a review by the Azure-Winged Magpie.

The Corvid Review - Magpie Chatter notice
My Super Magpie powers have returned!

HELLO! HELLO! WELCOME TO PART ONE! 

(^^) Squee!

It’s Magpie-fangirl time! With Uncle Gojira! And oh birdies and delicious fishies… he’s back bigger and badder than ever before (even bigger than our G, our boy Kamakura-san). And he has some annoying hoomins all up in his peaceable kaiju business.

And you lot know how this ends. With a big ol’ splat on the face of the Earth.
…or does it?

But! Hang on! Before all that…! We’ve gone all scifi this time arounds! We’ve got space travel and mechs (not MechaGodzilla… but okay MechaGodzilla, kinda) and weird bat-monsters and all! This is a Gojira film the likes of which we’ve never seen before! And it’s an anime! And it’s part one of an anime film series! Whee golly! This sounds GUD.

You know how excited I was for this shit? Like… this excited:

(⊙◡)

And hoo boy, do I got a lotta chatter to talk about…


A planet of… humans?
LUL nope.

img_20180107_204907-1

RUN, HUMANS, RUN!

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING SECTION CONTAINS GOJIRA-SIZED SPOILERS

In Godzilla: Earth, His Holy Nuclear Scaliness God-King Gojira of August Majesty over the Monsters, the First of His Name, the King of the Monsters and the Kaiju is such a beast of a King that the puny humans have no choice but to make boots and bug off the planet before he turns them to nuclear-flavoured ash.

And birds, oh birds, is he some beast! We get to see clips of his rampage through the humans’ silly concrete dollhouses. We see him just twatting escape-spaceships left and right, and surviving over two hundred (!) nuclear bombs all without even a twitchy-twitch. This the King‘s house. All y’all ain’t welcome here. No you’re not. The lot of you. Your betters have come to take their rightful place.
And by betters, I mean better. And by better, I mean the KingHis Holy Nuclear Scaliness God-King Gojira of August Majesty over the Monsters, the First of His Name, the King of the Monsters and the Kaiju!

But…! The humans aren’t alone! There are aliens in this film! But no. Not the grabby-vagina kind.

I mean Star Trek aliens. Weak, featherless humanoids with their opposable thumbs and everything. I mean: zero-effort aliens, really. Like… two arms, two legs, one head, and no wimmin AT ALL.
Seriously, do aliens just not have grills or something? I feel left out…

(ಢ__ಢ) …I want to be an alien

So, we got the Exif (lololololol!) and the Bilusaludo (! …barley… salad?). The Exif are these religious-nutjobs, and the Salads are refugees who promise the humans that they’ll chase the King away with their shiny little toy (MECHAGODZILLA) as long as they can stay and be all at home on cushty little third-planet-Earth.

So the aliens and the hoomins put their heads together to fight the King, and because the Barley Salads are engineer-folks like us! and are really good at building Kaiju-fighting machines and such, they build Mechagodzilla and get ready to sicc him on the King (I wonder what the .jpeg-people actually did here. They look kinda useless to the story.).

And it all goes well and MechaGodzilla gets all up to FULL POWER and they done blow up the King and everyone lives happily ever after and everything’s all jus’ peachy!

lul

no

I already told you the King makes everyone bug off the planet. He does it by doing this to the lot of em:

None of them ain’t got nothing on the King. The King just does them up like torched squirrels to the point where our humanoids go: “we dun gone!”

So the hoomins and the “needs more jpeg”-folk and the Barley-Salad-folk go away and kinda amble around space looking for a new place to put their booty-boots down somewhere far far FAR away from the King.

What they’d like to sing some day… (I guess)

And… yeah. They find out what we already know… that space ain’t nowhere for us to just put our booty-boots down. And after TWENTY years of floating around like “a turd in the wind” (couldn’t help it), they realise that there just isn’t anywhere to go.

Now let’s talk about our main character a bit. His name is Sasaki Haruo. And he’s an annoying little shit. But stick that in a jar for now. I’ll get to all that in a mo.

He gets thrown into the nick for getting up to some terrorist hijinks. See, he thinks that the committee running the space show are reducing the population by getting rid of the older folk in “accidents” when trying to settle new planets. And he’s right. The committee are getting rid of the old folk and yadda yadda. But he gets thrown in the nick anyway because the BIG GOVERNMENT FOLK HAVE TO BE EVIL!

