Movie Review: Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah: Giant Monster All-Out Attack (2001)

Japanese movie poster

One of the interesting things about the last round of Godzilla films, known as the Millennium series, was that none of them had to have much continuity with the previous films, other than the original Gojira (1954). There was also none of the sixties and seventies' Godzilla,  who was a friend to children and protector of the planet. With Godzilla Mothra King Ghidorah: Giant Monster All-Out Attack, the Big G goes further back than the original; he's not just a force of nature in this one - he's a mean bastard out to destroy everything in sight.

While Godzilla was ostensibly destroyed in the original movie (with a little retroactive continuity for this one), the monster in this movie is given a much more mystical origin and is basically Zombie-Godzilla for all intents and purposes. The lack of pupils and irises makes him even more evil-looking in my opinion.

Godzilla now exemplifies all the lives lost to Japanese forces during the Pacific War. He's come back to take revenge on the islands of Japan for those deaths, since the Japanese people (or at least the Government) is more than willing to consign those acts to a forgotten corner of their history. To protect the land (the actual land of Japane, not the people), the Guardian Monsters rise up: Barugon (from Frankenstein Conquers the World), Mothra (from almost as many movies as Godzilla), and King Ghidorah (ditto). It is interesting to see Ghidorah as a hero, as usually the space monster is one of the ultimate bastards. Barugon is still a popular kaiju in Japan, which explains his inclusion, rather than the more popular Rodan or fan favorite Anguirus (Angillas).

The human side to the story features the commander of the Japanese Self-Defense Force dealing with his often-drunk daughter, a reporter for a cheap digital TV station producing sensationalist dramas. She's the only one who has contact with an old man who knows everything about the Guardian Monsters, and the coming battle.

There's a lot of great action and destruction in this one, as Godzilla, left loose for the first time in his cinematic career, gets a free hand to destroy Tokyo. Nothing accidental about this rampage ... he's there to kick ass and take names! He decimates the Japanese land forces in less than a minute, and nearly destroys everything on the water as well. The battles with the Guardian Monsters show there's no quarter given to the populace of Japan. Hundreds, probably thousands of people are shown being crushed under the debris of the monsters' swath of havoc. The only way this could be worse for Japan is if Godzilla was hungry and started eating people.

Godzilla facing King Ghidorah and Mothra
(Barugon already met his end about
twenty minutes earlier).

Barugon gets a bit short-changed in the end, but does have a pretty long battle with the Big G in the movie. Mothra's role is apparently just to die and supercharge King Ghidorah a couple of times. Ghidorah is at his most impressive (short of his brief Mecha-King Ghidorah phase, which was simply too cool for words), but it is Godzilla's show all along. And one of the few instances in the long series that the efforts of the human forces actually play a major role in the villain monster's defeat, much like the original 1954 movie.

This is definitely a must-watch for the kaiju fan, and it is a very accessible film for the average movie-goer.

John Carter (2012): $300 million for ... this?

After reading John Carter and the Gods of Hollywood, a book that went deep into the problems behind the latest cinematic megaflop, I decided it was finally time to sit down and watch John Carter. Given that Disney pretty much set the film up to fail with either too much or not enough control or effort at various stages, I was actually hoping to see a good adaptation of a story I had read a long time ago.

Perhaps that was the problem, as I read the entire eleven-book Barsoom series by Edgar Rice Burroughs one after the other over a period of a week or two. So I think my memories may be a little warped over what happened where. I just started re-reading the series from the first book, A Princess of Mars, from which this movie is supposedly adapted.

To be completely honest, I see very little of that book in this movie. I see very little Burroughs at all, really. I see a lot of Flash Gordon, a lot of  Star Wars and a bit of Dune, all of which can probably claim the influence of John Carter of Mars somewhere in their lineages, but I would've hoped this movie, of the original source material, would've found away to rise above that.

There's a lot of CGI. I assume that's where all the money went. And the Martian Tharks are amazing. The various Martian vistas are truly wondrous to behold, though I'm not exactly sure why Mars has a blue sky when there are no oceans. And you gotta love the babysitter beast, Woola. But not even a Michael Bay movie can get by just on eye candy anymore, and there needs to be a story.

