Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla

Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla (2002)
Toho Studios
Director: Tezuka Masaaki, Kikuchi Yūichi (special effects)
Also known as: On the posters it’s Godzilla X Mechagodzilla, with the “X” pronounced “tai” like the 1974 film’s title. Some use the acronym GXM for convenience. I don’t think anyone’s seriously interested in calling this one “Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla III”.

Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (GMK, 2001) was the most successful of the first three Millennium series Godzilla movies by quite a margin, taking well over twice its budget in domestic ticket sales and enjoying widespread critical acclaim. Director Kaneko Shūsuke had done it again, revitalising a beloved but flagging daikaiju franchise with modern sensibilities, a large dose of mysticism and a dash of horror.

For reasons, executive producer Tomiyama Shōgo decided not to ask Kaneko to make another Godzilla movie, but instead brought back Tezuka Masaaki, the director of Godzilla vs Megaguirus (2000), objectively the least successful of the three movies. Perhaps he felt Tezuka’s vision – less horror, more heroic action – was a better fit for Toho’s or his own view of what a Godzilla movie should be. (It’s worth noting that Toho released several of the Millennium series Godzilla movies on double bills with children’s animated films about Hamtaro, an anthropomorphised hamster...) Tomiyama was so confident in his choice that he backed Tezuka to direct multiple films – having abandoned their plan for a trilogy based on Godzilla 2000: Millennium (1999), Toho would absolutely, definitely follow through on a new trilogy featuring the fan favourite character Mechagodzilla. Given the strong military focus of Godzilla vs Megaguirus, Mechagodzilla and Tezuka must have looked like a match made in heaven. The gamble paid off, for this first movie at least.

Godzilla appears at Tateyama in Chiba Prefecture in 1999 during a typhoon. He’s got those big, gnarly, spiny dorsal plates again, but they’re not purple this time and his skin tone is dark and not green. His head is less flattened and better proportioned than it was in Godzilla vs Megaguirus. He has very expressive eyes. The JXSDF sends in a specialist unit, the Anti-Megalosaurus Force (AMF).

(Based on what we see, the JXSDF could be an in-story parallel version of the JSDF or a special branch of it. The actual distinction between this, the regular JSDF and the AMF remains unclear in this and the next movie. We’ll find out in the sequel that JXSDF stands for the “Japan Counter-Xenomorph Self Defence Force”. A series of on-screen captions tells us that the AMF has 4,072 members, is dedicated to defending Japan from monsters and was established in Chiba in 1966.)

The AMF deploys conventional tanks and maser tanks (those fantasy weapons familiar from earlier films) without success. Maser tank driver Yashiro Akane tries to manoeuvre out of the path of Godzilla’s breath ray, but in the darkness and rain her commanding officer’s truck reverses straight into her vehicle and is knocked off the road, where Godzilla crushes it underfoot. Godzilla goes on to devastate Tateyama and then disappear back into the ocean. Yashiro is officially cleared of all responsibility for the AMF deaths but is reassigned to back-office work.

In a conference between the Prime Minister and her Minister of Science and Technology, we learn that this is the first Godzilla attack since the original one in 1954, which ended with that Godzilla’s death. Japan has been attacked by several other giant monsters, however, including Mothra (Mothra, 1961) and the giant humanoid Gaira (War of the Gargantuas, 1966). It was Gaira’s attack that led to the formation of the AMF.

(These incidents are illustrated with clips from the old films, plus a restaged shot of the 1954 Godzilla being killed by the Oxygen Destroyer. This time, Godzilla’s skeleton is left behind whereas in the original it dissolved away. This will become vital to the plot in a few minutes. Another small change is that, when talking about the development of the AMF’s maser weapons from the heat rays used against Mothra, the Prime Minister says the technology was invented in Japan, while in the 1961 film those heat rays were on loan from a Cold War superpower.)

Since the masers were useless against Godzilla, the Science Minister is tasked with overseeing the development of a new, more effective weapon. To that end, he gathers together a team of top scientists including Professor Yuhara, who wants to expand the field of conservation by resurrecting extinct species. Yuhara has created a replica trilobite using a robotic exoskeleton and organic components from a crab, with the crab’s DNA directing the computers that control the body. (This sounds... ethically complex.) The Science Minister has had the 1954 Godzilla’s skeleton recovered from Tokyo Bay and proposes that the scientists should use DNA from it to create a biomechanical nemesis for Godzilla. Yuhara rejects the offer on the grounds that it’ll keep him apart from his young daughter Sara, whose mother has recently died, but he accepts when the Ministry officials agree that she can join him on site.