His Exif (lololol. Can’t get over that one.) mate Metaphies sneaks him some R&D on the big G and Haruo goes and writes a RESEARCH PAPER (who the hell wants to do Uni all over again?!) about him and how to take him down (lol. As if).

So with the essay doing the rounds and everyone sadface about the whole planet-hopping project not working out, the BIG GOVERNMENT folks agree to return to Earth and take a look around. And they even (after a little bit of pushing and shoving) agree with a plan to kill the King (if he’s still about).
…!

(ʘ __ ʘHow dare they?!

So, they send some scouties out to look around the Earth (well… Japan). And yup. The Big G’s still there. Y’know, kicking back on the beaches and enjoying the peaceable-ness of the planet now that all those annoying little humans are gone.

Haruo gets let out on bail (thanks, Metaphies!) because Metaphies throws his freedom into the deal for revealing the name of the essay’s author (clever alien-boy! Take that, BIG GOVERNMENT!), and they come up with a plan to beat the King. Quick-version is that His Nuclear Scaliness is like a starship (from Star Trek!) and has his “shields up” whenever he’s attacked. The shield comes from an organ in his dorsal fin (they find this out later). So… you destroy that, and he’s wide open for getting blowed-up!

So the humans land on the planet and start poking about a bit. And guess what?!

THE HOOMINS WERE BAD AT MATHS! It’s not been 10,000 years like they thought. It’s been more like 20,000 YEARS! And now… and now… all the plants have knives for leaves and all the squishy-biology of the planet has changed to “serve Gojira” (wait… THAT’S not how evolution works!).

So… folks are setting up shop around the LZs, and they’re walking around the forests and everything. And… GUESS WHAT HAPPENS?!

Well… a good buncha things happen. First, some people-looking shapes watch them. Second, we get to know Haruo’s designated bae Yuko a little more. Third, Haruo goes epic-babby BAWWWL because “EVeN thOuGh wE fORgoT, thIs pLaNEt alWaYS rEMemBeREd uS!” like a tot in fucking diapers. And fouuurth

All these weird bat-like-snake-like creepy-crawlies attack the humans! (It’s been 45 minutes. FINALLY!) And even though these crawlies got NOTHING on the Big G, they punch a few BIG, GAPING holes into the hoomins’ set-up before the pesky hoomins can do anything about it.
smh. How do these idiots even think they can give the King a boo-boo?

So… the human kill one. The rest bugger off after causing mayhem at the LZ. They cut one up and find out how bad at maths they are. And we find out that these new life-forms are connected to Godzilla, AND connected to plant-life. Which kinda makes His Nuclear Scaliness a big ol’… treeooo-kay!

“Tree-noises”

Commander Leland does the smart thing and decides to make booty-boots like everyone did twenty (thousand) years ago. The landing teams split themselves into two when they got to the planet, so they decide to meet up first. But before they can get on going along their merry way, Metaphies points out that they HAVE TO GO THROUGH HIS NUCLEAR SCALINESS’ PERSONAL BACK YARD!

Screw plot-armour. This is plot-heck! Aaand… y’know what? Even though Metaphies seems to be ALL OVER his bae Haruo (Leland ends up agreeing to Haruo’s original plan), I’m beginning to think that he ain’t all flowers and bunnies. Something about this sleazy religious nutjob is rubbing me the wrong way.

Know what? Stick that in a jar next to my “10 REASONS WHY HARUO IS AN ANNOYING LITTLE SHIT” from up above for Part 2. I got a LOT to say about these two things.

Anyway, moving on… the film shows off some tech that I’m pretty sure never shows up again, and people talk about how HARUO = GOOD, LELAND = COWARD. The two sides of the hoomin’ party sneak into His Nuclear Scaliness’ back yard, and they’re about to meet up with each other somewhere in the middle before bugging off. Metaphies tells Haruo some weird “mystic” sounding shiz about how Godzilla won’t let humans go (…?), specially because they’ve come here to “provoke him”. And when Haruo fluffs at it and asks him if it’s some relgious nuttery, Metaphies tells him it’s a “legend”.

See… the Exif (lololol) have seen this happen before. Lots of civilisations done bit the dust because of “creatures” like “Godzilla”. He’s kinda like a comeuppance for “arrogant” folk. And this is all news to Haruo. How come everyone’s finding out about this all of a sudden now?! And he’s ’bout to tell us more, when…!

His Holy Nuclear Scaliness God-King Gojira of August Majesty over the Monsters, the First of His Name, the King of the Monsters and the Kaiju shows up to say “Hi!” and “It’s time to fuck off, pesky hoomins!”

