Godzilla vs Biollante

Godzilla vs Biollante (1989)
Toho Studios
Director: Ōmori Kazuki, Kawakita Kōichi (special effects)
Also discussed: Princess from the Moon (1987)

The Return of Godzilla (1984) performed well enough at the box office to justify a sequel, although it took Toho five years to produce one. Godzilla vs Biollante shows more of an interest in picking up on details from its predecessor than most of the Shōwa era films – this is an early indication that the Heisei series will be a much more interconnected affair than the movies of the 60s and 70s. Here we have a new kaiju whose existence is only made possible by the events of The Return of Godzilla, and which in its turn will have an unexpected bearing on a later instalment in the series.

A quick note on the Japanese title. Shōwa era movies that pitted Godzilla against a titular adversary, starting with King Kong vs Godzilla (1962), used the word 対, pronounced “tai”. Godzilla vs Biollante actually has an English "VS" in the title. This is how it’s going to be for the rest of the Heisei series.

The film opens with some computer text on a screen describing the four levels of a "G” alert system. There’s then a short reprise of the battle between Godzilla and the Super X, the JSDF’s hi-tech flying tank, as seen in The Return of Godzilla. In the aftermath of that battle, we see scientists collecting samples of Godzilla's genetic material from the scene – the samples appear to be scales or skin fragments. (Missing from the reprise is any mention of the fact that two nuclear missiles collided right above this spot in the previous movie. The scientists are at least wearing some kind of hazmat clothing, but the soldiers with them aren’t so well protected. Perhaps we might generously assume Godzilla absorbed all the dangerous radiation.) The clean-up crew are abruptly killed by a team of American paramilitary types who steal the samples. (These villains are accompanied on screen by a rockin' electric guitar version of Ifukube Akira's famous Godzilla march. They’re easily the best English-speaking actors in the film, so it’s a tragedy that they’re so short lived.) They themselves are almost immediately killed and robbed by an unnamed agent of the Middle Eastern state of Saradia.

In Saradia, the Japanese Dr Shiragami is researching the genetic modification of wheat, not just to meet Saradia’s food needs but to end the nation's commercial dependency on oil sales. A breakthrough in his work could see Saradia outpace America in the international grain export market. He's already successfully spliced wheat and cactus genes for a desert-growing crop and is hoping to use Godzilla's genetic material to make the hybrid regenerative as well. However, his work has attracted the attention of an unscrupulous American corporation called Bio-Major, who were responsible for the earlier, failed attempt to secure the Godzilla samples. Agents of Bio-Major bomb Shiragami’s lab, killing his daughter Erika, and steal the genetic material.

Fast forward five years.

Shiragami is now living in Japan and has invited Ōkouchi Asuka, the daughter of an old colleague of his and a friend of Erika, to visit. At his request, she’s brought the 17-year-old Saegusa Miki, apparently the strongest student at the "Japan Psyonics Center" where she works, to listen for telepathic messages from his roses. Miki can't read anything from the roses but, as they’re about to leave, she hears a woman's voice calling for Asuka. No one notices the team of Bio-Major agents surveilling the house from their mobile operations centre, which is badly disguised as an American courier van. They themselves haven’t noticed the nameless Saradian agent further up the hill watching all of them.

Later, Asuka meets her young scientist boyfriend, Kirishima Kazuto, for dinner at the Godzilla Memorial Lounge. This is a central Tokyo restaurant with a window built into a hole in the roof in the shape of Godzilla’s foot – either it was damaged but not too badly in the 1984 incident, or the owners have a very shrewd grasp of marketing. Kazuto has received an offer to go and work at MIT and is hoping Asuka might go with him. He’s currently working at the Tsukuba Bioengineering Laboratory, which is funded by her father’s institute, the Ōkouchi Foundation, the only organisation in Japan to have secured samples of Godzilla’s cells. Kazuto’s lab has been working on something called Anti Nuclear Energy Bacteria (ANEB), which use the unique properties of Godzilla’s cells to render atomic waste harmless. The Japanese government hopes to use ANEB as a weapon against Godzilla, if he returns – and, as a sidenote, ANEB could potentially upend the balance of power established between the nuclear superpowers.

