Godzilla vs King Ghidorah

Godzilla vs King Ghidorah (1991)
Toho Studios
Director: Ōmori Kazuki, Kawakita Kōichi (special effects)

Godzilla vs Biollante (1989) had done well enough at the box office to justify the continuation of what was becoming a new series of Godzilla films, but it hadn’t built on the success of The Return of Godzilla (1984). In order to boost the series’ popularity, rather than create more original daikaiju like Biollante, the filmmakers decided to bring back some of the best-known old monsters but with a twist for the new audience. The first of these returning foes was perennial favourite King Ghidorah. In all his previous appearances in the 60s and 70s, Ghidorah had been the pawn of alien invaders. The Heisei series hadn’t yet gone so far as to introduce aliens, and rather than take that step the writers chose instead to bring Ghidorah in through the far more reasonable narrative device of time travel.

This is the first and (to date) the only Godzilla movie to involve time travel. Warning: contains non-linearity!

The film’s pre-title sequence is set in the year 2204 in the Sea of Okhotsk. A pair of unseen observers discuss video footage of a dragon-like creature lying on the sea bed. One of the observers explains to the other that this is King Ghidorah, who fought Godzilla in the late 20th century. The full significance of this scene won’t become clear until much later.

Cut to Tokyo in 1992. Crowds of people watch agog as a UFO flies over the city at night. The next day, journalist Terasawa Kenichirō gets a call from the editor of Super Mystery Magazine inviting him to write up the incident. Terasawa came to the magazine’s attention after writing a famous book about ESP, but he wants to move into more serious journalism. His eye is caught by a small newspaper article about an employee of the Dinosaur World museum who claims to have seen a real dinosaur. This is Ikehata, a veteran of the Second World War who was stationed on Ragos Island in the Marshall Islands in February 1944. (Note: the Anglo subtitles say “Lagos”, an on-screen map with English lettering says “Ragos”. It’s a fictional island either way. I’m not 100% confident in the subtitles on this movie, so on this occasion, I’ve decided to back the map.) Pinned down by American forces, his garrison was successfully evacuated after a dinosaur suddenly appeared and drove off the Americans. Although he concedes to Terasawa that the dinosaur was probably just defending its territory, he believes it will appear again to defend Japan in what he considers are troubled times.

Japanese officials, in consultation with the telepathic Godzilla expert Saegusa Miki, review the available satellite images of the UFO’s activity. It seems to have first appeared over the site where Godzilla, weakened by a bacterial anti-nuke weapon, has been recovering underwater since his battle with Biollante. It’s disappeared somewhere near Mt Fuji. The JSDF find it on the ground after two of their helicopters are shot down.

Terasawa confides in his editor his suspicion that Ikehata’s dinosaur is in fact Godzilla – Ragos Island was among those affected by America’s H-bomb tests in the 50s. She later sends him to interview Shindō Yasuaki, the head of the Teiyo Group corporation. As well as owning Dinosaur World, Shindō was the major in charge of the Japanese garrison on Ragos in 1944. Although he initially laughs off Terasawa’s questions, he’s eventually persuaded to give Terasawa and his editor some photographs he took of the dinosaur, which he hasn’t shown to anyone else since.

The occupants of the UFO request a meeting with the Japanese authorities. Dobashi, a senior security official, and Fujio, the nation’s top physicist, turn up for the rendez-vous and are met by three humans who introduce themselves as Wilson, Grenchiko and Emmy Kano. (Names which broadly suggest a coalition of Americans, Russians and Japanese?) They’ve been sent back in time from the year 2204 by the Earth Union in a craft that they call “Mother”, but which Dobashi and Fujio would call a time machine. (And when he says this, Wilson says both the name “Mother” and the phrase “time machine” in English.) At an arranged meeting with the Prime Minister, they explain that an attack by Godzilla in the 21st century will lead to the radioactive contamination and complete evacuation of Japan. To prevent this, they propose to travel further back to the site of the pre-nuclear Godzilla’s sighting in 1944 and teleport him away from the island, so that he won’t be exposed to the H-bomb tests and will never become Godzilla. They’ve got the details of their plan from a book about Godzilla’s origins that Terasawa is, in 1992, still only beginning to research. They’ve already scanned the comatose Godzilla and confirmed Terasawa’s theory to within a small margin of error.