(⊙◡✿) My King!

So we’re at about an hour in, and we FINALLY get the Big G vs Humans fight we’ve all been waiting for.

Until we don’t.

(◕︿◕) …why?

I mean… come ON you lot, HOW LONG ARE YOU GONNA MAKE ME WAIT?! I’ve been sitting through this boring-ass bullshit for WAY TOO LONG. WHY AM I WATCHING HUMANS AND EXIFS (lololol) AND BARLEY-SALADS BABBLING ABOUT POINTLESS CRAP WHEN I COULD BE WATCHING MY KING CAUSING SOME FUCKING DAMAGE! GIVE ME WHAT I WANT!

THAT’S THE POINT OF A GODZILLA FILM!

Anyway. With Leland smoked and everyone all sad, Haruo falls up like he earned it thanks to the sleazy bastid Metaphies (who I kinda think has a thing for Haruo). Everyone decides to take a crack at Haruo’s BIg plAn now that they’ve done seen the Big G and somehow aren’t scared shitless, and they set up for an ACTUAL fight when there’s only like 30 minutes left to go. If I had balls, they’d be blue rn

So the hoomins attack the Big G with these hover-bike thingies and the Big G swats a fuck-load of them and everything suddenly makes Berserk 2016 noises. They get these GITS-type tanks to attack him and more GITS-type armoured suits to attack him and then Haruo goes epic-fucking RAWWRRR! and stabs the Big G with like a toothpick once they get him stuck in like a pile of mountain rubble.

And they do whatever to his dorsal fin and they poke their EMP magic into him and they think it’s all good and they’ve beaten the king when…

What The Kaiju SHIT-FUCK?!

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!

the King… my King…
They… blow him up.

(__) …no! 😥

…why? WHY CRUEL WORLD?! Y U HURT ME SO BAD?!

Look at his face up there. Look at how sad he looks. He got more emotion in that one scene than ANY of the human characters in this film. I feel so bad… I just want to curl up into a ball with my blankie and cri myelf to sleep. How could they do this?!

They gave me a 90-minute film. They waited an HOUR before he showed up (in his OWN film). They gave me a few minutes of him twatting folks. They made him kill one guy (ONE — and one of the two smart guys too!). And then they waited again, and gave me a few more minutes of him before blowing him up with like FIFTEEN MINUTES STILL TO GO.

Did these people WANT to make a film that pisses me off?!

I want blood… I want blood on the fangs of my ancestors and the beaks of my sisters… But let’s just watch these last few minutes before I go and start atomic-breathing-on people…

Yadda-yadda. People are talking and beaks are being sharpened. And just befo…

HANG ON A MINUTE!

OH HOLY SHITBALLS!

Hoo boy!

Everyone in trouble NOW!

That was just his babby-boy!

(ಠ ◡ ) THIS GUN BE GOOD!


So yeah… this was kinda shit. If it wasn’t for those last few minutes, this’d be a waste of bloody time. And it still is. It still is in a BIG way.

The film wastes WAYYY too long trying to make us care about these insignificant little folk running around doing whatever they think is important (which really isn’t). Haruo is a TERRIBLE main character. All he does is beat his chest like a certain monkey I could mention. The doctor’s cool and so was Leland. The Barley Salads are just kinda… there. And I think Metaphies is setting up to be a pretty cool “bad guy”, if what I think ends up being correct, even though he rubs me the wrong way like he’s a sleazeball. And shout-out to Yuko for being the ONLY sister I could see in the whole damn thing. I mean… seriously. How come there ain’t any girls about? Imma fight whoever thought that’s how this shit would fly.

Not enough of His Nuclear Scaliness. Not even enough of his kid (…?). Wayyy too much of other folks. And wayyy too much STORY. Now don’t get me wrong. I like a good story much as the next bird, but this one had SO MUCH shit that just never becomes important. The whole first twenty minutes could just be put in big capital letters and we wouldn’t-a missed a thing AND we’d get to spend more time with the Kaiju.

But hey. At least Part 2’s gonna be better now that we’ve FINALLY gotten around to the Big G himself and now that our characters are all talked-out. Right? It’s got MechaGodzilla on the cover and everything. It’s GOT TO be SO much better.

right?


FINAL RATINGS

THE AZURE-WINGED MAGPIE: 4/10

THE CROW: 2/10


Here’s the official poster:

4 thoughts on “ Review: Godzilla Part 1: Planet of the Monsters [2017] ”

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