Movie of the Week: Godzilla: Planet of Monstars

Alexa: I’ll be honest - I fell asleep during this movie, so I can only judge about the first two-thirds of it. But needless to say, it did not hold my interest. Anime is not my cup of tea, nor have I seen many Godzilla movies, so this movie was not made for me. If you do love one or both of those things, then I hope there is something for you here. But if you don’t, then this movie is probably not the thing that’s going to convert you into a fan. When I did fall asleep around an hour into this 90-minute movie, I had only seen Godzilla maybe once, which is very little Godzilla for a movie that’s supposedly about Godzilla. Maybe there was some action in those last 30 minutes that I missed, but I expected more throughout the rest of the movie. The lack of action wouldn’t bother me so much if the characters were interesting, but I found them underdeveloped and flat. It was just so. Dang. Slow. The animation was beautiful, and it was an intriguing enough concept for a reboot, but it ultimately didn’t have enough substance to make me invested in the story.

Joel: Ok, I have a huge soft spot in my heart for all things Godzilla related. That silly Hanna Barbera Godzilla cartoon? Love it. Godzilla vs. Megalon, everyone’s favorite example of how to do everything wrong in a Godzilla movie? Yeah, I love that movie as well. The first American Godzilla movie starring Matthew Broderick? I’m not saying there aren’t any flaws there, but it was 1998. I was excited by the mere fact that we were getting a Godzilla movie set in America at all. The point is that I might be the easiest audience to please when making a Godzilla movie, so I was happy to pick this one when it was announced that Netflix would distribute the first Godzilla anime movie.

Netflix has this movie listed as Part 1, the way they do with their series. It’s a movie, but for whatever reason, Netflix is treating the movie as the first entry in a TV series. This might mean that Netflix already has worked out a deal for the next two anime movies. See, this movie is the first of three anime movies featuring the same characters and the same storyline. It’s a very interesting premise and it’s a new take on how to address the “Godzilla problem” something that can help the movie feel fresh after 30+ installments. But perhaps the fact that it was envisioned as a trilogy is what hurts this movie so much. I’m not complaining about the lack of Godzilla in the movie. The Godzilla franchise was always as much about the people dealing with a giant monster as it was about Godzilla. I don’t think there’s a Godzilla movie out there where Godzilla is on screen more than 25% of the movie. But this movie is clearly set up to be the first part of a three part story more than a complete story on it’s own.

For example, the movie makes it clear that MechaGodzilla is something that will come up in this story, but so far, only passing references have been made. MechaGodzilla was obviously mentioned in this movie as a setup for a later movie. Similarly, a huge amount of the beginning of the movie is dedicated to the very complicated setup of the movie. It’s probably the right amount of time for a four and a half hour movie (or three 90 minute movies) but to have it all in one movie like this makes the first part of the movie feel overly extended.

Ultimately, though, the movie falls flat because Godzilla doesn’t feel like that much of a threat. For years, Godzilla movies have had to work around the fact that Godzilla is, in reality, a normal sized man in a suit that’s knocking over tall buildings. This is the first time that the size and power of Godzilla can be shown off without having to resort to camera tricks. For this movie they can simply draw a very big, very scary Godzilla. For the most part I liked the character design, but there’s never really a time in the movie that you can get a sense of scale on the monster. Often times, Godzilla is seen from a distance, and only takes up a very small part of the screen. This feels like a wasted opportunity. Also (because of the extended amount of time focusing on background information) the plan to defeat Godzilla works very quickly, and on the first try. Godzilla is taken care of very efficiently which gives the whole movie a bit of an anticlimactic feel.

As a prologue to a much bigger story, the movie has a new, unique set up and it has the potential to to kick off a really interesting story, but as a standalone story, it’s for the most part an example of a deeply flawed missed opportunity of a movie.

Chris: I’ll have to agree with Alexa and it’s weird because there’s just a wave of nonstop action that hits you in the last 30 minutes but yet I still found myself bored. Honestly, it took way too long to get to the action bits and when you get there, it’s too nonstop to the point where you’re just mentally tired of seeing everything to max intensity for so long. I had a similar complaint when watching Man of Steel, the last act is practically all action all the time without giving the audience a chance to recover and leaving you drained to the point where to movie feels more like a chore. That’s what this movie felt like, a chore. And it’s unfortunate because I do love giant monster movies and there’s an art to pacing one successfully. And I understand, you don’t want to just completely show you giant monster right off the bat, you have to build up suspense and work to a gradual payoff but Planet of Monster took way too long to reach that point. And of course, you barely get a moment to be relieved that the Godzilla they were fighting is dead until a bigger, more powerful original Godzilla shows up and wrecks shop. The pacing probably is my biggest issue with the movie and it was enough to make myself not really care about what the plot was trying to achieve. That being said, I’m gonna go watch Gareth Edward’s Godzilla.

Jason: Man, I wish this had been a real Godzilla movie. I would have been more entertained watching Godzilla 2000 than this nonsense. I spent the first half of the movie trying to figure out if they had been gone from Earth for 20 years or 20,000 years. I suppose I just wasn’t paying enough attention during the onslaught of exposition at the beginning to catch that vital bit of info. I thought the main character guy had been a kid when they fled Earth and in that case, 20 years made sense. But then, they got back on the planet and said that the changes must have taken thousands of years. I don’t know. And honestly, I don’t really care. I spent the second half of the movie trying to figure out whether the rest of Godzilla history was cannon to this new timeline. Did he fight Mothra and Rodan and King Ghidorah and Space Godzilla? Do the newer movies count? I turned to the IMDB page and saw that some of it counts, provided you read the Japanese language prequel novel that came out a couple months before the theatrical release in Japan. Yeah. This movie was shown in theaters.

Don’t get me wrong. I love me some anime. I am the only one of us reviewers who does. But this was just too jam packed with techno-babble and forced plotlines (an electromagnetic forcefield? What??) to have any sort of coherence. And to call itself a Godzilla movie is a tragedy. And to call it a good anime is unfortunate, too. Full CGI anime is tough to get right. This one feels too crisp and the faces look off to me. However, I doubt that hand-drawn traditional animation would have helped this convoluted story in the least.
There are two more parts of this story to be released some time this year. I don’t intend to follow up on what happens to this branch of the Godzilla franchise.