[Dr Kain]

After three consecutive years of featuring monsters from days past, Toho finally decided to one more give us a brand new original monster to battle Godzilla. Unfortunately, the monster’s aura and name failed to live up to the execution of the movie itself.

“Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla” begins with crystals crashing onto an island where members of the G-Force are going to be testing out a new project to control Godzilla through telepathy. This leads to the capture of the now grown up baby Godzillasaurus, named Little Godzilla, by a new monster known as SpaceGodzilla and Godzilla must go on a vicious rampage to find the monster who kidnapped his child. The G-Force has also been busy building a replacement for MechaGodzilla known as Moguera. Moguera is a two piece vehicle set that combines into a giant robot monster bird type thing. With the help of Godzilla, Moguera is set out to destroy SpaceGodzilla in order to save the Earth.

To put it lightly, this plot just does not make sense. It I just seems overly complicated and throws in too many pointless characters and subplots that it really does not go anywhere. SpaceGodzilla was created from the cells of Godzilla that made it out into space and were pulled into what is known as a white hole. At one time it is stated the cells are from Biollante and another they are from Mothra. While I personally believe it is the former, it just adds more confusing to the plot this movie is trying to convey. The biggest issue with the plot is the whole Project T aspect. The concept behind the project is to control Godzilla through telepathy from Miki’s ESP abilities which have suddenly developed into telekinesis. And then she is kidnapped by Doctor Okubo who has sold the project out to the Yakuza. WHAT?! Nevertheless, Miki has now been given the ability to move objects and speak to others with her mind. It just does not make sense and is completely out of left field and feels like the writers needed something to hit the 108 minute running time and this was the way to do it.

The characters of the movie are underdeveloped as well once the movie hits the half hour mark, which is strange considering how many characters this movie throws in at us. First, we have two characters who have relations back to Lt. Gondo from “Godzilla vs. Biollante” with his sister Chinatsu Gondo and his best friend Akira Yuki. Two other G-Force pilots by the names of Koji and Sato also share the sceen with those two while there is a biologist named Okubo in the mix. Finally, Miki and General Aso return. As in the previous movie, Miki is really the only one to receive any sense of development here, but with her really bad hair do (seriously, what were they thinking?) and the horrific ability to now use telekinesis, her character feels different from the past movies. The only thing that does make her recognizable is that she still will not kill Godzilla. It is a shame too, as both Chinatsu and Yuki had such great potential due to essentially bringing Gondo’s ghost in the film through those two but nothing is ever really developed on that front. It is mentioned once and then everyone moves on.

On the positive side of things, the costume design for SpaceGodzilla is very well done. The colors work on the monster as he is a mix of dark blues and purples with white crystals and an orange horn on his head. He looks like the threat we were lead to believe and acts like one. There was even a lot of potential here with the fact that he was created from Biollante, and yet, it is all wasted as it is never mentioned again outside of the first time. Another negative to the monster is that he barely ever moves because of how big and bulky his body is. He pretty much repeats what MechaGodzilla did and just stands there are she shoots. It works for a robot, but not an organic being. Even his flying is done poorly during the final battle as he really just floats across the screen as if he were a 16bit sprite. The worst part of SpaceGodzilla is that he is defeated in the blink of an eye. If you just look away for a split second at that right moment during the battle you will not even realize the monster was destroyed by Godzilla.

Godzilla returns with yet another updated costume and this time they have done at truly fantastic job with it. This is the first time since “Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah” that he looks really well done without any oddities involved. This is especially weird considering the nature of this movie feels very Showa-esque as not only is Godzilla more of a good guy here, but his son, Little Godzilla, resembles Minilla due to the big anime eyes and cutesy smile on his face. Oh, and what is up with Godzilla’s ever changing scale in this movie? Since when can trees grow more than 100 meters?

Speaking of the Showa era, we have another monster that had not been seen since the 60s returning. Moguera made his first appearance during “The Mysterians” as a giant alien robot. Here, he is the successor to MechaGodzilla and is essentially two vehicles combined. As an update, he looks great. There is a nice silver shine to him with blue highlights over pieces of his body while his drill hands and nose are a metallic black and he has bright yellow eyes. In execution though, he is not worthy of being MechaGodzilla’s replacement. Of course, both he and MechaGodzilla could have been given any name and they would have worked fine in the same manner as there never really was any need to have either machine look the way they did.

The effects of the movie are a mixed bag. Most of the stuff in space looks bad (especially the space station recording with the poor acting) as does the telekinesis segments. On the other hand, the big finale between the trio of monsters is very bright and vibrant looking, especially the beam effects coming out of Mogeura and SpaceGodzilla’s lightning breath. The crystals look so fake during the day time scenes, however.

Overall, I can sum this movie down into two simple words, wasted potential. There was so much good that could have come out of this movie that it makes it crushing to see it all poorly executed. The best part of the movie is the monster designs while the worst comes from its contrived convoluted plot and most importantly, it is just a boring movie all around. Even the monster battles are boring to watch. It also does not help that the soundtrack of the movie, while good in its own right, feels more like it belongs to “Kyoryu Sentai ZyuRanger” rather than a Godzilla movie. SpaceGodzilla deserves so much better than this train wreck of a movie. It is the only movie in the Heisei era that I find myself watching very rarely, and usually only done during Godzilla-thons. Even “Godzilla vs. Mothra” is better than this, as for everything that movie gets wrong, at least it has a soundtrack that fits the bill. I give “Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla” a 3/10.