December 20th: Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II (1993)

This is coming to you a day late, but it’s a busy time of year so I feel like I should be forgiven, right? What you don’t have to forgive me for is the fact that I’m hungover writing this and so it’s going to be a short one. Thankfully, there isn’t al that much I have to say about this film, mostly because there is basically no story in Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II (1993). To try and summarise this film, the United Nations have decided there needs to be proper defences against the threat of Godzilla. So, using the remnants of Mechaghidorah they create Mechagodzilla. While this is happening, a group of scientists have been to an island to investigate the fossils of Pteranodon that were found there. Instead, they find a nest with a huge egg in it which the take back to study, but not before being attacked by a radiation fuelled Pteranodon, or as you may know him, Rodan. It turns out the egg is that of a baby Godzilla, leading Rodan and Godzilla to try and find the egg and retrieve it.

What I wrote there for the synopsis pretty much captures every plot point of this film. Genuinely. This film has the most basic of narratives. And is basically just a film where we see Kaiju beating the crap out of each other. Now, for some people this may work. And for a good amount of the runtime, it works for me. The first Rodan and Godzilla fight is a lot of fun, and it’s always a good time to see Godzilla destroying a city. But I also need a good, fun story to get my teeth into otherwise I just start to lose interest, and that is what happened towards the end of this film. It never got to the point where I thought the film was bad, but I don’t have any particular interest in going back and seeing it as a whole film when I could just watch the fight scenes in isolation. Also, I couldn’t care less about baby Godzilla, but at least he does have a narrative reason for existing. I also am not a huge fan of the Mechagodzilla design in this film. It is fine but looks clunky and not as fun as the brilliant original design. On a more positive note, Rodan finely looks good. In the Showa era of films Rodan always looked like he was being held together by Sellotape and dreams and basically looked terrible constantly. Here he looks like a real animal with a proper design, and it is a huge improvement. Still not enough for you to watch the film though.