Kaijû daisensô (1965) Directed by Ishirô Honda

A yes, sequels in space! Normally it's not a great or very successful combination but leave it up to Gojira for it to still work out as something awesome and entertaining!

Of course none of "Gojira" sequels are any brilliant movies but most of them luckily still are very entertaining ones to watch, which makes them great ones on their own right.

All of the Gojira movies are of course science-fiction movies but this one feels like a more classic science-fiction movie, in the sense that it's also taking place at a far off planet and features a bunch of aliens in it as well. It all sounds so lame and terribly uncreative but in the world of Gojira movies it still works out well. It's absolutely something that hasn't been done before in any of the previous movies and in some ways it also appears quite different from any of its predecessors, while still maintaining the same sort of style and feeling to it. But that's no great surprise, seeing how most of these early sequels were made by basically the same crew; director Ishirô Honda, writer Shin'ichi Sekizawa, cinematographer Hajime Koizumi, composer Akira Ifukube, Gojira performer Haruo Nakajima and the list goes on and on.

It's a pretty creative movie and one of the things that I really have to give the Gojira movies is that they always seem to come up with a new and original angle to the story. None of the sequels that I have seen so far feel like a rehash of any of the other previous movies and they did a great job with keeping things fresh and original to watch, for each new movie again.

Seems to me that people always go watch these type of movies expecting to get a lot of monster fights and destruction but that in all honesty and realism is only 10-20% of what these movies are all about. Usually the human plot lines still form the basis of the movie and sometimes Gojira doesn't even appear and starts to cause havoc and destruction until the movie is halfway through already. This movie is no exception to that either. It doesn't mean that the rest of the movie is lackluster. Even while none of the writing or acting by any of the actors is that solid, it's all still something that helps to make the movie a perfectly entertaining and engaging one. Of course the story is silly, of course the characters are all some one dimensional ones but the movie isn't ever pretending to be something that it isn't. It knows what it is and it also definitely knows and seems to understand what its audience wants to see and doesn't disappoint.

It once again is featuring a bunch of different kaiju's in it, who also all had appeared together in the previous movie "San daikaijû: Chikyû saidai no kessen". It's also definitely kind of like "San daikaijû: Chikyû saidai no kessen" round 2, in which Godzilla and Rodan (Mothra was too busy taking care of her eggs I guess?) team up again to battle King Ghidorah, this time on Planet X. But don't worry, the movie is taking place at good old Japan as well, which means that the big guys cause plenty of destruction and chaos in the human world as well again. And yes, it's all pretty awesome to watch as well. Not just the destruction they cause but also definitely the fight scenes between the different giant creatures themselves. The movie besides also features some pretty good battle scenes in it in which the army is trying to take down the big guys, with lots of tanks and missiles. More than ever before! Luckily the effects and miniatures are all pretty good looking as well again, though all of the other science-fiction aspects, such as flying saucers and lasers look terribly outdated, even by 1965 standards. It was like I was watching a bad and cheap Z-grade science-fiction movie from the early '50's at times. But oh well, even that is not without its own charm as well.

The movie is just as fun and awesome as Gojira's little victory dance!

8/10

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