Godzilla: Final Wars

The world faces its greatest crisis as a race of evil Aliens unleash Monsters all across the globe.  With the valiant warriors of the Earth Defense Forces stretched to their limit and compromised from within, a desperate plan sees them turning to the one force capable of standing against this invasion.  The King of the Monsters is resurrected to face an army of his greatest enemies, some of whom have been reborn more deadly than ever before.  Whether the world lives or dies, the final march of Godzilla marks the beginning of Earth’s Final War.

When an icon as big as Godzilla (pun plenty intended) turns 50, no one more than he deserves an epic adventure worthy of such a milestone.  Godzilla: Final Wars, the final entry in the Millenium Series and, at one point, proposed as the final entry in the entire franchise, both takes advantage of the celebration but not nearly enough.  Oh yes Godzilla is here but more often than not, he’s competing for screentime in his own film against another film that could be good on its own but decides to slot itself into this anniversary project.  The end result is a bit of a cluster cuss mess but it’s still a lot of fun, for the most part.
 
At its core, Final Wars is basically an HD Updated version of 1968’s Destroy All Monsters: Aliens take control of the Kaiju of Earth, make them run amok and it’s up to Godzilla to stop them with a little bit of help.  The film even features a new iteration of the most classic Godzilla Aliens, the Xillens.  Focusing on this aspect alone, the movie is great.  Many of Godzilla’s most popular foes show up for the party, including ones like Angirus, King Ceaser and Ebirah, who haven’t been seen on screen in decades.  One glaring omission is Mechagodzilla.  However seeing as how he appeared in the two preceeding films in the Millenium Series, I get why he was left out.  All of the Monsters get amazing visual updates, brought to the modern era with spectacular suit work and some new gimmicks that make a couple of them more dangerous than ever.  While it would’ve been nice to see more of some Kaiju like Hedorah, seeing Godzilla bulldoze his way through the longest field of continuous enemies he’s ever faced is incredibly fun to watch.  After all, it’s his 50^th birthday after all, let him have some fun…especially when it comes to a certain Americanized imposter trying to crash the party and paying the price for his intrusion.
 
However, the Kaiju carnage takes up about…40% I’d say of the overall film (including the planet wide invasion at the start).  The other portion is a Super Sentai inspired action film leaning heavily on recent action movie influences like The Matrix.  It’s certainly the most visually eyepopping human story in a Godzilla film with well choreographed fight scenes, some cheesy effects and some surprisingly fun performances.  MMA Fighter Don Frye brings some Street Fighter level gruff and amusement to the role of katana wielding bad ass Captain Gordon.  Meanwhile Kazuki Kitamura is having the time of his life as the main villain of the film.  He’s chewing the scenery like crazy, especially when he just keeps losing it whenever Godzilla wrecks another Monster he sends out.  The human story gets a nice boost whenever he’s on screen.
 
Like I said though, Matrix fighting Humans who look like theyre auditioning for Kamen Rider aren’t why we’ve come to a 50^th Anniversary Celebration of Godzilla.  I get that Director Ryuhei Kitamura wanted to put his own spin on a Godzilla film for the occasion but it doesn’t work as well as he’d like.  Intercutting between two main characters going at it while Godzilla wrestles an upgraded Gigan only heightens the issue.  The Mutant Super Soldier storyline could make for its own entertaining movie and I do think the action is crazy, over the top fun.  But so is the Godzilla stuff but that’s not the priority for the first half of the movie and even then the balance is still off in the films final act.  Focusing on the Earth Defense Force also makes the movie feel longer than it needs to.  This isnt the first Godzilla film to clock in at two hours but you can feel the length of Final Wars, signifying pacing issues, this film definitely needed some more time in the editing room.  Also, I don’t like the music.  There’s none of the majesty of Akira Ikufube’s classic scores, instead we get a mix of techno and hard rock blasting your eardrums that doesn’t feel appropriate for Godzilla at all.  I mean do we even get the classic theme song at all? 

As a celebratory Godzilla experience, Godzilla: Final Wars doesn’t live up to the expectations one would expect from a 50^th Anniversary.  The Earth Defense Force cast and their action scenes battle the King of the Monsters for screentime and even sometimes come out on top.  Sure there are some fun performances and decent action but that’s not why we’re here.  When it comes to Godzilla himself, they do attempt to make up the negligence by having him carve his way through an impressive line up of returning favorite Kaiju in an all out brawl that has some of the best Suit Work and Action in the Millenium Era.  At the end of the day though, Final Wars feels like its at war with itself over what kind of movie it wants to be: Godzilla Celebration or ghost pilot for a next gen Kamen Rider.  When the priority isnt the King himself, maybe it makes sense why the franchise went on pause here.  The King gets his time to shine but deserved a lot better than this.
 
5/10
 
But while the King returns to sleep, rest assured…Godzilla will return in November 2025 for GODZILLA MONTH IV, right here at the Gundam Anime Corner.  (Til then, Konosuba starts Next Monday.)