Monster and Kaiju Movie Thoughts and Impressions

#7: Monster Zero

or Invasion of the Astro Monster, etc.

I think I might approach this one a little differently than the others. I like the monster action in this movie well enough, what there is of it. I'm a little torn on Godzilla's celebratory dance after chasing off Ghidorah in the rigged first round – sometimes I can roll with it, other times it feels just a little too silly. I do however always like Godzilla's overly flashy footwork when fighting Ghidorah at the end of the movie, and the finishing move where Rodan just grabs Godzilla to pull off a combo-attack that was almost certainly not consented to is fun.

Some of the comedy actually works, like when Planet X's controller is doing his monologue, turns around and finds the astronaut guys gone. There's also some unintentional humor, I like the voice over on old grainy stock photos of riots explaining how crazy things got without really showing much and then the office building or whatever in the scene immediately after is just randomly and lightly damaged to try and convince the audience that the world went nuts after Planet X sent its magnetic tape audio recording demanding surrender. The effects can be just funny, I have bad vision and from Gojira to Ghidorah the Three-Headed Monster I haven't seen the wires without looking for them and getting lucky, in this movie I catch them quite often without looking for them. The alien ships are so simple and dorky looking it's funny.

I feel relatively confident calling this one the silliest of all Godzilla alien invasion movies, and that's not something to say lightly. It seems to be without much explanation but as soon as the heroes work out their plan to counter-attack the aliens their computers start going crazy prompting them to not let the heroes scheme and move the invasion ahead. I don't get how they knew, but it's sort of fun, "Heroes are up to something." "Not on my watch!"

Now on to cons: I kind of hate this movie as a direct follow up to Ghidorah the Three-Headed Monster. It cheapens Ghidorah immediately, turning him into a tool right away and it discounts Mothra's contribution in that fight, saying that she was never needed to repel Ghidorah. It's probably not an extreme claim to make given that the larval stage is not really that impressive, but it still feels like a slight.

Planet X is so bad at being sneaky it veers between being annoying and kind of funny, the characters repeatedly comment that they seem off – at least in English, I goofed up the menu options with this movie. Showing up to grab Godzilla and Rodan before Earth can give an answer for starters, and then there's still outrage when the alien "miracle cure" is just orders to accept that Planet X is taking over.It's kind of weird that the aliens are apparently powerful enough to simply abduct Godzilla and Rodan without much incident and control King Ghidorah but still treat them as major weapons. Freeing the monsters is even a priority to stop the alien invasion, even though that simple abduction makes it seem like the aliens don't have anything to fear from a kaiju attack. Which is also kind of annoying because the monsters are supposed to be the stars of these films, not just cameos with little relevance. Yeah, far from the only Godzilla movie to be susceptible to this line of criticism. I don't really get why they felt the need to deceive the human characters for so long, but it is what it is.