Godzilla: Final Wars
Year:
2004
Directed by:
Ryûhei Kitamura
Rated:
PG-13
Country:
Japan
Country:
Australia
Country:
United States
Runtime:
2 hrs. 5 min.
Production Company:
Toho
Written by:
Isao Kiriyama
Ryûhei Kitamura
Wataru Mimura
Shogo Tomiyama
Starring:
Masahiro Matsuoka
Don Frye
Kazuki Kitamura
Kane Kosugi
Similar Films:
Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack
The most action ever in a Godzilla film.
I applaud Ryûhei Kitamura for showing all the Godzilla sequel directors how it's done. With the exception of very few Godzilla films (most notably the original and its first sequel, Godzilla Raids Again), Godzilla movies are here for a single purpose: giant monster action. When we pop in a Godzilla DVD, we expect to see either giant monsters laying waste to cities or giant monsters laying waste to each other. Too many of these films try to create subplots with uninteresting characters that ultimately do nothing but take screen time away from what we really want to see. When Godzilla: Final Wars breaks from its many monsters, it is only to show off its almost equally entertaining sequences that provide the backdrop needed to give us more colossi. This is not only one of the best Godzilla sequels (if not the best); it is a paragon of the Godzilla franchise, the one that demonstrates best all that we love about Godzilla movies.
Ironically, the movie starts with the successful laying to rest of Godzilla, a feat that so many characters of so many other entries tried the entire runtime of their respective films to do with no success. Years later, other giant monsters suddenly pop up all over the world and begin destroying it. We've got Rodan, Anguirus, Zilla (the Godzilla from the horrid American remake), King Caesar, Kumonga, Kamacuras, Ebirah, and, much less destructively, little Minilla -- and that's just the first attack. An alien race called the Xilians shows up to save us, quickly garnering the praise, admiration, and trust of the entire population of the Earth, but behind their benevolent façade are ulterior motives. When the Xilians release the monsters back onto the planet, it's time for us to release Godzilla from his deep freeze to destroy them all.
There is also an Earthian race of superhumans, simply called mutants. They serve almost no purpose in the film other than to provide action scenes akin to those of The Matrix. For most of the film they are all good guys, but we still get several scenes of them fighting each other. These scenes are a nice way to pass the time, even if they do contain a number of predictable bullet-time moments and high-flying acrobatics. What's better is when these mutants fight Ebirah, for the simple axiom that superhumans and giant monsters are inherently more entertaining than superhumans alone. It would have been nice to see one more superhumans-versus-monster scene and one fewer superhumans-versus-superhumans scene, but maybe I'm nitpicking.
Captain Gordon (played by mixed martial arts phenomenon Don Frye), a character who is neither Asian nor a mutant, is so powerfully stoic that it doesn't matter that he's also completely one-dimensional. It is as if Kitamura somehow harnessed all the energy of mutant superpowers and monster dynamics and injected them into one character who everyone believes could explode any minute but who never does and never shows any signs whatsoever of losing his cool, neither when his submersible is about to implode nor when he is confronted by aliens much more powerful than he is. Just watch what he does when he comes face to face with Godzilla near the end of the film. Classic.
The single best thing Kitamura does right with Final Wars is something that many Godzilla sequel directors have astonishingly done wrong in the past: he devotes a lot of time to the monsters. When the monsters first show up, he gives us one scene after another of them demolishing cities full of fleeing, screaming victims and tops it off with the aforementioned battle of the mutants against Ebirah. After a little downtime from the monsters during the middle portion of the film, we come to a sequence that has Godzilla fighting Gigan and then every one of the above mentioned monsters (except Minilla, who is his son). As if that weren't enough, he then fights Gigan again in upgraded form as well as a new monster called Monster X, who eventually transforms into a resemblance of King Ghidora, and *pauses for breath* our old friend Mothra shows up to help out. It is clear that Kitamura is doing all he can to constantly give us more, and it is great to have a Godzilla film provide in such abundance.
There are some welcome and expected comical touches as well. When one character who was captured by the Xilians suddenly shows up, he says merely, "I managed to escape somehow." There is also a sort of in-joke in Zilla being the only fully computer-animated monster, another sort of derision against the American remake for parting so widely from established Godzilla conventions. Then there is the not-so-in-joke of the same monster, the most despised of all Godzilla creatures (if you're charitable enough to consider him as such), lasting about fifteen seconds in his fight against the real Godzilla. Kitamura knows just what Godzilla fans love (and hate) and uses it all to the film's advantage.
