Godzilla: The Planet Eater

With the fall of MechaGodzilla City, the last of humanities weapons has been spent.  Broken from the loss of the woman who loved him and countless others, Haruno’s doubts begin to mount as does the pressure he faces from his superiors in space.  As desperation and paranoia sink in, the true enemy of humanity makes its move.  There is a threat to the universe even greater than Godzilla himself and he has just been summoned to Earth.  Haruno will have to find a new spark of hope to save the planet and the rest of those he holds dear.  As he faces his destiny, Godzilla faces his greatest foe, the golden God of destruction known only as…Ghidorah.

Probably the most praise I can give Godzilla: The Planet Eater is that once it’s done THAT’S IT.  This horrible, boring, full of wasted potential trilogy is finally in the books as one of the worst outings ever to feature Godzilla…and just like the last two movies Godzilla is barely a footnote.  Oh and that wasted potential is arguably at it’s pique here as we’re finally promised a true showdown of epic Kaiju proportions with The King of the Monsters squaring off with his greatest nemesis…should it come as any surprise that The Planet Eater manages to botch that too?  Jeez…ok let’s start at the beginning and get this over with. 

There has been so much going on in these three films and yet there’s a lot that feels…uncessecary or just plain ignorable.  From the characters to the philosophical debates to the immense letdown of a Kaiju showdown, if you thought The Planet Eater was going to somehow redeem anything about this trainwreck of a trilogy, I suggest tempering your expectations going in.  By this point, I had no reason to give a single care about any character, not that I can tell anyone apart because of the terrible character designs.  And main character Haruno, to quote Supernatural: The Abridged Anime, “It’s amazing I’ve hated you since we met and youre STILL losing points” (feel like ive said that about a few characters…maybe that’s a future Top 5 Wednesday list?).  I don’t care that he’s hurting over what he’s lost or his inability to kill a mountain sized behemoth.  That’s because it’s hard to sympathize with someone who has led men into a losing battle with bad speeches and nothing but rage in every word out of his mouth.  Only this time he is given the Messiah label and is getting it on with questionably aged girls (seriously how old were those Mothra psychic twins?  Something is very wrong there).  Watching Haruno’s “journey” has been the worst chore about this whole trilogy and that’s saying a lot.  And just when you think the guys learned his lesson…no, he doesn’t and it goes about as well as you’d expect.  The rest of the cast, well by this point everyone is pretty much getting what’s been coming to them.  It’s hard to care about character outcomes when you want the movie to be over barely a minute in.

But surely a new legendary duel between Godzilla and King Ghidorah can save this fledgling trilogy, right?  Are you kidding?  Once again, Godzilla does little more than take five minutes to turn his head and that’s all.  A Godzilla that moves this slow isn’t going to do squat against anything it doesn’t luck into hitting (good thing he’s still durable).  As for Ghidorah, well he’s more like a Golden Shenron from Dragon Ball Z rather than a traditional Ghidorah.  We do get glimpses of his classic monster design in the form of mind shillouettes but otherwise, he looks like he is taking forever to be summoned once all the Dragon Balls have been collected.  Much like Godzilla, the new Ghidorah design is interesting but nothing is done with it.  And for a second, it looks like we might have a true battle.  The moments where Godzilla and Ghidorah move to face each other does feel like a big deal…and then you remember it’s the Anime trilogy and nothing is going to happen because we have to watch Haruno fall into The Matrix and converse with the Space Elf Architect rather than watch the monsters fight…ugh, my head hurts thinking about it.

I hate to say it, though it’s true, but I felt depressed watching this movie.  Godzilla films are supposed to be fun, containing a smart(ish) scifi story that’s just an excuse to watch two monsters beat the crap out of each other.  There’s a human story thrown in just cause but at least the action is always memorable (and the occasional hilarious English dub line too).  Godzilla: The Planet Eater feels like it wants to end things on a more optimistic note than the previous two films but ends up just repeating the same dialogue with a new pair of characters and drags on and on and on and on.  What’s worse, the human characters once again take all potential fun and excitement out of the Godzilla showdown cause someone thought theyre the real reason we watch these movies.  This cast is infuriating and not even the monster fight can top them because we’ve got the most boring match up between age old rivals ever made.  It must be said, even the 1998 Godzilla film with Matthew Broderick had more entertainment value…and a lot of fish (shoot me now I just quoted that, damn you Planet Eater).

The Godzilla Anime Trilogy should have been one of the best things to happen to the Godzilla franchise since Shin Godzilla.  You had the perfect platform to tell your story (Anime) and the backing of one of Anime’s best writers (Gen Urobuchi) and a great potential of a premise.  What we got, shown more so than ever in the grand finale, was a CG Anime abomination that has only gotten worse with each subsequent chapter, a story that was more Aldnoah Zero than Madoka Magica, and the best thing about any Godzilla movie turned into a long, tiring waiting game.  Godzilla: The Planet Eater finishes the trilogy on the worst possible note and I knew that was going to be the case.  But there’s knowing it will be bad and then actually watching it, it’s hard to tell which hurts more. 

So yeah, the pressure is on for Godzilla: King of the Monsters now.  Not only does it need to redeem the since of 2014 Godzilla (aka give us more Godzilla and less pointless human family drama) but it also needs to knock it out of the park to make us forget that Godzilla’s first true Anime outing was a massive disaster.  I knew what the final rating was going in…and Godzilla: The Planet Eater now joins a very small but distinct club here on the Gundam Anime Corner as it is a recipient of a very much deserved…

0/10