Mt Mihara, the volcano Godzilla fell into five years ago, is under constant watch by the JSDF. The officer in charge, the eccentric Colonel Gondō, complains that nothing ever happens and he’s bored. He will shortly become unexpectedly busy. The younger students at the Japan Psyonics Center have been having increasingly regular dreams about Godzilla returning. Soon enough, Mt Mihara erupts and causes an earthquake. This persuades Dr Shiragami to come out of his self-imposed retirement and work on Godzilla’s cells again, to advance the development of ANEB, after the earthquake wrecks his greenhouse and endangers his roses. Shiragami's one condition is that he keeps the Godzilla cells in his home laboratory for seven days. He uses this time to splice Godzilla’s genetic material with the roses which, plot twist, he's already spliced with genetic material taken from Erika after her death.

Bio-Major's agents raid Shiragami's lab again, this time with the Saradian agent on their heels. They all get an unpleasant surprise when they're attacked by giant plant tendrils. Their attacker breaks out of the lab and into the nearby lake. Following this setback, Bio-Major demands, under the alias of a terrorist organisation called "Alien", that Japan hand over its ANEB or else they'll detonate a bomb at Mt Mihara, releasing Godzilla. They set off a smaller explosion to prove they’re not kidding.

The JSDF now have an elite wing ready to defend against Godzilla attacks, headed by a hotshot young officer called Major Kuroki. They’ve constructed the Super X2, an improved rebuild of the Super X, and they’re being a lot less secretive about the X2 than they were about its predecessor, even giving press tours of the thing. It’s piloted by remote control, can go underwater and its entire front section opens up to either side to reveal the Fire Mirror, a weapon made of synthetic diamond that can reflect Godzilla's atomic breath ray back at him. They also have the latest computer equipment, by which I mean that when they’re talking through their tactical plans later in the movie, we’ll see some fairly shonky wireframe computer graphics (which look more likely to be cel animation). We’ll also see the familiar old maser tanks, which now fire electric blue rays.

Meanwhile, the hybrid that escaped from Shiragami’s lab has grown into a gigantic, thick-stemmed rose standing in the neighbouring Lake Ashi. With its single bloom and two large leaves it looks very slightly humanoid, and it makes the occasional whimpering sound. The bloom will turn out to have Godzilla-style teeth at its centre. Shiragami had hoped to create the world’s hardiest flower to immortalise his daughter’s DNA, but realises he has made a mistake. He names the rose-creature "Biollante". (He spuriously claims this is the name of a plant spirit from Norse mythology.) Miki initially senses Erika within it, but Erika is soon drowned out by the Godzilla component and Biollante becomes an unthinking monster. It apparently senses Godzilla, who may be drawn to it because of their shared genes.

The government, represented in person by Kazuto and Colonel Gondō, meets with an agent of Bio-Major to hand over the ANEB and prevent Godzilla being released. Unfortunately, the handover is disrupted by the Saradian agent and the bomb, which is on an automated countdown, goes off.

Godzilla looks a bit more animalistic than in his previous appearance, albeit his teeth are more even. His eyes are smaller and more sunken – the irises look yellow. He has more prominent nostrils and small, pointed ears. He has more of a muzzle and a puffier top lip, giving him more of the appearance of a Chinese dragon (or, as many have said, a cat). This is more or less how Godzilla will look through the rest of the Heisei series. He fires a solid-looking bluish ray from his mouth.

