Godzilla vs Destoroyah

Godzilla vs Destoroyah (1995)
Toho Studios
Director: Ōkawara Takao, Kawakita Kōichi (special effects)

With the Hollywood blockbuster version of Godzilla now confirmed to be in production, Toho decides to wrap things up and clear the deck in the most apocalyptic (and showy) way possible. This is nothing less than the Gojidämmerung – the Twilight of the Godzilla.

It’s 1996. A G-Force helicopter flying over the island Godzilla’s child was living on in Godzilla vs SpaceGodzilla (1994) discovers that the island is gone. From the look of it, it’s been destroyed by volcanic activity, but later investigation reveals some kind of nuclear radiation was to blame. Meanwhile, Hong Kong is attacked by Godzilla, who’s glowing bright red and visibly steaming with heat. His breath ray looks like it did at the end of the previous movie, all red and fiery (which suggests the strange energy he absorbed in his fight with SpaceGodzilla has had some sort of continued effect on him). The UNGCC Council discuss a thesis about Godzilla’s biology that might help them to understand what’s happening to Godzilla. They received it from Yamane Kenkichi, none other than the adopted grandson of the Dr Yamane played by Shimura Takashi in the original Godzilla (1954).

On a TV science programme, Kenkichi’s journalist sister Yukari interviews the chemist Ijūin Kensaku. Dr Ijūin presents his latest discovery, a means to compress oxygen molecules into a form he calls “micro-oxygen”. The process accelerates fish growth and could be used to alleviate famine. It also produces a lot of energy under certain conditions, but Ijūin is confident that it won’t be weaponised. Kenkichi’s and Yukari’s aunt, Yamane Emiko (yes, the romantic lead from Godzilla!) contacts Yukari to express her concern over the programme. The micro-oxygen process sounds a lot like Dr Serizawa’s research into the Oxygen Destroyer, the weapon that killed the original Godzilla.

A tunnelling project at Tokyo Bay runs into problems when the tunnel machine shaft enters a fossil-rich stratum of rock and begins to disintegrate. Yukari establishes that the tunnel has passed under the part of the bay where Godzilla was destroyed 40 years earlier. Ijūin is interested in the site, and in the pre-Cambrian life forms that were sealed away under that rock in the billenia before oxygen-dependent life evolved on Earth.

(The tunnelling project is almost certainly a reference to the Tokyo Bay Aqua-Line toll bridge/tunnel. This project to connect Kawasaki and Kisarazu across the middle of the bay was started in 1989 and wasn’t completed until December 1997, making this a super-topical reference for the Heisei Godzilla series.)

Kenkichi, who has inveigled his way into the UNGCC summit, suggests that Godzilla’s heart is like a nuclear reactor approaching meltdown. One false move and Godzilla could explode with the force of the world’s entire nuclear arsenal. Colonel Asō is appalled to be told his forces must under no circumstances attack Godzilla. Kenkichi suggests instead recreating the Oxygen Destroyer to use against him. Dr Ijūin, meanwhile, is examining mineral samples from the tunnelling site and discovers microscopic signs of life in one of the sample flasks. The life forms break out of the flask and soon find their way through the city’s water infrastructure to an aquarium, where they promptly skeletonise all the fish. Close analysis of the aquarium’s camera footage suggests that the creatures, now insect size, are a kind of arthropod unknown to science. Ijūin speculates that they were revived by the effects of Serizawa’s Oxygen Destroyer.

Godzilla proceeds from Hong Kong to Taiwan and Okinawa. Colonel Asō fears an attack on mainland Japan. But the Tokyo Bay tunnelling complex is instead attacked by dozens of the supercharged pre-Cambrian life forms, now grown to the size of a horse, which make short work of a squad of armed police (in a scene clearly influenced by Aliens (1986)). They have red carapaces, axe-head-shaped heads and crab-like bodies, and can fire some kind of energy beam from their very toothy mouthparts. (Those mouthparts are also inspired by the Alien franchise – we later see one shooting a smaller, toothed proboscis from inside its mouth.) They are, it turns out, vulnerable to rocket fire, but the police didn’t bring enough of those and the creatures soon emerge above ground. G-Force, however, is distracted by Godzilla emerging from the channel between Kyūshū and Shikoku islands and heading for the nearest nuclear power station. They’re authorised to launch the Super X3 against him.

