it — now we’ve got two monsters!”

- some military yahoo (what, like you ever have fewer
than two kaiju at a time?)

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 6 (plus the standard invisible casualties, including a large swath of the Hong Kong waterfront)
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 116
• dream sequences: 1
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0