Superhero Media: Godzilla 1 - Planet of Monsters

Much as I tend to disagree with the conventional "wisdom" that Netflix Original Anime is terrible (I enjoyed both Baki and Neo Yokio), I really did not enjoy Godzilla 1 - Planet of Monsters. Now, I'll watch just about anything that involves Godzilla, I even watched the 1998 film again for this blog, but man, this was a dull mess and I'm really not looking forward to the next two parts. In the not-to-distant future, humanity has fled Earth, unable to stop the rampage of Godzilla. The remaining humans share a failing generation ship with two alien races who are so poorly designed, I kept forgetting they were aliens unless it was specifically mentioned. I'm not sure if they were alien species from other Godzilla media, but I really hope Planet of Monsters doesn't sully the franchise further. With food running out and mutiny threatened, the decision is made to return to Earth, where twenty thousand years have past, and fight Godzilla. The ecosystem of Earth has adapted to the presence of Godzilla, wither every plant and animal becoming genetically related to the kaiju. 

What follows is a not-at-all satisfying mashup of Starship Troopers and Attack on Titan, where characters I can't muster any interest in throw themselves at Godzilla until they luck out and kill it. Even the design work is uninspired, looking like something from one of those online video games I'm not interested in, and engaging design work is kind of the hallmark of the Godzilla franchise, even in the not terribly good films. Once Godzilla is defeated, it turns out that this wasn't the real Godzilla, the real Godzilla was hibernating and is much bigger and just woke up in time for the next part. Dull. Dull and derivative. But wait! In a "killer" twist, one of the alien species worship Godzilla and had this planned all along somehow? Really? I let that crap slide when Nick Fury pulls it, because there's a great deal of winking and artifice to it, but here it's just dropped in the finale like a dog turd. I really shouldn't try and teach anyone writing technique, only really having blogs and a couple of published stories to my name, but "I planned it all along" is lazy and makes your writing look unplanned. 

Also quite a bit of Planet of Monsters' screen time is dedicated to a long-winded explanation of Godzilla's magnetic field and how that makes him hard to kill. Again, what is the point of this? To fill run time? That Godzilla has a "shield" and the heroes need to work around that is a fine conceit as to how/why they can defeat him with conventional weapons, but such a huge amount of dialogue is committed to belaboring the point, it feels like maybe this was the point of the film? Is the writer of Planet of Monsters a huge Godzilla fan who's been sitting on a pet theory about the King of the Monsters for years and finally had a chance to share it with a big audience? Man, this was a frustrating watch, and I'm not looking forward to the next two parts; "luckily" for me, I recently realised I'm currently watching/reading/playing 14 pieces of media for these articles and really want to cut that down, so it'll be a while before I'm back to this particular version of Godzilla.