Rating: 3.5/5
Hooptober 5.0 | 22/32 | Flying Thing that Kills You 1/2
In Kitamatsu, a mining town, Goro and Yoshizo, two miners, get into a physical altercation. Later, they ride the cart into the mine to start their shift. Shigeru, a tunneling and safety engineer, receives a call that the mine has flooded despite no underground water.
They send a team in and find Yoshizo’s body covered in deep lacerations. A cut to the head killed him. The crew speculates Goro did it, but they can’t locate him either. Also, the doctor doesn’t know what could cut up Yoshizo like that.
The police go into the cave to search for Goro. They hear a bizarre skittering. Whatever it is, it takes them out, one by one.
That night, Shigeru and his fiance, Kiyo, receive an unexpected visit from a giant-ass bug. And it’s just in its larval state.
You might think, “I thought this was about Rodan, the pterodactyl-like kaiju!” And you’d be right. The mining project is what unearths the bugs. Then, after a cave-in and an earthquake, they find a massive egg, and Rodan hatches. The bugs were just the grub to feed Rodan.
While they could also blame the mining project for Rodan’s hatching, the scientists instead blame hydrogen bomb tests. Which, okay, fine, but we had a whole mining thing going on.
Give me a Japanese Kaiju How Green Was My Valley any day! That’s not quite what this is, but the opening mining town was so beautiful in how it sat in the valley.
The matte paintings work for me. They’re not stellar, but they have the right texture to feel nostalgic.
The egg-hatching scene is so fucking good! The zoom on Shigeru’s face has Spielberg qualities and creates such an impact. A chill went down my arms!
The Rodan dogfighting was pretty fun, although some of the toy planes were not great.
Rodan destroying the city looks sick. The wind his wings create adds a fun mechanic to its destruction.
I was surprised! I enjoyed this one almost as much as the original Godzilla! It has less of the goofiness and overwrought plotting that makes the later ones harder for me to enjoy. Also, this has so many set pieces! The latter one leans on mashing action figures together as the primary action.
The ending is so sad :(