Blackmoor Vituperative

“Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack” (2001) is a strange movie. Like all of the Godzilla reboots up to that point, it’s a direct sequel to the original Godzilla, ignoring everything in between. However, it goes in some new directions for a Godzilla movie.

First of all, Godzilla’s look is different, in one small but very visible way: he has solid white zombie eyes. In previous Godzilla movies, Godzilla’s eyes always looked like, well, eyes. Giving Godzilla solid white eyes makes it clear that this is a monster, not a defender of the Earth.

Godzilla has gone back and forth from being a villain or a hero, and in this one he’s the villain. That by itself is not strange. What is strange is that King Ghidorah is the hero of this movie (with some help from a sacrifice play by Mothra). Making Ghidorah (formerly “the space monster”) into a defender of the Earth is a 180 degree about-face.

Thirdly, prior to the power-up of Ghidorah into King Ghidorah, none of the three monsters facing up against Godzilla are as large or as powerful as Godzilla. They are at best about three-quarters of Godzilla’s size. That’s different. In the only previous movie where Godzilla fought smaller monsters, it was a swarm of them, and they eventually merged into a giant monster as big or bigger than Godzilla.

And the ending is the most bizarre of any Godzilla movie ever made, in my opinion.

It’s a good movie, though. I enjoyed it, anyway.