Godzilla: Final Wars (Gojira: Fainaru Uôzu) (2004)

This review is sponsored by

BUY IT

General		Extras
Category	Action	Featurette-Behind The Scenes Gallery-"Meet The Monsters" Interactive Gallery Notes-Godzilla Filmography Gallery-Production Sketches, Movie Stills Gallery-Poster-Japanese Posters Teaser Trailer Theatrical Trailer TV Spots Trailer-Godzilla-Destroy All Monsters, Inner Senses
Rating
Year Of Production	2004
Running Time	120:09
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (36:10)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Ryuhei Kitamura
Studio Distributor	Toho Madman Entertainment	Starring	Masahiro Matsuoka Rei Kikukawa Kazuki Kitamura Don Frye Akira Takarada Kane Kosugi Maki Mizuno Masami Nagasawa Chihiro Ôtsuka Kenji Sahara Kumi Mizuno Masakatsu Funaki Masatô Ibu
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Dual
RPI	?	Music	Keith Emerson Akira Ifukube Nobuhiko Morino

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	Japanese Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	Yes
Subtitles	English	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Godzilla has been frozen in the Antarctic following his last battle. Meanwhile a bunch of monsters from previous Godzilla movies are terrorising the Earth. Earth responds by calling in the Earth Defense Force, a team of mutants whose tactics initially seem to involve Hot Gossip dance moves. They appear to be losing when suddenly a spaceship arrives, and some aliens who call themselves Xilians defeat the monsters.

    Initially the Xilians are welcome, but it turns out they have plans to harvest the Earth for its human cattle. In order to achieve their aims, they let loose the monsters again. Earth's one last desperate hope is to revive Godzilla from his icy prison...

    The amount of screen time Godzilla gets in this movie is enough to relegate him to supporting actor status. There is way too much emphasis on the alien invaders and the mutants, and far too little in the way of battles between the monsters. The human scenes all have the trademarks of the director. I have now seen five of Ryuhei Kitamura's twelve completed films, and frankly I would not be disappointed if I never saw another. They have little substance and seem to be comprised of lots of stylish action and banal dialogue and plot. The humans in his films don't have character, they have attitude, and frankly I'm a little sick of seeing movies like this no matter how glossy and well made they are. The villains are often no more clearly delineated than is the host of Iron Chef. Then again, I'm not the target audience the movies are aimed at. But surely even teenagers have the ability to see massive plot holes and recognise turgid dialogue? The one redeeming feature is that Kitamura shows genuine enthusiasm for what he is doing, and there is little of the obvious contempt for the audience that mars so many Hollywood action blockbusters.

    Anyway, this movie is not meant to be taken seriously. After all, when Godzilla puts on a few wrestling moves immediately followed by a tryout for this year's soccer World Cup, why should one expect anything more serious? The monster battles are reasonably enjoyable but they are far too brief. They benefit from having a man in a lizard suit performing the moves rather than a computer-generated creation like the American Godzilla, who incidentally gets her just desserts at Bennelong Point. We don't get enough of the guest-star monsters either, though the less of Minilla the better in my opinion.

    Among the actors, well, anyone over about 25 is relegated to a supporting role. Anyone under 25 has a stylish haircut and clothes, knows a few cool stances and is not called upon to do much in the way of acting. There are a couple of pertinent casting choices. The secretary-general of the United Nations is played by Akira Takarada, the male lead in the original 1954 movie. The Earth Defense Force commander is Kumi Mizuno, who apart from being in several Toho monster movies of the 1960s (such as the surreal Matango) also appeared in a couple of Godzilla epics in that decade. The captain of the Gotengo, the ship which the EDF uses to try to defend the Earth, is played by former mixed martial arts champion Don Frye. Frye looks like a square-jawed hero straight out of the comics and delivers all of his lines in English, though no-one seems to notice this. He puts in just about the most enjoyable performance in the movie. At least, by someone not wearing a monster suit.

    It remains to be seen if this effort is as successful in killing off the Japanese Godzilla franchise as the 1998 Hollywood movie was in terminating the American version. I would not be surprised if Godzilla made a comeback, but I hope it is in a better vehicle than this one.

