Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack

The title is a bit lengthy, but so is Godzilla's illustrious movie career. And there is no way I've seen every Godzilla movie out there; it may in fact be a misconception that I love his movies and have seen a ton of them; I've certainly seen my fair share, but when I look at the pool, I can't help but think I've only swam in the shallow end. This is further verified by watching All-Out Attack: the movie looks and feels old, it has terrible acting and cheesy scenes. It has crazy action and awesome monster battles, and a little bit of a unique take on Godzilla himself, but most of the movie feels like it was from the sixties or seventies. It was hard to identify the age of the film, then you look it up: 2001.

Where are the modern special effects? Where is the modern storytelling? Why has this movie not been touched by today's movie-making style? Because Godzilla doesn't bow to that nonsense. It's never been about the special effects, or in some cases, the story. Godzilla is, and will always be, a guy in a suit fighting other guys in other monster suits. If you've ever been involved in one of our conversations about CGI, you know how it is: CGI doesn't look quite right, and "classic" effects will always stand tall, because they are tangible. They are caught on film, not added later and because of this, they are timeless. Anyway, as the film progresses the traditional effects start looking better and you can see a bit of modern influence in here, but it never detracts from the epic battles you are watching.

What's really great about this film is how it feels like a direct sequel to the 1954 original, where Godzilla is just evil. In that original, Godzilla just comes out of nowhere, wreaks havoc and moves on; a product and warning of the nuclear age, Godzilla was an uncontrollable, unstoppable beast that couldn't be reasoned with. Indeed, this film's events take place fifty years after Godzilla's initial attack on Japan. Over the years, Godzilla becomes a saviour, warding off other monsters and protecting the people of Japan. Perhaps his motives were questionable at times, but when aliens visit Earth and plop down some terrible creations, it's Godzilla who comes to the rescue. In this film, he's just plain evil. Rising from the waters, hunting down Japan's protectors, and with absolute fury, kills them all. And just in case you don't want to accept this version of Godzilla, you are forced to as your look into his soulless, inky black eyes.

Mothra and Ghidorah make an appearance too; in the past movies I've seen Mothra was fighting off an evil (although not this evil) Godzilla, and if I'm not mistaken, they become best pals and team up a few times. I'm not sure I've seen Ghidorah in a film before, but since I have him sitting on top of my speaker I felt it was high time to see him in action. IMDB trivia tells me this is a smaller Ghidorah than typical, and to further alter him, he's a good monster; in the past he's been quite evil. There's another beast in there too, but the little thing looks so sad and useless that I think the only reason he was in there was to show how cruel this Godzilla was. The four legged dog-like creature had puppy-dog eyes and a knack for burrowing underground, but was clearly outmatched to Godzilla. Once the three ancient guardian monsters are taken care of, it's up to the humans to step up their game and put an end to this malevolent threat.

Knowing that they are still churning out great Godzilla flicks, it's time to swim into the deep end.