Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S.
AKA
Godzilla X Mothra X Mechagodzilla: Tokyo S.O.S.
(2003)
Page 2
The ideas of Tokyo S.O.S. are promising, making the disturbed spirit of the original Godzilla the heart of the story, but ultimatly nothing exciting results from it. The human drama is flat and uninteresting. Hell, we don't even have Akane from the previous film to gawk at anymore (though Yumiko Shaku has a slight cameo early on, it's disappointing she couldn't reprise her role further). There is so little to give a rat's ass about here that when the monsters aren't onscreen, my attention wandered. This is a problem when you go 40 minutes before you finally get some Kaiju payoff. The closest thing to compelling human drama in the film doesn't happen until much later in the film, when a character is forced to fix Kiryu from the inside, only to get trapped inside during the process. He lies to his superiors and claims he made it out safely so the battle could continue. If only the rest of the script was as exciting as that, then we'd have something special on our hands.
I've always liked the continuity of Godzilla X Mechagodzilla and Tokyo S.O.S. best out of all the Millennium films. I love the way it worked the Godzilla that attacked Tokyo in 1954 and made it relevant to the script. I love the way it opened up and said other monsters had attacked Japan, allowing fans to make up their own timeline. It made the series mythological and brought back many fond memories of the Showa series while growing up. And working the original Mothra into continuity and directly sequeling it in this film was fun. Unfortunaty Mothra, neither character nor film, has never been a favorite of mine, so the link and appearance didn't really excite me much beyond that.
Plotwise, Tokyo S.O.S. is pretty much the same as Godzilla vs. Mothra, only instead of Godzilla and Mothra fighting over a giant egg, they're fighting over Kiryu...and Kiryu is an egg that fights back. I love Godzilla vs. Mothra, but Tokyo S.O.S. takes too many notes from it for my liking. Too many beats feel far too familiar, and I knew what was going to happen long before the film reached that point. Adding Mechagodzilla to the mix is interesting (since neither Mothra nor Mechagodzilla have ever shared the screen before), but it doesn't add any particular spice to the film to make it feel fresh.
The one saving grace to the film is that it is by far the most polished and visually appealing film of the entire series (American Godzilla notwithstanding), and when your film ends with 45 minutes of nonstop Kaiju action, that is a very good thing. Everything about the film looks great. Godzilla and Kiryu are the same designs from the previous film, and the Mothra puppet is the best I've ever seen. Even the Mothra larvae feel more organic than they usually do.
But that only amounts to very little, in the end. The first half is a chore, the second merely has it's moments. Tezuka's heart is in the right place by giving us one hell of a dominate battle, but he needs to spiffy his screenplay up.
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