Video

    The film is presented in the original Tohoscope ratio of 2.35:1 and is 16x9 enhanced. This is a progressive PAL transfer.

    Given that this film is only a couple of years old you would expect it to be flawless, and it very nearly is. The transfer is sharp and clean, with no film artefacts and very little in the way of film to video issues, though it is a bit grainy. There is a little bit of telecine wobble and some faint aliasing, but nothing more.

    Colour is good. Blacks are clean and the colour palette looks about right. The transfer is bright and has good contrast, so there are no issues with shadow detail.

    Optional English subtitles are provided in the usual yellow font. These seem to be well-timed and all of the Japanese dialogue is subtitled. The English dialogue is not.

    The disc is RSDL-formatted with the layer change placed at a cut at 36:10.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There are two soundtracks provided for the movie, one being the original Japanese and the other an English dub. I listened to the former in full. Both are Dolby Digital 5.1.

    The reviews of the Region 1 release indicate that the soundtrack is very loud. Extremely loud, in fact. The Region 4 soundtrack does not seem to be overly loud. It doesn't seem to me to be that impressive either. I think that there is something not quite right with the balance between the channels. The main channels seem a little underpowered and recessed compared to the centre and surround channels. Otherwise the soundtrack comes over well, with no obvious distortion or other problems. Dialogue can be heard clearly, and I had no trouble understanding the snatches of English dialogue.

    The subwoofer gets a reasonable workout and the low frequency effects are well integrated into the overall sound picture. There are some directional effects done to good, err, effect.

    It is fitting that the movie gets a 1980s-style synthesizer score by none other than Keith Emerson, of Emerson, Lake and Palmer fame. It is quite cheesy at times and while it is sometimes distracting, it does not seem out of place.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Main Menu Introduction

    A brief blast from the titular beast.

Main Menu Audio & Animation

    A cheesily animated lizard breathing fire, with audio effects and music.

Featurette-Behind The Scenes

    This featurette is a series of selectable "behind the scenes" segments which show the various battles being set-up, rehearsed and shot, and is reasonably interesting if you want to know how these things were done. We see the white-bearded Kitamura telling someone in a yellow Bruce Lee jumpsuit how Godzilla is supposed to behave. I presume that the latter is Tsutomu Kitagawa, the man normally inside the rubber Godzilla suit.

Gallery-"Meet The Monsters" Interactive Gallery

    Each of the guest monsters gets a gallery which has data and background information on their original appearance in the series, as well as a link to watch their battle scenes in this film. These scenes appear to have been taken from a Japanese print of the movie, as the English dialogue has burned-in Japanese subtitles. There is often severe macro-blocking in the action scenes.

Notes-Godzilla Filmography

    A complete list of the 28 Godzilla films.

Gallery-Production Sketches

    13 monster sketches.

Movie Stills

    16 stills from the film.

Gallery-Poster-Japanese Posters

    6 Japanese movie and DVD posters.

Teaser Trailer (0:39)

    Half of this trailer is a black screen, which soon has some graphics revealing that it is not 16x9 enhanced. Nor are the other trailers.

Theatrical Trailer (2:02)

    Pro rata, there is more monster action in this Japanese trailer than in the feature.

TV Spot (0:33)

    An effective Japanese TV commercial for the movie.

Trailer-Godzilla-Destroy All Monsters, Inner Senses (4:04)

    Trailers for other Eastern Eye releases.

    The US Region 1 sounds quite similar in quality to the Region 4, the only extra being a comparison between the "B-roll" footage and the finished product.

    The Region 2 Japanese releases do not have English subtitles. The single disc release has an audio commentary with the director and the special effects director, and a choice of Japanese soundtracks, being the one on the Region 4 and another with the English-speaking actors dubbed into Japanese.

    The three-disc special edition has many featurettes including a making of documentary and a documentary about the history of Godzilla, but sadly the lack of English subtitles makes this a non-starter for non-Japanese speakers.

    A terrible end for Godzilla.

    The video quality is excellent.

    The audio quality is problematic.

    Some good extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall