Some people prefer Godzilla to be a chaotic neutral monster that’s a just a slightly better option than the latest monster of the week. Others prefer their Godzilla to be a destructive force of nature with little rhyme or reason. Fans of the latter will thoroughly love Netflix’s Godzilla: Planet of Monsters.
For fans of not necessarily either, like me … well, it was just okay.
Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters is reportedly the first installment of an ongoing animated trilogy. It is also the first anime ever, featuring the king of kaiju, which feels long overdue. Directed by Kobun Shizuno (Knights of Sidonia) and written by Gen Urobuch (Psycho Pass, Madoka Magica), Planet of Monsters kicks off with the the current state of the human race: adrift in space desperate for home in a colony space vessel, The Atratum.
We soon learn that Godzilla and his scary friends have been wreaking absolute havoc on earth. Humanity had tried everything, desperate for a solution. But one never comes.
It gets more complicated than that. At a certain point, a group of aliens comes to earth to convert humanity to their space religion, which isn’t really related to the situation. And then another group of aliens appears with a seeming solution to the initial Godzilla problem: a Mecha Godzilla. Eventually, though, all options fail and everyone is forced to evacuate earth and try to colonize on a Godzilla-free home.
I am out of breath and we aren’t even into the actual movie, yet.
So after over twenty years of travel and no new home, the colony makes one last desperate push to return to earth, in the hopes of finding a Godzilla-free earth (or creating one of their own by killing it).
This is an awful idea.
The universe and the world-building that surrounds the film are interesting and different, but its characters are not, causing the film to fall flat. We spend plenty of time getting to know the main character, Haruo Sakaki, so it’s unfortunate that the rest of the cast doesn’t get the same treatment. Every member of the cast is almost impossible to distinguish from the other, making it hard to feel anything, among the plot’s failures and successes. The film is also cluttered with a heavy dose of technobabble, which plays off the script as lame and lazy.
However, where the film succeeds is with its creation of a genuinely interesting setting for Godzilla to play. You really get a sense about how devastating the life aboard the Atratum is, an almost coffin floating through space. The film also excels near the end of its runtime when the main cast of indistinguishables finally go head-to-head with Godzilla. It’s actually awesome. Waves of sci-fi vehicles going against the colossal beast work perfectly with some very proficient 3D animation.
If this movie does anything right, it is when it showcases Godzilla in an anime: a monster who looks and feels just as menacing as the “real deal”. The final battle is filled with action, showing Godzilla’s size and destructive force in a new way that live action incarnations would never be able to.
When I had first heard there was going to be sci-fi Godzilla anime, I was almost hoping for a weird Gundam-meets-Pacific Rim-style smackdown. I wanted cool, huge robots doing reverse suplexes on weird, huge monsters. Instead, we’re presented a large-scale sci-fi story that’s more focused on setting up lore, than the titular monster. It was strange realizing half-way through the runtime that I still hadn’t seen (or felt) the destructive force of Godzilla.
But once the characters finally arrive on the “Planet of the Monsters”, the film definitely picks up and offers a rather satisfying finale. Fans of any Godzilla will love this film. As for me, however, I’ll just keep waiting for Pacific Rim: Uprising.
Editor’s Note: This is the first article by our good buddy, Justin Salva Cruz. I still remember walking out of Batman V. Superman with him and him liking it and we really needed to make sure we had a well-balanced staff. (He’s also a super talented writer, so we are super lucky to have him at Super Kaiju.)
