By this point, Toho decided to start remaking their classic kaiju. It started with King Ghidorah, and it continued with Mothra… and her long lost psychotic brother named Battra.
This movie starts with a random, poorly CG’d meteorite crashing conveniently right where Godzilla was sleeping, waking him off and setting him on his usual rampage. During a typhoon caused by the impact of the meteorite, a giant egg is uncovered on Infant Island. Some people discover that the egg belongs to Mothra, and is guarded by the twin fairies, who are now called the Cosmos. It should be known that this is Mothra’s egg, but there is not an adult Mothra to protect it like she did in the original 1964 version. Instead, Mothra is inside it. I’d also like to point out that there’s only one baby to hatch from the egg, instead of the two that the movie’s poster shows.
The Cosmos give a rather odd backstory to the two moth kaiju in this movie. It’s odd, even for Godzilla standards, and that’s saying something. It’s about some ancient scientifically advanced civilization building a weather machine. Since the machine poses a great threat for the natural balance of the world, the Earth makes a bad@$$ armored laser shooting caterpillar kaiju, named Battra, to destroy it. But, I guess stopping a catastrophic machine is a bad thing, because Mothra fought Battra… just so she could destroy the machine herself… and destroy the entire civilization in the battle. Good going, Mothra!
With the recent meteor strike, Battra has woken back up from his sleep. Now we have 3 kaiju trampling around Japan… almost. Godzilla and Battra have a brief encounter, get caught in an undersea volcano, and don't come back until the final fight, so all we see is the people running around, doing boring things, bad dubbing, and all that. It’s not like Godzilla vs King Ghidorah where the human characters are enjoyable while they move the plot forward, instead we get these bland, stupid people. The worst had to be the little girl. The voice that the dubbing person chose is annoying as can be. Might not as bad as the kid from Godzilla’s Revenge, but pretty close. The only character I kinda liked was Andoh. He’s the most tolerable out of all of them.
This is where I’d like to mention one of the very disappointing elements of this movie… it’s all an environmental message. Yes, this movie hammers ‘saving the environment’ into your brain like every children’s cartoon of the 90’s. But this one, instead of Captain Planet, Ferngully, or any other crappy environmental cartoon of the time period, has some hope because it has Godzilla. It’s got to be at least a little entertaining, right? Surprisingly enough, it is. It’s not perfect at all, but I wouldn’t say it’s a bad movie. It’s preechy at times, but easy to ignore. The fights make up for the stupid message, to an extent.
The best action sequence wasn’t even the big highlight battle at the end, it was when Godzilla was fighting off the military while he was converging on Yokohama. The three way fight was okay, but nothing too exciting. It was the visibility of the strings that did it. Speaking of which, the quality of the special effects has dropped significantly here. The strings were visible WAY too often. I know they didn’t have the money for any better way to solve it, but it kills the fun. The design of Mothra is really bad. It looks like a fluffy plush toy, even more fake looking than she usually is! Battra isn’t too much worse, though. The Godzilla suit is pretty good, and the miniature cities are okay, I guess.
In conclusion, this isn’t the worst of the Heisei series, but It could have been a lot better. I still watch it every now and then, because it’s fun to laugh at how terribly misplaced the environmental message was. It doesn’t belong in a Godzilla movie! I thought Godzilla vs Hedorah taught us that. If the environmental hazard the film focused on was nuclear waste, or something like that, it would make sense, given the grim message about nuclear weapons in the original Gojira. But that isn’t what the 90’s were about. It was about the threat of MAN!!!
As for the rest of it, the fights were okay, and the soundtrack was decent, and it manages to entertain fairly well. It doesn’t hold anything to the original Godzilla vs Mothra. The only interesting thing to come out of this was Battra. If he wasn’t symbolizing the Earth’s distaste for the pollution the human race has caused, he would have been cooler. If you watch this movie, don’t expect anything fantastic, but don’t expect anything too terrible either. It falls somewhere in between.
FINAL RATING: 26 / 50
STORY: 3 / 5
ACTING: 2 / 5
CHARACTERS: 2/ 5
SPECIAL EFFECTS: 2 / 5
ACTION: 3 / 5
SOUNDTRACK: 3 / 5
TONE: 2 / 5
ENJOYABILITY: 3 / 5
REWATCH VALUE: 3 / 5
OWNING VALUE: 3 / 5
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