Monster and Kaiju Movie Thoughts and Impressions

#4: Mothra

I'm fairly sure I only ever saw the original Mothra movie once or twice as a kid, but some images stuck with me. Mostly the cocoon sequence - always thought it looked like a cartoon peanut. Also the heat ray attack on it was one of the few things I remembered clearly.

It's kind of surprising just how big Mothra is stated to be, though I'm not certain it holds up when comparing the models.

If I were a deeper reviewer I could probably go on to say quite a bit about the movie commenting on imperialism or some such, the bit where the natives are just making noise and the modern people start shooting is brutal in its way. However, I'm really just here to talk about how fun the monster stuff is movie by movie.

I noticed the fairies said that Mothra doesn't know right and wrong, only that there's an instinct to return them to the island. The subtitles on this version also call Mothra a 'he' and I don't know if that's accurate or caused by translation issues (I've heard that some Japanese pronouns are rather ambiguous).

So even Mothra had a morality adjustment to the good side over time, we just don't notice it as much compared to Godzilla. She went from a sort of ambiguously non-moral creature to the one kaiju that's always the non-mitigated good guy. Even Gamera had an edgy anti-hero run.

Overall I give the movie a "fine" rating, the city model being destroyed by wind alone is pretty effective but larval Mothra's slow paced, straight-line trek through town isn't much to write home about.