Netflix Godzilla Will Rock Your World
It seems as though the new Netflix movie Godzilla: Planet of Monsters was made just for me. Not because I am any kind of a dedicated Godzilla fanboy, but because I’m more of a Godzilla filthy casual.
To be clear, I think I’ve seen almost every Godzilla movie made, from the Toho originals to the 1998 Roland Emmerich American version to the 2014 Gareth Edwards confusing mess. About the only one I haven’t seen is Shin Godzilla, Toho’s own modern update released in 2016.
But I’ve never been much of a fan of the “guy in a rubber suit” versions. I am reluctant to say that I liked the 1998 American version best so far, for fear that real Godzilla fans will stop reading at this point.
No, I say Godzilla: Planet of Monsters was made for me because it is an animated film series made by Toho and Polygon Pictures, the studio behind some of my favorite anime of recent years, Knights of Sidonia, Ajin and Blame! While Polygon has lots of products in the market, it seems to focus its anime efforts on smart science fiction or supernatural stories. Godzilla: Planet of Monsters falls squarely into the smart science fiction category.
It’s tough to review the movie without giving away some basic core elements that I don’t want to spoil. I can say it is to some extent an alternative timeline story, in that it places the appearance of the various Toho monsters in the mid- to late-20th century as historical fact.
The story of Godzilla: Planet of Monsters takes place further in the future from that time, after a couple of alien races have appeared so technology has taken a cool science fiction leap. The main character, Sakaki Haruo, as a child saw his parents die in an attack by Godzilla and has harbored a hatred for years. The way he is introduced sets the stage for the world in which the story is set in an innovative way, using a very compelling plot element to handle a lot of early exposition.
One complaint I’ve seen is that, aside from flashbacks, Godzilla doesn’t appear until the last third of the 90-minute movie. In that sense it is actually better than the 2014 movie, which hardly showed a single monster, Godzilla or otherwise, until near the end, at least in any clear way.
Godzilla is much more like the Toho version than either American movie, drawn with all the crinkles and detail of Shin Godzilla. The action is fast paced, and the attempt to battle Godzilla is well written, with a smart strategy, tactics that sometimes work and sometimes don’t and the need to adjust plans on the battlefield quickly presented well.
Godzilla himself should satisfy purists, unless they can’t accept anything but a man in a rubber suit. Whether or not those purists can accept a Godzilla movie in which no city streets are destroyed or spitting high tension wires are pulled down (OK, some in flashbacks) is the real question.
I loved the mashup of Interstellar, Avatar, the novel Deathworld and Godzilla. And the ending has me chomping at the bit for the next movie in the planned trilogy. I give Godzilla: Planet of Monsters 4.5 out of 5 stars.
