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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