I decided to take an off day a couple weeks ago, and then last week I had technical issues with my post and later decided I didn’t want to put it up. Anyways, I have been working on my comic, making slow progress. It’s occurred to me recently that I planned this whole thing wrong. I love making comics because it gives me structure and a goal; I’m very goal-oriented. I came up with a story I really wanted to tell, and I planned out a good way to tell it, given my current abilities and resources. But I forgot the part where I should have planned out a bunch of stuff I wanted to draw. I had been thinking about the story from a very “writer” perspective, instead of an “artist” perspective. What I really mean is that I am committed to finishing out this story, and then I’m going to focus on drawing for fun. I have ideas that excite me, but my ideas are almost entirely words; that’s why drawing is so interesting. I need to dig into what about drawing is most exciting so I can unite the two.
Another thing that happened a couple weeks ago is that I was thinking about my fighting TTG again while playing a card game. That made me want to add more of those sorts of mechanics in, an idea I’ve had in the past, and that made me think of the Super NES game Super Godzilla. I didn’t use that initial idea for the game, but for the past couple weeks, I’ve been making a lot of progress on that game and thinking about Godzilla more.
So I would like to do a series where I talk about the Heisei era Godzilla movies. If you’re not familiar, the second series of Godzilla films is referred to as the Heisei era films, since most (but not all) were produced in the Heisei era (which is also true of the third Millennium series, but you know). This series started with Godzilla (1984) and ended with Godzilla vs. Destroyah in 1995. The evolution of the Godzilla franchise from an artistic perspective is really fascinating. The original Godzilla was, of course, a serious, romantic story of humans struggling with their capacity for horror and their desire for peace. As the series went on, it quickly adapted to the constraints of filmmaking at the time and became a series of “good monster beats evil monster” movies, with some serious ideas used as set dressing. The Showa era films, in particular, have a cool quality where they’re clearly using the stature of Godzilla to make whatever kind of movie they felt like, as long as it tied back into giant monsters somehow. Godzilla (1984) tried to take the series back to its more serious roots. I don’t want to spend much time on that film, as it’s been a very long time since I’ve been able to see it, and mostly remember a combination of the manga adaptation and Marc Cerasini’s Godzilla Returns novel. That said, I understand it raised its intended audience up from children to at least teenagers, with the more advanced effects afforded by eighties tech also giving them the opportunity to revisit the horror of Godzilla himself, as the sole villain once more.
Then, for whatever reason, there was a five-year gap between that film and the sequel, Godzilla vs. Biollante. I should know the reason why, and will look it up after this because I’m writing with less than an hour before I intend to publish this blog. What I do remember is that Toho was accepting proposals for movies to make after their hit revival. They ended up going with a script from a dentist. The resulting movie is not regarded very well, and it is admittedly very messy. There’s multiple subplots and schemes that are competing for attention, and many of them don’t work particularly well. There is also remarkably little time spent with Biollante, compared to most other films’ antagonist monsters. It doesn’t help that the movie ends with Biollante “beating Godzilla” and then leaving, and Godzilla immediately recovering. It’s muddy and messy. I really like what they were trying to do, and still love Biollante as a monster, so I’m soft on it.
Here’s what I would do to improve it. The film includes this espionage subplot, where American agents for an organization called Bio Major (unclear if that’s a government organization or what) are competing to steal Godzilla-related research from Japan with a single spy from the fictional Middle Eastern country Saradia. I think the opening scene, with Bio Major agents, Japanese military, and the Saradian agent clashing in the wreckage of the final battle from the previous film, is really cool, and I’m fine with that staying. It sets the tone well, and it shows right off the bat the importance of G-Cells (Godzilla cells) to the whole world. This plot continues with Saradia getting the G-Cells and asking a Japanese scientist to use them to genetically engineer desert-growing wheat. That scientist then loses his daughter when a bomb (presumably left by Bio Major) blows up the lab with the G-Cells. All of that works well, but it confuses the plot when all this espionage stuff continues through to the very end of the movie, five years after the opening scene. We don’t really get anything else from it; even the later Bio Major threat to release Godzilla from the volcano, the only thing this subplot produces of note, doesn’t hold up because Godzilla would have emerged on his own eventually. The scientist doesn’t get involved with it, either, and he’s the one who has a connection to it. So let’s just cut it all out after the opening scene.
