Monster and Kaiju Movie Thoughts and Impressions

#14: Godzilla vs Megalon

It seems like this is the movie most likely to be dismissed as Godzilla's silliest or dumbest. I can see why, but personally I think Godzilla vs King Ghidorah's reckless use of time travel is probably worse. It makes it a surprising place to see a return to the idea of haphazard nuclear tests inviting disaster to the series. The idea of a nuclear bomb test around the Aleutian Islands being felt all the way down to what appears to be a semi-tropical environment on Monster Island and breaking open lakes in Japan seems out there. Sure nuclear weapons are scary but they don't work on a tectonic scale like that – admittedly it might not be too crazy to think that weapons development went bigger in a world with kaiju but that's kind of unimportant as it's just the inciting incident that brings out the Seatopians really.

Little side-note: Poor Anguirus showing up just to fall in a hole. From Godzilla's first opponent to the first to draw blood on Ghidorah to lackey to cameo appearance that falls in a hole to what happens in the first MechaGodzilla movie... just ouch.

I've never been particularly fond of Jet Jaguar and Singular Point didn't really do much to help. That said I'm not that offended either, he doesn't really steal the spotlight too badly or anything. I don't have much to say about the human characters here.

Megalon is such a giant dork, jumping around all the time and being clumsy. It's kind of hard to buy that he's been attributed with some of Ghidorah's old rampages just because they have similar looking attacks. It also makes all the fan attempts to make him cooler or edgier kind of funny. I can't help but feel just a bit bad for him when Jet Jaguar abuses the fact Megalon has no reason to expect any violence from him to land a sucker punch.

Watching everything in order like this has started to generate something of an Avengers problem. Tell the robot to go get Godzilla? Mothra has a lot less collateral damage in her history, why not her? - I'm kidding a bit, Godzilla's the big name and his 'heroic monster you call' role in this movie was pretty important to a certain subset of the fanbase, like myself.

The tag team final battle is fun overall even if it's a little one-sided. I personally like when Gigan tries holding Jet Jaguar hostage and Godzilla's like "Barely know the dude." *Atomic blast – again I joke a little, Godzilla's a pretty considerate ally here all things considered. He comes in pretty carefully, side-stepping over to JJ and keeping his guard up against both enemy monsters in a pretty funny way and spends a lot of time trying to help JJ back up.

So, personally, I give this one a 'good time' kind of score, when I watched Godzilla vs Kong and said I enjoyed the fact that they let that movie be as silly and strange as older Godzilla movies the main one I was thinking of was Godzilla vs Megalon.