Welcome to Tokusatsu Gesundheit, where we’re continuing our look at the Heisei Godzilla series with 1992’s Godzilla Vs. Mothra!
Plot Rundown
A meteorite lands in the ocean and sets off a chain of events that will once again put some Kaiju on the path to battle: it awakens Godzilla from his slumber on the bottom of the ocean and uncovers a previously hidden egg on an island in the Indonesian archipelago. A group of human adventurers discovers the tiny fairies known as The Cosmos (formerly known as the Shobijin) and get the skinny on the egg: it will grow into a Mothra but that will revive the vengeful rogue Battle Mothra, AKA Battra, and none of this is gonna end well for the squishy humans caught in between.
Brief Background
After the success of the previous flick, Toho was considering bring back King Ghiddorah again…but then market research demonstrated that Mothra was more popular with Japanese women. Since women made up a narrow majority of the Japanese population at the time, it was decided that Mothra should be Godzilla’s foe in the next flick (two times over, apparently).
Highlights
- Battra, essentially Mothra’s non-indicatively named evil twin, is a nifty monster in the Godzilla canon. As smart as his good counterpart and fed up with humanity’s crap, he represents a rare not-evil human-hater in the meta-franchise.
- “The Cosmos” is a much more fitting name for the diminutive psychic prophetesses of Mothra than “Shobijin” (literally “small beauties”).
- This flick set Mothra up for her own spin-off series, marking her solo return to the screen in more than thirty years.
Review
Mothra is, while an overall pretty neat concept, not my favorite monster. She’s a little too goody-goody, too on humanity’s side (at least when other kaiju are rampaging) for my tastes. As such, I find it to be “just OK”…but it’s actually rightfully well-regarded
Come Back Next Week For Something Completely Different!
