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Godzilla Planet Eater review


Today the final installment of the Godzilla anime premiered on Netflix. Titled Godzilla: Planet Eater, it finishes the trilogy that began with Planet of the Monsters.

 
If I were to use a sentence to describe it, it would be metaphysical mumbo jumbo anticlimactic nonsense. I actually started laughing during the “big climax” as I couldn’t believe that this was what they came up with to conclude the series.
It begins where City on the Edge of Battle ended, with the plan to destroy Godzilla by fusing with the tech in Mechagodzilla City failing, causing the death of Yuko. Haruo is mourning her loss and blames himself. Meanwhile, Metphies tells him he’s the chosen one and that their God will defeat Godzilla.
 
SPOILERS: Metphies turns out to be a batshit crazy religious fanatic who is sacrificing all who believe to be eaten by the energy of Ghidorah, their God. During their summoning ceremony, Ghidorah kills the worshippers and destroys the ship of survivors that’s in space. Then it arrives on Earth to attack Godzilla, who is unable to effectively attack the 3 headed monster.

The final “fight” is basically 3 Ghidorah necks wrapped around Godzilla, sucking his energy, while the scientist repeat in painstaking detail everything that’s happening during the attack. Metphies tells Haruo some nonsense about life being suffering and death is the only salvation from a life of hardship, one of the twins calls Mothra who wakens Haruo from his trance and he rips out Metphies eye, which is giving Ghidorah power. Ghidorah then dies. In the end, Haruo takes Yuko’s body on the only remaining ship and smashes it into Godzilla, screaming about how he represents all of humanity’s anger or some nonsense like that, because the only way to win was to die, which is odd considering that’s pretty much the same thing Metphies was trying to convey. So for Haruo to refuse to sacrifice himself so that one monster could live (Ghidorah), only to sacrifice himself and allow the monster he hates most to live (Godzilla) makes no real sense. He could’ve done that in the first film and we would’ve been spared this long, drawn out bore.


It’s clear that the writers had no idea how to conclude this story, so it feels like they threw a bunch of ideas and concepts on a table and picked ones that they thought would come off as smart and metaphorical. But the end result is a movie that talks a lot but ultimately has very little to say. Their efforts to be “deep” feel more like a dud. Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris is a smart film that has much to say, Jonathan Glazer’s Under The Skin is a smart film that has much to say. Shin Godzilla was a smart film. This is not. This takes ideas that have now become cliché and attempts to present them as new. The first film was a bore, the 2nd was better and had an interesting concept, the third is pretentious crap that’s as transparent as a window without glass.
 

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