Review of Godzilla vs. Biollante (1989) by Maineutral R — 03 May 2014

What? I mean, what? How do you go from Godzilla 1985, which respected its premise for the first time since 1954, to this?

It starts out with some promise, showing a shoot-out between two military forces fighting over samples of Godzilla's skin during the clean-up after the events of the previous film. But instead of a movie about the international intrigue, backstabbing and espionage that would happen after a giant monster attack, we get a story about a scientist whose dead daughter's soul has become trapped in an evil plant monster that was made with Godzilla's DNA. I wish I was making this up.

There are a lot of random shoot-outs in the movie between forces of unknown origin with unexplained motivations. It's almost like the makers were thinking that there is too much talking in between monster scenes, but they couldn't afford more monster scenes, so they wrote in action scenes without bothering with things like sense or relevance.

There is an fun bit where terrorists threaten to release Godzilla if the heroes don't turn over vital research, but I'm not sure how risking the complete destruction of Japan helps their goals.

I know this movie gets a lot of love from the Godzilla fandom, but I just don't get it. I found the movie's attempt at a serious tone to be completely undercut by the silliness of the whole Plant Wisperer concept. There is a character in this film who can psychically communicate with plants, and everyone reacts as if this is normal. I'm not opposed to the premise; only the presentation. Just because you've sold me on a giant radioactive monster doesn't mean you can dump other fantasy concepts on me without context or explanation.

In other entries that come out of the gate with a tongue-in-cheek attitude, the rules are a bit different. But if you try to be serious, you have to follow through on that and go out of your way to justify things that are inherently silly.

The basic idea of Godzilla vs Little Shop of Horrors is loaded with potential, especially if it were to take a similar satirical edge as the famous musical, but this poe-faced effort fails at both drama and comedy.

That said, there are positives. The acting is decent and the effects work is pretty solid for a man-in-suit affair. Biollante's final form is an amazing design that doesn't get enough screen-time. It is one of the most imaginative monsters that Godzilla has fought, which may be why fans seem to like it.

Yet the big fight itself is all too brief, has no clear winner, and ends with one of the biggest WTF moments of the series when the dead daughter's face appears in the sky above Biollante as it...dies? Dematerializes? Teleports? I really have no idea what hell was supposed to have happened during the last ten minutes, and this ain't exactly my first rodeo.

Some might say, "Yeah, but that fight is really sweet while it lasts!" Yes, the fight is cool, but much like almost all of Godzilla's fights with other giant monsters, it is filmed in a way that destroys all sense of weight and scale. I'm never able to suspend disbelief that the monsters are supposed to be hundreds of feet tall.

So after a promising reboot, the series nose-dives straight back into please-make-it-stop territory, where it will remain for quite some time.