Godzilla vs. Destoroyah
Flamin' Hot is now my favourite flavour of <PERSON>.
Godzilla vs. Destoroyah feels, quite fittingly, like the end of an era, in a way that I don't remember Terror of Mechagodzilla (the bookend of the <PERSON> era) being at all.
This brawl reunites us with characters, plot points and themes from the very first Godzilla, which I coincidentally rewatched right before this. It's a quality that is strangely unique across the <PERSON> franchise. Most of the movies feel like episodes of a decades-long Saturday morning kids show, which is as much an insult as it is a compliment. In the time between 1954 and 1995, we've seen <PERSON> as an allegory for nuclear war, a force of nature, a father, a saviour, a demon, and a volleyball player. Much like <PERSON>, Spider-Man and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, <PERSON> isn't beholden to one singular tone. He can be an absolute menace (Godzilla: Minus One), but he can also be a big ole silly (Godzilla Versus Megalon). We've tasted so many different flavours of <PERSON> that it doesn't really matter if one of them tastes like shit (All Monsters Attack).
<PERSON> vs. <PERSON> feels indebted to the totality of <PERSON> history, drawing from the cutesier side with bringing back <PERSON>, the spectacle of a secondary titan for <PERSON> to conquer, and lastly the darker questions posed by the original 1954 film. 167
In different hands, this could have been a tonal disaster, and yet with all these elements at play, this feels like one of the most focused <PERSON> films since the original.
It takes a while to get to the meat of it all, but once it gets there, it really cooks. I think a large part of this comes from Destoroyah, a monster that embodies the phrase "this isn't even my final form". It starts as a pesky microbe but finishes as a hammerhead lobster dragon. This, paired with <PERSON>'s surmounting temperature threatening a world-ending explosion, gives the film monumental stakes that are weirdly lacking in many previous entries. It's definitely the episodic nature of these movies that can deflate any real tension, but the finality of this one makes it feel like there's actually something we could lose here, even if another era is just four years down the line.
So far in my <PERSON> journey, it hasn't so much been about finding my new favourite movie as it has been a completionist goal. At best, I hope to come out of this with a handful of Godzillas I can pull out at a party that won't bore my friends to tears. Godzilla vs. Destoroyah feels like it would play well as the closer of an old-school <PERSON> marathon. It scratches all the itches a <PERSON> fan would have, with effects that hold water and some decent pathos. I can see why it ranks so highly in the franchise, and it would take something truly special to top it... 698