Beowulf (1999)

The last time we went over an adaptation of Beowulf, it was John Gardner’s Grendel, a very intentional reversal of the poem that made the monster the protagonist. I think it’s about time we studied a more straightforward re-interpretation, and so I went for the most obvious one: the 1999 techno-medieval movie version starring Christopher Lambert. What, were you expecting something different?

Shot in the backwoods of Transylvania, this Beowulf looks akin to a Renaissance Fair that was sub-themed around the late nineties, a world of castles and battle axes that also includes smokestacks, winding gears and machinery, and some stylish jackets and tops to go along with the royal robes and peasant rags. From the raging techno/industrial/metal score—including songs from Fear Factory, Anthrax, KMFDM, and many others—that ramps up to numerous fight scenes full of clashing steel and ninja flips (would you believe that Mortal Kombat producer Lawrence Kasanoff was involved?), you really get the sense that this is a bare knuckle attempt to make that musty old poem into a hardcore actioner for the fifteen-year-old boy audience, like a even less mannered and subtle version of Brotherhood of the Wolf. I feel that a movie that opens with a unique, silhouette-based logo is very loudly announcing its own brazen approach to the material, and does it ever live up, or down, to those early promises.

Zeiram 2 (1994)

You may remember Zeiram as the movie that begins as a Sci-Fi martial arts clash between an alien bounty hunter and a mutant super-weapon that suddenly pivots into a Laurel & Hardy duo of dimwits having a Scooby-Doo chase with said mutant super-weapon in an empty warehouse district. More than anything, it was a vehicle for director/character designer Keita Amemiya’s intricate tokusatsu aesthetic, probably one of the most prolific ones in the eighties and nineties (aside from various TV series, he worked on the effects of both GUNHED and Shin Kamen Rider: Prologue, and directed the Ultraman vs. Kamen Rider special), let loose from the strictures of television and plot—but that comic relief twist made it an odd one. Amemiya’s sequel, made three years later, actually streamlines the storytelling in a way that better distributes the action throughout its runtime and integrates all the characters in a more organic way, meaning that it might be a better-constructed film, while still being almost exactly the same.

GUNHED (1989)

There seemed to be a certain level of ambition behind GUNHED—it was created through a collaboration between some of Japan’s biggest franchise hitmakers, including Toho, Bandai, Gundam creators Sunrise, Kadokawa, and special effects house Imagica, who formed the “Gunhed Production Committee” (there was also a manga produced by noted author Kia Asamiya, but I don’t know if that preceded the movie or not.) It’s also a movie that makes no bones about existing in the shadow of James Cameron, shamelessly pilfering imagery and ideas from both Terminator and Aliens in order to construct an action epic full of apocalyptic tech graveyards and danger-filled corridors. What you get is, essentially, a story set in a variation of Terminator‘s future war zone, pitting man against ruthless machines, except with classic Toho kaiju effects from the early days of the Heisei era—effects Koichi Kawakita, who had been at the company since the early sixties, directed the effects for all but one of the Heisei Godzilla movies and the first two Mothra movies, and even worked on Zone Fighter—and the addition of a friendly battle mech, a very late eighties Japanese take on a very eighties American concept.

Creature Classic Companion: The Terminator (1984)

Before the name The Terminator defined what a blockbuster film would be for the ensuing thirty years, and before it became synonymous with a lurching franchise constantly finding new ways to not justify its own existence, The Terminator was, simply, a monster movie made by former Roger Corman employees (and with Joe Dante’s Gremlins released a few months before, 1984 was a pretty good year for monster movies made by former Roger Corman employees.) But what could have been a small and economical film with the simple hook of “someone being chased by an unkillable monster” instead feels large in scope, something that does not want to be contained by the Corman ethos. Largeness would come to define pretty much every movie by James Cameron, who started out as a special effects technician, had the frustrating experience of being micromanaged on Piranha II (a sequel to a Corman-produced monster movie directed by, guess what, Joe Dante), and then came up with this and guaranteed the rest of his career. His technical ambitions logically flows from his time in the effects and art departments, but there’s a vision here that isn’t just tailored to fit an effects vehicle—an approach to how to make a thriller, an atmosphere, a sense of what makes for particularly potent “cool” imagery, all stuff that has been normalized in genre movies now but definitely feels distinct when compared to the movies I’ve been watching from this period recently. Everything here comes together in such an explosive way, and casts such a long shadow over film as a whole, you often forget that, at its heart, it is a horror movie, following and innovating on a long line of horror movies.