When they realise Godzilla is heading across the bay from Mt Mihara to the mainland lake where Biollante is waiting, the JSDF try to intercept him with the Super X2. As it turns out, the Fire Mirror can only withstand and reflect so much of Godzilla’s fiery breath and the X2 is critically damaged. At Lake Ashi, Biollante attacks Godzilla with tendrils with little sharp-toothed mouths on their ends – these variously bite Godzilla and spit some kind of corrosive green substance at him. In retaliation, Godzilla sets fire to Biollante with his breath. As it burns, Biollante releases a cloud of shiny golden spores into the air.

Worn out after all of this, Godzilla heads for the nearest nuclear power station so that he can recharge. Miki has a brief psychic standoff with Godzilla when he's heading towards Ōsaka, and this actually stalls him for a moment. Then there’s some kind of mutual energy discharge; Miki faints and spends the rest of the day asleep, while Godzilla continues on his way. The JSDF take the opportunity to confront Godzilla in Ōsaka and attack him with missiles loaded with ANEB. The ailing Super X2 lands two direct hits with little effect, while Colonel Gondō fires an ANEB missile straight down Godzilla’s throat from the roof of a tall building, at the cost of his own life.

Godzilla appears unaffected by the bacteria; it’s theorised that his cold-blooded physiology could be preventing them from multiplying. In order to raise his body temperature, the JSDF send in the maser tanks and also deploy the Thunder Control System, a ground-based microwave array that’s supposed to work alongside cloud seeding technology to control the weather. (Perhaps a callback to Son of Godzilla (1967)? On a sidenote, it looks like Godzilla doesn't like lightning as much as he did in The Return of Godzilla.) Godzilla makes short work of the maser tanks. Then, in a surprising twist, Biollante's spores emerge from the cloud formed by the Thunder Control System and spontaneously generate a massive new body just below the surface of the ground. (Yes, well, no one ever said it had to make sense.) This new Biollante body still has the snappy tendrils, but instead of a flower it has a head that resembles that of an alligator with tusks. It can move over the ground on leg-like roots. When it attacks Godzilla this time, it spears his hand with a pointy tendril. After a brief fight, Godzilla dispatches it by firing his breath ray into its mouth. Again it releases a cloud of golden spores, but this time we see Erika's face superimposed on the cloud, implying she's won back control of Biollante's mind. Miki claims that Biollante thanks them all before the spores disappear into the sky.

Godzilla finally becomes groggy and collapses face down into the sea, but recovers, supposedly because the water lowered his body temperature again. Denied the chance to retrieve ANEB for his employers, the Saradian agent kills Shiragami. Kazuto gives chase, but the agent is killed when he stands on part of the Thunder Control array and is vaporised. The last shot, over the end credits, is of a gigantic rose in orbit, hinting at a possible return for Biollante.

There are no prizes for guessing what this movie’s all about. Genetic engineering became a practical science in the 1970s – the first recombinant molecule was created in 1972, the first genetically modified bacterium in 1973, the first GM mouse in 1974. In 1978, the company Genentech was founded and by 1982 it was producing synthetic medical insulin. Then and ever since, the scientific community and the general public have voiced concerns ranging from the religious (the idea that scientists are “playing God”) to the legal/ethical (the fear that corporations might take out patents on living organisms) to the medical/nutritional (the worry that the introduction of GM crops into the food chain might spread allergens across species or have other negative side effects on conventional food crops). Alongside this, in popular fiction and the tabloid press, there have been GM scare stories that draw from a broad palette of partly understood science and outdated, discredited or pseudoscientific ideas about biology.

