by william newell » Sat Mar 08, 2014 11:38 pm
The first time I got to see this was at the second AFFE convention when they had a special screening at a local theater and I had a blast! I was so happy when Sony announced that they were going to release it on DVD. Then along came the release and I hurried home and popped it into the player and all I could think was, "What the hell happened?" Some of the worst English acting ever. In fact, so much of this movie is in (really bad) English, I was wondering why they even bothered to subtitle it. To be honest, though, this was a common problem with Toho's films from that era. Just look at the Gajin performances from "Returner"...so sad. And Rodan...worst incarnation of the character, ever,imo. One of Kawakita's main flaws was in representing flying monsters (which he insisted on placing in every one of his G films after Biollante, for some reason)and the lifelessly static puppet used here is ALMOST as bad as Space G's. And then there's Mecha-Godzilla. I actually liked the design for this when I first ran across the model kits for it, especially when the Garuda was attached, but then I heard someone refer to it as "Mecha-Barney" and I thought, "My god, they're right! That's exactly what he looks like!" Now I can't get that image out of my head. I do have to give them props for baby G, though. Probably one of the most life-like puppets from that era, to my eye. All in all, it's not the worst of the Heisei films (this one seemed to have some interesting story ideas, they were just executed poorly,imo), but, then again, I'm not that enamored with any of them (the Heisei films) as there seemed to be no "heart" involved, they seemed to be more interested in just cranking them out so that Bandai would be able to release more toys that Christmas. Just my thoughts, for what they're worth...