Rebirth of Mothra 3 - Ghidorah Kidnaps the Kids!

After Rebirth of Mothra 2, it wasn't gonna take a lot to make me happy. Honestly entire detour hasn't exactly been splendid. The first movie wasn't bad but it could have used something more that I can't place my finger on. And the second one was just not good. So, how about Rebirth of Mothra 3? Well, I'm happy to report that despite this one being a bit redundant, it's definitely the best of the trilogy. We get to see a fun exploration of all of the Elias as sisters and see some interesting development of their characters, a bunch of cool powers from Mothra Leo and much better digital effects compared to the first two movies. Now, I'm not gonna say this movie is anything more than some light entertainment. It's not gonna win an Academy Awards or anything, not even for visual effects, but it's not bad. It of course has its flaws, largely in its redundancy, but it's not a bad watch. I can't exactly tell you you should go out of your way to watch them. Like the previous two, I will only recommend them if you are that much of a fan that you want to explore EVERY facet of Toho's monster catalog. But if you want to explore and have a solid hour and a half to kill, then I can definitely think of worse movies to sit down and watch in that time.

On a night mostly like any other, what seems to be a meteor shower is striking the Earth. This turns out for the sinister however, as this meteor shower heralds the arrival of King Ghidorah! An ancient monster that fought with Mothra in the past, Ghidorah is looking to wipe out humanity by kidnapping all of its children and forcing the rest of the world to die out. To weak to stop him in the present, Mothra Leo plans to go the past and kill Ghidorah in the Cretaceous Period in hopes of saving humanity millions of years before they were even born.

Alright, let's start with some of the issues. First and foremost, let's talk about the redundancies and Ghidorah. Ghidorah's awesome, he always is, and always will be. The problem however is that we've already seen Desghidorah. So, if we wanted to use Desghidorah as this world's only Ghidorah, then I'll accept that. That's pretty interesting and a new way to take the character, so, no problems there. So then when we meet the TRUE King Ghidorah, it's kind of like "I've already seen this." Plus, his backstory is exactly the same, being the dragon that came from space and wiped out the dinosaurs. Except the Elias say he wiped out the dinosaurs 130 million years ago, which, just, okay. They do avoid this being a 100% complete rehash however with the introduction of the Cretaceous King Ghidorah. Again, Ghidorah is ALWAYS cool, so getting a new interpretation and take on one of the greatest movie monsters of all time is welcome. And it's kind of necessary in this movie when we've alright seen a Ghidorah before and heard the same back story. So when we get to see the Cretaceous Period and see a battle between Mothra Leo and the original Ghidorah, not only does it give us a fun action scene that probably wouldn't exist anywhere else in the series, but it works to avoid the complete plot rehash of the Rebirth of Mothra.

As mentioned above, Aki Hano and Megumi Kobayashi both return in the roles of Belvera and Moll respectively, but Lora is played in this movie by Misato Tate (all pictured right). In this movie, we get to see a bit more of their full sibling dynamic. Belvera was very much like a cartoon villain in the first movie, acting childishly and just being a curled mustache away from a caricature, but she's been seeing a steady character evolution. Even with all the flaws of Rebirth of Mothra 2, she got in a good character moment when she saved her sisters and all of the kids from a massive fire in the the Nirai Kanai pyramid. So, she definitely cares about her sisters, but just disagrees with their stances on humans. And this is made even clearer when Moll gives up her life to give Mothra enough power to travel through time and she mourns for her and briefly joins forces with her sister Lora, despite still believing that humans are not good for the planet. We get much less black and white character morality out of the three this time around, and it is always splendid when we get to see such a situation with characters who previously were a bit more bland and not as well written as I'd hoped for them being an expansion of the Mothra fairies. Oh, and the Mothra theme is WAY better in this movie. God, it sounded bad in the last two.



Returning back to the theme of redundancies however, let's look at Mothra Leo last. The Rebirth of Mothra movies are structured very similarly to the original wave of Gamera movies (which, for those asking; no, weren't not gonna watch any Gamera), with Mothra Leo meeting his opponent early on, getting it handed to him, getting some kind of powerup and then being able to beat them later. We saw it in the first two, and it was already egregious by the first one, so seeing it repeated here is irritating. But Leo still gets some cool moments. In particular, my favorite is when he reawakens from his ancient cocoon after his battle with the Cretaceous Ghidorah, covered in Armor and of course taking the name Armor Mothra. And of course then the rest of the movie is simple: one sided battle where Mothra kills Ghidorah, the day is saved and the kids return to their parents. It's nothing special, but it's still a fun enough romp. Mothra sees some good action and really gets some cool forms, especially the Armor form. The movie is redundant, but it's still exciting to at very least look at.

Overall, Rebirth of Mothra 3 wasn't bad. I definitely needed a bit of a palate cleanser after the Ghogo movie, so, this was nice. It definitely is not a movie I'd fully recommend however. It's not bad, but just not a movie to actively seek. I watched it once when I was very young and it was fun enough. It's just a simple movie for kids, nothing much else to it. If you just want that, then you'll be happy enough, I suppose. Just don't go into it expected GMK or anything.

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Alright, you knew this was going to happen. Unfortunately it's time to write a review that will please no one. Because I'm not going to tear into the movie, and I'm not going to call it a hidden gem, because tomorrow's movie is just a waste of time. Yeah, you know it. Tomorrow we're talking about TriStar's infamous 1998 debacle, Godzilla, or as some call it, Godzilla 1998. Come back tomorrow and prepare for disappointment.