The Super X3 is a return to classic form after the bipedal mecha of the last two movies. (Presumably the JSDF has exhausted its supply of reverse engineered 23rd century technology.) It looks like the bastard offspring of a Sukhoi tactical bomber and a Northrop stealth bomber. It’s armed with cadmium missiles and an array of freezing weapons, including one that emerges from its nose in the style of the Super X2. The X3 succeeds in temporarily freezing Godzilla, which brings his detectable temperature down to normal levels and diverts him from the power station. The apocalypse appears to be averted.

Saegusa Miki shares a moment of confidence with Ozawa Meru, a younger psychic who’s been attached to the American wing of G-Force. Miki has been trying to find Little Godzilla and reveals she’s always struggled with the anxiety that her abilities would fade. Meru’s concerns are more superficial – she just wants to know if boys like her or not. Soon after, Godzilla’s child is spotted off the coast of Shizuoka. After another year’s growth or mutation (or both), he looks like a younger replica of Godzilla. Colonel Asō renames him “Godzilla Junior”. The UNGCC projects that his and Godzilla’s courses are taking them towards the island in the Bering Sea where Godzilla Junior’s egg was found. Meru then relays the information from the American team that Godzilla’s temperature is rising again. Although he may not explode, if his temperature continues to rise at the same rate, within a week he’ll go into meltdown and burn straight down to the Earth’s core.

The JSDF deploys conventional tanks and maser tanks to contain the pre-Cambrian creatures in the bay area. The maser tanks have been modified with freezing capabilities, since Dr Ijūin has determined in his lab that the creatures are vulnerable to extreme cold. Several of them erupt from the ground and reveal a surprising new ability: they can merge together in the presence of micro-oxygen to form a single gigantic creature that quickly polishes off the tanks. This daikaiju has a large horn protruding from its forehead and wings that allow it to fly. Ijūin declares that it can only have drawn such power from the original Oxygen Destroyer, and dubs it Destoroyah. (That’s Toho’s approved English language spelling. Japanese, being a syllabic language, tends to separate consonants with additional vowels when approximating words from other languages. What we’ve got here is a slightly closer English rendering of the Japanese rendering of the English word “Destroyer” – like the kaiju, a step removed from the original “Oxygen Destroyer”. Compare with the “o” in “Ghidorah”, a name that riffs on “Hydra”.) Kenkichi believes that Destoroyah, as the living embodiment of the Oxygen Destroyer, is the best chance of killing Godzilla before he melts down. Meru proposes psychically diverting Junior towards Destoroyah to use him as bait to draw Godzilla into a head-on fight. The UNGCC orders the complete evacuation of all areas within 200km of Tokyo.

(That’s an extremely large proportion of the middle of mainland Japan. What we actually see is crowds in central Tokyo being ushered out of the centre by traffic police and completely failing to get anywhere near either underground shelters or the countryside. There’s plenty of the usual road traffic in Tokyo when the X3 flies overhead, too.)

The plan to divert Junior works, but Junior ends up apparently killing Destoroyah after a close fight. Junior and Godzilla meet up at Haneda Airport but are surprised by the reappearance of an even bigger Destoroyah. G-Force launches the Super X3 again in the hope of containing Godzilla’s meltdown, as his temperature is escalating out of control. Destoroyah mortally wounds Junior by dropping him onto a sports stadium, which only enrages Godzilla. Godzilla fights off Destoroyah, who is ultimately defeated when the JSDF launch their freezing weapons at it while it’s in the air, causing it to plummet to its death. (Finally, the JSDF have achieved something in this film franchise!) Godzilla hits the temperature at which it’s predicted he’ll destroy the world, and the JSDF empty their arsenal at him. The pilot of the X3 reports that the radiation reading is off the scale – Tokyo may never be habitable again. Yet just as suddenly, the radiation levels drop. The smoke clears to reveal that Junior has absorbed the radiation and returned to life as a new, full-size Godzilla.

The credits roll over a selection of clips from the 1954 original and the Heisei series, and a triumphant arrangement of Ifukube’s iconic Godzilla march.