Emmy Kano will conduct the mission in Mother’s scout ship alongside the visitors’ android, M11. In addition, they offer to take three observers from 1992 with them: Terasawa, Saegusa Miki and Professor Mazaki, a paleontologist that Terasawa has been consulting. They explain that they can’t take a more obviously qualified observer such as Shindō with them, as two versions of the same person can’t co-exist in the same time period. Also along for the ride are Emmy’s three Dorats, ridiculously cute genetically engineered animals the size of a cat but with dragon-like rear legs and wings. Emmy claims they’re a popular variety of household pet in the 23rd century.

The team arrive in 1944 as planned but have to sit tight while an American battleship shells them. M11 scouts the island and confirms the presence of Shindō’s garrison. (While he does this, he moves in a form of high-speed-but-slow-motion that’s reminiscent of The Six Million Dollar Man (1973-78) but – probably unintentionally – much funnier.) The next day, they witness the dinosaur’s appearance and see it massacring the American troops on the island, although it’s wounded by artillery fire from the battleship. They fast forward a week and, once the Japanese soldiers have been evacuated, they transport the immobile, wounded dinosaur from the island to the middle of the Bering Strait. (Bad news, 23rd century folks: the Americans tested nuclear weapons up there too.) Unseen by any of the others, Emmy shoos the Dorats out of the ship before they timewarp back to 1992.

On their return, the team are told that Godzilla has disappeared as planned but King Ghidorah has appeared in his place. (It’s unclear whether this is meant to be Ghidorah’s first attack on Japan – everyone already seems to know his name, but they act as though this is the first time they’ve seen him. Funnily enough, they also seem to have no trouble remembering Godzilla, so he obviously hasn’t entirely vanished from history.) King Ghidorah looks much like the Shōwa era version, a three-headed and two-tailed yellow wyvern, but a bit more golden and shiny. He flies into Kyūshū and works his way north, destroying everything in his path. Miki guesses that Emmy left the Dorats behind in 1944 so that they could be exposed to the radiation of the Bikini Atoll tests and fused together to form King Ghidorah.

Privately, Emmy confronts Wilson and Grenchiko about their plan to direct Ghidorah across Japan and destroy everything except Tokyo, which they intend to take under their patronage. She thought they would only threaten Japan with Ghidorah, not wipe it out. She sneaks away and visits Terasawa at his home, where she tells him that what they’d told the Prime Minister earlier was a lie. In the 21st century, Japan becomes so economically powerful that it can buy up entire continents, while America, the Soviet Union and China have renounced all nuclear weapons and are no longer superpowers. (And she does audibly say “Soviet” even though the Soviet Union was already collapsing while this film was being made. This might imply that the filmmakers weren’t as confident as some American pundits about the USSR’s demise, or that they could imagine it reforming at a later date. As I write this in 2024, that doesn’t seem as outlandish as it once did. Or it might merely suggest that the time travellers didn’t do their homework thoroughly enough.) The Earth Union that’s sent the three visitors back to 1992 in a stolen time machine isn’t some kind of world government but an international activist group resisting Japan’s domination of the world. Their plan is to prevent Japan’s rise to power through coercion.

Having received Wilson’s and Grenchiko’s demands and desperate to find something they can use against King Ghidorah, the Japanese government moots using nuclear material to turn the relocated dinosaur in the Bering Sea into a new Godzilla. Shindō reveals that the Teiyo Group – which Emmy claims will be the world’s most powerful corporation in the 23rd century – has its own nuclear submarine, which it keeps moored outside Japanese waters. He offers to send it to fire missiles loaded with Japan's nuclear waste into the dinosaur. Miki, however, intuits that Godzilla has remained active this whole time. Terasawa finds an old news report of a nuclear submarine that sank in the Bering and was never recovered, which could already have mutated the kaiju. The government sends the sub anyway, and it’s destroyed en route by Godzilla who later surfaces (to a lovely, cheerful flourish of harp music) in the sea near Japan. He looks like he did in Godzilla vs Biollante, but bigger – either this is another, different individual or the energy from Shindō’s submarine has rapidly advanced his growth.

