[GoldenXtreme]

I was going to wait until I finished Gamera the Brave before posting about Heisei Gamera, but I think I need to talk about the Heisei Trilogy while it's fresh in my mind.

A while back I posted about Pacific Rim (bear with me here), and at the time I was able to enjoy it as a fun little diversion because I had somehow managed to completely forget about it's overblown reputation from back when it initially released. I *wish* that had happened with the Gamera trilogy, but I went in with sky-high expectations after constantly hearing them lauded as some of the greatest kaiju movies movies ever created. I saw the Shibuya scene from G3 referenced frequently even outside of tokusatsu contexts among Japanese nerds. Unfortunately, the movies just weren't able to match up to all of this overhype.

Among them, I think I actually like G1 the most. It's the most practical effect heavy of all three of them of course, but there's several other aspects working in its favor. The plot is well paced and coherent, with a broad but focused cast where everyone served some narrative purpose. I also generally find the general visual style the best in this one. The scenes are always well lit and stylish, with action sequences that are easy to follow. A pattern I found did not continue in later movies. It is definitely the most "standard" kaiju film of the three, but I thought it hit a pleasing balance of classic Gamera and a modern, adult take on the series. Not to say it blew me out of the water, but I liked it quite a bit, even if when I initially finished it I was like "That's all? I guess the next two movies must be really special if everyone talks so highly of the trilogy!"

G2 and G3 were both considerably weaker in my eyes unfortunately. I like to think I am not excessively picky about every detail when it comes to tokusatsu, but man... Why are these movies so badly lit? Both of these films are really into nighttime kaiju scenes, which doesn't HAVE to be an issue, but they are almost always really dark with terrible contrast combined with some extremely heavy smoke usage. These movies also had a frequent aversion to showing the lower bodies of the kaiju, which often makes it even harder to see what's going on! To me, it came across almost like they were embarrassed by aspects of their effects and were trying to obscure the details, even though they were clearly amazing for the time period and genre. With any tokusatsu show or film there are times where the "flaws" are visible, but I think most genre fans consider it part of the fun? I know I do, so it was actually pretty frustrating how it felt like they didn't want me looking too closely at their work. Maybe I'm just reading too much into things.

I also feel like both these movies have notable narrative issues. G2 mostly just has the issue that the nature of Legion's motivations and lifecycle are really hard to follow and understand along with more cast members who achieve very little. That being said, I do think Legion is a very unique monster and this movie is probably the most respect the JSDF has ever gotten in a kaiju movie, which is nice. G3 is a proper spectacle at times, but it overall very light on the amount of kaiju content. Like yes, the scene where Shibuya gets wrecked and all the civilians killed is spectacular and very daring for a kaiju movie show, but it is also an extremely small sliver of a larger film. This means more human drama overall, which I didn't think was that great. The cast is really large in this one, and there just isn't enough room for them all to develop, or even for us to learn what happens to them after the movie suddenly decides their screentime is up. The Ayana's brother just kinda disappears partway through. The guy who was a detective in the first movie disappears after getting arrested. We spent quite a while in this mountain town with the locals but every last one of them besides Moribe dies or stops being relevant. Whyyyy? but There are also numerous aspects of the movie that just aren't really relevant to anything but eat up time anyways. There's a Gamera graveyard? Not important at all apparently. What the heck is up with that game developer and the shine maiden lady with him? I'm not sure even the writers knew.

I didn't hate these movies but I wasn't impressed either. I guess the moral of the story is that you should live in blissful ignorance of any sort of claims of a piece of media being the most amazing, mind-blowing thing so that you can actually enjoy it.