Godzilla vs. Megalon Review: Jet Jaguar = Ultraman

Welcome back once more to the wonderful world of kaiju, sugar junkies!

If you’ve been reading all of my Godzilla movie reviews as I’ve been doing them, I doubt it would surprise you if I gave Godzilla vs. Megalon (aka Gojira tai Megaro) a glowing review. It’s a campy, ridiculous film that spends no less than half its running time focusing solely on the monsters, it’s CHOCK FULL of cheesy dialogue and goofy characters and its nearly nonsensical plot make it the type of film that you can pick up at any point and watch, even with half-interest and still follow easily (thus making it perfect for late-night viewing). So, just to keep you all guessing (and because I have to be HONEST, when I do these, don’t I?) I am going to tell you that I don’t like this movie. I don’t despise it quite as much as Godzilla vs. Hedorah, Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla, or Godzilla vs. Megaguirus, but it's among my least favorite films of the earlier series (aka Showa series) of Godzilla films (which still makes it better than just about anything in the Heisei series).

VERY briefly (since I will one day likely do a full hub on it) the Godzilla series is more or less broken down into three eras: the Showa series is all films from 1954 through 1975, the Heisei series is all films from 1984 through 1995 and the Millenium series is all films from 1999 through 2004.

The beginning MIGHT have you hopeful because it seems to establish the idea that brought inspiration to the first film (that radiation and nuclear testing are the enemies rather than giant piles of trash or overgrown cockroaches wearing man-suits), but don’t be fooled! While a voice-over narration tells us that nuclear testing is bad, and also tells us that it’s impacting an underseaciety (I like to invent words, that one means a society under the sea!) called (laughably) Seatopia, we are shown that a recent nuclear test is having a particularly bad effect on MonsterIsland. So, just in case any of you had been fooled to think that we MIGHT be in store for some heavy-handed allegory and evil radioactive beasts, you can stop that right now; the MONSTERS are the victims here, with humans scientists testing their nukes as the aggressors…

Anyway, Seatopia is pissed off at the surface world, so they occasionally trigger earthquakes topside (I guess they are pretty close to the tectonic plates, right?). This is where our three main characters come in. The first one you’ll recognize if you’re the type that instantly recognizes little boys who wear short-shorts (uh-oh…) is Roku-chan (Hiroyuki Kawase of Godzilla vs. Hedorah and Time of the Apes), whom due to a bad dub-job I always grew up thinking was called Roxanne while I wondered when he would be told he didn’t have to put on the red light…Then there’s our token scientist for the film, Goro (Katsuhiko Sasaki from Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah and Godzilla vs. Biollante) and the other guy, Hiroshi. Get that? A little boy, a scientist, and another dude…no wives, girlfriends, sisters, daughters, nieces, or just token WOMEN in this movie at all (well, technically there are some female bodies that appear…we’ll get there).

One day, as Goro, Roku-chan, and Hiroshi are out having a picnic (even as a kid this movie always tipped off my gaydar) an earthquake breaks out, draining the lake that Roku-chan had been swimming in to the point that it becomes bone-dry. When they get home, they find that their place is a bit of a mess and they get attacked by a couple of thugs. The one that looks like Oscar Wilde is Kotaro Tomita of Ghidorah, the Three Headed Monster and Terror of Mechagodzilla. They manage to escape without our heroes learning much of anything about them other than they seemed to be interested in Goro’s robot.

Oh, I didn’t mention that already? Goro has a mostly-built robot sitting in his main hallway. So…yeah.

Hiroshi and Roku-chan set about finding out the origin of the strange sand that is all over their house after the two thugs leave and Goro sets to work finishing his robot. When he’s all done, Jet Jaguar (as he’s calling the robot), is a seven-foot tall robot with no really well-defined purpose who looks a bit like a cross between Jack Nicholson and Ultraman. Unsurprisingly to us viewers, the sand turns out to be Seatopian sand and when Goro has completed Jet Jaguar, the two Seatopian agents (our thugs from earlier) show up to seize control of the robot.

Why do they need Jet Jaguar? Well, that’s complicated. Like I said before, the Seatopians have been forced to live under the sea due to the recent collapse in the housing market in addition to their desire to sing catchy Disney tunes and nuclear tests are destroying their world. The Seatopians want revenge, but because they are a society comprised of toga-wearing head honcho Antonio (Robert Dunham of Dogora and Mothra) and evidently (other than our two agents), mostly scantily-clad female dancers (why are we fighting these people?!?!). As the Seatopians lack the firepower necessary to invade the surface and their earthquakes are little more than inconvenient, the Seatopians are forced to awaken their deity Megalon, a giant monster. Unfortunately, Megalon is not very task-oriented and when he doesn’t have a robot pointing him where to go and what to destroy, he loses track of his time and ends up just wandering about the countryside, so guess what Jet Jaguar might be used for?

