Terror of Mechagodzilla (G)
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Caution: spoilers!

This 1975 film is the fifteenth in the Godzilla series, though it's only the fourth Godzilla movie I've seen. (It came in a box set of DVDs a friend gave me.) It's also the second film in which the monster Mechagodzilla appears, but I haven't seen the first one yet. Anyway, this is the final entry in the so-called "Showa era" of kaiju movies (which include various franchises besides just Godzilla). After this, Godzilla would not be seen until 1984, kicking off the Heisei era. But since this is the last DVD in my box set, I have no idea if or when I'll ever see any more Godzilla movies from any of the eras (which also include the Millennium era, which began in 1999). Nor do I know if I'll ever see any American Godzilla movies (though "Godzilla, King of the Monsters" technically counts as such, I guess), which don't really belong to any of the Japanese kaiju movie eras.

Incidentally, I want to mention that I'm watching this on the same day I happened to watch an episode of Pokemon, in which Ash, Iris, and Cilan got to star in a movie that was obviously inspired by Mechagodzilla. They must battle a Mechatyranitar, which I find amusing because ever since Tyranitar was first introduced some years earlier, I thought of it as being based on Godzilla. And in the movie Ash and his friends made, Zorua transformed itself to look like Iris, so they played twin priestesses, who were clearly based on the priestesses from Mothra movies (of which I've so far only seen Mothra vs. Godzilla). So anyway... I just really appreciate the serendipity of my having recently been watching the Godzilla movies in this box set for the first time, though I've owned it for several years now, at the same time that I'm catching up on old episodes of Pokemon online, which I didn't get a chance to see on TV over the past couple of years. It's the kind of thing that makes me feel like sometimes things happen when they do for a reason. Even if that reason is just so that I could enjoy a fun little coincidence.

Anyway... it starts out with what I assume are scenes of Godzilla's fight against Mechagodzilla from the previous movie. And btw, it seems that in that movie, aliens had sent Mechagodzilla- which, as you'd probably guessed, is a robotic version of Godzilla- to wreak some havoc on Earth. I get the impression they needed to colonize our planet because their own planets were being sucked into a black hole, or something. Seems to me it would make more sense just to come in peace, tell us their situation, and try to coexist peacefully with us, but... maybe they had reasons they considered that impossible, or maybe they're just not the kind of people who like sharing. I dunno. Whatever, Godzilla beat Mechagodzilla in the last movie, and now there's a submarine out searching for Mechagodzilla's wreckage. They don't find it, but instead the sub is destroyed by a totally new monster, a giant dinosaur called Titanosaurus.

Meanwhile, the aliens are still around, working on plans for a renewed assault. They'd already salvaged Mechagodzilla, and were working on restoring it in their secret base in the mountains. And they are now in league with a human scientist named Mafune, who had been thrown out of the scientific community fifteen years ago because of his crazy theory about Titanosaurus, which no one believed in, at the time. So now he wants revenge against all humanity. And he's developed a way to control Titanosaurus. And maybe he helped with the repairs to Mechagodzilla, that's not really clear to me. And he has a daughter named Katsura (who we like), who we eventually learn had actually died while helping her father with some experiment, I guess. But the aliens brought her back to life by turning her into a cyborg, so now Mafune works for them out of gratitude. But I'm really not clear on the timing of all this... it seemed to me that Mafune didn't start working with the aliens until sometime after the movie started, but it's only later that we see the flashback to the incident with Katsura, which looked to me like it might have happened years ago. So I'm confused.

Anyway, Interpol is investigating all kinds of stuff that's going on with Titanosaurus. And there's a marine biologist named Ichinose working with them, who meets Katsura. She tells him and an Interpol agent that her father died five years ago, and she doesn't have any of his notes about Titanosaurus. But still, she crosses paths with Ichinose several times throughout the movie, and he falls in love with her, for no apparent reason. But at one point I guess he develops a weapon to use against Titanosaurus (though it could have been someone else who did that, I dunno). But it gets sabotaged right before the monster attacks Tokyo. (Wikipedia says the attacks in this movie happened in Yokosuka, but I never heard that name mentioned. The only time I ever heard a city mentioned in this movie was early on, long before any attacks, when the aliens mentioned Tokyo. Unless I misheard.) Anyway, whatever city Titanosaurus attacked, Mafune had sent the monster against the orders of the aliens. I have no idea why he did this. But eventually he gets Titanosaurus to quit attacking, I think because his daughter was in danger, though that's not at all clear to me. And later Mafune and Katsura and the aliens all get both Mechagodzilla and Titanosaurus to attack the city at the same time. But Godzilla fights them both. And eventually Interpol shows up with their repaired weapon, to help in the fight. Godzilla got his butt kicked pretty bad, but he never gave up, and eventually won. And the world was saved. Yay. (I have no idea when exactly Godzilla went from being a villain to a hero, but I guess I'm glad he did.)

I'm probably saying some things out of order, but it doesn't really matter. Because most of it didn't make a lot of sense, anyway. And the scene transitions were just incomprehensible (no doubt because of cuts made for the American release of the movie). And... I dunno what else to tell you. It's all just redonkulous. And Godzilla was the best actor in the movie, which is a pretty sad commentary, if you ask me.