Godzilla VS Biollante

Biollante Night

Godzilla VS Biollante
aka Gojira vs. Biorante
Directed by Kazuki Ômori,
Kôji Hashimoto & Kenjirô Ohmori
Japan 1989
Toho/Criterion Collection
Blu Ray Zone B

I’d not seen Godzilla VS Biollante before this new Criterion Collection Blu Ray version of the film but, while I am certainly most grateful to finally get to see it, I do have a couple of criticisms of Criterion’s handling of it... which I’ll get back to later.

While this is mostly known as being the second entry in the Heisei wave of Godzilla films, after 1984’s The Return of Godzilla (aka Godzilla 1985), it’s technically actually the first, since the 1984 reboot was released during the Showa era. But it really doesn’t matter and lumping it all in gives a clearer delineation of how this second wave of films all fit together.

After some eerie music while the typography on screen tells us about the four official government warning signs of The Big G (which read in a similar vein to the three rules which make up UFO close encounters) accompanied by some more eerie music playing in the background, we are then treated to some credits which have what is presumably the denouement of the previous film playing out, as Godzilla is trapped in a volcano. After this, a scientist’s daughter is killed while he is experimenting with genetic cells taken from the monster.

Cut to five years later and his invention of an anti-nuclear weapon bacteria using said cells is at the violent centre of a conflict for control of the material, between the Japanese government, the clueless Americans and the evil people from the fictional land of Saradia (which I think is meant to be a pointed reference to Saudi Arabia). There’s a lot of convoluted plot and action here, leading to the reawakening of Godzilla from his volcano slumber but, while this is all going on, the scientist accidentally creates a new, giant plant monster called Biollante, by mixing the cells of Godzilla with those of a rose and his late daughter. All the expected shenanigans ensue as gigantic monster battles are fought.

And, it’s not the best of the Godzilla films (contrary to what a 2014 poll of the Japanese people said) but, after a very slow lead in, it’s not a bad one either. Although I would have to say that the giant monster battles between Godzilla, Biollante and a Thunderbirds-like submersible air craft called Super X2, which looks like just what International Rescue might have sent, are actually pretty dull. Lots of water splashing, reflected heat breaths, tentacle grabbing and tail wagging theatrics. But it’s just not on a par with some of the sillier (and therefore cooler) Godzilla films of the Showa era. Although, there is the welcome return of the maser cannons from those earlier films.

There are also some nice shot compositions including a cool moment where some big, building windows going back to one point perspective in the foreground of a shot are used to house the establishing moment of people arriving at the building. There are, however, also some not so great things about the movie.

For example, the score by Kôichi Sugiyama seems somewhat out of place in a Godzilla film. Sounding more like the kind of score Ron Goodwin might have written for a British war movie, for the most part. Great as a stand alone listen but, yeah, it really doesn’t help the movie any, for a lot of the time. Toe tapping but a bad support for the visual image. Which would explain why there’s also a lot of tracked in music from Akira Ifukube’s brilliant Godzilla scores included too, a fair bit of the time. And in comparison to the new stuff, this reappropriated stuff sounds magnificent. There’s a great moment in the tale where, after a fairly dull opening, I really started investing in the film and a good deal of that was due to the re-use of Ifukube. There’s a scene where two of the principal leads go and see a classroom of children who all have extra sensory perception (that’s ESP to you and me folks) at the Japanese Psyonics Centre (don’t ask) and they are busy drawing what they have all individually dreamed of the night before. In a wonderful moment foreshadowing the reawakening of Godzillla, when they are asked what they have drawn, the kids all hold up very differently styled illustrations of The Big G and, as they do so, Ifukube’s wonderful Godzilla march swells up in, to overpower the mix and, as it did, the film finally had its hooks in me.

I’ve got two more complaints to level at Criterion. Various people speak English a lot in the early parts of the film but, they are clearly not speaking their first language because, honestly, the accents and mutilation of the language is so bad I could only understand about every eighth word. Which is unfortunate because, in these sequences, the subtitles are in Japanese rather than English like the rest of the movie. So, yeah, I had no idea what was going on for a lot of the time during those scenes. I would have thought Criterion would have been all over that.

And the other thing, which is problematic to me as a fan, is the existence of an individual release of the film from Criterion in the first place. Sometime during the pandemic (or was it just before?), Criterion put out a beautiful book/box set of the entire run of Showa era Godzillla films and very welcome it was too. We have all been patiently waiting for them to release the other two big waves of Godzilla films in similar presentations. Why, then, are we getting this little individual release? The fan base is obviously there and chomping at the bit for a proper release of this stuff so... this really is annoying you guys! It almost feels like a drug dealer giving his customers a taste of the product before waiting to get them hooked properly later on. These other two Godzilla waves need to happening soon... is that not obvious to the marketing people at the label?

Anyway, that’s me done on the new Criterion release of Godzilla VS Biollante. If you are a fan of these kinds of movies then you will probably enjoy this one. If not then, well, probably stay away is my best guess.