#10 Destroy All Monsters

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by Terickel

by Terickel

Ok, so this is a movie I've avoided rewatching until now and it's all due to one of the most bitterly disappointing experiences in my life. Kind of falls to seeing everything out of order and my dad being utterly incapable of giving a decent plot summary. I'd seen some of the later movies, Gigan and Megalon, MechaGodzilla, I had the NES game Monster of Monsters and to some degree my kid self had just kind of accepted Godzilla and Mothra's campaign across the solar system as part of Godzilla lore assuming that the monsters I didn't know were all from movies I hadn't seen. (Also I was confused as to why Barugon was misspelled and looked so wrong... kid nonsense eh?)

So to finally get to the point: when my dad told me there was a Godzilla movie where all the earth monsters, with Godzilla leading them fought all the space monsters with Ghidorah (Still Geedrah to me at the time) leading them, I had expectations completely blown out of proportion. What kind of crazy $#!* was I about to see? Rodan fight MechaGodzilla? Mothra fight Megalon? And what of the monsters I hadn't seen? Would guys like Varan and Moguera and Gezora be there and was Gezora as useless as his game counterpart? The possibilities seemed endless.

So when I sit through the movie and get to a climax where a rocket ship fights a UFO and Ghidorah just gets promptly curb-stomped in an act of gang violence I was about as let down as I'd ever been. So after all these years I'll try to give it a fair shake and judge it on what it is from where it was in the movie timeline and not what an overactive imagination had created.

SY-3 is a surprisingly decent ship for the time frame, and definitely less embarrassing than the Super X series. I was pretty sure it had some role in Monster of Monsters so I did a quick check. Is it actually good? Maybe, but I'm not really a big student of space ship aesthetics. (I do know I really like the TNG Romulan Warbird though.) The Kilaaks are a rather more interesting alien idea than I would have expected, high temperature metal slugs? Though it definitely makes it weird that they're supposedly from some asteroid and not an inner planet? I suppose Venus was ruled out because Ghidorah destroyed it but it's not like these movies care that much about continuity.

These days I'm very used to the idea of Godzilla and the kaiju he shares a setting with as being more something humans have to get used to and live around rather than outright defeat, so the tone of the monsters being more or less tamed and kept under watch feels very off. Humans gaining direct remote control of the monsters also feels quite wrong after however many years we've had of "even somehow killing Godzilla is only a temporary inconvenience to him." However it's still a good moment when the Kilaaks think they've won by setting the monsters free only to have Godzilla promptly end them anyway.

I think the announcer introducing all the monsters at the end is a little heavy handed a way of making sure the audience knows it's a big monster showcase, but it's not a big issue. Although it is funny that it's supposed to be set at the end of the 20th century (so 1999 to 2001?) and they're broadcasting audio and not video. I know, I know, 'zeerust' or whatever they call the inevitable missing of the mark when it comes to setting things in the future. The future catches up and no one was quite right.

This movie made Anguirus in his second ever appearance be the first to draw blood from Ghidorah and even it completely ignored Ebirah's existence. Ouch.

Now, the question is do I really want to rewatch Clip Show Kenny just for the Gabara content? No, the answer is no. The real question is if I force myself anyway for completion's sake.