Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (1993)

Godzilla stomps into town and he is in a mood because he's embroiled in a vicious three-way struggle for custody over a newly hatched baby Godzilla. That the others involved in the battle are Rodan and Mechagodzilla brings up a whole host of questions!

Scientists find two eggs, Rodan has recently hatched from one and it is flying around causing trouble. The scientists take the other egg back to the lab to observe it. What hatches is shockingly a mini-Godzilla. Godzilla and Rodan do battle over the baby and once again, the humans don't seem to understand that Godzilla rarely bounces into town to cause trouble unless he's been provoked. This time, he wants his kid back!

The humans have created Mechagodzilla to take on Godzilla and also have to use it against Rodan. A battle fighter plane can join with Mechagodzilla to form SUPER Mechagodzilla. Miki, the telepath of the G Force is back. And Azusa Goza plays surrogate mother to baby Godzilla.

Odaka Megumi did her best acting job of the Godzilla movies I've seen her in. All of the actors were serviceable although the 2 male leads felt largely indistinguishable. Ifukube Akira's score was superb as always.

Now to dig into the things I did not understand even after watching this movie twice. Baby Godzilla is not a Godzilla but Godzillasaur--nicer and a plant eater. Where did they get this information if he's the first one? And who is the mother? And does Rodan think he's his brother? How did Rodan hatch fully grown but Baby Godzilla is almost human size? Instead of who's the daddy, who's the mama?

It also turns out that Godzilla has another brain and it's in his rear. Not even going to touch that one. There is also a plant song that seems very important but for the life of me I don't get that story element.

Now on to what I did like. This is one of my favorite Godzilla costumes. I love his cat face and claws looks. After watching the first Rodan, Rodan's a favorite though often underused. In this film, near the end he does an incredibly sweet act that I found particularly touching. The monster fights and the fights with Mechagodzilla were all well done and of course the stake was custody of Baby Godzilla. Thankfully, this baby looked much better than and was far less annoying than Minilla. Baby Godzilla helped Godzilla be more than a rampaging destroyer and gave the humans more empathy to the giant monster. Unlike some of the revenge fueled movies, the humans built Mechagodzilla to protect themselves but also came to appreciate Big G's relationship to his son.

The theme was something about which would prevail-life or artificial life ( I can give you two guesses and one doesn't count) and the other thing they talked philosophically about was how dinosaurs would be there to replace humans when our time ran out. What I got out of it is that bitter custody battles are very costly.

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