With three heads instead of one, you'd expect Ghidora to be quicker on the uptake than your average kaiju, but instead he just keeps coming back for more beatings. Which can only be good as he's certainly one of the most cool-looking Godzilla foes around.
The storyline in this entry has its good points, but is overall none too tremendous. It makes an interesting attempt at explaining Godzilla's origins, and the character of mister Shindo is quite strong. Trouble is, he's also the only character that has any kind of punch. The rest are about as exciting as a bunch of cardboard cut-outs, and they hamper the pace of this movie quite considerably. Too much time is spent elaborating a truly ludicrous plot that involves time travellers from the future, who are not as nice as they first seem. They first erase Godzilla from the course of Japanese history with some time-travel wizardry, only to replace him with nasty ol' Ghidora who will trash Japan at his leisure with Goji out of the way...or is he?
Trouble is, the time-travel scenario suffers from some very severe plot holes, and the story as a whole tends to be sluggish and dull as well. To such a point even that the monster fight scenes can't -quite- wash away the bad aftertaste of the "human" scenes (I won't even go into the simply pitiful fast-forward effects of the cyborg M-11's Terminator pastiches).
There are plenty of good points, though. The fights and city-stomping scenes are quite solid and look very good. The final battle between Godzilla and a very cool mechanised version of Ghidora is especially commendable (it was great to see the famous Tokyo Metropolitan government building getting crushed). Akira Ifukube's music is as strong as ever, there's a certain feeling of suspense, and Terasawa was even pretty cute, I reckon (oh okay, and Emmy deserves a mention as being an assertive and strong female character in a kaiju film. Heck, she even fights the last battle against Goji). Goji die-hards will no doubt be interested in the scenes that try to explain the real original of Godzilla as well.
So what we end up with is a mix of good and bad points that doesn't quite balance out. For Godzilla fans it's still definitely worth watching, but there is better stuff out there.
The storyline in this entry has its good points, but is overall none too tremendous. It makes an interesting attempt at explaining Godzilla's origins, and the character of mister Shindo is quite strong. Trouble is, he's also the only character that has any kind of punch. The rest are about as exciting as a bunch of cardboard cut-outs, and they hamper the pace of this movie quite considerably. Too much time is spent elaborating a truly ludicrous plot that involves time travellers from the future, who are not as nice as they first seem. They first erase Godzilla from the course of Japanese history with some time-travel wizardry, only to replace him with nasty ol' Ghidora who will trash Japan at his leisure with Goji out of the way...or is he?
Trouble is, the time-travel scenario suffers from some very severe plot holes, and the story as a whole tends to be sluggish and dull as well. To such a point even that the monster fight scenes can't -quite- wash away the bad aftertaste of the "human" scenes (I won't even go into the simply pitiful fast-forward effects of the cyborg M-11's Terminator pastiches).
There are plenty of good points, though. The fights and city-stomping scenes are quite solid and look very good. The final battle between Godzilla and a very cool mechanised version of Ghidora is especially commendable (it was great to see the famous Tokyo Metropolitan government building getting crushed). Akira Ifukube's music is as strong as ever, there's a certain feeling of suspense, and Terasawa was even pretty cute, I reckon (oh okay, and Emmy deserves a mention as being an assertive and strong female character in a kaiju film. Heck, she even fights the last battle against Goji). Goji die-hards will no doubt be interested in the scenes that try to explain the real original of Godzilla as well.
So what we end up with is a mix of good and bad points that doesn't quite balance out. For Godzilla fans it's still definitely worth watching, but there is better stuff out there.