There's some stuff that resembles one in John Carter, but it doesn't always jump out at you. The sound mixing is horrible (at least to me) and I found myself having to go back to see what people said a couple of times because the soundtrack music drowned it out. The mysterious Therns, the inadvertent reason Carter is even on Mars to begin with, are interesting, but they really seem out of place in this movie, as there seems to be enough global political strike on Barsoom that they didn't need to stick their noses in it. The super-high tech that the Therns give the Zodangans is similarly out of place.

The whole concept of the moving city of Zodanga is completely ludicrous. It's like someone had a vaguely interesting steampunk design left over from The Wild Wild West movie and had a little too much beer one night. Sure it looked interesting during Carter's escape, but it makes no logical sense on a world with rapidly depleting resources to move an entire bloody city around the planet.

After reading that book, I was in a very accommodating mood for this movie. It may have been wronged by the morons at Disney, but it also wasn't very good. It was a disservice to long-time fans of the Edgar Rice Burroughs classic, and it certainly wasn't worth $300 million.

There are sometimes when a book really shouldn't be made into a movie. I think John Carter will stand, at least for a few years, as an example to prove that axiom.

Watch the fan trailer and save your Redbox dollar for a Scooby-Doo movie...

AVAILABLE ON AMAZON.COM FOR THE KINDLE

THE 1970'S SCI-FI MOVIE QUIZ BOOK

By Rich Meyer

This is the quiz e-book for the b-movie fan in everyone! If you liked watching Peter Graves fight giant grasshoppers, Bela Lugosi turn people into Tor Johnson, or giant brains crawling around the countryside, then you'll enjoy these questions (and answers) about the movie era that spawned a thousand chills and a million drive-ins!

US SITE: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004I6D6LW

UK SITE: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004I6D6LW

CA SITE: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B004I6D6LW

DE SITE: https://www.amazon.de/dp/B004I6D6LW

Movie Review: Destroy All Monsters (1968)

When I was a kid, Destroy All Monsters was the gem in the kaiju eiga crown ... that Holy Grail that every Godzilla fan wanted to see. Luckily, back then in the seventies, TV stations actually played stuff that people actually wanted to watch. The CBS Late Night Movie, The ABC Friday Night Movie, WLUK's T.J. and the ANT (All Night Theatre), and Saturday afternoon movies on the local stations in Central Wisconsin finally got me to that goal. And then the early days of TNT and The Sci-Fi Channel (I can't being myself to call it SyFy out of deference to the days when it actually played science-fiction) Channel buttressed it in the mid-eighties by replaying it. It took nearly twenty years to see that film twice.

Of course now, I have it on DVD and can watch it anytime I want. And two nights ago, it was my Kaiju fix. This 1968 flick is what you would call a "monster fest", much like Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman or House of Dracula  twenty five years earlier. it featured almost all of the popular giant monsters created by Toho Studios, battling on both sides of an alien invasion. In the far-flung year of 1999, space travel with the moon is common and all the world's monsters have been confined to an island for study. The invading Kilaaks take control of the island and the monsters, wreaking havoc on the world's cities. Earth isn't defenseless and fights back, culminating in a monster brawl at the base of Mount Fuji. The aliens bring in the space monster Ghidorah as a last ditch effort, but hey, you know how this ends, right? Godzilla, good guy, aliens, smucked all over the place.

Godzilla is, of course, the star of the movie, but a good number of his kaiju cohorts get a lot of airtime, namely Mothra (in caterpillar form), Rodan, Angilus (a.k.a. Angurus of Gigantis the Fire Monster fame), Manda (from the sci-fi movie Atragon) and Gorosaurus, who's only previous appearance was as the dinosaur that the giant ape kills in the Rankin-Bass/Toho production of King Kong Escapes. The monsters Varan (from Varan the Unbelievable) and Barugon (from Frankenstein Conquers the World) make brief appearances, usually at a distance, since the rubber man-in-a-suit-a-saurus costumes for those two creatures had degraded to the point that they couldn't be used for close-up, active city stomping. Gorosaurus does the subterranean monster bit instead of Barugon in Paris, destroying the Arch de Triomphe. Godzilla's son is on hand for a little comic relief in the final battle, blowing a smoke ring onto one of Ghidrah's flailing heads as he gets stomped by his dad and friends.