Wilson and Grenchiko send M11 to capture Emmy and bring her back to Mother, which he does after a brief car chase. They then leave her alone to repair M11’s damaged skin, and she takes the opportunity to reprogram the android. The fighter jets of the JASDF are powerless against King Ghidorah, but the reappearance of Godzilla rattles Wilson and Grenchiko and they send Ghidorah to fight Godzilla. Ghidorah seems to be winning, but when Emmy, M11 and Terasawa sabotage Mother’s computer systems, the visitors’ control over Ghidorah is broken and Godzilla gains the upper hand. He blasts off the middle one of Ghidorah’s three heads and his left wing, and Ghidorah crashes into the sea. Emmy and the others storm Mother’s bridge, but Wilson and Grenchiko are unconcerned – this new, larger Godzilla will destroy Japan after all, just as they’d originally claimed, and when Mother’s failsafe system kicks in they’ll be automatically returned to the 23rd century. Our heroes retreat to the scout ship, escape and teleport Mother into the path of Godzilla, who destroys it and the villains with his atomic breath. But Godzilla is soon laying waste to Sapporo and marching towards Tokyo.

We now replay the opening scene, as Emmy and M11 return to 2204 and, with the help of a submarine pilot, retrieve the still-living body of King Ghidorah from the sea floor. Their plan is to turn it into a cyborg that they can take back to 1992 and use to save Japan from Godzilla.

Tokyo is evacuated ahead of Godzilla’s attack, but Shindō chooses to stay in his corporate skyscraper. He believes he has a special bond with the kaiju after the events of 1944, and as Godzilla’s head draws level with his office window, Shindō seems to believe they’re having a moment. But Godzilla blasts him and knocks over his office building. It’s at this moment that the cyborg King Ghidorah – let’s call him Mecha-King Ghidorah – materialises in the sky over Tokyo. His central head, both wings and his upper torso have been replaced with robotic parts, and Mother’s scout ship forms a cockpit at the base of his mechanical neck from which Emmy pilots him, with M11 running the operating system. After a pitched battle, Godzilla downs Mecha-King Ghidorah, but the cyborg has one more trick up its sleeve – a set of electrified metal clamps that latch onto Godzilla’s limbs and waist. Mecha-King Ghidorah lifts off with Godzilla in tow and flies him out to sea, and the pair sink beneath the waves. Godzilla is very much alive, but seemingly trapped. Emmy escapes in the scout ship and returns once more to the 23rd century after revealing that she’s Terasawa’s descendant.

The first thing I think I ought to do here is try to make sense of the time travel plot. This will be a bit spoilery, but also potentially dull for anyone who can watch this movie, shrug and not care how much sense it makes. So if it matters to you, click the button below, but if not, please just read on.

On the face of it, I think it just about works. Although the time travellers don’t succeed in removing Godzilla from the picture entirely, they do create King Ghidorah, and Wilson and Grenchiko don’t seem too concerned whether present-day Japan is destroyed by Ghidorah or by a newly super-charged Godzilla (or both!) just so long as it’s destroyed. All three are agreed that the future they’re familiar with, in which Japan owns most of the world, must be averted, although they differ on the method. When Emmy pops back/forward to 2204 to retrieve what’s left of Ghidorah, her submariner friend describes Japan as having been destroyed after a period of naïve prosperity. (“That poor nation,” he says, in much the way that someone who’s joined a coalition of people resisting being subjugated by that nation probably wouldn’t.) The implication is that the mission to change history has succeeded: Japan is no longer the continent-buying imperial leviathan that rose to global dominance in the 21st century and is instead a radioactive wasteland. The lie the travellers told their hosts earlier in the movie has become historical fact. Possibly Emmy will be returning to something else again after the movie’s end, something between the two polar extremes described to us.

The big question is whether the travellers have changed anything in the Heisei series Godzilla’s personal timeline or simply reinforced it. The events of Godzilla (1954) will play an important part later in the series, but there’s no reason to suppose that would be affected by the interference here – everyone still knows who and what Godzilla is, and it’s kind of a given that the original Godzilla is distinct from any subsequent Godzillas given how the 1954 movie ends. We’d simply have to assume that there were multiple proto-Godzillas lurking around the Marshall Islands after World War Two, not just the one relocated by the travellers, which is possibly something the characters haven’t considered. (Let’s not forget that their primary source of historical research is the potboiler Terasawa hasn’t written yet.) What complicates matters is that everyone – not just Miki and Terasawa, who plausibly might remember the “original” timeline because they travelled to 1944 with Emmy, but the contemporary Japanese officials who stayed behind – remembers where Heisei Godzilla ended up after the events of Godzilla vs Biollante and notices that he isn’t there any more. (A reference to Godzilla vs Biollante in a later film also suggests those events haven’t been erased, although it might equally just be a continuity error.) Importantly, we’re not given any visual sign that Godzilla has winked out of existence at that point, we’re just told he’s disappeared, and it feels like he could just as easily have woken up and wandered off while no one was paying attention. We’re also not given a date for the newspaper clipping Terasawa finds about the nuclear submarine disaster that presumably caused Heisei Godzilla’s mutation (unless there’s a date printed on the paper that I can’t read). If it happened earlier than 1984, it could have led to Godzilla appearing and the events of the previous two movies unfolding just as we saw. The travellers’ attempt to erase Heisei Godzilla from history might have been the very thing that brought him into existence in the first place. The only question then is whether we’re supposed to understand that Godzilla being larger and more aggressive when he reappears in 1992 is because his origin story has been rewritten or due to an almost instant growth spurt when he destroys Shindō’s submarine. For the sake of simplicity and consistency with the other available evidence, I vote for the “instant growth spurt” hypothesis.

