Varan - the Uninspired

Alright, well, here I was giving Raids Again all the crap in the world, and here I am after watching Varan and I can't help but think I was being really mean. I remember I ended off the review of the Mysterians saying how excited I was to watch this one. This one's always been hard to find for me, so now that I finally had A, the time, and B, a way to watch it (I watched it on Amazon Prime), I was like "Yes! Finally gonna get a chance to watch Varan!" I've always liked Varan as a monster, and I really can't explain why. I mean, aside from this one, he's only in one other movie, and I've already seen it. He was in Godzilla: Unleashed which was pretty cool, but he never really seemed that cool. I really cannot explain why on Godzilla's green earth I've liked Varan so much, but, I just have. And here we are. This movie is 87 minutes I'm not getting back any time soon.

After a search for a newly discovered butterfly species in a remote part of Japan goes awry, an ancient monster, the terrifying Varan is awoken and ready to ransack Japan. Armed with the ability to glide long distances, our humans must work together to kill Varan before he makes his way to Tokyo to devastate the city like Godzilla only a few years prior.

There's no way to beat around the bush on this one: everything about Varan is what Godzilla did except worse in every possible way. Everything down to Varan's roar was really cheaply taken from Godzilla in hopes of lightning striking the same spot twice. Instead what you get is a slow, repetitive mess that is really unbefitting of the general quality kaiju films that Toho produces.

Alright, I'm gonna play it nice and talk about the two things I do like about the movie: first and foremost, the movie actually has a unique setting compared to other films throughout the rest of the series. Set in a very small village in the Northwest region of Japan (which keeps getting referred to as the Tibet of Japan in the movie), the backdrop of the movie is A LOT more rustic and unique than most of the other movies. I mean, the Mysterians had a similar idea, being in a village close to the base of Mount Fuji, but until almost the very end of the movie, it feels a lot more isolated. There's a lot that is good with isolation in film, I mean, just look at Alien and Predator. Now, while of course Varan NEVER escalates to the level of those two classics, it does set it apart and it helps to give it its own identity.

And of course, I like Varan himself. I feel like you have to work REALLY hard for me to not like your movie monster,  but, hey. Some movies still don't make me like the monster. Varan doesn't exactly do a lot in this movie, honestly. Which is odd 'cause he's actually in a lot of this movie, but it's really nothing about what he does in the movie, because I do mean it. He really doesn't do a lot in the movie. But I like his look, I like his roar, I like his whacky ability of gliding. I mean, it comes out of nowhere in the movie, which earns bonus points for me, because it almost makes me think of the first Gamera movie, honestly. But he's just a cool enough monster to stand out on his own. I just wish he got a better movie to show that off in.

Now, let's get into literally everything else about the movie. Yeah, this is a bad one. When I say literally, I do mean literally. Let's start with the fact that this movie is does not know when to show something at the right time. It starts VERY similarly to Godzilla, to the point that it is basically them ripping off their own movie. The main difference here being that you first hear Varan roar like 10 minutes into the movie. And then 10 minutes later, he's fully revealed on screen. There is no time for patience in this movie. There is a difference between show don't tell and letting there actually be build up. Godzilla and Rodan did this masterfully, revealing everything that needed to be revealed at an excellent pace, building tension, revealing the monsters, and then letting it hit the fan. Meanwhile, Varan appears so early and so often in this movie that he really isn't that interesting or scary. He just kinda comes off in this movie as kind of a nuisance, which I think is really not acceptable for a movie from Toho. The movie wants really bad to be exactly like Godzilla, but after watching these two so closely together, I kind of have to wonder if they saw Godzilla in the first place. There is an art to tension and making your audience feel nervous. This movie doesn't do that. This movie is so obsessed with trying to be Godzilla that throughout the entire final confrontation with Varan in Tokyo Bay, they use a metric ton of stock footage from Godzilla. From the jets shooting rockets to the artillery guns firing at the monsters, even a shot of very clearly Godzilla's tail slamming into a building. It's already very poorly edited to boot, using the same shot like jets flying towards Varan three times in a row and cut that they the clips don't even finish, it just becomes embarrassing.

But by far the biggest single issue with this movie is the people. Oh my God, the people in this movie are really bad. There's a lot more running around and shouting for other people in this movie than there is running away from monsters in fear. The people in this movie don't even really have anything memorable about them outside of just being really stupid and irritating. I've been pretty good at remembering names and such for this series, partially because I keep notes, but also because the actors and characters that stick out, they really deserve that mention, so I make sure I go out of my way to mention them. I got one ACTOR, not CHARACTER, that I can genuinely name: Akihiko Hirata. I tell you, during the Showa era of films, this guy was one of Toho's young studs and he did a pretty serviceable job with some terrible material. Everyone else fairs terribly, however. They have a Dr. Yamane stand in in this movie, and he's boring and he looks like he's going to fall asleep. And most of the time people are running around the jungle looking for some other unimportant person shouting their name WAY out in the open like it's a freakin' Jurassic Park movie. This movie doesn't feel like it cares about its genre, the genre that the studio that made it almost ALMOST (don't worry, we'll get into it later), created. It's just embarrassing.

In conclusion: Yeah. This is a bad one. Normally with bad movies in this series, I can write them off as being enjoyably cheesy. I WISH there was even a hint of cheesiness in this movie. All it comes off as is just a movie that you'd find yourself waking up to when you fell asleep watching a movie marathon on TV. Shameless stock footage, some really boring use of the monster an absolutely TERRIBLY written script and TERRIBLY assembled cast in general came together to form a movie that I can undoubtedly say will be in the bottom five once this series is done. Thank you, and GOOD NIGHT.

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Alright, this one was a bummer, not gonna lie. But, I'm still going strong. Tomorrow is looking to be REASONABLY excited, however. Up to bat tomorrow is Mothra. Mothra is another one of my favorite giant monsters, but, like Varan, I've never actually seen her debut film. So, here's hoping we watch a nice exciting movie tomorrow.