Objections to the project include that it’ll cost a great deal of money and that it’ll look like Japan’s rearming itself. Nonetheless, Parliament signs off on it. Three and a half years and one montage later, the bio-robot is complete. Sara and her schoolfriends think it should be called Mechagodzilla, but its official name is Kiryu (“Machine Dragon”). Colonel Togashi, the commander of the squad assigned to Kiryu, recruits Yashiro, which doesn’t go down well with one of the other pilots on the team, Hayama, whose brother was among those who died in 1999. Isolated from her peers, Yashiro ignores Yuhara’s clumsy advances but quickly bonds with his daughter Sara, who has taken on part-time work in the project facility’s cafeteria.

The former Science Minister, who has since been elected Prime Minister, unveils Kiryu at a press conference. It looks a lot like the “Super Mechagodzilla” from Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla II (1993), with the over-the-shoulder rocket launchers and back-mounted jetpack. It has a battery life of two hours, although it needs nearly half of that power to fire its main weapon, the Absolute Zero Gun, which literally freezes its target to absolute zero. It can be recharged in the field, remote controlled and airlifted by a small fleet of VTOL jet aircraft called White Herons. As with Yuhara’s artificial trilobite, DNA is a key component of its computer systems. (What isn’t made explicitly clear, but becomes apparent in the next film, is that Kiryu doesn’t just use the 1954 Godzilla’s DNA but has in fact been built around the substructure of his entire skeleton.)

Before the presentation has even finished, Godzilla is spotted heading for Tokyo and Kiryu is scrambled. Kiryu’s ballistic and maser weapons don’t seem to harm Godzilla but do stall him, and Yashiro, at the controls in her White Heron, prepares to fire the Absolute Zero Gun. But a loud roar from Godzilla seems to freeze up Kiryu’s systems and it stops responding to the AMF team’s commands. Godzilla slips away back into the bay. As the White Herons close in to airlift Kiryu back to base, it spontaneously turns on them, then begins to march through Tokyo, all the while firing its weapons at the aircraft and into the surrounding buildings. Yashiro earns her team-mates’ respect by rescuing Hayama from his downed aircraft. Unable to stop Kiryu’s rampage or control it at all, the AMF have no option but to wait for its battery to run down.

Insistent that Kiryu has a life of its own, Sara is upset that the AMF makes it fight Godzilla against its will. Yuhara opens up to Yashiro about the death of his wife and their unborn second child, explaining that Sara has been sensitive about questions of life, death and choice since then. Yashiro has a heart-to-heart with Sara, who rebukes her for feeling her own life is worthless. Yuhara modifies Kiryu’s operating system to prevent it going rogue again. When Godzilla is sighted heading for Tokyo again, Togashi personally lobbies the Prime Minister to order that Kiryu be launched, promising that the AMF now have it under control. A hesitant Prime Minister agrees that it’s their only option and takes responsibility for the order.

Kiryu arrives in Shinagawa just in time to save a hospital by body-slamming Godzilla. A pitched fight ensues, involving both beam weapons and hand-to-hand combat, during which Godzilla breaks off Kiryu’s shoulder cannons. Eventually Kiryu succeeds in throwing Godzilla down and, with barely enough battery power left, the AMF team prepares to fire the Absolute Zero Gun. At the critical moment, Godzilla knocks Kiryu over with his breath ray and three corporate tower blocks are flash-frozen and shattered. Kiryu’s remote control systems are also damaged, so Yashiro volunteers to land, get inside Kiryu’s maintenance booth and operate it manually. Tokyo’s power supply is diverted to recharge Kiryu via one of the other White Herons.

Almost immediately, Godzilla blasts Kiryu in the back and Yashiro is briefly knocked out, but she quickly recovers and gets Kiryu upright again. To prevent Godzilla doing the same thing again, Hayama ejects his co-pilot and flies his White Heron into Godzilla’s face. Hayama tells Yashiro to take this opportunity to fire the Absolute Zero Gun at Godzilla. Instead, Yashiro has Kiryu pull the aircraft cockpit out of Godzilla’s mouth and throw Hayama to safety, then fly Godzilla out over the bay and discharge the superweapon at point blank range underwater. Godzilla survives but is badly injured, with a large wound in his chest. He turns and trudges off into the Pacific as Kiryu bobs to the surface, missing an arm and out of power. (Note: the stump of the severed arm only shows wires and doesn’t give any hint that the 1954 Godzilla’s bones are under that metal cladding.) The Prime Minister is pleased that Japan now has the capability to deter Godzilla, if not actually kill him. Perched on Kiryu’s shoulder, Yashiro watches Godzilla retreat while she waits for her team to retrieve her.

In a post-credits scene, Yashiro is reunited with Sara and Yuhara in Kiryu’s hangar. With a renewed appetite for life, she agrees to take Yuhara out to dinner.

