Godzilla vs. Biollante (Gojira vs. Biorante)

10/24/2016 17:14

Film: Godzilla vs. Biollante (Gojira vs. Biorante)

Year: 1989

Director: Kazuki Ohmori

Writer: Kazuki Ohmori

Starring: Kunihiko Mitamura, Yoshiko Tanaka and Masanobu Takashima

 

Review:

This film begins right where the last one left off. Godzilla has been defeated and buried in the volcano. We see soldiers that are cleaning up the destruction and they find some of Godzilla’s cells. There is then a group of soldiers that kill them and steal it. They flee into the subway tunnels. While down there, they are killed by a lone soldier wearing glasses, played by Katsuhiko Sasaki. He takes the case.

We then see a doctor receive a phone call; he is played by Kôji Takahashi. He is called in to begin work with Godzilla’s cells. His daughter is there, she is played by Yasuko Sawaguchi. She drives him to the laboratory. His work is to help take land that is pretty much unusable to grow wheat. This is to take business anyway from the United States. Takahashi believes the cells will help his research. There is then an earthquake that kills his daughter.

The film then shifts a few years into the future. Sawaguchi gave up his work after what happened to his daughter. He blames himself for having her there and her death. He is working with a young psychic, played by Megumi Odaka. They have reason to believe the rose bush he has grown is housing the spirit of Sawaguchi.

Our main character is Kunihiko Mitamura and from what I gathered, he is seeing Yoshiko Tanaka, who is a teacher. Mitamura is a scientist, working on similar things as what Takahashi was. Tanaka’s children in her class as well as Odaka have been having the same dream that Godzilla is going to return soon.

There is a new warning system that is in place with different levels. They are currently at level one with the psychic phenomena that is happening. There is an office dedicated to Godzilla and defeating him if he comes back. The man that runs it is Tôru Minegishi. A major aspect of this film is they believe there is a disease that could be used on Godzilla that will kill him due to eating away at the radiation that gives him energy. This is what Mitamura is working on.

Takashashi has a change of heart and comes back to his work. He has an idea of using Godzilla’s cells and combining them with the rose bush. There is a competitor that comes to steal their research with two spies, played by Kurt Cramer and Derrick Holmes. When they come to steal it though, they are attacked by Sasaki and then by the rose bush itself. Sasaki gets away with the case full of Godzilla’s disease. The rose bush also escapes the lab.

There is also another military officer, played by Masanobu Takashima, who is in charge of fixing Super X and upgrading it. This version has synthetic diamonds in it that will act as a mirror to reflect Godzilla’s radiation beam back at it. They are prepared for his return. An earthquake occurs after they fly Odaka over top of the volcano and Godzilla is awake again.

The rose bush is then named Biollante and it has grown to be extremely large. It has different mouths all over it and tentacles. It doesn’t do much, but sway in the water though. Godzilla is drawn to it, by the cells from his body in the other monster. They do battle with Biollante disintegrating from the radiation beam. Super X is also defeated as Godzilla’s radiation beam is too much.

Super X is fixed and the disease is recovered. They use it on Godzilla, but it doesn’t work. They didn’t factor in his core temperature being too low and it not working fast enough. They come up with a plan to raise his temperature with electrical mines and weapons. Biollante also isn’t done either. Can Godzilla be defeated? Is Biollante good or bad?

Coming into this one, I was expecting it to be a lot like the old versus Godzilla films, but Godzilla is still a bad guy in this one. The humans are still trying to find an effective way to stop him. The battle scenes aren’t that bad in this one and this film actually takes me back to Godzilla’s Revenge. He fights another monster in that one, but is still a bad guy. This one does have a pretty deep story to it and covers a lot of subplots. You have issues of scientists playing God and the dangers of that. There is finding a safe way to destroy Godzilla without ruining their environment. I also got a sense of technology being something that we rely on, but doesn’t work as we expect it as well. I do want to add that I felt the acting was pretty good and the final battle was probably the bloodiest I’ve seen in a Godzilla film as well.

I did have some issues with this film though. The first one being that there is very little fighting between the monsters. Biollante legitimately just sways there and maybe has five minutes of fighting time with Godzilla. That makes me feel that this film’s title is a little misleading. I also was not a fan of the psychic aspect of this film. I don’t feel that it is believable enough. No one thinks that Odaka is going to stop Godzilla with her mind. I also want to say that Japanese military really needs to get it together with Super X. That thing fails every time. I guess that shows how strong Godzilla is, but come on. I thought Biollante looked cool, but I hated the concept behind his allegiance and especially what happened at the end with it.

With that said, if you like giant monster films, I would say give this one a viewing. I personally felt that this one was a little bit more boring than some of the rest. There is less monster fighting than previous installments. When we get it though, they are good. The acting is solid and the story is quite deep. I wasn’t a big fan of the amount of subplots for this one though. If you are interested in watching all the films in the series, then I would recommend giving this a viewing. If you are going to just pick one to watch, I don’t know if this is the one that I would go with.

 

My Rating: 6 out of 10