Godzilla vs Biollante straddles the line between believability and sensationalism. There are real-world efforts to engineer hardier food crops that can grow in the desert that mirror what we’re told about Dr Shiragami’s early work. And the idea that Godzilla’s atomic-powered biology might offer the key to creating bacteria that could break down nuclear waste doesn’t seem too far-fetched either – there’s been similar research into using synthetic microorganisms to clear up plastic waste, which Kazuto even mentions while he’s escorting Kuroki and Gondō to his lab. On the other hand, the notions that Shiragami has somehow transferred his daughter’s soul into his roses by splicing human DNA into them, or that adding kaiju DNA would cause the flowers to mimic Godzilla’s gross anatomy, are pure fantasy. Still, it’s no more egregious than most other examples of SF cinema I can think of. And although Godzilla vs Biollante isn’t the first big screen take on genetic engineering – notable forerunners include The Boys from Brazil (1978), which involves cloning a monster of another kind, and Blade Runner (1982), which hybridises the noir detective genre with a GM reimagining of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) – it might be the first GM giant monster movie, anticipating Michael Crichton’s novel Jurassic Park (1990) and its film adaptation (1993).

As far as the realisation of Biollante goes, it’s highly imaginative and largely successful. Sadly I can’t award it the crown of being the first Japanese plant kaiju – Tsuburaya Productions got there first with an episode of Ultra Q (1966). (In fact, it’s partly a plant kaiju and partly female thanks to Erika’s influence, which makes it a member of two underrepresented kaiju communities.) I do think it owes more than a little to Frank Oz’s musical film version of Little Shop of Horrors (1986), particularly in the toothy buds on its tendrils. Although I’d say it works on screen, it’s pretty obvious how the effects team have used wires to animate those tendrils.

Beyond that, the effects shots are fine but not spectacular. There's a touch of the Gerry Andersons about the Super X2 in flight, notably in shots of it circling Godzilla or entering the sea. The best composite shot in the film is probably when the characters first see Biollante standing in Lake Ashi, although the sheer novelty value does a lot to sell that scene. The city miniatures are, again, a pale shadow of what they once were, and one building placed right up in the foreground in one scene spoils the illusion completely.

The characters are an odd bunch. Dr Shiragami is the focal character of the film, but he’s no hero. On the contrary, he's an unethical scientist who creates a monster, although he does get to deliver the expected "We're the real monsters" speech during the denouement. Nominally, the hero ought to be Kazuto, but he feels like one of those side characters who just gets dragged into the main plot for the benefit of the others – they only want him for his microbes. How on Earth has he ended up in the action scenes? Let’s be honest, Asuka is only there for the multiple conveniences that she’s a) Kazuto’s girlfriend and his boss’s daughter, b) an old friend of Shiragami’s daughter, and c) an administrator at the school for gifted youngsters that has produced Saegusa Miki. She can thus tie three plot strands together in her first couple of scenes and stand around for the rest of the movie. Miki isn’t the hero yet, although she’ll become the lynchpin of the Heisei Godzilla series. Major Kuroki is too driven and unemotional to be a really heroic figure, and Colonel Gondō is just nuts. This film oozes 1980s cynicism – where are the storybook heroes?

Kuroki is a character to watch. Here he’s played by Takashima Masanobu, the son of Takashima Tadao who starred as Sakurai in King Kong vs Godzilla and was the commander of the weather research team in Son of Godzilla. (Hmm... once again I wonder if the inclusion of a weaponised weather control system in Godzilla vs Biollante is a callback to the latter film...) The character will reappear in Godzilla vs Destoroyah (1995), but there he’ll be played by the actor’s brother Takashima Masahiro, of whom we shall hear more in due course.

Sawaguchi Yasuko, who played Naoko in The Return of Godzilla, returns here as Erika, but it’s little more than a cameo role. The new rising female star of the Godzilla franchise is Odaka Megumi, playing the teen psychic Miki. Odaka was the winner of the second ever “Toho Cinderella Audition”, held in 1987, the contest that had launched Sawaguchi’s career. Odaka’s film debut for Toho that year was in Princess from the Moon (1987), which starred Sawaguchi. This was a glossy new fantasy take on a classic folk tale, the Tale of the Bamboo Cutter. It’s a popular story that’s been adapted several times in various media – a more recent and more traditional retelling was the Studio Ghibli animated film The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2013).

