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Last Update: 10.13.06

Godzilla - Tokyo S.O.S.

Godzilla is a classic movie of our generation. And by "classic" I mean "travesty."

The plot line is pretty standard for things that come out of Japan: giant monsters fight each other for no reason and give children epilepsy, but in the end we learn a deeper truth about love, family, and the fragility of life. Or at least, we would, except that they're freakin' monsters, and they teach crappy moral lessons, plus the movie's in Japanese, and most of the dialogue centers around people looking up, pointing, and screaming. Then sometimes at the end there's some guy who looks out upon the burning wreckage of what used to be his home, and says "I guess that we learned that, in the end, man was the real monster" just before he gets stomped on by The Beast.

So anyway, the premise of the movie is pretty simple: Godzilla appears for no reason and starts destroying everything in sight and basically hanging out and being the coolest giant monster of all time. A bunch of Japanese people get pissed that their city is being destroyed, and show their anger by pointing at the sky and yelling Godzilla's name. That never really makes sense to me. How do you know what Godzilla's name is already? Did he come and crush your cities some other time? I mean, it would have made sense in the new Godzilla movie, because the government could get on TV and say "We've decided to call the creature Godzilla, due to its striking resemblance in appearance, powers, and completely pointless tendency to destroy things for fun."

What I really don't get about Godzilla is how everybody's so angry that Godzilla is destroying their city. You'd think somebody could appreciate how funny it is. I mean, someone should probably look at their buildings getting blown up and think "Man, think how hilarious it would be if somebody else's city was getting vaporized by a stop-motion animated laser-breathing chunk of clay." Or better yet, somebody with an enterprising spirit could film the thing, and submit it to one of those schadenfreude sorts of websites. You know, where there are videos of 5 year olds hitting their dads in the nads with a piñata bat, and everybody laughs. Then the next video could be of a guy who slips and hits his head on the ground, and it's hilarious, and then he gets stepped on by a giant laser-breathing lizard.

So anyway, the Japanese decide to shoot missiles at Godzilla. If you've ever seen a movie like this, you know that the military and the entire government is always completely pointless and that the fate of all mankind lies in the hands of some pointless little kid (or in some movies, Chuck Norris). The missiles are basically like gnats and flies to Godzilla, so rather than building bigger missiles, they decide to just use a really really big bug, who hopefully won't be like a bug to Godzilla. So anyway, some random kid arranges a bunch of desks in an asterisk, which apparently summons Mothra. That's kind of strange, though, because I'm pretty sure that the shape of an asterisk has existed before, and Mothra didn't show up. Like, it would be kind of weird if some guys were out there trying to design the logo for E-Trade, and suddenly a giant moth comes in and vaporizes everything. And they're like "Uh.....okay, maybe let's go with a ying-yang instead."

So Mothra got summoned for what was apparently the first time. I don't know why that kid didn't summon Mothra every time he needed some help, like on a really hard math test. He'd just be taking a test, and Mothra would walk in nonchalantly and the kid would be like "psst....what did you get on number 9?" Sadly, the movie doesn't develop Mothra in this way. Instead, he flies around Godzilla sprinkling sparkle dust onto him. In a serious departure from his normal behavior, Godzilla says "Sparkles? Are you freakin' kidding me? Who comes up with this crap?" and shoots his patented Laser Breath at that stupid bird.

By the way, the ability to breathe lasers has got to be the best super power ever. There are very few things that I can think of that I would rather have than the ability to breathe lasers. One of them would be the ability to breathe robots. But anyway, back to Mothra. So Mothra is getting the crap kicked out of him since he has no powers and some wires that hold him up. But then they flash back to some time before the showdown, when Mothra laid an egg on some island (instead of in some guy's chest, which would have been cooler). Out of nowhere, two fairies start singing some Japanese song that causes the eggs to hatch. I'm pretty sure the lyrics to their song is "WTF this makes no sense", but I don't really speak Japanese (or fairy). The song causes the eggs to hatch, and these two larvae who look like they crawled out of Rosie O'Donnel's rotting corpse fly out. Apparently their power is to shoot silk at things. Godzilla screams "Oh no! Please don't make a shirt for me!"

Despite his pleas, they do in fact make a shirt for him. And when he puts on the shirt, it's too tight, so he can't move. And then Mechagodzilla, who appears for no reason, picks up Godzilla and throws him into the ocean. Considering that Godzilla came out of the ocean, and throws big parties in the ocean, it's possible that this wasn't the best decision. But the writers decided it was good enough, and ended the movie right there.

That's a pretty terrible ending if you ask me. I'd have Godzilla eat all the moth things, and then punch Tokyo in the face. Then he and Mechagodzilla would dance a hoe-down together. Since you need an awesome excuse for them to breathe lasers, suddenly a giant Rhino would appear, and he'd have the power to shoot chainsaws out of his eyes. Much laser breathing would ensue, and even though there's no plot, the audience would leave happy. I don't know why I'm not a movie director.

I give this movie 4 out of 4 terrible animated Japanese movies with matching collectible card games.