On the whole, the special effects are pretty good in this one, with a minimum of stock footage. Godzilla gets to stomp New York for the first time, and the monsters attack cities that aren't Tokyo for the first time. The story's fine, too. Don't bother deconstructing it; I mean it is just a monster movie and if you're watching a monster movie like you'd watch a Scorsese or Tarkovsky flick, you've got something wrong in the cabeza to begin with. The plot is adequate for the movie's intentions, and gives lots of opportunities for spaceships, monsters, aliens and wanton destruction to appear on the screen.

Sure, it's dated, but this is a fun movie and wastes an hour-and-a-half quite efficiently!

Movie Review: The X From Outer Space (1967)

The X From Outer Space (1967) was one of many kaiju-eiga (strange beast)/science fiction films released in Japan during the monster boom of the sixties. It is a seriously goofy movie. Do NOT even think about trying to find a proper rationale for anything that goes on in this film! Just sit back and enjoy the goofiness!

Several mission to Mars have gone missing with all hands lost, so the spaceship AAB-Gamma is being sent out to investigate. The crew encounters a fuzzy UFO that the comm officer notes as looking like a fried egg that impedes them a little, mainly forcing them to waste some fuel, and the ship's doctor comes down with an illness, and head for the moonbase instead. There's some romantic entanglements with the Captain, the biologist and a lady on the moonbase. The doctor on the base is forced onto the AAB-Gamma, and they again run into the UFO on their way to Mars. This time, they turn back after wasting more fuel and discovering a strange foamy substance on the outside of the ship, along with egg-like spores, one of which they take with them back to Earth.

The crew and some of the staff had a dinner party, which is interrupted by the obligatory call from the lab - the substance is missing and there's a hole in the floor ... and a track on the floor that looks like a big chicken! The four of the crew head out to a party in Hakone when the power goes out and a strange-looking  (and I mean strange - look at the picture!) monster pops out of the ground and starts on a rampage. They fairly quickly (y'know, around noon the next day) deduce that this is what escaped from the lab and they name the deely-boppered creature Guilala.

Lots of cornball destruction of the Tokyo landscape, some dams, and some tanks and planes (of course) follow. The scientists reason that perhaps that mysterious foamy substance might be a defense against Guilala, so the AAB-Gamma takes to the skies once again. The new substance, Guilalanium, sucks up energy and radiation, making it difficult for the ship to return home, since it interferes with communications and controls. They manage to find a way to shield it and, after another UFO encounter in which they are buzzed by the flying egg (and not much else), get the Guilalanium back to Earth in time to prevent Guilala from destroying the entire island. A poignant choice in the romance department and "The End" flashes on the screen.

A clip from The X From Outer Space (1967)

This was the first monster movie produced by the Shochiku Film Studio, and while it had none of the polish you would find with a Toho Production or the early Daiei Gamera films, it was still an enjoyable film. There's a lot of goofiness, with the comm officer trying hard to be the comic relief, the monster itself being just the strangest thing they could've come up with, and the quaintness of the special effects. You don't notice a lot of wires, but the buildings tend to fall apart like gingerbread houses. The design of the AAB-Gamma space ship is very interesting though; looking a lot like some sort of modified submarine and not the usual rocket/missile-shaped craft of the era.

But one of the hallmarks of being a kaiju eiga fan is to look at a movie in a Japanese manner: If the story is worth telling, you can overlook flaws in the presentation. The X From Outer Space was a tale worth telling, so I find I can quite easily enjoy it with those flaws; in fact, like a lot of films, you can enjoy it more with the flaws.

AVAILABLE ON AMAZON.COM FOR THE KINDLE

THE MONSTER QUIZ BOOK

By Rich Meyer

If you like monsters, giant-sized, human-sized or any size, then this is the quiz e-book for you! Godzilla, Gamera, Frankenstein, the Creature, the Mummy, Dracula ... nearly every creature that's tried to scare the pants off you gets a shout out in this one!