Zeiram (1991)

Keita Amemiya is primarily known as an artist and character designer for tokusatsu, contributing mostly to Kamen Rider from the eighties onward, as well as some series in sibling franchises like Super Sentai and Metal Heroes—he’s also created his own series (like Garo) and worked in animation and video games as well (doing design work for entries in the Shin Megami Tensei, Onimusha, and Clock Tower series, among others.) Looking back on things I’ve covered, he provided “SFX Supervision” for Shin Kamen Rider: Prologue (he would direct many subsequent V-Cinema Rider movies), and even did the monster designs for the Hanna-Barbera-produced Ultraman animated TV special. So, this is someone very deep in the world of Japanese superheroes and monster costumes, and when given the chance to direct a completely original movie (his directorial debut was a film tie-in to the Namco arcade game Mirai Ninja), it’s not surprising that something like Zeiram is the result—a pure representation of tokusatsu style over substance.

Creature Classic Companion: Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (1974) & Terror of Mechagodzilla (1975)

The Mechagodzilla duology represents the end of Toho’s twenty year run of classic (and not-so-classic) monster movies, with a new one almost every year since the original Godzilla. Despite attempts to keep the series going, costs of production and declining box office (Terror of Mechagodzilla remains the least-attended movie in the series, theatrically) put the King of the Monsters on ice for a decade, when he could be revived in a rawer, meaner form with more modern SFX. Despite having the dubious honours of being in the last two entries of the Showa years, which deviated further and further from the seriousness of Godzilla ’54 with every entry, Mechagodzilla remains one of the more popular of the Big G’s opponents, I think for pretty obvious reasons—it looks like it was pulled directly from the collective imagination of every ten-year-old on the planet, with its endless supply of weapons and a sinister sneer frozen on its mechanical face. I definitely got the appeal when I was a kid who saw Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla on VHS, with many moments from that movie etching themselves into my memory. Nowadays, having a far greater understanding of their context within the history of kaiju films (and having just read Ed Godziszewski, Steve Ryfle, and Yuuko Honda-Yun’s Ishiro Honda: A Life in Film), these two movies don’t just represent the end of their era, but also of the directorial styles of the Godzilla series’ two most important directors: Ishiro Honda, the original and the one who directed most of Toho’s best-known special effects films, and Jun Fukuda, who became prominent during the series’ turn to more lighthearted fare aimed at kids in the late sixties and early seventies. Despite using many of the same elements, they end up producing movies that feel very different.

Daikaiju 2014: Resurgence (3 of 3)

Godzilla Vs. Biollante (1989)

The first Vs. movie of the Heisei era is kind of odd and patchy – the actual confrontations between the titular monsters are few, far between, and fairly short, with the rest of the action devoted to more military hardware nonsense. Though brief, the fights manage to be enjoyably grotesque (as is the general relationship between the two monsters – Godzilla confronted by his mutant female clone), mainly because of how well-realized Biollante’s two forms are – it is a visually and conceptually unique creation (although its characteristics are weirdly muddled at times – especially by the ending.) It’s kind of a shame that the crew shied away from making more new monsters afterwards.

It is neat how the film, right from the hop, establishes a reality where the aftermath of Godzilla’s appearance has consequences – in this case, the harvesting of his cells and the political and corporate espionage games that make up the human part of the plot (except for the introduction of the psychics, which is important for the entire Heisei series, but man is it also really weird.) The presence of a giant radioactive monster leads to a whole load of other things, not the least of which is another monster engineered from his DNA – it gives the whole streak of movies a through-line, even if its not always capitalized on fully. The monsters’ existence having that kind of weight is definitely an interesting way to get the franchise rolling again.

