PATHETIC SPACE INVADERS
The Worst-Laid Plans of Mice and Spacemen
This recap -- not a review, but a full recap of the entire film, so grab a pillow and a snack -- is my
entry in the Incompetent Invaders Roundtable over at the Monster Shack. As if I needed an excuse
to watch a Godzilla movie...
The Worst-Laid Plans of Mice and Spacemen
This recap -- not a review, but a full recap of the entire film, so grab a pillow and a snack -- is my
entry in the Incompetent Invaders Roundtable over at the Monster Shack. As if I needed an excuse
to watch a Godzilla movie...
GODZILLA: FINAL WARS
(2005, 125 minutes, PG-13)
TohoScope. Oh how I love thee.
We're straight into a wintery hell, where Godzilla is making short work of some model tanks. A
giant drill/submarine/rocket thingie comes bursting out of an iceberg -- Kool-Aid Man-style -- to take
on Big G. Foolish, really. The drill/submarine/rocket thingie (now the DSR, for my own sanity) and
its crew of grim-looking Japanese men are grounded with Godzilla about to stomp a mudhole in
'em, and... EARTHQUAKE! As Big G takes a tumble, the intrepid Japanese fire on a nearby
mountain, burying him. And they've... won? Really? We're just 2:30 into the movie, and Godzilla is
already out of the picture? That's anti-climatic...
A Heroic Victory Anthem brings in an anonymous narrator to give us the skivvy. He says that 100
years of war and non-environmentally friendly policies "awakened vicious monsters," forcing
mankind to finally stop killing each other and form the Earth Defense Forces (EDF) so mankind
could focus on killing giant monsters instead. All of this is accompanied by golden oldie clips of
such classic monsters as Titanasaurus, the Japanese Frankenstein and Joan Crawford.
So far, so good, right? I hope the lawyers at Marvel Comics are reading, cuz at the same time,
"mutants, a new human race with superb physical abilities" started popping up all over the place.
Convenient. The EDF rounds up the mutants and makes them its special forces, called X-Forc --
uh, I mean "M Organization." Its mission is to stop Earth's Public Enemy #1, "the King of All
Monsters, who first appeared in 1954 and has since regularly threatened mankind"... until he got
his dumb ass buried in the South Pole.
Opening credits, stuffed with stock footage, mass destruction and bitchin' Techno of Urgency.
Sum 41 rocks this sequence hard. This is easily one of my all-time favorite credit sequences.
The always helpful military-style captioning (a.k.a. HMC from here one out) tells us we're by the
ocean floor off the coast of Normandy. The same DSR from the opening Kool-Aids through an
undersea wall with a giant monster snake named Manda (I know that because I'm a geek)
wrapped around it. These days, the DSR is captained by a huge, moustached gaijin whose name
should be Ivan. It's not, but I'm going to call him Ivan anyway.
Everyone sits tensely as the camera rocks around. Crew members twitch and complain that
they're too deep. But neither the water pressure, the high temperatures or being squeezed by a
giant snake will move Ivan, and he orders the crew into the earth's mantle. Yes, really. Manda is
like, "F' this, it's hot" and lets go. This apparently was what Ivan banked on, and he orders the crew
to warp speed on out of there. Manda's in hot -- literally, he's glowing -- pursuit. Ivan has the DSR
pull a 180 for a little game of chicken, but he has a trick up his sleeve: Ivan fires his "phaser,"
freezing Manda. Inertia does the rest as the DSR drills right through Manda, turning him into ice
shavings.
For those of you keeping track, that's Humans 2 - Monsters 0 within the first ten minutes of the
movie. I don't think mankind had more than three straight-up victories in the other 27 movies
combined.
NEXT: Re-heated leftover fight scenes from one of the Matrix sequels!
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
(2005, 125 minutes, PG-13)
TohoScope. Oh how I love thee.
We're straight into a wintery hell, where Godzilla is making short work of some model tanks. A
giant drill/submarine/rocket thingie comes bursting out of an iceberg -- Kool-Aid Man-style -- to take
on Big G. Foolish, really. The drill/submarine/rocket thingie (now the DSR, for my own sanity) and
its crew of grim-looking Japanese men are grounded with Godzilla about to stomp a mudhole in
'em, and... EARTHQUAKE! As Big G takes a tumble, the intrepid Japanese fire on a nearby
mountain, burying him. And they've... won? Really? We're just 2:30 into the movie, and Godzilla is
already out of the picture? That's anti-climatic...
A Heroic Victory Anthem brings in an anonymous narrator to give us the skivvy. He says that 100
years of war and non-environmentally friendly policies "awakened vicious monsters," forcing
mankind to finally stop killing each other and form the Earth Defense Forces (EDF) so mankind
could focus on killing giant monsters instead. All of this is accompanied by golden oldie clips of
such classic monsters as Titanasaurus, the Japanese Frankenstein and Joan Crawford.
So far, so good, right? I hope the lawyers at Marvel Comics are reading, cuz at the same time,
"mutants, a new human race with superb physical abilities" started popping up all over the place.
Convenient. The EDF rounds up the mutants and makes them its special forces, called X-Forc --
uh, I mean "M Organization." Its mission is to stop Earth's Public Enemy #1, "the King of All
Monsters, who first appeared in 1954 and has since regularly threatened mankind"... until he got
his dumb ass buried in the South Pole.
Opening credits, stuffed with stock footage, mass destruction and bitchin' Techno of Urgency.
Sum 41 rocks this sequence hard. This is easily one of my all-time favorite credit sequences.
The always helpful military-style captioning (a.k.a. HMC from here one out) tells us we're by the
ocean floor off the coast of Normandy. The same DSR from the opening Kool-Aids through an
undersea wall with a giant monster snake named Manda (I know that because I'm a geek)
wrapped around it. These days, the DSR is captained by a huge, moustached gaijin whose name
should be Ivan. It's not, but I'm going to call him Ivan anyway.
Everyone sits tensely as the camera rocks around. Crew members twitch and complain that
they're too deep. But neither the water pressure, the high temperatures or being squeezed by a
giant snake will move Ivan, and he orders the crew into the earth's mantle. Yes, really. Manda is
like, "F' this, it's hot" and lets go. This apparently was what Ivan banked on, and he orders the crew
to warp speed on out of there. Manda's in hot -- literally, he's glowing -- pursuit. Ivan has the DSR
pull a 180 for a little game of chicken, but he has a trick up his sleeve: Ivan fires his "phaser,"
freezing Manda. Inertia does the rest as the DSR drills right through Manda, turning him into ice
shavings.
For those of you keeping track, that's Humans 2 - Monsters 0 within the first ten minutes of the
movie. I don't think mankind had more than three straight-up victories in the other 27 movies
combined.
NEXT: Re-heated leftover fight scenes from one of the Matrix sequels!
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |