Godzilla: the Final War

Godzilla: the Final War - Xillians from outer space have bred a race of mutant warriors with M-base genetics. These Xillians feed on human mitochondria and have the nasty habit of referring to all earthlings as cattle. To subdue the earth, the Xillians have unleashed all monsters -- Gigan, King Caesar, the giant Armadillo, and a skyscraper-sized hornet. The monsters ravage Tokyo, Sydney, Paris, just about everywhere that has a recognizable monument like the Eiffel Tower available for destruction. Captain Gordon, a burly guy who looks like "Iron" Mike Ditka, pilots his huge drilling rig through the center of the earth where he releases Godzilla from his icy sepulcher. Godzilla joins with Mothra, brought from Infant Island by the tiny, red polyester clad singing sisters, and the two working as tag-team partners defeat the monsters unleashed by the Xillians. Lots of real estate gets trampled, and death-ray pulverized, but in the end Godzilla, with Mothra's help, proves why he is KOM -- King of Monsters. Meanwhile, the army of mutants fights the Xillians on their space ship, decorated with Gothic arches like Lyonel Feininger's expressionist paintings of medieval cathedrals. All is well in the end. Ryukei Kitamura's Godzilla: the Final War is nothing if not action-packed. Shot in extremely wide-screen process, the film exemplifies creative graphic design using as a canvas the difficult ribbon-format of 3-to-1 ratio cinemascope. Kitamura uses strict symmetry for about half of his images -- balancing both sides of the screen with the same color, or architectural details or figure groupings while a central focal point (face, man, monster, landmark) occupies the exact middle of the frame. (A wonderful iconic example is Godzilla posed directly under Fujiyama, the snowy slopes of the peak ascending upward on both sides of the reptile monster). The rest of the film uses off-balanced or assymetrical compositions that become symmetrical by juxtaposition -- in the first shot in a series, only the left 1/3 of the screen will be occupied, the rest will be smoking ruins; the second shot will show the right one-third of the screen filled with smoking wreckage occupying the left 2/3rds; the third shot will put the focal point of the composition in the exact center of the field of wreckage, thereby utilizing the whole breadth of the 3-to-1 ratio but in a three-shot sequence. Finally, Kitamura can have his monsters square-off across blasted amphitheaters of ruins, Gigan (a sort of animated circular saw) facing Godzilla across a huge terrain of rubble. The graphic design is extraordinary and the film is textbook of techniques for effective use extreme wide format cinemascope. Less successful is the combination of Matrix-style fighting sequences with men in flabby-looking rubber suits grappling with one another in sets full of knee-high trees and buildings. Both types of special effects are great and I am particularly prone to the rubber suit battles in terrariums full of lovingly detailed city-miniatures. But the two sometimes coexist uneasily. Matrix effects use extreme fast and slow motion in a herky-jerky rhythm. This clashes with Godzilla's characteristic clumsy lumbering. In a number of scenes, Captain Gordon's flying drillilng rig leads Godzilla, for instance from the South Pole to Sydney harbor -- the boring machine wafts over the waves in the tank like a big, slow Zeppelin while Godzilla wades through the blue icebergs behind. At this rate, it would take Godzilla six weeks to reach Australia and several months to get to Paris and Shanghai where his servces are required to neutralize the monsters ravaging those metropolises. But there is nothing better than the supernatural blue-green of those artificial waves whipped to a tsunami when Godzilla surfaces from the wine-dark sea. The picture is fun throughout with kitschy subtitles and dialogue, a "cute" baby Godzilla discovered in a crevass on Fuji by a "cute" little boy and his curmudeonly grandfather. And, atlhough the rampaging monsters have undoubtedly killed their hecatombs, no bodies are ever in sight -- this is the great difference between all the later entries in the Godzilla franchise and Ishira Honda's grave and majestic and Hiroshima-influenced first picture, 1954's Godzilla King of Monsters. The first important story that I wrote in College was called KOM, for King of Monsters, and I have a particular affection for the big, rubbery beast whose unexpected and catastrophic entry into the world coincided with my own.