On the third of November, 1954, unsuspecting Japanese audiences were introduced to a character that would become the most recognizable movie monster of all time. Gojira (Godzilla to Americans) stomped his way into the popular consciousness throughout the next five decades. Godzilla has starred in a total of twenty-eight films (not including the crappy Roland Emmerich version) the latest of which is possibly the craziest of all. Godzilla: Final Wars was released on Godzilla’s 50th anniversary and, as the title implies, was meant to cap-off the latest series of Toho’s Godzilla films. We start off seeing a military unit from the Earth Defense Force that is engaging Godzilla at the South Pole. The strategic importance of defending the South Pole is up for debate, but a war ship named Gotengo launches a volley of missiles to bury Godzilla in an avalanche. Then a narration describes a brief history of Earth, stating that near constant warfare and pollution has released or created many giant monsters that terrorize mankind. We get to see some stock footage of a the few monsters in Toho’s stable that won’t make an appearance later in the film. The greatest of these many monsters is none other than Godzilla himself. The film goes in to a little about the EDF and Shinichi Ozaki (Masahiro Matsuoka) one of the mutant soldiers serving in it. Ozaki is sent with U.N. biologist Miyuki (Rei Kikukawa) to the ancient corpse of a monster of alien origin. When all of the various monsters around the world attack several major cities, the EDF deploys to contain the carnage. But, ultimately, a group of seemingly benevolent alien visitors calling themselves Xilians trap the many monsters in an energy containment field in their ships.
The Xilians attempt to sell themselves to the people of Earth as wanting to help the planet avert a major disaster involving a gigantic meteor on a collision course. I guess Ben Afleck isn’t available to blow this one up. Anyway, Miyuki discovers that the genetic information from the ancient monster Gigan that they found is identical to that of the Xilians, as well as many of Earth monsters and the mutation that enables the enhanced abilities of the EDF’s mutant soldiers. As usual, people should never trust an alien as the Xilians turn out to be evil and are secretly trying to take over the world. When the Xilians are outed on national television for capturing and impersonating the head of the U.N. the evil aliens release all of the monsters under their control to destroy all of Earth’s major cities. Ozaki, who is the only mutant soldier able to resist the Xilian’s influence, takes Miyuki and legendary EDF Captain, Douglas Gordan (Don Frye) the only American actor in the film, and they take the warship Gotengo to release Godzilla from his icy prison in hopes that he will not be able to be controlled by the aliens, as he was created from nuclear fallout. When Godzilla is freed, he goes on a rampage and fights giant monster after giant monster on his way to Tokyo to take out the Xilian mother ship, and that’s what the audience has been waiting for the whole time. The second half of the film is almost entirely monster on monster violence, and even though most of the individual confrontations are pretty short, the sheer volume of monsters smacking each other makes it worth while. Most of the creature effects are shot with traditional monster suits and miniatures, but a few of the shots use computer generated monsters, like the giant mantis Kamacuras and the snake-like Manda. This is a bombastic send off to the franchise and goes overboard on action TO THE EXTREME! It has people fighting people, stuff exploding, a monster with giant chainsaw hands, lasers blowing up cities, aliens kung-fu fighting at super speeds, sword fights, and of course, Godzilla being a supreme bad-ass, and it is glorious.
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