Godzila: The planet eater review
So yeah, I watched the final installment of the Godzilla anime movie trilogy and really I didn’t find it all that bad. This is going to be an honest review of this movie and not just ranting I HATE IT BECAUSE IT AS NO KAIJU FIGHT SCENES! BAWWWW!
Also, will contain spoilers!
I knew before watching this movie that is was not going to be your typical Godzilla movie with the typical Godzilla movie elements in it, so I was not expecting any of that. This movie is a little better than the previous two as there is a little more focus on what this story is supposed to be about, a little more character development and while there is not much kaiju fighting, there are more dramatic scenes. This movie is where king ghidorah shows up and this movie’s interpretation of him is vastly different from how he is portrayed in other Godzilla movies and I kind of like it that way, mostly because I’m a Godzilla fan that is actually open to new things, shocker! Anyway, this interpretation of king ghidorah is that he is some lovecraftian hellspawn kaiju from another dimension that devours entire planets and that alien race in this movie see him as a some kind of divine god of destruction and willing to serve and sacrifice themselves to its will. Also that king ghidorah is so far removed from the main reality that he can wrap the laws of physics to his will. The only thing disappointing about king ghidorah appearance is that we never see his full form; we just see a black silhouette of his form and his 3 heads coming out of black hole portals. It would of nice we got to see his full form even for a brief moment. For those looking forward to mothra though might be really disappointed because all you see of her a silhouette of a quick fly by when haruo is trapped in a nightmarish dreamscape by metphies.
The main characters in this movie are a little better, but not by much. At first I really did not like haruo because he seemed like that angsty character who is solely determined to get revenge on Godzilla. But by the second movie he starts to realize how foolhardy his plan to destroy Godzilla was and that he was losing his own humanity in the process. So by the third movie he has pretty much given up on his quest to destroy Godzilla and metphies tells him that the only hope remaining in defeating Godzilla is by calling upon their god, king ghidorah. Of course, haruo thinks his plan is insane and wants nothing to do with it and ultimately towards the end stops metphies plans of king ghidorah destroying the earth. By the end of the movie haruo realizes he was his own prolonged hatred towards Godzilla is what brought king ghidorah to earth in the first place and that he must end the cycle of revenge and destruction by sacrificing himself to Godzilla. As for metphies, by the first movie it seemed like this supportive character that supported all of haruo’s decisions and be a person for advice and guidance when haruo needed it, but all of that just turned out to be part of a plan to bring king ghidorah to earth as haruo being a key part in that plan. Matter of fact in the end you find out metphies entire race of people are nothing but backstabbers and their whole plan to help the humans defeat Godzilla was just so they could get humans to blindly worship their god and be willing to sacrifice themselves and earth to king ghidorah. The other characters in the movie don’t really do much besides just being there to be part of the plot which is kind of shame because there could have been room for more character development. Even the mothra twins don’t do much, one of them as sex with haruo and gets pregnant, one of them finds out about metphies true plans and one of them tries to call upon mothra and that’s about it.
Now I will admit this movie does get too philosophical and preachy at points, like when metphies traps haruo’s mind is a nightmarish dreamscape and explains to him that his race of people discovered that the universe is not eternal and that the universe is just destined for destruction which pushes them towards a nihilistic ways of thinking, believing that ultimately everything you do in this life is pointless and that if your existence is nothing but pain and suffering, it’s best just to end it. And they sought out king ghidorah as their divine god to embrace that destruction. It even goes further on to say that humanity’s progress will eventually lead to its own destruction and that desire for progress lead to Godzilla being created and eventually king ghidorah showing up and also that haruo’s own hatred towards Godzilla is what brought king ghidorah to earth and keeping him rooted to this reality. So yeah, a tone of stuff to take in from one movie.
The ending is kind of disappointing because it’s kind of open ended and not much gets accomplished at the end. Haruo figures if humanity continue on the path of progress again with technology the king ghidorah will just come back to destroy the earth again. So he sacrifices himself by taking the last remaining flying mech robot and flying it straight into Godzilla. Did Godzilla finally get destroyed? Will humanity finally reclaim the earth with the people that are remaining? None of those questions are really answered. Plus it feels like a unfulfilling story, haruo and the rest of the crew on the spaceship never succeed in destroying Godzilla and never succeed in reclaiming earth as their home again. So it kind of made me think what was the point of all that? Maybe the sole message from this movie was no what humanity does in the way of progress and innovation nature will always win out or that will be humanity own demise? I don’t know, maybe I’m looking too deep into this. So in conclusion, I think this movie was just okay for what is it and for what is was trying to do and can at least give it some credit for trying something different with a well-known franchise.
As for this movie series as a whole, it was really a mixed bag for me, I didn’t like the first one because I thought there was too much exposition on the plot of the story and not enough character development, the characters felt like clichéd two dimensional personalities. Plus the idea of throwing in a red herring at the last minute of the godzilla they destroyed was not the true Godzilla felt forced. And with the second movie, yeah I was pretty disappointed there was this build up towards mechagozilla and yet mechagodzilla never fights Godzilla. By the second movie, the characters do get some more development, but not by much. So really, the third movie is probably the best out of the three, but again not by much. At least this movie had a bit more dramatic scenes then the previous two movies and you got what you expected from it. Overall, while I do admire these movies for trying something experimental and different with the franchise, but perhaps it was a little too different for godzilla fans to handle and I can see why for those looking for the typical Godzilla movie would hate these movies.