The first thing to say about Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla is that it’s almost a note-for-note reprise of Godzilla vs Megaguirus. A female officer of the JSDF’s anti-Godzilla force holds a personal grudge against Godzilla because of her commanding officer’s death in a disastrous operation a few years earlier. There’s a suggestion of romance between her and a frankly obnoxious scientist who’s been key in developing a physics-defying superweapon to fight Godzilla. There’s also a precocious child with ties to the opposing kaiju that she confides in. Unsurprisingly, as well as sharing a director, this movie was scripted by one of the two writers behind Megaguirus.

I think it all gels better here than in Megaguirus, though. The JXSDF feels like a more satisfying tribute to the Heisei series’ G-Force than the G-Graspers in Megaguirus, which felt a bit too much like a dozen people operating out of a downtown office. As the overly forward scientist, Yuhara is awkward and unfiltered rather than offensive in the way Kudō was, while Yashiro has more personal motivation than merely having lost a colleague to Godzilla, which Tsujimori would have had in common with her entire battalion. Making the child character a relative of one of the adult leads provides a more credible reason for her to keep meeting up with Yashiro than was the case with Jun and Tsujimori. On a technical level, too, this movie outshines Megaguirus throughout. The opening scenes of the JXSDF fighting Godzilla at night in a typhoon stand out as particularly good.

If Tesuka’s back as director, then so is Ōshima Michiru as the incidental music’s composer. This time the old Ifukube march doesn’t even get a look in. The main theme from Megaguirus is reused whenever Godzilla makes an entrance and over the end credits, but there are some great new themes as well for Kiryu and the JXSDF.

At first glance, Kiryu seems to serve much the same narrative function as Mechagodzilla did in its 1993 appearance: a military solution to a natural problem, which in this case becomes as bad as the original problem. There are some important differences, though. For one thing, Kiryu is actually effective – the cost was terrible, but it got results in the end. And then there’s Kiryu’s name, which is more “authentically” Japanese than Mechagodzilla, which just makes the 1993 machine sound like a piece of imported technology and made the 1974 version more obviously an alien creation. It’s significant that Kiryu is the product of a specifically Japanese military-industrial organisation, not an international body with American involvement like the UNGCC in Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla II. This is unmistakably Japan’s dilemma: can it, should it solve its contemporary problems by rearming? The question of rearmament is very briefly mooted in this movie but swiftly glossed over. The answer, supported by the film’s conclusion, seems to be not only that the circumstances might warrant it, but that the end would justify the means.

The question of rearmament is one that Japan has faced since the end of the American occupation in the 1950s, when the US urged them to rearm and they understandably demurred. It would come to the fore again soon after this film’s release, when Japan was asked to join President George W Bush’s “coalition of the willing” in the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq. Japan sent ground troops, but only in their constitutional capacity as a defensive force, not as aggressors. It’s only in the last couple of years that the Japanese government has passed the changes to their constitution necessary for Japan to build and maintain an offensive capability again. This move is believed to have been prompted by the intimidatory actions of their neighbours China and North Korea.

The other interesting thing Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla does is raise the question of whether Kiryu is in any sense “alive”. Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla II had that bit of nonsense at the end about “life against artificial life”, but Kiryu contains organic components and genuinely seems to be haunted. Reclaiming and weaponising the corpse of the 1954 Godzilla has quite literally raised the spectre of that original assault on Japan. This would seem to work against the upbeat ending of Kiryu’s eventual success by suggesting that by aping our enemies, we’ll only become like them.

The only other thing I’ll say about Kiryu for now is that, by having it be Japan’s superweapon (à la 1993) and having it attack Tokyo (à la 1974), the creators of this movie are very much having their cake and eating it.

Let’s end with a bit of actor-spotting. There are some familiar guest stars playing the two Prime Ministers in this movie. Portraying the 1999 Prime Minister is Mizuno Kumi, who appeared in several Shōwa era films, perhaps most notably (for us) as the alien infiltrator Namikawa in Invasion of Astro-Monster (1965). As an aside, there has never yet been a female Prime Minister of Japan in real life. The 2003 Prime Minister, formerly the Science Minister with responsibility for the Kiryu project, is, delightfully, played by Nakao Akira. Nakao featured in Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla II and the two movies that followed it as Colonel Asō, the head of G-Force who oversaw the construction of the Heisei Mechagodzilla. It’s about time that I also mentioned Ueda Kōichi, who played a variety of officials and other characters in small but memorable roles as far back as Godzilla vs Biollante (1989). Here he plays General Dobashi, a top Defence Ministry official, a role which he’ll reprise with substantially more screen time in the next movie.