US SITE: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005QRPTJE

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Review: Doctor Who "Nightmare in Silver" SPOILERS ABOUND

Okay, the latest episode of Doctor Who, while having a few excellent points on the plus side, really emphasizes the descent of the show into being a children's TV show again, rather than an actual science fiction program.

First the good stuff: Warrick Davis. You can't go wrong with Warrick Davis. And a couple of the special effects were good, though the sound editor didn't do a good job. How could that twit of a kid have screamed like she did if the Cyberman was moving at that speed? She wouldn't have even noticed until she was halfway down the hall.

And the final good point: The Cybermen, of course. They weren't all that scary to viewers, I don't think, but in the concept of the story, they were played to good effect, especially giving them an element of deviousness they hadn't really had before.

But the episode also went a little overboard on turning the Cybermen into the Borg. The partial conversions, the facial implements on the Doctor and Webley, even the mental combat all screamed "Borg" to me. The Cybermen could possibly have been an inspiration to the Star Trek: The Next Generation creators for the Borg, but this is such a blatant swipe.

Also, I think the writers should have maybe watch a few episodes of the original series, as I could've sworn that gold only messed up a Cyberman's respiration unit. Why touching a piece of foil to part of an implement would do anything is beyond me, at most a minor short circuit, I would think.

And now we come to the bane of the episode: The two kids. One kid, no problem. But two? Now you're pandering to the kid demographic and you officially have a kid's TV show. The mere fact that the Doctor would consider taking them along in the TARDIS, especially in a storyline where he is trying to erase his presence from history, is absurd. I suppose you can laugh it off because of his obsession with their governess, but it is lame no matter how you look at it. This is THE DOCTOR, not a babysitter. At least the initial process of turning them into Cybermen shut them up for a good portion of the episode.

Much like the previous episode, this one had a lot going for it, but stopped itself short of being a properly good episode. This one certainly did not feel like it was written by someone of the calibre of Neil Gaiman.  I suppose even the great ones phone one in now and again.

I don't hold out much hope for the next episode either, with the pointless answering of the "Question That Must Not Be Answered" either. In fact, I don't hold out much hope for the series until both Matt Smith and Stephen Moffat quit the show.

I'm still hoping that the entire Eleventh Doctor saga is some odd alternate universe that will resolve itself and disappear from the collective memory next episode or on the 50th Anniversary Special.

Comic Book Reviews - May 7th, 2013

As yesterday was a DC fest of reviews, today is all Marvel, primarily "Marvel Now" books.

The second Dark Avengers comic book is a spin-off from both the "Dark Reign" mega-event and the last Thunderbolts book. The team features corollaries to some of the most popular Avengers: USAgent for Captain America, Skaar for Hulk, Ragnarok for Thor, Trickshot for Hawkeye, Toxie Doxie for Scarlet Witch, Moonstone for Captain/Ms. Marvel, and Ai Apaec for Spider-Man. The current storyline has them in an alternate universe in which New York City is divided into gang and tribe-style territories run by Dr. Strange, Iron Man Mr. Fantastic, the Thing, and Spider-Man, following a major battle that resulted in the deaths of Hulk and Thor. There's some fairly good scripting and artwork in this one, and the story and characterization is fun to read. Moonstone constantly being forced to dress up as Ms. Marvel (something begun by Norman Osborne in the original Dark Avengers series) provides a little comic relief. The use of a character like Ragnarok, which I would've normally thought of as just a throwaway bit for Civil War is an interesting touch, as is the unique way Toxie Doxie gives John Walker (USAgent) back his mobility. This really isn't a top-tier book by any stretch, but it currently reminds me of Exiles, with this strange dystopian verve on the MU. It's definitely worth a read.


