Here's what you need to know; after witnessing the true enormity of their opposition, Haruo and what remains of his crew find that they are not alone on this alien Earth, and that even in the shadow of Godzilla, humanity still found a way to carry on. More miraculous however is the discovery that buried beneath the ruins of the old world is an ancient weapon that was once the solution to the King of the Monsters, and that even after twenty thousand years, might still hold the key to ending Godzilla's reign for good.
And so, after rather strongly disliking the first, I decided to carry on this masochistic adventure of the Godzilla Anime Trilogy by watching City on the Edge of Battle, the much hated sequel to Planet of the Monsters. But after finding Planet of the Monsters to be complete doo doo and hearing that City on the Edge of Battle was even worse, I still wanted to see for myself, because I'm just so loyal to my favourite monster, more loyal than he deserves in this case.
City on the Edge of Battle picks up right where the first left off, where *spoilers* they kill Godzilla, only for another, bigger Godzilla to appear out of nowhere and completely fuck them up, a twist that I thought was really dumb, like there being two Megs in The Meg, it's just an excuse to give the trilogy's first act a finale without actually being creative. But the immediate aftermath of Godzilla's attack does start out kind of interesting, with the crew of the Aratrum panicking at the idea of Godzilla noticing them in orbit and shooting them down, and Haruo having a run-in with a native, which, like the first, opens a Pandora's box of fascinating and completely wasted potential. For some reason the film throws out exposition about how these humans aren't actually human, but a kind of insectoid de-evolution, which is another one of those things that's never explained and never serves the plot, that is unless you consider their telepathy and culture of worshiping "The Egg," which I can only assume is Mothra. But sadly, despite being a massive revelation that Earth can in fact support human life, the natives don't serve much of a purpose outside of helping them film Mechagodzilla city and being all foreboding about the "poisonous" Nanometal of the "Shining Valley". What bugs me (pun intended) is how the film pontificates about these natives like it's some kind of philosophical exploration, every time the natives are on screen or referenced, it feels like the film is trying to say something, but I don't know exactly what because this film isn't as clever as it clearly thinks it is, inferring things like a "Genetic Monster Factor," whatever that means, and endlessly pontificating in its finale about how man must surrender its humanity to kill Godzilla as the only way to defeat a monster is to become a monster, which sounds clever on paper, especially considering the philosophical gold mine that is the Kaiju genre, but again, the film isn't as smart as it thinks it is so it comes across as the film just wanking itself off. This all ties into Mechagodzilla and the Nanometal, but that's further down this rabbit hole. Like the first, this film tries to consider some of the genre's philosophical overtones, but it fails because it doesn't really know what to do with those overtones; man not being the lords of creation and being struck down for their arrogance is just a tiny stem of an idea that's never allowed to grow, Godzilla being the lord of creation is literally only implied one time and never brought up again, nature overcoming and surpassing all of man's technology is another idea that never goes anywhere, and technology being a threat to the order of nature, despite the film's desperate peddling of it, only comes out half baked, and is used instead as a lazy dramatic device.
Did I say drama, well I guess it's time we talk about characters. Haruo is exactly the same as he was for the entirety of Planet of the Monsters, he's still an angry, emotionally driven fool on a quest for revenge, which makes one scene when someone gives him shit all the funnier, because while the film tries to make this guy sound like an idiot, he isn't wrong as it is Haruo's fault that they're stranded on Earth because he led them into a battle they couldn't have won, this is Last Jedi levels of self-destruction, minus the forced conflict, trying to make someone out to be in the wrong when they irrefutably are not. And on the other side of that coin is Haruo, the idiot whose fault it is that they're probably all going to die, and the film still treats him like a competent and heroic leader, still kind of reminding me of the thing I hated most in The Last Jedi, and when you're being compared to Admiral Holdo, that's a very bad thing. At least the film gives him a bit of development in the final act by forcing a moral choice on him, one relating to the idea of abandoning his humanity in order to save it, but like everything else, the potential is wasted, and two acts into this trilogy and I still wouldn't care if our main hero died. The big issue here is that people actually do die in this film, characters that the film wants you to care about, and the film tries to go deep with the Bilusaludo as they embrace this film's philosophical Monster factor and attempt to force Haruo into doing the same; this gets people killed, including *Spoilers* Yuko, who becomes romantically attached to Haruo for some reason, even when that love isn't reciprocated until after she dies, making it feel forced. Yet again there are places the film could have taken this; like Haruo mourning that Yuko will never get to see this Earth that she's only ever heard about in stories, or a more philological angle on the lines between man and monster, and how innocence and humanity, while morally just, are weaknesses in the face of evil, but I very much doubt that was the intention, it's clear that Haruo is mourning out of love, a love that was never expressed or even hinted at for the previous three hours of this trilogy. But at least the film does start to flesh out its characters a bit more, at least we see, for example, that Haruo and Metphies are in fact friends, that the Bilusaludo aren't just people with spiky faces, they actually have an outlook on the world that is different to that of humanity and the Exif, one that kind of comes out of nowhere upon the discovery of Mechagodzilla city. And as weak as the romance is, at least there was a slither of effort put into making you care, not that it worked.
