[Anguirus]

These movies are freaking amazing. You must have already figured out that movie 1 is the weakest...probably because it is the most like a Godzilla movie, which love to hit you in the face with a clumsy environmental message*.

Movie 2 is sort of like Aliens combined with a disaster movie. Very hard sci-fi, as far as these movies ever get. In fact at times Gamera seems almost like a secondary character...but hen he does something REALLY important that sets the stage for movie 3.

Movie 3 then chucks sci-fi totally and thrusts us into the last act of a mythic epic played out over thousands of years. The plot is a little obtuse and hard to follow, perhaps intentionally, but after yanking you a little off-balance with lore it then PUNCHES you with the most visceral, creative, real-seeming brutal kaiju footage ever. I can't think of anything remotely similar except Cloverfield, TEN years later, and that lacked the sucker punch of being done with Gamera. It is literally apocalyptic and forges the other two films into a complete saga.

* I am an environmentalist, but as such I actually repudiate the mindlessly anti-nuclear message of many of the movies in this genre.