Godzilla vs. Gigan - Aliens, Aliens, and More Aliens

Alright, this is not a great one, folks. After Godzilla vs. Hedorah, Toho yet again was a bit lost and perplexed with what to do next with Godzilla. I mean, Godzilla's Revenge wasn't great being kid centric and focused on its anti bullying message and Godzilla vs. Hedorah was even more confusing as a movie with a message that is mainly for younger people, the movie was just filled with disturbing imagery and would definitely not be the first Godzilla movie of choice for many parents. So, what was Toho's solution? Do it again, except even worse! Godzilla vs. Gigan is just improperly made across the board. I can confirm I don't want to hate it as I have a lot of nostalgia attached to it, but it is just a mess of an identity crisis. It isn't like vs. Hedorah where despite its flaws it also is not that bad. Because while there are positives with this one, they're mixed amongst a confusion of tone, an incredibly weird story relating to comic books and children's theme parks that it just ends up being on better left forgotten.

The theme park company World Children's Land is expanding to Japan, with the centerpiece of the park being a Godzilla themed tower. While this may sound normal, it gets more sinister, as it is soon revealed the people behind the park are aliens from the M Space Hunter Nebula and are here to takeover the Earth. Using tapes, they also have two monsters under their control: King Ghidorah, and the new and terrifying Gigan. Now it's up to the humans to use the tapes to call Godzilla and Anguirus and hope they can defeat this alien menace.

I think the first huge issue of this movie is the pace. It takes awhile for anything to get started, and for a nice chunk of the movie, there's just nothing that happens. Just a whole lot of seeing Godzilla and Anguirus swimming to the mainland. Which, I mean, I guess that has to be shown, but it doesn't have to take as long as it does. And then once Anguirus does reach the mainland, it takes awhile for Ghidorah and Gigan to appear from there. And then once they do show up, it STILL feels awful because of how lazy the effects of Gigan and Ghidorah flying look. They just look like toys being pulled by a wire on being pulled by lame magnetics or something. It looks terrible and lazy and is a real shame with how good Ghidorah flying in the past has looked.


The biggest thing the movie has going for it is its cast of monsters. Godzilla, Anguirus and King Ghidorah are main stays and it's always a welcome sight to see them again. But this movies main attraction is of course the newly introduced Gigan. Gigan is a weird monster and doesn't really fit in the Godzilla universe in theory. He looks a lot more like something that might come out of other kaiju licenses like Gamera or Ultraman, but he's one of Godzilla's best antagonists. I like comparing him to Starscream from Transformers. He's just an absolute villain, through and through. He's brutal and deadly and just dismantles whoever gets in his way... that is when he has the upper hand. 'Cause then he runs away like a coward. Gigan is actually brutal as hell. He's got hooks for hands, a laser on top of his head that he won't get to use for a few years, a buzzsaw on his chest and he can fly. The dude is mean and he does a lot of damage, officially becoming the first monster to ever make Godzilla bleed. And then once he gets it handed to him, he runs away. But not before putting up a really solid fight, beating the crap out of Godzilla and making Anguirus bleed as well, the third time this would happen in all of his appearances. He's a really weird monster, and he honestly probably should not be in this series. Yet, here he is. And he and all the other monsters do life the presence from being a REALLY bad movie into just a flawed Godzilla movie.

The human cast unfortunately doesn't fair quite as well, but they're not the worst in the series or anything. My favorite members of the cast are Kubota, played by Toshiaki Nishizawa (left) and Fumio Sudo (right). As the main antagonists of the movie, I won't say they're anything incredible or anything, but they do get the job done. They're both really cold and calculating, especially Sudo. I mean, it makes sense considering they're both aliens and trying to sneak their way into human society, but they both do a pretty solid job of clearly not being the guys to root for and being the villain. And then they just get worse once it their true form of being giant cockroaches is revealed. 'Cause then they just become more than a villain; then they're just gross. Now I'm not gonna sit here and wax poetic about how incredible of villains they are, or act like they're gonna win any awards or anything. Because even despite my compliments, they're still just kind of okay. But they're in my opinion the best of the human cast. They aren't incredible and they don't exactly add any points to the film overall, but they're solid enough and they do their job. And honestly that's about as good as we're gonna get for vs. Gigan.

Godzilla vs Gigan is so confusing. It's got a whole lot of qualities that are either range from just okay to bad, and it doesn't have anything exciting or intriguing to build up to for most of its run time. It's just a mess, honestly. I can't recommend it like I can Godzilla vs. Hedorah, because I find that at least vs. Hedorah was set on being disturbing and weird. This one just doesn't know what kind of flick it's even trying to be. I definitely say if you want a proper introduction for one of the weirdest movie monsters of all time, then go for it. But if you want a better movie and to meet Gigan later, then you're gonna have to wait awhile.

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Tomorrow is one I've just been absolutely dreading talking about because it might be the crowning jewel of craptitude over the entire franchise. Some love it because of how bad it is, and others just see what I see: an incredibly flawed movie that set the series back a few years. Tomorrow we're gonna be taking a look at the infamous Godzilla vs. Megalon.