Scraping the bottom of the Marvel barrel, we have Nova. Now, this title is a natural, as a tie-in to both the Ultimate Spider-Man animated series and the planned Guardians of the Galaxy movie.  But, unfortunately, this series has none of the fun of the cartoon series, and little of the majesty of what you would hope a GOTG movie would have. We're stuck with Sam Alexander instead of Richard Rider in the Nova Corps gear - a young kid with no experience in using the abilities the uniform gives him. We've got a cameo by the Pointer err the Watcher, and Gamora and Rocket Raccoon stop by with a less-than-inspiring training session for the kid. And issue three brings in the Chitauri, in all their Avengers movie glory. Considering that these were the Marvel Ultimate Universe version of the Skrulls, one wonders what unseen retro-continuity effects these aliens will have played in galactic politics. From their armada, they appeared to have fared much better than their namesakes during the Annihilation Wave. I've read almost everything in Nova before, mostly in the Jaime Reyes incarnations of Blue Beetle. The only difference is that Sam Alexander can take off his helmet and walk away, something I hope rapidly declining sales will make him do soon, so we can get back to a proper Man Called Nova.

I really cannot call myself the biggest X-Men/mutie book fan. I was back in the early days, up until Dave Cockrum left the book the second time. I did manage to be the only person on the planet to trade his copy of X-Men #94 for an issue of Two-Gun Kid (in my defense, it did have a kick-ass pin-up with all of Matt Hawk's gizmos). The X-Men have just grown so exponentially since I started reading them (X-Men #63, if I recall correctly, back in the reprint/nearly-canceled years), and that exponential growth, coupled with the bad artwork of the nineties that other people thought was exceedingly brilliant (even after all the artists went over to Image), left a sour taste in my mouth. The last time I tried any X-book was Grant Morrison's brilliant run on New X-Men. I've started reading the "Marvel Now" versions, in the aftermath of Avengers vs. X-Men, beginning with the excellent Cable vs. X-Force.

Cable's a character I never liked. Much like most of the nineties creations, I saw him as just a bozo with a gun, and usually one the size of a small sofa. The same with Domino, only with smaller guns <insert bad joke here>. But this series has an interesting cast, with Colossus from the proper New Uncanny X-Men, Forge, and golden age Marvel hero Dr. Nemesis. Cable and X-Force are a strike force working save lives by being proactive in trying to make sure Cable's prophetic visions don't come true. From Cable arguing with his daughter Hope (who wants to be involved in all parts of her father's life) to Forge and Dr. Nemesis' video game and giant monster contests, to Domino and Colossus getting a little frisky, this is a wonderfully written book with some great artwork. This is a book any comic fan should at least give a try once. You'll probably be back for more.

Well, to make a post even stranger (at least for me), here's another book for a character I never thought I could recommend. Wolverine has become an interesting character, but somehow his multitude of appearances in nearly every Marvel Comics title, at least as of late, haven't become tiresome. I personally haven't read a Wolvie solo book since the pioneering Chris Claremont-Frank Miller mini-series of the early eighties. I never got into his first on-going series, as the whole "Patch" thing seemed so stupid. But having enjoyed seeing the character in New X-Men and the Avengers titles, I thought I'd give the character another try. Savage Wolverine doesn't disappoint, though the series is more of a off-beat team-up tale (at least so far) instead of a straight Wolverine book. It's set in the Savage Land, with Wolverine, Shanna the She-Devil and and Amadeus Cho trying to find the secret behind an strange island, all for different reason. Frank Cho handles the story and art chores, while Jason Keith gets cover credit for being the colorist (finally at least someone remembers the important job a colorist does on a comic ... y'know they used to be called "four-color comics" for a reason). The tale is fast-moving and action-packed. There's nothing not to recommend about this one.

The latest iteration of the time-honored Bruce Banner is the focus of Indestructible Hulk. Dr. Banner has discovered that his condition, being the Hulk that is, is incurable, and much more like a chronic physical condition like diabetes. He's also become worried about how history will remember him - since other super-intelligent men like Tony Stark and Reed Richards get all the acclaim for using their minds and not their brawn. So he puts forth a proposal to SHIELD Director Maria Hill:  They give Banner the facilities to make scientific miracles come true, and they can use the Hulk as a WMD when needed. A little blackmail helps things along and a trial run against the Mad Thinker in issue #1 gets Banner "hired". Mark Waid is always a great writer, as anyone reading Daredevil nowadays already knows. Leinil Yu, an artist I never heard of before, is very capable and captures the raw power of the Hulk with aplomb. A great book for the Hulk fans, and definitely a more interesting take on the character.

