Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla Review: Robots have Feelings too

I kid sugar junkies, I kid, but the man behind Avatar just MAY have stolen his idea for The Terminator from Toho! Think about it, a cybernetic organism (cyborg) made up of a robot endoskeleton covered by living tissue...

In the pantheon of Godzilla foes popularity may be debatable but there is (and can be) no debate over the most powerful. Godzilla’s mechanical doppelganger, first appearing in 1974’s Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (aka Godzilla vs. the Bionic Monster aka Godzilla vs. the Cosmic Monster aka Gojira tai Mekagojira) is easily his most challenging opponent, nearly defeating him in just about every movie (and there’s five) in which the two fight. This one movie started the long road to four more Mechagodzilla films (Terror of Mechagodzilla, Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II, Godzilla against Mechagodzilla and Godzilla: Tokyo SOS).

It’s probably fitting that Godzilla would come so close to his demise just one film after he’s essentially depicted as the ultimate hero. How do you make an opponent seem really badass? You show him kicking the CRAP out of someone that kicked the CRAP out of someone strong (Jet Jaguar, in his giant size, could easily have destroyed the world had he had a mind to do so, and he got WHOMPED by Megalon who in turn got WHOMPED by Godzilla who in turn [for a while at least] gets WHOMPED by Mechagodzilla). Make no mistake though; despite a slightly more ‘adult’ theme (and lack of any semblance of a Kenny) this film is still meant for children. It has a nonsensical plot, four kaiju and more bright colors than an episode of Pokémon.

On some random island in or around Japan, late one night while he’s out for a stroll, Anguirus begins calling into the night. The giant ankylosaur is witness to…something. I don’t really know, this opening scene makes about as much sense as anything else in the movie and then WHAM! There’s an explosion and the title card pops up.

Then it’s a minute or two of some fairly horrendous music and some fairly horrendous singing while the credits roll when the priestess (whom had been singing) faints. She’s received some sort of vision and when she comes to, she reports that a giant monster is about to descend on the world, and “trample on the people that try to run away.”

Meanwhile, (at the Legion of Doom…) an archeologist Keisuke Shimizu (Terror of Mechagodzilla’s Masaaki Daimon) drops his brother Masahiko (Kazuya Aoyama was Zone Fighter himself) off at some cave where Masahiko wants to do some spelunking (I so rarely get to use that word). After walking around in the cave aimlessly for a bit, Masahiko comes across an odd piece of metal…Keisuke is about to make an equally odd find…

At his dig, Keisuke is confronted first with a smoking-hot archeologist grad student named Saeko (Reiko Tajima of Gamera Super Monster). Though he mistakes her for a reporter at first, she doesn’t seem the least bit offended by his misogyny and it’s when the two go into the cave (which looks a LOT more angular and well-constructed than your typical cave, making me think it’s some sort of sacred temple or SOMETHING) that they make their true discovery. First, there is a statue in the cave that Saeko believes belongs to King Caesar (that’s right, the Chinese fu dog-looking monster is named King KING). She’s unsure of its significance but is willing to be it has something to do with the drawings on the cave walls, something about a black mountain appearing above the clouds, and two suns; it’s all more than just a little confusing so Saeko hops on a plane to Hokkaido to pay a visit to her mentor, Professor Wagura (Godzilla regular Hiroshi Koizumi whom we’ve seen before in Mothra vs. Godzilla and Ghidorah the Three Headed Monster).

On the plane, a few important things happen. First, Keisuke is there, on the way to visit his uncle, so at least Saeko has someone to talk to (ok, maybe that’s not THAT important). Second, the two have their first run-in with Suspicious Sunglasses Man. SSM claims to be a reporter, but such dark sunglasses, dark hair and dark overcoat point him out as a LIAR. Couple that with the fact that he knows more about the dig than he ought to (even for a REALLY good reporter) and he’s almost definitely some sort of secret agent man. Third (and most important) a group of black clouds appears above the rest of the clouds (all of which are white) that looks (to everyone but me) a LOT like a black mountain.

Three somewhat separate story arcs spin off from this point. First, we have Saeko and Keisuke interpreting things with Wagura (it turns out Keisuke’s uncle IS Wagura). They come up with the proper translation for the cave drawings; “When a black mountain appears above the clouds a monster will come and try to destroy the world, but when the red moon sets and the sun rises west, two monsters will arise to save the world.” They also have to fight off various attempts by some guy to steal the King Caesar statue. Second, Masahiko goes to see his own doctor friend, a Dr. Miyajima (Gojira’s own Akihiko Hirata) who tells him that the metal he found in the cave is none other than space titanium (and how he’s able to deliver THAT line with a straight face is beyond me). Third, Godzilla appears.

Seems like that “two monsters arising to try to save the world” thing is coming true (and if we remember our opening scene, Anguirus might just be number two), but there’s a few issues here. First, we were expecting a BAD monster to appear. That’s solved readily when Godzilla starts destroying things (oops, guess Godzilla is back to being evil). Second, Godzilla doesn’t seem quite right. He’s walking stiffly and his roar is all wrong (and as a small child, knowing absolutely nothing about this movie the first time I saw it, I was PISSED at what they did to Godzilla and almost stopped watching). Third, Anguirus (who we’ve now established due to Godzilla vs. Gigan as Godzilla’s friend) appears and challenges Godzilla to a fight. If it hasn’t become painfully obvious to you what’s going on by now, then I suggest that after you go get your head examined, you watch for when Anguirus takes a chunk out of Godzilla’s hide and reveals glimmering metal underneath. Unfortunately for Anguirus, this fight goes about as well as the one in 1955 (except that he lives) and Godzilla leaves him a bloody mess before moving on to destroy Tokyo.