With the robot under their control, the Seatopian agents take Goro and Roku-chan in the back of a box truck to be dumped into the sea and held as Seatopian prisoners in case Jet Jaguar breaks and Hiroshi is kept hostage in case Goro gets ‘ideas.’ Honestly, I cannot fathom how a society can shield themselves from thousands of tons of seawater in a fully self-sustaining environment complete with an artificial sun and methods of transportation to the surface and yet have no idea how to build or repair robotics, but such are the mysteries of life. Hiroshi manages to escape, and beat some answers out of one of the agents before taking off in his car to save the day. What follows is the most ridiculous car chase in the history of film…

When Hiroshi arrives at the dumping point, a dam, Megalon arrives to destroy it in what is easily the best special effects shot of the movie and one of a handful of wholly original ones. You see, Megalon’s horn on the top of his head spouts out a ray that is astonishingly similar to that of King Ghidorah, and Megalon’s spiky hands can evidently bend to be very similar to those of Gigan when he battles planes (note the sarcasm: Megalon’s “abilities” that I’ve described just allow Toho to use as much stock footage as possible).

In a stroke of deus ex machina, Goro suddenly remembers that his necklace doubles as a radio transceiver for Jet Jaguar that can override the main control board’s commands, “just in case he ever lost control.” Goro confronts Jet Jaguar and asks him to go get Godzilla, which he does. Unfortunately, Jet Jaguar can fly faster than Godzilla can swim and when he returns to Japan, the golly green giant is still a ways behind and he will have to hold off Megalon for as long as he can.

How does a seven foot tall robot plan to fight a one-hundred-fifty foot tall monster? Well, according to Goro, he built in a protocol to the robot to take care of himself in times of crisis. As part of this protocol, the robot has managed to reprogram itself to increase its size twenty-fold, and voila! Jet Jaguar is now the same size as Megalon and the two begin to tango. Things go south for the would-be robo-savior though when Seatopia calls out to Nebula Space-hunter M and requests the presence of Gigan to aid Megalon.

It’s now two on one and Godzilla is nowhere to be seen. Will he arrive in time or will Jet Jaguar end up in the scrap heap? There’s also some sort of sub-plot going on where Megalon’s victory would mean the end of the world or something, but that doesn’t seem too likely. I mean, if Megalon kills Jet Jaguar (and kill is the right word as the robot has now become self-aware) then who will hold him by the hand and tell him which buildings to smash?

Did you hear that train crash right about the time that I mentioned it was worth wondering why the Seatopians couldn’t just build their own army of robots? This movie is a mess. Worse, it features little Godzilla until the very end. The reason being that we have yet one more example of a Godzilla movie that wasn’t originally intended as a Godzilla movie (remember the origins of Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster?). Though not quite as drastic a change (rather than substitute monsters, Godzilla was simply dropped into this film as an additional character), the film was originally intended as a vehicle for Jet Jaguar. Toho wanted to produce a Jet Jaguar TV series following the events of this film. I don’t know how the adventures of a robot that’s largely emotionless until an issue breaks out would go over, but I do know that Toho must have re-thought the idea. A Jet Jaguar TV series never came to be.

Megalon is bar-none one of the weirder kaiju in the Toho vaults, but his execution leaves a lot to be desired. The head REALLY looks like it’s just a giant helmet that the suit-actor wore on top of the rest of his suit. The decision to make the horn-ray look like King Ghidorah’s was obviously a smart one from a budgetary perspective, but in practice, it is exposed as the money-saving effort that it was and just an excuse to recycle the footage from Ghidorah’s earlier attacks. Jet Jaguar’s appearance can be easily explained by knowing that he was created by child submissions to Toho. Godzilla has been remodeled (finally), but not for the better. This is the Godzilla that would be made into plush toys and cutesy dolls. His big googly eyes and Kermit the frog grin expose him as being an over-the-top hero for children, FINALLY embracing that fact (even in Godzilla vs. Gigan, it’s mentioned that Godzilla ESCAPES Monster Island…). Gigan looks no different than he did in the previous outing (to me at least), but after being char-broiled by a few of my readers that are also very big Godzilla fans like myself, I feel compelled to tell you all that in fact, this is a brand-new Gigan suit and it is in fact altered from his first appearance.

The actors and characters don’t even really deserve to be discussed, so let’s hop right into what we’ve learned today. Seatopia is sweet and I want to live there if only to take command of the race of scantily clad dancers and be in command of a giant monster. We’ve also learned that Jet Jaguar is only a robot so far as it serves the plot for him to be (during the battles he even gets TIRED!), and Godzilla can talk with robots in addition to other monsters. Finally, we’ve learned that in the 1970s, Toho evidently watched a lot of pro-wrestling, as Godzilla performs body slams, tail slams, suplexes, and the singular greatest move of ALL-TIME…the tail slide! This one trumps even the flying Godzilla of Godzilla vs. Hedorah in terms of ridiculousness. We’ve also learned that your nation could have had all use and research of nuclear weapons banned and yet be held fully responsible for nuclear tests that destroy another society. Finally, we’ve learned to always keep your dreams alive; remember when you used to draw your ‘future’ home in crayon during science class rather than pay attention? That’s exactly what Goro’s house feels like, so keep the faith!

At the end of the day, all things considered, apples to apples, flying at 30,000 feet, this movie is an incomprehensible mess. It’s pretty fun, and while I don’t love it, I watch it every now and then, and I’ll agree that pissing and moaning about making ‘sense’ is just downright ridiculous when you’re talking about ANY 70s film let alone a 70s Godzilla film. What kills this movie for me though, is the music. It’s so unbelievably bad; you’d think Toho hired some softcore porn composers to take a crack at writing the music. If you’d like an example of just HOW ridiculous the score is, I’ve got two words for you: jaw harp.

Final Rating is below and if you CLICK HERE, you can read more about what that rating means and get access to an index of all of my movie reviews.