Even this movie was better than paying attention to the 2020 election.
Instead of focusing on something that was predicted to be close and take days to figure out-which happened to be the correct take... before anyone asks, I early-voted last week-instead I spent last night at the drive-in in Ocala, about an hour away from me. The reason for my first sojourn there: it was one of only a few spots across the country that was showing a trio of Godzilla movies-one of the two companies promoting it was Janus Films. As November 3 is The Big G's birthday in canon-because that was when Gojira was first released back in '54-that only made it most logical for me to visit a drive-in I now wish would have been visited by me much sooner.
I don't need to do new reviews for Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla and Destroy All Monsters as I am satisfied w/ both reviews I did for them in the past... and they were also two of the better films in the Showa-Era of Godzilla. This, however... it's more a minor rewrite than something completely new. As for why it was chosen to be screened alongside two worthwhile entries from the era: I can only presume camp value; G is hardly in it until the second half. This is likely best known in America for either... the skewering MST3K gave it many years ago, the “flying horizontal for 2000 feet before delivering a dropkick” moment or its poster from Cinema Shares, the people who released it in the United States 3 years after it came out in Japan. By this time the King Kong remake had been released so Cinema Shares decided to spoof that poster by creating one which was Godzilla and Megalon fighting each other on top of the World Trade Center; they must have thought, “Who cares if this doesn't actually happen in the film?!” At least it is awesome art... and “Gojira vs. Megalon fight in NYC, leading to the finish of both on top of the twin towers” would have been better than the actual plot presented here.
That actual plot: Ultraman... er, I mean “Jet Jaguar”, a robot created by two men who have a son (that's the subtext I got, that they're a couple and the young boy who unfortunately keeps the kaiju film tradition alive of wearing too short shorts is their kid), and how the robot has to do battle with Megalon, a beetle-like creature who has drills for hands. It's actually a cool-looking kaiju monster... unfortunately it comes off as a real dumbass-the bad guys need to steal Jet Jaguar and program him to lead Megalon around as otherwise the creature would be too dopey to know where to go. It's released by the Seatopians, humanoids who used to live on the Earth's surface but they moved to the subterranean level and are pissed off by nuclear testing. Former enemy Gigan also appears. Eventually, Godzilla shows up to save the day.
It seems like a random movie that The Big G was randomly inserted in as otherwise a solo Jet Jaguar film would have bombed... which is actually what happened. That's why it is more about a robot that can magically force itself to grow from human height to kaiju height to fight than Godzilla saving the Earth's ass once again. The movie is funny bad, sure, but overall it's not too good. While there's such absurdities as the “modern version of what the people from Atlantis would wear” outfits the Seatopians are seen in, what hurts this movie a lot is how cheap it seems; the fact that a lot of stock footage is used from previous films demonstrates this rather well. I won't fault those that unironically love this-it did play better in a giant format. All that being said, my original rating still stands, even if I am glad for the opportunity to see all three at a drive-in, dubbed (which seemed appropriate for the setting) & between concessions and admission, was less than 15 dollars total.
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