GODZILLA VS DESTOROYAH (1996)
Director: Takao Okawara
Genre: Kaiju eiga
THE MOVIE
Ah, the best laid plans of mice and monsters...While Toho was hard at work on their beloved Heisei series of Godzilla movies, they were working behind the scenes to make an American Godzilla movie. In the mid '90's, it became clear that this was finally going to happen and Toho began toying around with plans to kill their Godzilla to make way for a series of movies produced in the US. While they had considered killing Goji off at the claws of his powerful opponents Mecha Godzilla and Spacegodzilla, they ultimately decided to have the big guy finally meet his match in the form a new monster, Destoroyah who was born of the very weapon which killed the original Godzilla in his 1954 movie. Since the filmmakers were treating this as the "final" Godzilla movie there are lots of cool connections and homages to the original film.
The story begins with a catastrophic event on Birth Island, the remote location where Godzilla and Junior make their home in the Heisei movies. Junior is presumed dead and the eruption triggers some sort of nuclear meltdown in Godzilla, with large patches of his body literally red hot. The Japanese defense force predicts that the monster will die in an explosion which will destroy life on Earth. They begin experimenting with various ways of bringing Godzilla's temperature down, including freezing rays.
Meanwhile, another scientist begins working on a similar technology to the Oxygen Destroyer developed by Dr. Serizawa (the scientist who gave his life to stop the monster at the end of Gojira.) He soon discovers that a strange life form has developed at the exact spot where the weapon had been used in 1954 and these small creatures escape the lab and begin to grow and change in the outside world.
They grow into larger car-sized monsters and are dubbed "Destoroyah." The creatures multiply in an industrial location and soldiers are sent in to kill them. While it is a nice change of pace to see creatures of this scale in a Godzilla movie, this sequence is shamelessly derivative of Aliens, complete with motion sensors and double-jawed creatures.
The Destoroyahs are able to combine into a larger aggregate form and begin wreaking havoc on Japan when Godzilla junior resurfaces and attempts to take on the larger monster only to be handily (and viciously) defeated by him. After being dropped from a great height and being bitten and exposed the very same substance that killed the original Goji, Junior is fatally wounded. Godzilla arrives and is really not happy about the scene he finds, plus he is having a crappy day in general, what with being about to explode.
After a great struggle and with assistance from the defense force, Godzilla defeats Destoroyah. In an attempt to contain his impending meltdown, the JDF shoots Godzilla with a freezing ray from their airship, which mitigates his explosion. Instead of destroying the planet, the meltdown only affects Tokyo. It also has the effect of reviving Godzilla junior, who, thanks to the energy absorbed from his adopted parent, is now a fully-grown Godzilla. The movie ends with credits over select clips from the original movie and the other Heisei movies accompanied by Akira Ifukube's Godzilla March, as a kind of eulogy for the character and the series.
MONSTERS/EFFECTS
While he largely features the same suit as in his previous movie, Godzilla vs Spacegodzilla, this version of Godzilla features his iconic "meltdown" look, with illuminated patches of red and orange all over his body. This is a very striking look for the character and one that has not been used in any other media (save for a similar non-character-specific power-up in the Nintendo Wii fighting game, Godzilla Unleashed). Godzilla's biology is not something that had been really explored in other movies, and I'm glad that his appearance in Godzilla vs Destoroyah highlights the fact that Godzilla is, in fact, a dangerously unstable creature. I always liked the idea that beyond the physical damage caused by Goji, there would be a lot of collateral damage caused by fall-out and radiation. Destoroyah takes this idea and runs with it, playing with the idea that Godzilla simply has too much power to be contained in his body
The star creature has the Engrish-sounding (but copyrightable) name of Destoroyah. The idea of Destoroyah is pretty cool and the fact that he is born of the device used to kill the original Godzilla is nicely ironic as he was to serve as the big guy's final opponent. Also cool is his Hedorah-like ability to take on different forms. Sadly, the effects are not up to par when it comes to bringing these forms to life.
His immature, crab-like form is heavily featured in the movie and represents a scale we don't often see in Toho's kaiju movies but the puppets and animatronics are not entirely convincing. They are shot from tricky angles meant to hide their mechanisms and they also don't move in a convincing way. This is particularly true when they attempt to swarm Godzilla later in the movie which compares unfavorably to a scene in Gamera 2: The Attack of Legion released the same year which features a similar but much better-executed effect.
The adult monster Destoroyah comes off a little better but there is something almost Power Ranger-y about his design. He almost has too many cliched monster parts: giant bat wings, a horn, a long tail with a pincer on the end, a dino-like crest. And why does he have feet on his knees? He also does not really look like a creature that is composed of other, smaller creatures, which he supposedly is. He does, however, have tons of malice and even gives Spacegodzilla and Ghidorah a run for their money as some of the most evil kaiju in Toho's stable. His most despicable moment comes late in the film when he actually succeeds in killing Godzilla Junior in a very graphic way.
Speaking of Junior, he has undergone quite a growth spurt and now actually looks like something that is related to Godzilla for once. In fact, he looks much like the adult Godzillasaurus from Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah. It's nice that he has finally come into his own and that he has an actual character arc of his own. With his resurrection at the end of the movie, he effectively becomes the new Godzilla.
HOME VIDEO AVAILABILITY
Available on double sided DVD with Godzilla vs Spacegodzilla. Also streaming for free on Crackle.com.
MOST MEMORABLE MOMENT
As Godzilla begins to meld down his trademark spines begin to actually melt from his back. It's at that moment you are like, "Holy crap! This is really goin' down!" The sequence a little bit later on of Godzilla literally melting is actually very cool and it is one of the most unforgettable sequences in the whole series.
SEQUELS
Godzilla vs Destoroyah is the last of the Heisei series and a kind of valedictory round for the monster. While it was originally envisioned as the last of the Japanese movies for the forseeable future, the failure of the American movie and competition from the surprisingly good Gamera movies (which started in 1995) forced Toho to amend their plans and Godzilla was back in Japanese theaters three years later with Godzilla 2000.
While G2K was a new Godzilla movie, it was not necessarily a sequel to anything but the original Godzilla movie (although some people see it as featuring Godzilla Jr, though the events of the Heisei series are not referred to in any of the Millenium movies, which are almost all set in their own continuities).
Destoroyah is not featured in any other Godzilla movies, although he does appear in various video games such as the Atari fighters, Godzilla Save The Earth and Godzilla Unleashed.
TRAILER
Patrick Garone
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Author of City of the Gods: The Return of Quetzalcoatl
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