Leofwine_draca GODZILLA VS. DESTOROYAH is the final in the 1990s series of GODZILLA films that started with GODZILLA VS. BIOLLANTE back in 1989. This is rather a sombre effort with a heartbreaking climax that will upset many Godzilla fans; it's an effective piece but not really one of the best in the series. It's a watchable and entertaining film all right, but just one of those films that seems to be going through the motions rather than offering much new.Godzilla himself is in trouble this time around: he's suffering a nuclear meltdown from the inside, which is causing him to go completely crazy. Godzilla Junior is still hanging around, and boy has he grown up; this means that Megumi Odaka is back in the film as the woman with a psychic connection to the not-so-little-anymore critter. And the villain of the piece is Destoroyah, a kind of prehistoric sea bug which grows to super-scale to fight our scaly heroes.For much of the running time, DESTOROYAH seems to have been inspired by other movies, not least the preceding Godzilla outings. There are plenty of moments which reference JURASSIC PARK, which must have been a big hit in Japan; the car attack is the most obvious. Other moments are reminiscent of ALIENS with motion detectors and the like. The special effects look cheap and cheerful here, and the climax is appropriately large scale and dramatic with plenty of destructive mayhem. It's just a shame that this is a rather maudlin movie as I would have preferred an all-out party atmosphere to celebrate the big guy's (temporary) demise.

ultramatt2000-1 It was 1995, the big G died. I did not know that until 1998 when there was a lot of hoopla over the GODZILLA remake. I discovered this on the book THE Official GODZILLA COMPENDIUM and found out that this film was the one where he dies. I wanted to see this movie since it came out on video at the end of the 1990's. My chance came when it stomped on FearNet on Demand. I taped it. And now here is my review. The big G gets a nuclear meltdown. And the JSDF must find a way to stop it. Meanwhile an experiment with the Oxygen Destroyer released a terrible monster called Destroyah. But in the English dub he was referred to as Destroyer. Also in the film there is Godzilla Jr. He is not silly, cute and cuddly like Minya from the 60's or Little Godzilla from GODZILLA VS SPACEGODZILLA. He looks like a teenage Godzilla in my opinion. He is carrying characteristics of his father. Destroyah is an homage to Battra, Hedorah and Ebirah. I mean he can fly, he can change into many forms and he is part-crustacean. Speaking of homage, there are a lot of scenes that pay homage to the original 1954 GODZILLA. Such as the Oxygen Destroyer, the stegosaurus skeleton. It was kind of sad to see the Godzilla Jr. (or Teenzilla as I call him) this film was dark and serious and for the first time ever, has CGI effects. You heard me CGI, where can you see it, only at the part where Godzilla melts. Also there is stop-motion in this films where the animation is the standards of those monsters in one of those movies by Full Moon Entertainment, but no where close to Ray Harryhausen's. It at the part where the Destroyer crabs are walking in the foreground. The animation is pretty jerky. OK now pay attention to the ending. After Godzilla dies, the smoke comes. Then it clears up, and lo and behold, another Godzilla!! And you thought he was dead. Well if you pay attention, Godzilla gave his energy to Teenzilla so he can grow up to be like his father. So Godzilla is dead, but his spirit remains in the form of a fully grown Teenzilla. Confused? Watch the movie. Now originally they wanted to let Godzilla fight the Ghost of the 1954 version in the film GODZILLA VS. GHOSTGODZILLA, but it never got made because in the previous two Godzilla films GODZILLA VS MECHAGODZILLA 2 (read my review) and GODZILLA VS SPACE GODZILLA, the two monsters were Godzilla-looking characters or may I say "Godzillesque". So he can't fight another monster that looks like him, so the cooked up an new one that looks like a monster from hell or some heavy metal poster named Destroyah. If you watch the credits, you see a montage of G-movies starting from the old 1954 version to the Heisei series. Now about the music it is not only Godzilla's theme from the 1954 film but it sounds like a mixture between the theme from MAJIN (Daiei's monster movie about a giant stone idol) mixed with the opening credits from DESTROY ALL MONSTERS and if you listen to the closing credits you hear the theme from 1962's KING KONG VS GODZILLA. So here are some facts before I go on talking about the bottom line and rating. This was the last film of Momoko Kochi who played Emiko Yamane in the 1954 film. It was Koichi Kawakita's idea to kill him off because people were getting tired of him. It ranked number 6 of the box-office grossing Godzilla films in Japan. KING KONG VS GODZILLA ranked number 1 followed by the original. Also at that year, another monster returned. This one from another studio: Gamera in GAMERA: GUARDIAN OF THE UNIVERSE. Bottom line: A must for die-hard fans. This could give you a feeling of Godzilla films in the 1990's. Rated PG-13 for thematic elements, monster violence, peril, some language and gore. Not for the entire family.