This is one of those Godzilla movies that sets off some people’s Nationalism Alarms. After all, it does moot the possibility of Japanese global domination in the future, and the villains want to prevent that, so maybe – depending on exactly how you interpret the temporal convolutions of the plot (or, dare I say it, on how closely you’re paying attention) – the film is saying that it’s a good thing? But there’s no suggestion of a resurgent Japanese military empire. Rather, what’s hinted at is a world in which Japan dominates the world economically, and specifically Japanese business interests. It’s not so much a nationalist dream, more the kind of dystopia beloved of cyberpunk novelists, in which capitalism has gone into overdrive and nations as we once knew them have given way to the rule of transnational corporations. It’s just phrased rather awkwardly.

The key figure here isn’t any of the time travellers, but Shindō Yasuaki. A major in the Imperial Japanese Army in 1944 and the chairman of the Teiyo Group in 1992 – which we’re told is the most powerful organisation in the world in 2204 – he thus bridges Japan’s militaristic past and its objectionable potential future. He’s practically a James Bond villain already – he has his own nuclear submarine, for goodness’ sake. (And for bonus points, he’s played by Tsuchiya Yoshio, the Controller of Planet X in Invasion of Astro-Monster (1965).) He thinks he’s special enough to stare Godzilla in the face and get away with it during the kaiju’s rampage through Tokyo. Godzilla, who is presented as both an existential threat to Japan and, according to Shindō’s old comrade Ikehata, potentially its saviour, doesn’t think nearly so highly of Shindō. I think we can take that as a rejection of the future Shindō represents.

If we’re looking for a message in Godzilla vs King Ghidorah, it might be this: that wanting to change Japan's past, and specifically the bits between 1939 and 1954, won't solve today's problems. The Prime Minister jumps at the chance to thwart Godzilla, who once served as a reminder of how America subdued Japan during the war, but that hope is frustrated. Godzilla is still there – he’s always there. If it hadn’t been one thing, the film seems to say, it would have been another thing and we’d be in the same fix today. Japan’s future appears to be in flux, but its past is something the characters just have to come to terms with.

The issue of revisiting Japan's past would have been a topical one in 1991. Akihito, latterly referred to as the Emperor Heisei, had only recently acceded to the throne. One of his earliest public acts, during a state visit by Chinese Premier Li Peng in April 1989, was to express his remorse for the wrongs that Japan had previously committed against China. This was the first of many conciliatory statements from Akihito towards Japan's neighbour nations. It may look to us like a half-hearted almost-apology, but two things make it remarkable. Firstly, the revised Constitution of Japan drawn up under the post-war American occupation limits the Emperor's position to that of a purely ceremonial figurehead. Even commenting publicly on political matters in this way is more than many people would have expected of him. Secondly, some of those wrongs, notably including the 1937 invasion of China and the Second Sino-Japanese War, had occurred during the reign of Akihito's own father Hirohito, the Emperor Shōwa. Akihito's statement of remorse came just two months after Hirohito’s state funeral.

At a less introspective level, the theme of changing history in Godzilla vs King Ghidorah is appropriate given the fluid nature of the political landscape at that time. 1990 had seen the first secessions of former member states of the Soviet Union, with many more to follow in 1991, as well as the treaties that formalised the reunification of Germany. The USSR would be officially dissolved less than two weeks after the cinematic debut of this movie. In the basin of the Persian Gulf, Iraq invaded Kuwait in late 1990. The USA, which might have been hoping for an era of peace after “winning” the Cold War, ended up leading a military campaign against Iraq in early 1991 to shore up the political stability of the region, and incidentally protect its oil import interests. The volatility of Japan's own future in Godzilla vs King Ghidorah – raised high or brought low by forces beyond the understanding of the contemporary characters – may reflect anxiety over this real-world political turmoil.