In Tokyo, our suspicions (if they are still suspicions and not more to you by this point then seriously…go get a CAT scan!) are confirmed. As the Godzilla that bloodied Anguirus is setting stuff on fire, the REAL Godzilla appears from, inside a building or something to do battle with the impostor. Who would build a terminator-esque version of Godzilla (metal underneath real skin)? None other than the aliens from the third planet of the black hole of course! What do they want? Just to invade the Earth and use it as their new home planet (I think, it’s never made ENTIRELY clear but…that black hole business is a nudge in the right direction). Inside Mechagodzilla’s control room, the supreme alien commander (Goro Mutsumi who provided the voiceover for Russ Tamblyn’s character in the Japanese version of War of the Gargantuas) watches as Godzilla and Mechagodzilla have a brief battle that ends in a massive explosion. The explosion throws Godzilla into the ocean (which then bubbles with more blood than we’ve EVER seen Godzilla bleed) and knocks Mechagodzilla’s controls out of whack. It must be brought back to base for repair (it’s here revealed that Mechagodzilla can fly).

For reasons I don’t care to attempt to understand, the alien leader decides that Dr. Mayajima knows all about ‘space technology’ and after kidnapping him and threatening his daughter (and Masahiko) they get him to help them repair Mechagodzilla. He does so and then the aliens turn on him (DUH!).

Meanwhile, Saeko and Keisuke are trying to keep the statue out of that one guy’s hands in addition to keeping it safe from Sunglasses Man and for some reason take a boat where Saeko swears she can hear Godzilla attempting to regain his strength (which again for reasons I can’t possibly understand consists of him being struck by lightning on some island). On this boat, the one guy tries to steal the statue again but Sunglasses Man shoots him and it’s then revealed that the aliens turn into Planet of the Apes-like simians when they die for some reason (I can’t make this kind of crap up…). Saeko stays in some hotel room because women can’t possibly be of any practical use, and Keisuke and Sunglasses Man head off to that cave where Masahiko found the space titanium (seriously, read the last two paragraphs on their own, not in context of the story and if they make ANY sense to you, then your sensibilities are WARPED).

They get kidnapped by the aliens while we learn that the statue is to be used to free King Caesar, which it does get used for eventually and then the Earthlings decide they need to get themselves re-captured so they can attempt to take down Mechagodzilla from the control room. King Caesar is awoken from slumber by a pop song and is getting whomped by Mechagodzilla when Godzilla shows up.

We have our one monster trying to destroy the world (Mechagodzilla, even though he’s not technically a MONSTER, he’s been BUILT, but I digress…) we have our two savior monsters trying to save the world (and King Caesar’s powers are as inconsistent as the logic of the movie itself…but trust me, the most bizarre thing is yet to come) and we have our humans involved in a meaningful way.

There’s no denying that this movie is a TON of fun. Space-monkeys building robots then needing humans to help them so their robot can fight giant fu-dogs and radioactive dinosaurs is a recipe for fun. It also takes a certain brand of crazy to come up with a story like this. I’ve come to believe that Jun Fukuda literally began to lose his mind a little bit towards the end of his Godzilla tenure. How else can you explain the entire human plan for saving themselves and helping Godzilla defeat Mechagodzilla resting on the pure happenstance that Dr. Mayajima happened to be carrying his radio-wave interrupting tobacco pipe with him that day? Or the singular most bizarre power ever to be attributed to Godzilla wherein he (with no impetus other than near-death) is able to harness the power of the lightning bolts that struck him earlier and turn himself into an electromagnetic force?!?!?

In fact, the whole lighting/magnet business is a great place to start our lessons learned. Above all else, we’ve learned that lightning strikes (the more, the merrier) can actually RESTORE your life force AND impart upon you the ability to turn yourself into a walking magnet. We’ve also learned the reason why Japanese pop music is life-sucking to human beings; it sucks our will to live from us and imparts it into giant mythical creatures! Furthermore, we’ve learned that there is evidently a “space” counterpart to everything in existence. Concrete descriptions of space titanium and space technology imply there are such things as space ketchup, space yogurt, space ice hockey, space football and even space sex AND that (much to my chagrin) these space counterparts of Earth conventions actually suck MORE than they do on Earth. Earth titanium (if you’ll permit me to call it that) is NON-magnetic. Earth technology is also varied enough that your average scientist can’t work his way around our most complex systems all by himself without any manual or guide. With that being the case, I dread to ever win the space lottery, watch space porn or experience space sex…

Name-calling and ridiculous lapses in logic aside, this is one of my FAVORITE Godzilla films. It combines the unbelievably wacky and illogical plots of Godzilla vs. Gigan and Godzilla vs. Megalon (and Godzilla vs. Hedorah as much as I hate to complement that film) with the unbelievably colorful and fun fights of Son of Godzilla and Godzilla vs. Monster Zero (and another film I’m more hesitant to complement, King Kong vs. Godzilla). Were it not for the INCREDIBLY awful 70s pop show-stopping songs that I fast forward through EVERY TIME I watch the movie, I think I’d give it my highest possible doughnut-hole rating…

Final rating below. As usual, you can read more about what it means and have access to a full list of all my reviews RIGHT HERE.