r-c-s This isn't a big Godzilla movie. It it plagued by all the shortcomings of the G movies, and gets none of the advantages. For example, Destroyah is clearly an Alien rip-off ( EG the scene in which it attacks soldiers, coming from the roof ), swarming blood-thirsty creatures with a second mouth on the top of a tube they protrude from their bigger mouth (did i mention Alien?). Destroyah on fire looks like the Terminator on fire from the 1984 movie.The plot struggles to make sense...some scientist ( a plagiarist maybe? ) might have re-invented an oxygen destroyer similar to the 1954 weapon. Godzilla internal nuclear reactions are out of control and the earth is in danger. A college nerd publishes a thesis over the internet about it and gets hired by the G force team as he guessed right what top scientists couldn't. Supa X (the multi-purpose flying machine ) is back as X-III.SFX are decent, but often Destroyah looks like a cartonbox puppet on strings; at other times it is evident X-III and the army "freezing tanks" (the same from decades earlier as in SANDA TAI GAIRA ) are just big garage sale toys & nothing more. SFX when monsters are superposed with panicking crowds or loom from far away often look like practice tests from absolute beginners in video editing. The G suit looks like an hot air balloon.There is a whole classroom of characters, so it is difficult to focus on who is who/who does what and there is no tangible character development. Acting skills are negligible.There is pop-culture from the mid-90's, namely the mention of the internet, cellphones still as big as a brick, etc.

zv300 I'm at a quandary grading this movie, the deaths of the 2 protagonist do elicite true emotion from all watching, but those scenes are almost200 completely negated by just horrible movie making. Godzilla and his son apparently die and those scenes are truly emotional, but are only 2% good compared to 98% crap. People either love or hate this movie, and people generally think this is the best of the series, but others, including myself think it's the worst. First of all, this "Destroyah" looks like pure crap in ALL it's incarnations, especially when it was smaller. You can see this thing actually FLOATING on on it's tracks. Horrible. It just looks bad. It's not a good Monster at all, it just lacks any emotional attatchment what so ever. I KNOW it's a monster movie, but this thing is at the lower end of the genre. And the fact that Godzilla fans accept this crap speaks VOLUMES, I am a fan but was insulted at this failed attempt at movie-making. And don't even get me started with all the Oxygen-Science mumbo jumbo. Then there is the X3 Military 'Freezer' plane. It's not a sleek or cool design at all, looks like it weighs a ton and it's exhaust is horrible. The ONLY redeeming factor of this movie was Godzilla and his sons seeming demise. (I'm not happy they died, but it WAS emotional) With a name like "Destroyah" you would expect some sort of impervious brute with the raw strength to go toe-to-toe with Godzilla, but the monster is nothing but a mutated crab. All the special effects money must have been spent soley on the Godzilla "glowing" costume. As good as he looked, the crab-monster looked like it cost a grand total of 7.89+tax. (American, not yen) As popular as Godzilla is, why do studios continue to refrain from spending a decent amount of money on the series? Even the most advanced Godzilla effects pale in comparison to his cousin, Gamera. (Well, I guess they are cousins, one a turtle and the other a lizard, both reptiles?) Pick ANY Godzilla effect (even the inane Godzilla 1998) and put it up against the scene from Gamera vs Isis when Gamera lifts off at FULL AFTERBURNER (looking just like the space shuttle) and see what I mean. In all honesty, the Gamera movies just seem rawer and better, and I LIKE Godzilla so it pains me to say that but it's true. I think Godzilla can make a comeback if they do 2 things, give the director some money to work with, and don't let American studios touch the franchise ever again!