Pocket Reviews: Godzilla vs Destroyah

What if the Godzilla movies were courtroom dramas? Godzilla vs. the people of Japan, Godzilla vs. Connecticut public schools. With the oddly titled "Godzilla vs. ___" films of the 90s, you knew exactly what you were getting when you rented the flick. The king of the monsters is going to duke it out with a mysterious big baddie. These films perfectly captured that VHS box aesthetic, with glossy city skylines, huge early-CG color font, and plenty of lasers, explosions, and smoke to go around.



I mean just LOOK at that gorgeous shot of Godzilla emerging from the water in front of a gritty nighttime Tokyo. The pulpy covers and screen-grabs of the 90s Toho franchise were a large part of the shelf-appeal of these films. They conveyed a sense of comic book materiality in their design, you could almost smell the cardboard and plastic cutouts of the monsters commonly displayed in novelty shops and rental parlors just by gazing at those images.

I'm a sucker for cool special forces uniforms, and Godzilla vs Destroyah (1991) delivers. The shot of the men storming a cold silent corporate lobby calcifies that early 90s semi-futuristic b movie vibe that you might find at home in Robocop or Total Recall.

Part of the appeal for me of these cyber-soldiers was the generic quality they possessed - the slick blank slate that my childhood imagination could manipulate into all sorts of scifi scenarios. Unfortunately, that slick portrayal of the military remains at the core of Godzilla vs Destroyah's weird politics. A vast majority of the film is occupied by glamour shots of Japanese G-Force soldiers gathering weapons, getting into formation, and deploying. The hyper-militaristic quality of the film seems to feed into a fantasy of Japanese military might and unconquerability. A recurring theme of the movie is that the children of Japan (symbolically represented by Godzilla Jr), must be sacrificed if Japan is to survive, and that the audience must not be sentimental regarding that notion.

From a special effects perspective, this kaiju-fest is a mix bag. Some of the miniature effects are very impressive, while others posses glaring technical errors. You can see in the shot above where the city slate was not properly cropped in the optical printer, resulting in a composite with ugly black boxes around the building tops. Elsewhere in the film, the FX crew struggled to convey the sheer amount of monsters and military vehicles in the same frame, resulting in shots where it's clear that the mini-destroyahs are just 3 inch puppets pulled around on strings.

However, making up for all that are the strange yet glorious computer room interiors. The walls of G-Force central command are covered in these intricate concrete engravings that serve no practical purpose. I absolutely loved the hyper-90s tech on full display in this film, complete with that unique IBM ambient hum anyone who grew up in the 90s/early 2000s will remember.

So that's it for this Godzilla flick. Overall, I liked it, but I wouldn't recommend it unless you were already a giant monster movie fan.