Gojira VS Mekagojira (1993) Directed by Takao Okawara

It's good to see how the Gojira series throughout the decades continued to evolve and kept on trying out new things, without ever really deteriorating. The Gojira movies from the '90's are quite different from the ones from the '60's and '70's but are they also worse and less entertaining to watch? Not in my opinion!

This yet again is a very entertaining movie, with a sort of weak and silly story but plenty of good action and other creativity in it. It's not one of the best ones out of the long running series though. The movie feels a bit overlong and maybe should have been at least 15 minutes shorter and there are certain plot lines in the movie that don't really work out for the movie.

Still I'm mostly positive about the story though. What I like about it is that it puts its focus on the military this time, or rather said the G-Force, which is a special group of soldiers trained to fight kaijus, in giant robots and flying machines. I really like this concept and it's actually weird how the Gojira series never really focused on the military but often featured journalists or scientists in it as the main protagonists. And of course the concept of giant monsters versus giant robots is just awesome enough on its own already!

It also means that the Gojira plot line gets pushed to the background again though. He really isn't much of a character in this movie but simply a villainous monster, that needs to be stopped. I definitely liked the character better when he was being more of a 'good' guy and occasionally helped the human out, while fighting off other kaijus but it's OK for this movie really. Because the movie heavily focuses on a whole bunch of other stuff, it doesn't matter too much that Gojira isn't featured as prominently in it as usual. It gives plenty in return, such as tons of action and the return of another classic kaiju character; Rodan.

Thing I also love about the series is how it remains loyal to its roots. Even though this is a 1993 movie and other, more advanced, techniques were obviously already available at the time, they still stick to the idea of having a bunch of guys in rubber suits fighting each other and destroying miniature buildings. It's a certain consistency that this series also needs in my opinion, since otherwise there is not an awful lot that holds all of the different movies together. Every movie in the series is basically a different one and it also truly isn't necessary for you to first watch all of the other Gojira movies made before this one before you go watch this one. The stories of all of the different movies are never really connected to each other and chronologically, the series is even a bit of a mess as well. There for instance are a whole bunch of Gojira sequels that take place in the future and it's also funny how people keep on rediscovering Gojira in these movies, as if his existence and legacy is nothing but a myth, even though he destroyed plenty of cities and saved humanity from annihilation on several occasions. I think that people would remember a giant lizard doing all of these things and teach kids about it in school, yet they are often completely surprised whenever Gojira or one of his 'friends' appears. Not that that's the case within this movie as well but it's just something to indicate how the series really isn't the most consistent one around, when it comes down to its stories and characters.

But on the things that the series also still is consistent with of course is its entertainment. The movies are basically always doing the same things but yet it never gets boring or tiresome. It's always awesome to see Gojira or one of the other kaijus cause chaos and destruction and the kaiju fights themselves are also always good and fun to watch, even when all of its looks terribly fake. But I still have to say though that all of the effects in this particular movie look pretty impressive, even while some of it looks outdated by today's standards.

It yet again is a very visual and colorful movie, which is something I also really liked about the previous sequels from the '80's and '90's. I'm really not surprised that Takao Okawara more or less became THE Gojira director for a while. He took a classic movie monster into the more modern and advanced age of the '90's, without turning it into something silly.

Simply another good and fun Gojira sequel, despite some minor flaws!

7/10

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