Anime Movie Review: Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters

Godzilla: Kaiju Wakusei [2017]

Back in 2014, the huge successes of both Universal's Godzilla reboot as well as Toho's own Shin Gojira reboot have sort of reinvigorated the market for everyone's beloved giant kaiju monster, and throughout 2017 to 2018, we've gotten a trilogy of anime movies with a lot of huge names attached to both the writing and animation department. And it's also on Netflix, which makes viewing it a lot easier for me.

Gojira: Kaiju Wakusei, or Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters, is the first installment in this trilogy of Godzilla movies, and it's... it's definitely an interesting one. I'm not the most familiar with Godzilla's movies, with the Japanese movies I've watched all being from the Heisei and Showa era, and all of them featuring "Godzilla against some giant monster" formula, so seeing them take a completely new spin on the mythology and basically turn this into a post-apocalyptic space opera that feels more at home in something like Mobile Suit Gundam than anything. 

And it's... it's interesting. Through the prologue at the beginning of the movie, we learn that humanity has been essentially wiped out into around 4000 lives hanging out on a spaceship with a bunch of other humanoid alien races (which, I assume, is something from the movies I didn't watch?) and they were all survivors who escaped Earth several decades ago when Earth was ravaged by giant kaiju attacks. And while humanity was successful in defending themselves against some of them, Godzilla himself ended up wiping out civilization, essentially. 

And the animation itself is beautiful, even if we focus on humanity on their spaceship for a good half of the episode, and Godzilla himself doesn't appear in the movie outside of flashbacks until around the final one-third of the movie. A good chunk of the movie is spent on world-building, something that's more excusable considering the high-end futuristic sci-fi setting. The politics of the spaceship Aratrum, as well as the vengeful, "take back our home" protagonist Haruo Sakaki, is... it's interesting. I feel like the drama in this movie is a bit too melodramatic, and the main protagonist Haruo is not the most likable character. If he didn't prove himself to be a competent military commander when he eventually takes charge, his insistent desire to return back to Earth for what amounts to a combination of revenge and sentimentality feels more stuipd than anything... but unlike most characters of this sort, Haruo is at least shown to be reasonable enough to change his mind, particularly during the twist at the end. It's interseting that the movie never really goes full-on in actually showing if Haruo is justified for his insistence and determination that they retake their old homeworld, or if it's just foolish, narrow-minded sentimentality. He did lead his team to victory against a threat he planned out for, and there certainly is a point to standing down and fighting for a known resource instead of drifting aimlessly in space... but he definitely was a bit too vengeful for his own good. 

And while I'm not the biggest fan of the politics of a space colony, it's fast-paced enough with the only real weak points being the random insertion of alien religion cults (which is more weird than distracting) until the mission to return to Earth and essentially kill Godzilla so the rest of humanity (and their alien buddies) can colonize the planet again. 

And the action scene is... it's pretty simple, too, with the added twist that this is a planet which has evolved and changed after almost 20 thousand years thanks to the problems of light-speed travel. It's a wholly different world with plants with extra-hard leaves, and while there are hints of other surviving species, for the most part the only creatures we see is Godzilla himself and a bunch of smaller dragon-like pterodactyl monsters that attack the military squad early on as they try to establish their plan to kill Godzilla. 

It's an interesting take on the franchise, in any case, as they try their best to take out what's essentially a force of nature, while at the same time trying to figure out why Godzilla has stayed similar to his form from 20 thousand years ago. Some of the supporting characters that are memorable enough in the context of this movie end up biting the dust in some awesome action sequences, and eventually they manage to lure Godzilla into a ravine where he gets killed with a combination of firepower, falling rocks and making usage of targetting a unique shockwave-generating organ.

And then, of course, with the monster slain (which is surprising, but not exactly new for the franchise), the humans gather to wax lyrical about how humanity's taken over their home world and everything... only for the REAL Godzilla to show up, being the size of a literal mountain and leagues larger than the smaller Godzilla (Minilla? Godzilla Junior?) who they killed, who turns out to be a smaller offspring of the original Godzilla. And as Haruo immediatelly calls for a retreat, Godzilla's roar (not his atomic breath) ends up wiping out all of humanity, pinning Haruo under rubble, and leaving the fate of the other surviving supporting characters uncertain... at least, until the next movie. 

