Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla (1974)

“Who are you?”

“Commander first conquest of Earth, from the third planet of the black hole, outer space.”

This is most certainly one of the best films the franchise has given us. I don't care how Mechagodzilla is disguised as Godzilla only in the early scenes so we get to see some old-fashioned distruction by our old friend but appears only as a robot (described as a "cyborg") thereafter. Nor do I care about the Ptofessor's suspiciously accurate guesses early on, nor that his pipe is the most obvious example of Chekhov's Gun in cinematic history.

No; this is B movie heaven, with lots of action, interesting locations and a fast-moving plot- set partly, interestingly, in Okinawa, which is culturally and linguistically not quite Japanese, and certainly gets othered here. Mechagodzilla looks awesome and, while one sinister bloke indeed turns out to be the alien leader, others turn out to be cool and friendly Interpol agents in a nice bit of misdirection. Even the true form of the aliens looks quite impressive.

As for the corny sci-fi dialogue and hilariously 70s alien spacecraft, well, those are the reasons we watch these sorts of films. We even get an appearance from Angilas, and a cool new monster in the form of King Seesar. 70s Godzilla is really on form by now. And what’s pleasing is that each film is interestingly different.