Godzilla Mothra And King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All Out Attack/Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla

Godzilla Mothra And King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All Out Attack/Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla
Released by: Sony
Released on: September 9th, 2014.
Director: Shusuke Kaneko/Masaaki Tezuka
Cast: Chiharu Niiyama, Ryudo Uzaki, Yumiko Shaku, Shin Takuma
Year: 2001/2002
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The Movies:

Two more recent Godzilla movies released on a two-disc double feature Blu-ray release from Sony. Here's how it works…

Godzilla Mothra And King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All Out Attack:

The first film begins with an American nuclear submarine mysteriously wrecked off the coast of Guam. When the Japanese send some rescue teams down in submarines to help investigate, they see the fins of a giant reptilian creature as it swims away. The next day, a tunnel is brought down in what at first appears to be an earthquake, killing the bikers inside - but it wasn't an earthquake that caused the collapse, it was Godzilla. He's returned to lay one big-ass smack down on modern day Tokyo. Luckily for the Japanese, General Tachibana (Ryí»dí´ Uzaki) is on the scene, and seeing as his parents were killed by the big guy way back when in the original incident, he's ready to take him on.

While the military are getting ready to fight back, the General's daughter, Yuri (Chiharu Niiyama), an investigative TV reporter, starts digging around. She finds that a mysterious and prophetic old man has been warning of Godzilla's coming for quite some time, and also of the rise of the Guardian monsters. He claims that they will show up at the scene when it happens to help take Godzilla down - those Guardian monsters are Mothra, King Ghidorah, and Baragon.

The rest of the film is pretty much a very large scale wrestling match between the title monsters (Baragon gets taken down pretty early on, but he makes the most of his screen time, jumping through the air and chomping down on Godzilla's arms), with the military and Yuri's TV crew stuck in the middle.

Opinions seem to be mixed on this entry in the seemingly endless Godzilla franchise. A lot of fans were upset that Godzilla is shown here as a merciless killing machine who doesn't give a damn who gets in his way. On the flipside, you could see him less as a bastard, and more as an unstoppable force of nature, just doing what his instincts would tell him to do. He is definitely a leaner and meaner Godzilla than we've seen before though, so don't go in expecting the cuter, tamed down version that we've seen in other films.

While the story is pretty basic, the fight scenes are not. Using the standard 'man in a rubber suit'
technique and combining it with more CGI effects than we had seen in the series to date, the results are different from what most were probably expecting. For the most part, they work really well. The fights come off terrific and the monsters are all really well done and look great. The problem though is in the backgrounds and with some of the vehicles. These and the underwater CGI scenes look really hokey and just don't cut it. As such, there are times when they do take away from the movie as they're just plain bad looking.

CGI complaints aside however, GMK is a really fun beat'em up monster bash. Some have argued that director Shusuke Kaneko turned the movie into a Gamera film (he directed two of the Gamera films in recent years, both of which fared quite well with fans), but that's not really the case. Yes, he has changed things, and it's a different course for everyone's favorite green monster, but the franchise has been around long enough now that some fresh blood was needed. Kaneko serves it up the thrills by the bucket and this one is a blast.

Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla:

Made hot on the heels of the success of GMK, 2002's Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla starts off strong enough with a neat opening scene in which a storm swept Tokyo finds itself the victim of a surprise attack from everyone's favorite monster. The military, under the leadership of Akane (Yuriko Shaku), rush into action and while they don't kill him, they do manage to send Godzilla on his way.

From here, Prime Minister Tsuge (Kumi Mizuno) and a her scientist named Igarashi (Akira Nakao) have a discussion about the evolution of Godzilla, one of those talks that brings us up to speed (and sometimes messes with continuity). After this lengthy talk, Igarashi rightfully assumes that they haven't seen the last of Godzilla and so they should come up with some new weapons to have at the ready. A team of scientists, under Igarashi's direction, set to work building a giant mechanical Godzilla loaded with high-tech weapons and somehow powered by Godzilla's own DNA. Nothing could go wrong there, right? At any rate, one of the other scientists, Doctor Yahara (Shin Takuma), has a daughter named Sara (Haruna Onodera) who will no doubt find herself in danger soon. Yahara's really into Akane but she's all business and isn't interested in anything outside of military stuff that ties into her past.

So with the human element established and Mechgodzilla on its way to completion, it only makes sense that Godzilla would emerge out of the ocean and try once again to stomp the living Hell out of Japan, right? Right! He does, and the new Mechagodzilla and its team are there to take him on… but will they succeed?

This is a lesser entry in the series for a few reasons, not the least of which is that the human element in the story is weak. We know as soon as Sara is introduced why she's introduced and we know that Akane's past will come back to haunt her even as Yahara pines away for her. There is enough monster mash action to compensate for this and that aspect of the movie is fun, helping to make this one worth seeing for those sequences alone, but the story has problems. Why is everyone in this film so laid back about Godzilla's return? No one seems particularly worried despite the fact that they all know Godzilla will keep coming back to trash their cities even if the original beast was eliminated by the Oxygen Destroyer way back when. There's no thought put into how the good people of Japan should or would react to this situation, everyone is just completely chilled out because, hey, the Mechagodzilla that we wisely built using Godzilla's own DNA will totally take care of the problem, there's no room for error here.

Mechagodzilla, as redesigned for this entry, is a pretty lean, mean fighting machine. He's fast, he's got nifty weapons and he is actually pretty cool looking while the revamped Godzilla looks a bit off, his head is unusually tiny. When they fight though, it's good stuff. The CGI sticks out like a sore thumb here like it does in all of the movies in the run from this era but the action happens on a grand scale and there's no shortage of spectacle. It's a shame that more care wasn't put into the narrative itself, and because of that this is entertaining enough but ultimately a pretty disposable entry in the Godzilla pantheon.

Video/Audio/Extras:

Both movies arrive on Blu-ray from Sony in 2.35.1 widescreen both with AVC encoding at 1080p high definition with each film on its own 50GB disc. These look better than the nineties era Godzilla movies that were released earlier this year but once again suffer from some of the same flaws, mainly a somewhat flat looking image. While there's no denying that we get a noticeable improvement over past DVD releases, it looks like once again Toho have supplied Sony with some older masters to work with. Grain can sometimes look a little clumpy and black levels more of a dark grey. Detail in the close up shots isn't bad and color reproduction is okay though. These aren't abominations of anything, but you get the impression that they could have looked better (particularly when compared to the transfer we saw on the Kraken Releasing Blu-rays of the older titles).

Each film is given English and Japanese language options in DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio with optional subtitles in English and English SDH. There isn't a whole lot of channel separation here to note but the levels are properly balanced. Hiss and distortion are never an issue and there is sometimes some pretty decent depth and surround evident throughout both movies on this release. Bass response is also pretty solid, there's nothing to complain about here, the movies sound good.

Aside from some static menus and chapter selection, the only extras on this release are theatrical trailers for each of the two features. Inside the keepcase you'll find a download code for a digital copy of each film.

The Final Word:


This one is a bit of a mixed bag, with GMK standing head and shoulders above Godzilla Against Mechgodzilla but both movies do look better here than they do on DVD even if the transfers aren't going to blow you away. Godzilla fans will certainly appreciate this release.

Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!

Godzilla Mothra And King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All Out Attack:





















Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla: