Godzilla Appears at Godzilla Fest // Godzilla vs Hedorah (2021)

A pair of shorts directed by Kazuhiro Nakagawa, Toho's go-to guy for brief (usually tourist attraction exclusive) glimpses of the King of Monsters. 2020's Godzilla Appears at Godzilla Fest is a sub-two minute piece completed using an iPhone for an online character convention. The slight dimensions of the camera used allow the filmmakers to shoot Godzilla - here represented by one of his more muscular Heisei era suits - from angles that might otherwise prove difficult. The best of these inspections is a point of view shot that seems to originate from the rubble gathering at Godzilla's feet. The angle has a warped, almost fisheye, effect to it - shattered concrete buildings and sagging lamp posts curl in towards the catastrophic weight of Godzilla. Close-ups of the Big G's face aren't quite so forgiving. The auto-focused lens stresses the outfit's rubbery hide to such a degree you begin to wonder if an action figure has been subbed in for a moth-eaten costume. 

Far more entertaining is this year's Godzilla vs Hedorah, a 5 minute film produced to commemorate the 50th anniversary of its Yoshimitsu Banno directed namesake. Given more than twice the runtime of Godzilla Appears, Nakagawa recruits the foam latex suits used in Ryuhei Kitamura's Godzilla: Final Wars, a decision that allows the monster actors a greater degree of freedom in their movements. The Godzilla costume - known as the FinalGoji suit - reigns in the stomping cataclysm of the Heisei era with a design that is leaner in trunk and thigh. The creature's expression is different too, conniving rather than impassive. This is Godzilla as a street brawler, the lightweight apparatus even allowing actor Naoya Matsumoto to lift his leg high enough to hurl a kick at Hedorah's wonderfully sludgy midriff. At least as impressive as the two feature costumes is the conflict's arena, a 70s era power plant filled with rusting buildings and collapsing cranes. Nakagawa and cinematographer Yutaka Adachi's photography may have the same rough-and ready feel as digitally shot Tokusatsu television but the decision to use a more natural style lighting in several shots - appearing to emanate from a setting sun rather than flatly oppressive studio lights - beautifully compliments the peeking, human, perspective on this titanic struggle. 

The Doorman

A surprisingly tame - despite the presence of a homemade nail bomb - action thriller from Versus director Ryuhei Kitamura. The Doorman is a cheap, tension free rehash of Die Hard that fails to locate either the harried action or chromed beauty of John McTiernan's film. It's an extremely tall order, obviously, but it's Kitamura who repeatedly invites the comparison, even staging our hero's first kill in a half-completed room filled with plastic sheeting. Ruby Rose plays Ali, a shell-shocked former bodyguard who gets mixed up in an extremely slow-moving art heist. Despite a bloviating Jean Reno as the brains of the criminal outfit, Doorman numbs its audience by repeatedly eschewing pounding hyper-violence to return to a sitting room talking-heads that fails to muster any genuine threat.

Ali is a slasher killer in search of a much grimmer home video rating. The polythene wall fight briefly positions her as a phantom, invisible until she intrudes into the frame, harassing her beleaguered prey. The script harps on about secret doors and snaking passages but Kitamura's film proves largely unwilling to stage the kind of ambush kills that could really milk this conceit. The aggressive, coked-out energy the director brought to the best of his Japanese work proves largely absent here, tamed even. Like Die Hard, Doorman's best moment arrives when our hero is at a low ebb. An exhausted Ali zones out, returning to a moment in which she failed, spectacularly, to protect a child. A burning car barrels towards her, the movement built out of a repeating, tightened coverage that registers as impossible rather than impoverished. Ali's bloody face is held in almost religious awe, apparently willing the tumbling machine to collide with her and end the suffering.

Godzilla: Final Wars

Just so you know it isn't fucking about, Godzilla: Final Wars begins at the South Pole in the midst of a nuclear war. The Japanese Prime Minister from Godzilla: Tokyo SOS commands the submarine battleship Atragon in a final, desperate battle against The King of Monsters while all reality collapses around them. This is Ryuhei Kitamura's film in a nutshell - an adrenalised rummage through the Toho back catalogue with an emphasis on violent flippancy. Kitamura ditches the regal splendour of the last two cycles to zero in on Godzilla as a manoeuvrable, unbeatable scrapper.

Although fresh from international success with Versus and the insipid Azumi, Kitamura is a bold choice for Toho. Like the Bond producers the studio tends to play risk averse, preferring to stick with tested hands and groomed talent. Kitamura's idea of Godzilla is an impertinent slugfest told with the visual language of V-Cinema. Heroes are moustached mixed martial artists or amped-up pop stars with bad attitudes. Heroines are shot leg first, and outfitted for pinku thrillers. It's a trash cinema aesthetic that blends wonderfully with the smoke choked devastation of Eiichi Asada. The special effects director's work is reminiscent of Teruyoshi Nakano, with whom he worked on The Return of Godzilla. Everything is brutal and distinctive, washed in rubble greys and void blacks.

When it can drag its attention away from a team of backflipping mutants, Final Wars puts Godzilla to work. The basic premise of Destroy All Monsters is inverted, placing Godzilla in the antagonistic King Ghidorah role. Freed from a couple of trillion tons of Antarctic ice, The Big G must travel the globe thumping former kaiju allies who are stuck in the thrall of cool guy aliens. Final Wars isn't about radioactive calamity or mankind perverting the laws of nature, it's about who's the best toy. It's Godzilla as the coolest, most powerful action figure grinding lesser merchandise beneath his heel. Although overlong and a little too excited by routine shonen superheroics, Final Wars is basically delightful. It's exactly the kind of film the latchkey kid from All Monsters Attack would make.