Second, I would reframe the perspective about ANEB to better focus the genetic engineering theme. ANEB, or Anti-Nuclear Energy Bacteria, is a potential genetic technology that they hope can be made from G-Cells; basically, they want to place the genes that allow Godzilla to absorb radioactive energy into bacteria. They could be used to fight Godzilla himself, and they could be used to end nuclear weapons once and for all. There’s arguably not nothing to the idea that Bio Major wanted G-Cells to make ANEB so they could destroy every other country’s nuclear arsenal, leaving America supreme, but that can just as easily be left in the past; their idea for a fascist power grab is also a potential move forward for world peace. The issue with ANEB in this movie is in how it’s framed. One character opposes the production of ANEB because “it could end up being a worse monster than Godzilla,” but it’s never specified how. It’s part of the vague threat that we don’t know what horrors genetic engineering can produce, and thus we should stop looking into it before we make another nuclear bomb. That’s a really good way to frame the threat and set up an interesting juxtaposition for this movie. But why is ANEB the scary threat? After all, the issue is the potential of genetic engineering technology, which can and should be centered around Biollante. ANEB should be presented as the shining hope that makes people want to reach into this Pandora’s box, and Biollante should be the resulting horror. Some, remarkably few figures can see the potential dangers, but the force of the government and military are behind the efforts anyway, as if blinded to the past and their own hubris.
Third, to better focus on the threat of Biollante, we also need to cut out a lot of the other military weapons and projects. The Super X-2 can maybe still play a small roll, but I don’t see it as very important. It has fewer weapons than the previous Super X, which also failed, because we don’t fully understand or accept what Godzilla truly is. So the Super X-2 being used in a brief scene as this overhyped military wonder that immediately fails seems the best way to go, for me. There can’t be hope for victory with current technology to fight off Godzilla, as there never is. More importantly, it would make Biollante all the more powerful and dangerous if she were the only thing capable of fighting Godzilla off. We don’t need to give her a handicap by injecting Godzilla with successfully produced ANEB, and thus we don’t need the resulting weather control system to zap him with lightning. No, the scientist was asked to make ANEB, so he asked to work in his own home lab, and instead of making ANEB, he made Biollante in an attempt to keep his daughter-rose alive (the scientist made a rose with the DNA of his dead daughter so she could keep living).
The film would open with the spy battle and terrorist attack, then cut to the present with people’s continuing recovery and debates over genetic engineering, then they try to get ANEB off the ground and instead get Biollante. Super X-2 tries and fails to fight Godzilla, and then Biollante deals a serious blow to him in their initial clash. As Godzilla reemerges, so does Biollante, and they fight to a standstill. Biollante then releases her spores in an attempt to survive, and Godzilla manages to throw himself into the sea. The end.
The only thing I would really add to the movie is that it’s possible, and likely very fun, to show Biollante as a virus. Genetic engineering as a threat that can spread through other plants, creating dozens of demon spawn. That would be a really fun horror movie thing to do, it would fill extra time left in the movie from the other subplots I’d like to cut, and it would be a good demonstration of why genetic engineering is as big, if not bigger, a threat to all life on Earth as nuclear weapons. Right before Biollante’s final emergence, we could even see an animal being infected, taking on Godzilla-like qualities. Not only is this a great visual and a lot of fun for the effects crew, who can reuse Biollante tentacles for most of these scenes, but it gives Miki Saegusa something to do. She’s a teenage psychic, the most powerful in Japan, and becomes the most prominent recurring character (if not the only) in the Heisei era films. Her scene in Biollante of nearly stopping Godzilla in his tracks with a telepathic assault is awesome. If she was also the only person Japan could rely on to track down Biollante spores, and know they’ve been eradicated, that would up her profile, show why Japan is investing in psychics, and tie into the genetic engineering theme as a monster that makes false souls. Or are they false?
So yeah, that’s my thoughts on Godzilla vs. Biollante. I wasn’t initially going to focus on this one so much, but it’s important. This movie was so messy and poorly received that afterwards, Toho decided to revive interest in the series by bringing back fan favorite King Ghidorah in Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah. That movie also revived the “good monster beats evil monster” tropes of the Showa era, resulting in a lowering of thematic ambitions. While I do enjoy monster fights and cool effects, the thing that brings me back to giant monsters is and always will be that they are as serious as they are unrealistic. They’re a living manifestation of all our societal sins, something so big and obvious and destructive that you can’t ignore it. I gravitate towards the movies that reach for those heights, as the original Godzilla did, and like the first two Heisei era movies tried to be. So the rest of this series is going to be devoted to reimagining the other movies of this era to be in line with the tone set in the first two entries. Until next time.
Life in the Gutters 