Godzilla Vs. Mothra (1992)

This is an ostensible remake of both Mothra and Mothra Vs. Godzilla happening at the same time, and Godzilla often feels like a third wheel, simply sauntering onscreen to sock whatever giant bug is closest at the time. But while his bearing on the plot is more or less minimal, it sort of makes sense to have him there – with Mothra and Battra as the spirits of the natural world (who, naturally, have clashing ideologies regarding the human race), just about the only thing that could bring them together in the end is a monstrous reminder of how humanity alters nature. Godzilla, then, becomes the mechanic in which the two counterparts reconcile – it’s not smooth, but it is enjoyable. The reconciliation is also paralleled in the human scenes as well, with the separated couple coming back together for the benefit of others – just like the giant flying insects!

While the environmental subplot is mostly in the background, the movie does wring out at least one good scene with it, where the amoral CEO says something along the lines of “I don’t care if they destroy the city, I’ll just rebuild it!” This is the whole “technological solution for a technological problem” (that is later repeated in Destoroyah) in a nutshell – having the money and the means allows some to ignore the problems they cause. It’s brief, but its a reminder of what is being confronted every time one of these movies are made.

Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla (2002)

It’s a real shame that the most interesting idea in the movie – that the “DNA computer” made from Godzilla 54’s remains gives Mechagodzilla the creature’s memories – is dropped in the second half, because this otherwise solid action-heavy entry could have been even more worthwhile if they explored it more. I mean, after the really cool scene where the robot goes berserk until it runs out of power, they only bring it up again by having Mecha-G’s pilot make vague statements about “feeling” what it wants (and trying to parallel herself with it) – that allows them to give lip service to their concept even though they had no idea how to really follow it up. It’s an interesting take on Godzilla-counterpart theme so common in these later movies, but again, it only gets a small percentage of the movie here.

Godzilla continues his run as purely antagonistic in the Heisei through Millenium continuum in this as well, although in some ways he seems more like a walking natural disaster here – and so the focus on political fallout/governmental/bureaucratic response to a new Godzilla attack becomes a fairly interesting theme running in the background (the practicality of building a giant robot is at least brought up, which is always fun). At the same time, the pilot’s arc – overcoming her trauma, guilt, and fatalism – pushes Godzilla more in the villain direction, as something that must be defeated rather than just overcome. The plurality of perspectives makes the scenes without monster fighting a little more engaging, although its never as interesting as those aforementioned concepts they only toyed with.

Godzilla: Tokyo SOS (2003)

Almost more of a supplement to Against Mechagodzilla, Tokyo SOS allows them to go back to the Mechagodzilla-as-Godzilla’s-ghost and do a lot more with it. It takes the previous movie’s implied history of monster fighting and runs with it, creating a background legacy of kaiju attacks on Japan that gives the more threadbare human scenes an interesting twist. Once again, Mothra has to play both sides of the fence here, promising to protect Japan from Godzilla as long as they return Godzilla ’54’s remains to the sea – but why should they trust another monster with its own agenda? The conflict between the natural order and human designs (after all, the Godzillas were the results of humanity’s own actions, and the presence of one Godzilla seems to attract the presence of another, it seems – which is an idea picked up from Biollante) goes in its own very weird direction – it’s not enough that humans create these radioactive monstrosities, they can’t even let the dead rest in peace, which might be an even greater affront.

I thought it was interesting that primary human perspective shifted from the military-trained pilots to the actual mechanics – after all, who else would have the same kind of relationship with Mechagodzilla than the ones who actually build and maintain it? It makes the film’s universe feel a lot bigger – there are many people involved with the building of a robot monster to fight another monster, and we get to see even more of them here. In the finale, where Mechagodzilla takes matters into its own hands and piledrives Godzilla to the bottom of the sea, the connection between the mechanic and his beloved machine gives it an emotional hook (Godzilla-ghost-robot even manages to say goodbye!) It even raises some questions about the the robot’s actions – was it merely trying to defeat its enemy or return to its resting place, or was it atoning for its past destructive behaviour now that it has gotten to know its human victims better?