Well, that's all this time around. Next time, some a few more books I think are worth reading, like Masks, and probably a couple that aren't worth buying for your birdcage. We'll see.


AVAILABLE FOR THE AMAZON KINDLE: 

THE MUSIC TRIVIA QUIZ BOOK

By Rich Meyer

Are you the kind of person who wants to rock and roll all night? Enjoy being all out of love? Is Georgia on your mind? Are you the very model of a modern major general?

This quiz e-book features 301 easy-to-navigate trivia questions on music: All genres - rock, country, R&B, classical, opera, alternative and even pop! There's something here for everyone!  Hours of fun for the whole family! Stump your friends! Enrage your enemies! And have a rockin' good time with the Music Trivia Quiz Book!

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Comic Book Reviews May 6th, 2013

I've been catching up on my comic book reading for the past couple of weeks, and thought it was time to post a few reviews. We're doing two titles I've mentioned here before, and all three are from DC Comics' current "New 52" continuity.

All Star Western could for the most part have been part of the old DC Universe with only a few tweaks. It is quite possibly one of the top five books being published today. The writing is excellent and the artwork is perfect for the time period. Bounty hunter Jonah Hex has starred in the first nineteen issues, in stories set primarily in 1880's Gotham City, with Dr. Amadeus Arkham, the person who would found the legendary Arkham Asylum, along for the ride. The title features a back-up story set in the same era, highlighting western characters such as El Diablo, the Barbary Ghost, and Bat Lash, as well as a new version of Tomahawk, Dr. Thirteen and an early version of Stormwatch. Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti have captured the essence of the era perfectly in this series. All Star Western is a series that belongs on everyone's comic pull list.

The biggest disappointment in the "New 52" for me so far has been Justice League. This book is supposed to be the flagship title of the company, but it comes off as the same-old, same-old. We've seen almost all of these stories before, in one form or another, and the original iterations were much better. The artwork, yes, it's pretty darn good. Jim Lee is the only real original Image graduate that actually improved since those halcyon days of artists who cared little for human anatomy. But the book is severely lacking. The Justice League always seems to be bit players in someone else's story. From the hackneyed origin story with Darkseid to bring Cyborg into the JL fold, to the "Throne of Atlantis" storyline, and the current one, which portends to be a retelling of "Tower of Babel" and the Justice League: Doom animated feature, I find myself not caring about any of these characters. Superman and Wonder Woman getting friendly? Yawn. Batman being nosy and underhanded. Ho-hum. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. How about having these people act like heroes again, rather than bit players in other sagas or spoiled brats?

Finally we have The Movement, written by fan favorite Gail Simone, noted for stints on Wonder Woman, Batgirl, and several other popular titles. This book is set in Coral City, a previously unknown municipality in the DC Universe. There's a lot of corrupt cops, one cop trying to do his best, a possibly possessed young man who's a serial killer and a bunch of young metahumans. What there isn't is a cohesive story. I've only read the first issue, but nothing in it makes me want to leave the house to look for the second. I have no empathy for anyone in this story. I've read some of Simone's Batgirl issues, and they made sense and were entertaining. If this is how she writes when creating her own characters, then she should stick to established ones. Freddie Williams III provides some interesting art, very reminiscent, at least to me, of some of the art on Rachel Pollack's Doom Patrol run. But it's not interesting enough to shell out money for the next issue.

I'd have to say that, right now, The Movement is the absolute nadir of the "New 52" imprint, even topping Liefeld's Hawk and Dove for that honor.

I'm so proud of myself for not making any obvious puns on the name of that last book.  Next time around, some of the "Marvel Now!" titles, including Dark Avengers, Indestructible Hulk, and Savage Wolverine.

AVAILABLE FOR THE AMAZON KINDLE - FREE TO BORROW FOR AMAZON PRIME USERS: 
1,001 Comic Book Trivia Questions (Comic Book Quiz Book Volume 3)
By Rich Meyer

Here's truth in advertising: 1,001 trivia questions (and answers) about comic books! All genres, hundreds of popular characters, easy ones and stumpers ... hours of family fun!




US SITE: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007YUL0CQ
UK SITE: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B007YUL0CQ