Gozilla Vs. King Ghidorah [Gojira vs. Kingu Gidora] (1991)

4/10

Written & Directed by: Kazuki Ohmori

After watching the American '98 Godzilla and preparing for 2012 reboot, I decided maybe it would be time to catch up on some Gojira history. I started with Vs. King Ghidorah.

Most people would be instantly turned off by the idea of a human rampaging through miniature models of cities in a monster suit, but I tried to appreciate it for it's time, because that is how it was done.

Sometimes, the giant monster and blue screen shots looked spectacular, but this was equalled by the amount of dreadfully tacky shots of the giant monsters and terrible blue screening. The special effects helped very little too, but at the time I guess that couldn't be helped.

The few amazing shots that were included showed that there really is a place for the monster suits and miniature cities in modern film making, but only if it was used sparingly well, otherwise CGI would be the way to go.

The plot itself falls a bit flat, though not dreadful. It brings up interesting questions and concepts about the future. Unfortunately, the plot develops it's own time travel paradox when characters change history. Changing history is never going to make sense, but this was an exceptionally poor effort of doing so. Every single character was aware of what had changed and what they had missed. When Godzilla was reborn (as the original's birth was thwarted) some characters said he was "worse that the original". But of course, the original never having existed means that they would have never known of Godzilla before.

Whether the subtitling was done wrong, the dialogue didn't translate well into English or maybe the script was badly written in the first place, but the dialogue for the film was terribly average at most points and absolutely ludicrous at others. There is even a terrible Steven Spielberg joke, And I mean terrible.

Overall, I wouldn't bother with this film. If you are a fan of giant monster films then give it a go, there are interesting parts to it and someone fantastic looking shots. But mostly, it is a weak entry in a powerful series.