I do like the portrayal of Godzilla as an antagonist, albeit one that's mostly reacting to things around them. Sure, Godzilla is destructive and there's really no way to live in the same continent with the big nuclear dinosaur as a neighbour, but the movie shows that while Godzilla is certainly willing to attack and blow up human ships, he initially only does so after the humans enroached on his territory and opened fire. There's the same sort of parallels to Attack on Titan, too, with the protagonist being single-minded in the destruction of a gigantic antagonist, except Haruo is a lot more reasonable and more competent than Eren. 

The movie isn't the most well-paced affair, with a lot of the military techno-babble during the fight scene making it feel more like an extended video game boss fight more than a desperate effort to contain Godzilla (compare and contrast the climax of this movie to, say, Shin Godzilla) but the animation is pretty enough that I can allow myself to be distracted for the length of this movie. Again, the human characters aren't the most well-developed ones out there, with a significant portion of the dialogue being philosophical poetry that feels a wee bit pretentious, and at the end we're just hanging around Haruo and a couple of one-dimensional supporting cast... but I do enjoy the twist at the end, as well as the change of setting into a pretty interesting post-apocalyptic-future bit. Overall, while not the best movie out there, it's fun and pretty enough, and the fact that there'll be more down the line is definitely something I'll be looking forward to in the subsequent weeks.

Random Notes:

• They honestly sort of blur together, but the supporting characters are:
• Yuko, the independent, competent girl of the movie. She's Haruo's adopted sister of sorts, and the granddaughter of the old man that adopted Haruo after the escape. We get some token lines of Haruo being surprised that she's competent and a driver of a power suit, but the movie doesn't give her a big role... but also doesn't shoehorn a "wow, you're competent??!" plot down our throats, so. 
• Metphies is the representative of the Exif alien race, who's soft-spoken and is shown as Haruo's sponsor and ally through the political machinations of the first half of the movie. He's all right as a mysterious character, but clearly meant to be built up for subsequent movies. His little "HAIL THE GOD OF DESTRUCTION" speech at the end certainly makes it seem like he's engineered this whole encounter for his own religion?
• Mulu-elu Galu-gu (ha!) is a representative of the Bilusaludo alien race, who's... he's a tough guy. He is mostly an action her, really. 
• Leland, the one that sort-of disagrees with Haruo (all their disagreements are relatively reasonable and amicable, which is a nice change) and ends up getting a heroic sacrifice halfway through the movie. 
• Adam, Haruo's buddy. He gets some fun lines and some badass moments with an escape pod during a carpet bombing sequence, but otherwise he's just there.
• Martin, the scientist. He's just there for exposition. 
• I really do appreciate how Leland and Haruo's arguments on whether it's better to risk it and stay on Earth to kill Godzilla, or just return to the safety of the Aratrum are both very reasonable. Leland's proposition of setting up a colony on the Moon and sending periodic expeditions to Earth to gather resources is perhaps the most reasonable of the two, though, and I guess their willingness to risk everything to take down their ancient enemy is due to the whole revenge theme.
• The little dragon creatures that attack the base camp and later on appear to serve Godzilla Jr are apparently called "Servum". Pretty neat, actually, I don't think the franchise has quite as many of these not-quite-building-sized Kaiju.
• Really do like the design of the weird spider-legged railgun tanks, which is probably my favourite vehicular design in the movie.  
• The flashback to the ominous visage of Godzilla rampaging in the distance, casually using an atomic breath attack to blast an evacuating ship and the shockwave and flames from the explosion killing the bus Haruo's parents are in as collateral damage... the horror seen through the eyes of an evacuating child is pretty horrifying and perhaps my favourite sequence in the movie. 
• There is a lot of little homages in the brief montage of how Earth fell to the Kaiju, huh? Perhaps my favourite little detail is the fact that apparently there was an "Operation Hedorah" at one point, which I think is implied to be humanity either utilizing Hedorah or engineering a confrontation between it and Rodan, causing them to kill each other. Also hilarious is the fact that apparently some of the aliens tried to teach humanity to make Mechagodzilla, but they couldn't get it to start up in time.