The film's presentation isn't much of an upgrade from the previous film; the CG anime style still looks cheap, the film still has an ugly colour pallet, only now with a bit of orange thrown in with the green and grey, until the finale that is, where we get some admittedly very pretty blues and reds, the ecosystem of Earth is still dull and empty, seemingly populated only by Godzilla, the natives and the Servum, once again, the opportunity of creating a weird and wonderful Monster Planet rich with biodiversity and crazy creations is wasted. In fact it's so lifeless that while I was at work I dreamed up a scenario that would have killed three birds with one stone. How's this; rather than Yuko kissing Haruo in Mechagodzilla city, she kisses him in the natives' little valley where the air is breathable, while there maybe they could run into some monsters that resemble normal Earth animals, let's say a herd of deer monsters, Yuko could be mesmerised by the creatures, she could think that they're beautiful. At that point you could have some cool monsters and a deeper philosophical meaning all at once, as Yuko is now not just a forced love interest, but a symbol, a thing for Haruo to fight for that isn't revenge, so that the people born aboard the Aratrum who never set foot on Earth can have a future and know what it means to truly have a home, which would have given her death some actual weight as with her dies not just a love interest, but a dream. But no, rather than kissing him in a scenic valley surrounded by animals, she kisses him in the dull, dark, grey, lifeless waste of screen time that is Mechagodzilla city, a place that, despite repeated claims to the contrary, feels more dead than my hope of enjoying Doctor Who again. I know that I've just spent a bit of time complaining about what isn't the film, but what I hope I'm explaining comprehensibly is that even with the shitty framework this film shambles around on, a trim here and expansion there could make all the difference, but that doesn't happen. The music's better this time at least, which isn't saying much given how inconsistent and weird the first film's soundtrack was, and this film also has a pop song; The Sky Falls, and while it isn't as annoying catchy as White Out, it's decent enough, and some of the returning musical cues from the first film are used effectively. And while Godzilla's design is still decent, the film is never given a chance to fuck up any other monsters' appearances for the sake of forcing change, sort of.
But what does that mean, sort of? Well, Mechagodzilla is in this film, except he isn't; like his cameo appearance in Planet of the Monsters, he's nothing more than a name in this film since we never see him and since they abandon their original plan of rebuilding him in favour of an unbelievably boring climax. But in a way, this is a blessing because the design they created for Mechagodzilla in this film is fucking hideous. I'm not kidding, Mechagodzilla is completely unrecognisable, he's just a mass of metal with a shape that's practically impossible to describe, and that only bears a vague, faint, maybe noticeable if you squint, resemblance to Godzilla, which defeats the point of Mechagodzilla being a robot Godzilla. I mean, just look at him on the poster of the film, if you didn't know that it was supposed to be Mechagodzilla and saw that on the poster, would you even be able to tell, the answer is no because the design is horrible. This is all also going on the notion that it even matters, which is doesn't because he's not even in the film. Oh yes, despite the amount of fun you could have with Godzilla having to take on a robot version of himself, the film instead has Godzilla being lured to a trap point and shot at by stationary artillery guns, and if that sounds familiar, it's because this film is so original and different that it is in fact exactly the same as the last one. I am baffled that they would even consider this a good idea, absolutely baffled; promise Mechagodzilla, create a design that looks like something vomited up a pile of scrap metal, and then rip off the first film by having the heroes use the exact same strategy as before, only bigger and with big metal domes somehow being an even less appealing backdrop to the dull, boring jungle of last time. Granted, the strategy worked in the first film, barely, and at the cost of far too many lives, but when you have access to an unlimited supply of magic metal that can do literally anything, how could the best thing you come up with be some guns and couple of flying mechs, and I say this not to the characters but to the writers, how could you have so little fun with the Nanometal, especially since you promised Mechagodzilla, and since with an unlimited supply of magic metal you could create something completely insane, and the most insane thing you could come up with was the hoverbikes from last time, only now they're mechs and there's only three of them, fucking genius. Maybe I'm getting a little too personal with this, but it genuinely annoys me that they took the Nanometal, a substance in unlimited supply that can literally become anything you tell it to become, and they turned it into a boring contrivance and pseudo-philosophical crutch.