The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter goes something like this. One day, an old bamboo cutter finds a tiny child inside a stalk of bamboo, which he and his wife adopt as their own. On later return visits to the forest, he finds caches of gold that they use to raise the child in increasing comfort. She ages quickly into adulthood and, because she lives like a princess, noble society accepts her as such. Several suitors approach her, but she sets them all impossible tasks to prove their good character and they either cheat or give up. She finally attracts the attention of the Emperor himself. Before anything can come of it, a caravan of celestial beings descends from the Moon and takes the princess away – she herself was a celestial being all along. She was sent to Earth to live a human life for reasons that are only vaguely defined, and she’s expected to forget her mortal life once she returns to the Moon, although it’s suggested she doesn’t entirely forget.

Princess from the Moon gives this story a von Däniken-esque spin, so the celestial beings from the Moon are aliens that literally live on the Moon, and they descend to Earth not in a divine procession but in a UFO that looks like it’s been borrowed from Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). Adding a bit to the backstory of the bamboo cutter and his wife and their decision to raise the princess themselves, the film rewrites them as bereaved parents whose infant daughter is buried in the forest. The princess is thus able to use the dead child’s DNA as a template for her own body in a way that’s reminiscent of another feelgood American SF movie, Starman (1984). Instead of finding fairy gold inside bamboo stalks, the bamboo cutter is able to trade away fragments of the princess’ crashed space capsule, which seems to be made out of gold.

The film’s also of potential interest to kaiju fans because one of the princess’ suitors is sent to retrieve a gem from the forehead of a sea monster. Unlike the scuzzier suitors, he actually attempts it but ends up lost at sea. The design of the sea monster came from sketches that Toho had left over from a planned collaboration with the UK’s Hammer Films that had fallen through, which would have centred around the legendary Loch Ness Monster.

Toho clearly had high hopes for Princess from the Moon, although it got a mixed reception on its release. It was billed as their 55th anniversary film. Besides starring Sawaguchi as the titular princess, it co-starred Mifune Toshirō, an absolute giant of Japanese cinema and the former star of Toho’s quasi-historical epic The Three Treasures (1959), in the role of the bamboo cutter. This production had prestige written all over it. Odaka’s comparatively small role as Akeno, a blind village girl who befriends the otherwise aloof princess, was obviously meant to propel her to greater heights, and it did win her plaudits. Two years later, here she is playing probably the most significant non-kaiju character in the Heisei Godzilla series.

Here’s the thing: at some point in the five years since their big relaunch of Godzilla, Toho had realised that they needed to appeal to female cinemagoers. It seems that women formed the largest contingent of those who still regularly attended the cinema in TV-flooded Japan in the 1980s. Women had turned out to see The Return of Godzilla, and not just mothers taking their pre-adolescent sons to see a monster movie, but young professional women with disposable income looking for a fun evening out with their friends. If they wanted to hold onto this audience, the makers of any further instalments in the Godzilla franchise would have to provide better on-screen representation than they had with Return.

So this film introduces Miki, a young woman empowered with psychic abilities that enable her to build up a sort of bond with Godzilla and, from our perspective, give her an unusual authority to explain parts of the plot. And rather than have her be the only speaking woman in the film, as Naoko was in Return, the writers of this and the next five films wisely include at least one other prominent female character who carries her own plot strand as well as interacting with Miki. (Whether these films can be said to pass the Bechdel Test must depend on whether you’d count a conversation about Godzilla as a conversation about a male character...) Ōkouchi Asuka isn’t the best example of this, but she’s a start.

I’m not sure whether the fact that Biollante is genetically part woman counts as further representation or not. Let’s face it, I’m the wrong person to comment on the feminist implications of a film whose antagonist is an 85-metre-tall rose with teeth.

Like Return, Godzilla vs Biollante performed well but not outstandingly at the box office. Another sequel was justified, but Toho would take an extra year to think about it and would start bringing back the big-name antagonists to try to draw the crowds.