#megaguirus

[chernobog13]

Watch out, Godzilla!

[autoacafiles]

[chernobog13]

GODZILLA VS. MEGAGUIRUS (2000)

[digivolver1011]

[chernobog13]

Megaguirus takes flight over Tokyo!

[ask-the-toy-box]

[chernobog13]

The titular combatants face-off in Godzilla vs. Megaguirus (2000).

[jcw3-protectorate-enthusiast]

I watched Godzilla vs Megaguirus (2000). 9/10. My score was pushed higher and higher the more this movie went on, despite my misgivings. I feel like my actual letter grade would be like an 88 or an 89, but I'll round up - this is an explicitly alternate history movie where the plan to defeat Godzilla involves launching a MINIATURIZED BLACK HOLE at him from a satellite.

Spoilers follow.

This feels the most like a Showa Godzilla movie of any of the Heisei era Godzilla films. The absurd pulp science is nonstop, the anti-Godzilla task force is a more grounded (somehow) JSDF branch rather than some absurd UN organization that can casually produce mecha (not complaining about that, it's just not something the Showaverse really did).

The kaiju feel a bit less stiff in this than they did in the other Heisei movies. The human characters are largely good. Tsujimori is the coolest female character the franchise has had yet and she gets a lot to do.

She's great - I liked that she really had no idea how to respond to this kid's question at first and kind of just shood him away.

This movie is explicitly an alternate history where Godzilla has engaged in a sixty year project of anti-Japanese national humiliation. Apparently he hasn't bothered a single other country in that time.

-The enemy kaiju in this - Megaguirus - is also a welcome female kaiju - I think this franchise has like, only 3, so we'll take what we can get. When testing the MINIATURIZED BLACK HOLE, they accidentally open a portal to the prehistoric age and a giant dragonfly-dinosaur egg comes out through it and hatches. That kind of 'sure, dinosaurs in the past were supernatural' thing is so Showa-era (hi, Rodan, Varan, and Titanosaurus).

It reminds me a lot of Legion from Gamera 2 - it's this giant swarm of minions that exist to support a kaiju. Gamera 2 and GvMegaguirus kind of illustrate one way to take out a kaiju - swarms of kind of tough minions attacking them all over their body. Godzilla ultimately prevails, but still!

I liked that this is the first time Godzilla faces a peer opponent and it's something really weird like Megaguirus. Given his immunity to conventional arms, the first time he faces adversity is when a thousand murder-dragonflies the size of a horse are swarming him and puncturing him to suck his radioactive blood.

-The miniaturized black hole is a big part of this movie - I laughed when I saw that they were launching it from a Japanese island - no one else in the world was comfortable helping them launch a weaponized satellite with a space-launched MINIATURIZED BLACK HOLE.

The climax of this movie involves the satellite crashing to Earth, Tsujimori having to pilot the sick VTOL plane over Godzilla so its operating system can lock on while it's crashing to Earth, and the black hole then swallowing Godzilla.

We get the heroic triumphant moment, everyone cheers as humanity defeats Godzilla for the first time… and then we get the first after credits scene I've seen in this franchise where we just see the ground shaking in a classroom and hear Godzilla's roar offscreen. This movie nailed its climax.

One thing I thought was kind of funny is that I've seen like three movies where they hem and haw about the moral implications of using an atomic weapon on Tokyo to defeat kaiju. But no one raises a single question about using the MINIATURIZED BLACK HOLE on Tokyo to kill Godzilla.

I actually like the implications of that - at this point, Godzilla has destroyed their capital three times. They're single-mindedly obsessed with the idea of avenging their country - they'd probably use nukes if they thought it'd work.

Good movie. If you're doing a villainous Godzilla movie, you need the human characters and the non-Godzilla plot to be fairly strong becasue otherwise you have no one to root for and I think this movie clears that hurdle.

Godzilla vs Megaguirus is a good time - high B+ movie, I'm fine rounding it up to a very low A- - the writing and effects are inconsistent and the characters are merely 'good but not great', but there's enough pulp fun in this that I can recommend it without too much guilt once I've given those caveats.