Godzilla vs King Ghidorah (1991)

 "You can tell your son about it when he's born, Major Spielberg."

I thought it was about time I continued with my Godzilla marathon, and this is a massively fun film to return to. This is the best kind of unashamed B movie, which quite properly luxuriates in what it is and doesn't care what you think.

I mean, let's recap the plot: people from the future arrive in Japan giving dire warnings of destruction meaning Godzilla must be destroyed before his birth, but secretly planning to destroy future economic superpower Japan by arranging the creation of the monster King Ghidorah. Fortunately not only is Godzilla brought back bigger than before by a random nuclear sub but the Japanese person amongst them, at one point seeming to be a possible love interest for the male lead but ending up as his great grandaughter (er...) is able to return to her time and bring back a cyborg King Ghidorah to save the day.

Yes, that all actually happens. Gloriously mad, is it not?

This film, with its different backstory for King Ghidorah, with (despite some misdirection) no aliens about, underlines the fact that the films from 1984 onwards are a different continuity. It also adds a nice bit of backstory in that the creature that became Godzilla in 1984 was previously a dinosaur in the South Pacific that saved some Japanese soldiers from an American assault in 1944.

There's lots of splendid city destruction with models. there's lots of cheeky "tributes" to Hollywood too- the computer interface of the time machine looks an awful lot like Doc Brown's DeLorean, while the pursuing android looks suspiciously like the baddie from Terminator 2: Judgement Day. This sort of thing makes the film even more fun.

There's one big caveat, though; Japan never underwent the equivalent of West Germany's de-Nazification, and it shows in the nationalistic subtext here. There's a defnite glee in Japan's future economic domination; the android antagonist is definitely coded as American and, worst of all, the Imperial Japanese Army is presented as honourable. Let us be clear: it had absolutely no honout whatsoever, and its officers were not gentlemen.

Disturbing subtext aside, though, I enjoyed this splendidly silly film.