Oh, did I not mention the philosophical aspect of the Nanometal, well then buckle up because you're gonna love it. Like everything else in the film, City on the Edge of Battle loves to wank about how brilliant and deep the Nanometal is; throwing around names like "poison" and "wicked" while heavily implying that it's somehow alive, which could be awesome couldn't it, a city made entirely of a material that is alive and can think, there are so many directions you could take that. You could have it becoming its own master and choosing its side; it could decide that Godzilla and humans both need to go and that Earth would be better if it was all just Nanometal, or it could decide that humans are more useful as processors and start trying to assimilate Haruo and his crew while also attacking Godzilla, which kind of happens, but it's the Bilusaludo controlling the city who tell it to start eating people, forcing them into a villain role that makes very little sense. Or how about it decides that the best way to kill Godzilla is a rebuilt Mechagodzilla, resulting in a completely autonomous Mechagodzilla that's as big a threat to humanity as it is to Godzilla, which could then give the subsequent battle some actual stakes. Or since it's apparently a living city, you could also have Godzilla attack the city and have the city attack back, as in have the city itself attack Godzilla rather than just growing guns and shooting at him, that would be interesting, that would be original, and it would be immensely more interesting to watch than Godzilla moving down a straight path while guns shoot at him and he spams his atomic beam. And what I find completely laughable is how while Godzilla is lured through a narrow, straight path, we are told, not shown, told, that he is attacking his surroundings, which is utterly laughable, as if animating Godzilla swinging his tail at the walls of the trap was too much, instead lets settle for a shot of him moving his tail, then cut to a wide of degree flying about like he actually did something. This is a problem that Godzilla had in the first film; that he doesn't interact with his environment in any meaningful way, but it's exacerbated in this film because of his size, and this film absolutely, demonstrably proves that bigger is not better. Godzilla in this film is three hundred meters tall, making him the biggest Godzilla there has ever been, nearly triple the height of the previous tallest, and while that would be very menacing were he looming over a city, in City on the Edge of Battle, he never even enters the titular city, and spends most of the film roaming around in the surrounding jungle, standing literally dozens of times higher than the trees. This makes his lack of interaction with his surroundings even more boring to look at because there simply isn't anything big enough for him to interact with.
It's such a strange problem in a kaiju film, or at least you'd think, because when it comes to giant monsters, surely bigger is better, but that isn't the case with this film because for all I care he could ten miles tall, it still wouldn't make this boring, empty excuse for Godzilla entertaining to watch, it still wouldn't fix that he has absolutely no personality, that he displays no intelligence or cunning despite the film wanting us to believe he does. And like the first, the plan is simply to lure Godzilla into a trap, destroy his shield and blow him up with EMP probes, only now the EMP probes are EMP harpoons, and in place of the spider tanks from before are big domes with guns sticking out of them, it's the same finale as the first film, the exact same, only with more colours and bigger guns, which is not enough to save it, especially with the unlimited potential of the Nanometal, which would at least be more entertaining as a lazy justification for the film not having rules than as a lame dramatic and philosophical device. And to add insult to injury is the mere knowledge that the plan won't work; we saw the plan just barely work in the first film, only for it to all be made pointless because it was just a babyzilla, and we know that this is part two of three, which means that Godzilla will survive no matter what, unless they honestly want to make a Godzilla film with no Godzilla in it at all. This is a problem that literally every film has though, the inherent knowledge that the heroes will win, only in this case it's inverted, we know that the heroes will lose and that Godzilla will win, but that doesn't matter because we can still become invested, we can still have our heart strings pulled by an inevitable ending if it is executed well, shit, if it's executed well, people will lap up a disaster of an ending where all the heroes lose and most of them die, yet Infinity War this film is not. People were shocked by Infinity War's ending because of the build up to it and the execution of it, sure, the heroes all losing kind of sucks, but it hurts because we like these heroes and because even against the insurmountable threat of Thanos, there's still a chance that they could win, making their battle so much more intense, and their eventual defeat so much more powerful. Meanwhile City on the Edge of Battle has written this trilogy into a corner, one that almost certainly will not be sorted out in an emotionally satisfying way because we don't care. By making Godzilla so powerful to the point of being literally unkillable, not only have you made the entire film pointless, but you've put the heroes in a situation where they either win by incredibly convoluted means, or they don't win, one of which would almost certainly be stupid, and the other would render the entire trilogy pointless, and because I still don't have any emotional investment in the story and characters, I'm not going to care how it turns out, even when you throw in Ghidorah, or rather the space spaghetti that's supposed to be Ghidorah.
Are the Passing Crows Wings of Death?
Planet of the Monsters was underwhelming and boring, but City on the Edge of Battle isn't just that, it's a mess of a film through and through, one plagued by all its predecessor's shortcomings as well as its own painful lack of substance and wasted potential. Once again the film fails to deliver on the simple promise of its title; giving us a city that is lifeless and uninteresting and a battle that's just one long bout of Deja vu. But more egregious than that is the film's handling of its monsters and themes, giving us the same weak and unenjoyably dull portrayal of my favourite movie monster, and a Mechagodzilla so ugly and poorly handled that it beggars belief. But instead of being entertaining, the film instead tries to be insightful and meaningful, the only problem is that it fails there too, its deeper themes are half baked at best and completely ridiculous at worst, and none of it is able to amend for the absence of this genre's biggest draw, entertainment. City on the Edge of Battle is an uninspired and boring film, but it is a terrible Godzilla film, and I don't know which I find worse, I definitely wouldn't recommend it.
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