Fantasia Festival Report: Godzilla Final Wars

So, I survived the drive from Toronto to Montreal today, found my gracious host - Mark Mann, who has been providing stacks of solid Fantasia reviews - and then made my way to the theater to catch my first of five films over the weekend: Ryuhei Kitamura's Godzilla Final Wars.

Now, as readers of the site are likely aware I am a big fan of Kitamura's Versus. It has its flaws, yes, but it's one mighty good time. However my love for Versus has not come with an appreciation of Kitamura's later films. With the exception of his excellent short The Messenger I have been horribly disappointed by every film Kitamura has made since his auspicious debut.

And Final Wars? There have been some rumblings of discontent from hard core kaiju fans complaining that for a film marketed on its massive lineup of monster all stars the big rubber guys have surprisingly little screen time. That is a fair complaint. The film spends at least as much time with its human characters as with the monsters. But focus on that supposed flaw at your own peril: whether the monsters are on screen enough or not Godzilla Final Wars is BY FAR the best thing Kitamura has ever made, Versus included.

We've already posted one review of this film that gets into plot specifics, so I won't rehash that here. What I would like to talk about are the things that Kitamura finally got right.

With this sort of subject matter saying that the man has finally 'gown up' would be a little silly, so what I will say is that he has FINALLY learned from his past mistakes.

First: he has finally learned how to pace a film. All of his previous efforts - Versus included - have been plagued by long dead stretches and seemingly never ending epilogues. Not a problem here. The film is on the long side, yes, but it is jammed full of good stuff from start to finish and is very efficient in embedding exposition within fast paced scenes rather than stopping and having the characters explain everything. And the dreaded epilogue? There simply isn't one. The action wraps up and the film stops with the audience cheering. Perfect.

Second: he has finally gone out and hired a decent action director and actors who know how to fight - or at least how to fake it convincingly - in the action roles. The action sequences are plentiful, inventive, beautifully shot, tightly edited and - glory be - you can't see them pulling their punches. And that goes for both kaiju and human fights. Complaints aside there are a LOT of monster battles in here and while, yes, some of them are on the short side they are all dead solid. The best rubber suit choreography I've ever seen.

Third: he has finally remember that these genre films are supposed to be fun. A healthy part of what made Versus so memorable was the grim sense of humor, the bleak tongue in cheek. Alas, the bulk of what has come from Kitamura since has been nothing more than grim. No smiles, no laughs, no fun. Not the case here. Kaiju films are an intrinsically goofy genre and Kitamura knows it. He jams in countless visual gags, sound cues, wry glances between cast members, deliberately goofy dubbing - on English speaking parts, in a nicely ironic bit of role reversal - and jams the film with deliberately oer the top cheeseball moments and in jokes for the kaiju crowd. And how did that crowd respond? With cheers and laughter, non stop.

With Godzilla Final Wars Kitamura has finally found a project that has both the scale and the budget to live up to his grand visions and stylistic excesses. He goes for it hard and it pays off large with by far the best looking and most entertaining film of his career. There are some moments when he borrows a little too obviously from his own back catalog - some shots, themes and effects from Alive make it in here - but when he does so he does it with far more style and verve than he managed the first time round. There are some quibbles, sure, but this is the film I've been waiting for from Kitamura: a rousing, high energy, cult classic. Yeah, I liked it a bit. If the advance marketing is true and this really was Godzilla's last stand - it definitely was the end for two other popular kaijyu figures - he has gone out with a bang.