By Dustin Cabeal
Is it just me or does seeing anything labeled “Part 1” just kind of making you cringe. It’s like, Nah, just tell me how many parts there are already. Because frankly, if you told me there were six parts left, I would be a one and done.
The story for Godzilla, Netflix’s original 3-D animation produced by Toho, is that humans have abandoned Earth after Godzilla takes over. With the help of two alien races, they blast off into space looking to find another planet to fuck up. It’s been 22 years, and they haven’t found anything. Meanwhile, their resources are running low, so they are encouraging old people to basically piss off on suicide missions. Our main character Haruo is referred to as Captain, though it’s never and I mean never established why the fuck anyone calls him that.
After Haruo tries to stop his grandpa from going on a suicide mission and then later to watch him die in an explosion that he was very likely responsible for, he comes up with a way to defeat Godzilla. For whatever reason, Godzilla’s power set wasn’t powerful enough, and they added a goddamn forcefield to his arsenal of bad ass powers. Haruo’s theory is that if they can find the source of the sound that makes the forcefield and disables it, they’ll be able to go hog wild on Godzilla. The rest of the “part” is spent getting reading to do that, but it takes half of this 88 minutes “part” to get there. There is a lot of fucking talking.
Before talking about the story anymore, I feel we must start with the shitty 3-D artwork. I personally really detest this 3-D cell-shaded shit that’s starting to become more and more popular with cheap anime. There are three alien races, which pretty much equated to three people. Everyone looks the same. At one point a man and a woman were standing next to each other, and I had to look at the handcuffs to figure out which one was which. They were talking too; it’s just that the animation is so poor that they both had their mouth hanging open. This animation style only caters to vehicles. From Star Wars inspired speeder bikes to Avatar inspired mech walkers, the vehicles looked nice. What didn’t look nice, aside from the people and the planet, was Godzilla.
Not only is there a severe lack of Godzilla in a “part” of a film with Godzilla’s name on it, but the king of the monsters looked like shit. Spoiler, there’s two, and both looked like shit. The first one looks like a lava rock texture that was placed over a drawing of Godzilla. The outline has more detail than any close-up. The design for Godzilla is sadly based off of the American movie, which means it’s shitty. The explanation for the second Godzilla is that it’s actually the first one and that he’s continued to grow why humans have been gone. Now, I told you 22 years, because that’s all that’s passed for them in terms of aging, but thanks to space tech they’ve actually been gone from earth for 20,000 years. Apparently, Godzilla didn’t stop growing and instead turned into a teenager and started sleeping more. Now he’s poking his head out of the fucking atmosphere practically, and he has an unstoppable power set. Oh, and humans/aliens are limited in numbers and resources, so it’s total crap to think they’ll even remotely win. Better start praying to Mothra to come save your asses.
Which brings me to the story. This is typical Toho Godzilla crap. They haven’t known what to do with Godzilla in ages which is why they focus on the human element of the Godzilla story. The problem being it’s always a shitty, unbelievable revenge story. Are we truly to believe that one person on that spaceship wants revenge? And how does one get revenge on a creature that doesn’t understand the concept? Maybe they should throw books at him first so he can get a proper education and then live with the guilt of destroying the planet, that would show him! The point is, the human element sucks when it’s a revenge story angle. There is so much you can do with this storyline, but Toho is just lazy. Shin Godzilla was fantastic because it didn’t even remotely feel like they had touched that film. This is shit because it feels like they mashed their cock into it over and over until someone had to tell mom, “We ate all the pie.”
The dialogue is predictable and boring. The voice acting is uninspired. If you don’t figure out who is pulling strings behind the story, then congrats, this movie is paced for you. Toho doesn’t think anyone will figure it out either apparently because they barely tease it in the story. I knew from the first scene this character appeared. It’s that painfully obvious. When the other shoe drops, it’s unlikely that anyone will be shocked.
I have a Netflix subscription so there’s a slight possibility that I’ll watch the next episode or part, but it’s doubtful. This was a chore to watch. It’s 88 minutes, but it felt like an entire Thursday. Busy, but always close to the end of the week, but still out of reach. Godzilla can be complex and enjoyable, simple and fun, but it can’t continue being a revenge story with a bunch of dipshit humans that just want to go home again. Because the latter is boring as hell.
Score: 1/5
Godzilla – Part 1, Episode 1 “Planet of the Monsters”
Toho/Netflix