It’s all gone a bit meta. In 1954, Godzilla symbolised the atomic bomb, the most terrifying real-world weapon, and was killed by the fictional Oxygen Destroyer, an equally nightmarish weapon but a sort of conceptual opposite of the bomb. Now here we have a kaiju that symbolises the fictional weapon that killed Godzilla. And Godzilla, who seems to now symbolise the fear of nuclear power stations failing more than nuclear weapons, has to kill it right back. We’ve come full circle. Which is perhaps appropriate for a film that ends with the passing of the torch to the next generation of Godzilla.

As a kaiju, Destoroyah has a novelty that the previous year’s SpaceGodzilla lacked and is certainly more interesting. It’s not the first time we’ve seen a swarm of smaller, human-scale monsters – Rodan (1956) gave us the insectoid Meganulons, probably inspired by the giant ants in Them! (1954) – but I think it’s the first film to show us a sort of queen kaiju in charge of the swarm. No doubt this, too, is something this film owes to Aliens. But in a peculiar extra twist, the queen is formed by the smaller kaiju merging together, a bit like the cumulative growth of 1971’s Hedorah. As with SpaceGodzilla, the special effects budget seemingly couldn’t stretch to a visible transformation, although this time it’s masked by clouds of dust rather than simply happening between shot cuts. Beyond this detail, the idea of a weapon like the Oxygen Destroyer creating conditions that would actually suit pre-Cambrian life forms has a pleasing “scienciness” to it that, again, contrasts with the sci-fi salad of SpaceGodzilla’s backstory.

On the subject of special effects, this film sees the Godzilla team experimenting with CGI with some obvious and mixed results. Not in the portrayal of the daikaiju themselves – suit acting and other practical effects are still preferred for that (and on that note, a quick shout out to the stunt actor playing Godzilla Junior, Hariken Ryū, who I think outshines longstanding Godzilla actor Satsuma Kenpachirō throughout). But in long shots of the human-scale Destoroyah creatures swarming above ground, there’s clearly an element of copying and pasting a digital model going on that, looking back on it today, sadly resembles the sort of thing you’d see in the knock-off “mockbusters” produced by The Asylum. CGI is also clearly used in the scene of Godzilla frosting over as the X3 empties its freezing weapons at him.

Among the cast there are the usual regulars – Odaka Megumi as Miki, Nakao Akira as Colonel Asō – and a couple of other familiar faces. Takashima Masahiro, seen very recently as the male lead in Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla II (1993) and the titular hero in Yamato Takeru (1994), pops up as the pilot of the Super X3. Ozawa Meru is played by Osawa Sayaka, who made a cameo appearance in Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla II as one of a pair of telepaths at Miki’s psychic research centre – perhaps she’s meant to be playing the same character here? She and the other telepath were also Mothra’s fairy emissaries in Godzilla vs Mothra (1992) and Godzilla vs SpaceGodzilla. Perhaps the most surprising returning actor is Kōchi Momoko, reprising the role of Yamane Emiko she’d played 40 years earlier in the original Godzilla. Her part in this film is a small one, but a significant one as the Heisei Godzilla series draws to a close. Her co-stars Shimura Takashi and Hirata Akihiko appear in the form of photographs and stock footage respectively.

The character of Meru feels like a bit of a missed opportunity. It’s as if she’s being set up as a kind of cracked mirror of Miki, another young professional telepath but one who joined the militaristic G-Force rather than being co-opted as a consultant, and who wears the uniform (or at least the beret). The heart-to-heart scene between the two reveals Meru as shallow where Miki is introspective. Moreover, she’s spent her time with the UNGCC training in America, far from the kaiju action, while Miki has forged a genuine connection with Godzilla’s child. Meru’s the one who suggests using Godzilla Junior as live bait for Destoroyah, and although Miki is obliged to participate in this plan when the UNGCC greenlights it, she looks uneasy and has every reason to. This could, maybe should have led to a confrontation between the two, but nothing ever comes of it.

Overall, though, this is a strong finish for this run of Godzilla movies and a confident handover to TriStar Pictures as they prepare to bring Godzilla to a whole new, much larger English-speaking audience. Let’s hope they don’t mess it up.