Rebirth of Mothra 2 - The One About Ghogo

Alright, well, this one wasn't great. The Rebirth of Mothra wasn't exactly going to change the world or anything, but it definitely wasn't a bad flick. Like I said, if it's ever on and you just happen to be watching, it's not a bad watch. Rebirth of Mothra 2 however is not in the same conversation. I tell you what, it certainly is a follow up to the first movie, I guess. Honestly, this movie is not good. I won't say it was as bad as say Atragon or Varan, but it does have ironically enough talk about the Kingdom of Mu in Atragon. What we get here is basically a knock off Indiana Jones movie with a plot focused on this stupid little monster named Ghogo and then we have the entire separate have of the movie dealing with Mothra, Dagahra and the Barem. And the stuff with Mothra and Dagahra is pretty exciting stuff, honestly. It's just that everything else in the movie is not so. There's a common joke that you have to suffer through the human scenes of a monster movie to get to the good stuff. And while I will say you don't have to "suffer" through most of the movies, you do for this one. A boring cast largely made up of kids and a leading monster with magical healing pee (I'm not making that up) all culminates in a movie that has some positive intentions, but just ends up being better for gotten by time.

After creatures who look like starfish named Barem rise from the ocean, another ancient monster soon washes on shore; Ghogo. An ancient water fairy from a long lost kingdom of Japan. Ghogo's mission is to return to the lost kingdom of Nilai Kanai and save the ocean from the pollutants that are slowly killing it. What stands in his way is Dagahra, the monster corrupted by pollution bent on destroying the last remnants of the kingdom that made him. Now Mothra must come to protect Ghogo and defeat Dagahra to save the ocean and the planet as a whole from the Dagahra and his toxic Barem.

Alright, I don't want to tear into this movie as much as Atragon, so I'm gonna start with the negatives first and foremost. First of all, we got Ghogo. I gotta be honest; I HATE this little thing. Everything about I just find really irritating. I really do not like its design. I feel like they were trying to aim for a cute angle, which, I can see how someone might find it cute, but I do not. He makes a bunch of very strange sounds, almost like purring and he never stops making noises. Also, I just realized I don't know if they gave Ghogo a gender in the entire movie, but WikiZilla's calling him a he, so that's what I'm going with. Worse from Ghogo is that he doesn't ever walk around. If he's not being carried, he's hopping around with a really dumb bouncing sound that is also joined by a jingle because he has two golden loops tied around his tail. And in the second half of the movie or so, when he does nothing but jump around, it gets really annoying. My biggest problem with Ghogo however, is that he completely steals the attention of the movie. The movie is called Rebirth of Mothra 2, the second movie in the Rebirth of Mothra series. And Ghogo just dominates the screentime. In part this is because he is small and almost always being carried by the humans, but what this feels like is like he was the star of a completely different movie and they just mashed it together with a working script of Rebirth of Mothra 2 and mashed them together because they knew it'd make a box office killing. It's not like Ghogo is a bad monster or anything (although I do indeed find him to be very irritating), but he just completely steals the attention of the movie. And for a sequel made for one of the greatest movie monsters of all time, that really sucks.

Next up with my issues for the movie we have Dagahra. Despite legitimately being the biggest reason I included the Rebirth of Mothra trilogy, he just, I gotta be honest, he just isn't a very interesting monster. My main issue with Dagahra is his design. It's not inherently a bad design or anything, looking like a classic western dragon, but he is just too bulky, WAY too. While Dagahra does get in some classic Godzilla style city destruction scenes, he just looks stupid doing it. Between his wings that just do NOT look like they'd function and how covered he is in what basically looks like fat, he is just not a high quality design. What also doesn't help is that he just kind of grosses me out. This is one of very few movies that we get to see the inside of a giant monster, and we get to see him producing the Barem inside his body, and it just, oh my GOD it looks so nasty. His backstory is definitely kind of interesting, being a monster designed to destroy the pollutants, but he basically got corrupted from the inside out in creating the Barem. Interesting backstory, but the Barem are more intimidating than him. We get to see some good near horror scenes from them with them jumping onto land and burning people like acid blood from a Xenomorph in Alien, but that's about it. The Barem pose a bigger threat than Dagahra, which it feels like that might have been the intention, but it just wasn't perfect in my opinion.

Alright, on to some better horizons. Despite not being very important in most of the movie, Mothra Leo does still get some good moments. In particular, we really get to see how even though he is the strongest Mothra thus far, he is still vulnerable, getting swarmed by Barem and being crippled for a long while in the climax. And while I'd usually say such is a negative, I thought it was a good scene. And him falling into the water near the end similar to the death of his mother was a nice callback. Mothra Leo also gets an awesome powerup in the form of the Aqua Mothra power granted to him by Ghogo to finish off Dagahra on his turf. It's definitely odd seeing Mothra Leo I guess, shrink (I actually don't know, it's weird, you'll have to watch the movie for yourself), to kill Dagahra from the inside, but it's still a cool thing. I really like how he gets this super cool X shaped, I guess beam that he launches at Dagahra like a torpedo. It's not exactly necessary, but it still looks cool. What little of Mothra Leo we do get in the movie is ultimately pretty cool stuff. I just wish there was more of THE TITLE CHARACTER AND NOT FREAKING GHOGO!

Honestly, I was disappointed by Rebirth of Mothra 2. While the first movie wasn't special but still enjoyable, this one is just forgettable, boring, and better left at the bottom of the ocean. It's not terrible, but it's not particularly good. Watch it if you're REALLY dedicated. Otherwise, stay away.

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Alright, tomorrow we're ending this detour with the only movie of the trilogy I've seen before this marathon; Rebirth of Mothra 3. I watched it MANY years ago, so this refresher will be nice. But, I think tomorrow's review will be much quicker. Because once that's done, we got bigger fish to fry.