Here's what you need to know; at the dawn of the Atomic age, Man's power over Earth has never been stronger, but with this new dawn comes new threats, ones far beyond Man's wildest nightmares. When a small Japanese mining town becomes the site of a series of mysterious and gruesome murders, they soon realise that they have become the first victims of one such nightmare, an unstoppable, prehistoric monster lost to time, a giant monster of the sky, Rodan.
It should be fairly obvious what I'm doing now; my last review was Godzilla, this one is Rodan, my next one is going to be Mothra. With the IMAX tickets booked for Godzilla: King of the Monsters, I could just sit around and count down the days, or I could take a plunge back into Godzilla's history and indeed, into my own childhood as I show you where King of the Monsters' Titans came from, and today's Titan is none other than the King of the Skies, Rodan.
The version I of this film that I got my hands on does appear to be the American cut of the film, normally that wouldn't be important, but even if I didn't know from it being in English and it being ten minutes shorter than the Japanese cut, it starts with a prologue that has barely anything to do with the actual film. This prologue also feels distinctly American thanks to the stock footage, the narration and the fact that it's dripping in that old charm of Golden Age Science Fiction. That being said, it still has nothing to do with the film outside of the basic premise that Rodan's hatching was in-directly catalysed by Atomic testing in the Pacific. This prologue feels completely disconnected from the film, probably because it's unique to the American cut of the film, and it lacks the to-the-point intensity of Godzilla's opening, expect a lot of comparisons by the way. When we get to the actual film, you may be surprised to know that the shit you came for; Rodan destroying things is only in the last third or so of the film, so what does the rest of the film do in the meantime. For most of its runtime, Rodan isn't really a Kaiju movie, it has far more in common with a Creature Feature like Them! as the small mining town is attacked by giant bugs. This is not my favourite thing about Rodan, obviously, but I do like what this film does with the bugs, initially playing out like a murder mystery before our hero and his lover get attacked by one. The bugs themselves are also very cool; they look about as 50's as you can get with big, rubbery bodies, giant bug eyes and giant pincers that flail around cartoonishly. Rodan feels very much like a product of its time, for better and for worse, which means that you probably already know whether or not it's a film for you; depending on whether or not you like those cheesy old 50's sci-fi films, which I fortunately do.
I did say though that this was for better and for worse because while Rodan has many of the pros of this kind of sci-fi, it also has plenty of the cons. There is a lot of fun to be had with the bugs and the mysterious deaths; the film's setting of a small town gives this event a much more contained and personal feeling than something like Godzilla, and the mine itself and the giant bugs feel a lot like the horror movies of the time, which is hardly surprising. What else isn't surprising is that the film's characters are kind of flat. This is a problem that exists throughout the Godzilla series, and is only a problem in these older films thanks to modern movies that spoil us with layered, complicated characters. But Rodan has all the usual suspects of 50's sci-fi; the hero, the lover, the scientist and the military guy, and all of them fill their roles admirably. Unsurprisingly the romantic subplot is very corny and contrived, but these things often are, though giving the hero amnesia halfway through puts a neat spin on the idea, and having him get his memory back in the way that he does is very clever and makes Rodan's appearance a surprisingly frightening moment. And unlike Godzilla, I honestly don't recall a single character name, though you could say it's made harder by them all being Japanese. It was the same with some of Godzilla's characters too, but then there was Serizawa and Yamane, two characters that were on par with what's expected of modern films, two characters that were hugely compelling, particularly Serizawa, and Rodan doesn't have anyone like that. Instead we have our architypes, with the likable everyman and his lover leading the charge, which isn't a bad thing, don't get me wrong, even the bad things about this period in sci-fi have a certain degree of charm, but Godzilla had substance, it had a message which it spread masterfully through subtle metaphors and enthralling characters, while Rodan is just a monster movie.
Not to say that Rodan isn't worth your time, shit, if all you want is destruction and mayhem and giant monsters, you are almost certainly going to have more fun with Rodan because it has more of it, and it's in colour if that makes a difference to you for whatever reason, and it isn't bogged down with all that depressing stuff about widespread suffering and the evils of the Atomic Bomb. What you get instead is a film that escalates, starting out small and personal with the mines flooding and horribly mutilated bodies turning up inside, before the bigger and more bonkers stuff starts bubbling to the surface in the form of the bugs and Rodan. The film also tries to explain how exactly a two-hundred-million-year-old animal can still be alive, which isn't necessary or even realistic, but it is neat to hear a possible way that it could work. Let's face it though, it's a kaiju movie, you're here for the kaiju, you're here for Rodan, so does Rodan deliver on its titular king of the Skies. The film's first half is all about the bugs until a strange mystery emerges of a supersonic UFO terrorising the Pacific coast, this is Rodan, naturally, and it's about this point that the mystery slowly unfolds as fighter jets report pursuing impossibly fast targets and a couple is attacked on a mountain side, their camera snapping a photo of a giant wing. But eventually, the real chaos begins as Rodan emerges from the Earth and begins taking down fighter jets. These dogfight sequences are kind of fun, even with their annoying habit of reusing footage, but the model work on both the jets and Rodan is really good, and like Godzilla, the full body shots where a suit is used still look really good. But unlike Godzilla, Rodan is very much a film about the spectacle, whereas Godzilla's destruction wasn't for the sake of destruction, Rodan is much more conventional in that regard, and Rodan does a lot of damage in this film.
Rodan being one of Toho's first films to be shot in colour, I imagine the focus on spectacle wasn't an accident, and in some ways, Rodan is even more dangerous than Godzilla in this film; his supersonic speed makes him a match for even the fastest fighters, tanks are still completely useless, and his ability to generate hurricane-force winds with his wings, which is his main attack in the film, is crazy powerful, blasting cars and buses into the air and tearing buildings apart. As with Godzilla, the model work in these scenes is awesome, the miniature cities that Rodan trashes are filled with small details that make them feel truly alive and the pyrotechnics are positively explosive. This may be the last twenty minutes of the film, but the destruction in Rodan is easily more entertaining than that in Godzilla. But with this increased focus on destruction comes a catch; Rodan isn't as clever as Godzilla, nor is it anywhere near as emotionally stirring. Whereas Godzilla took the time to show you the human cost of Godzilla's attack, Rodan does not, instead indulging in the carnage for its own sake before getting straight to the plan to kill Rodan. While this may suit someone looking for some good old Monster mayhem, and doesn't hurt the film in isolation, it does make Rodan a little bit less special than Godzilla, a point that's made very clear in the film's ending. Like Godzilla, Rodan tries for a sad ending, trying to make us pity these monsters while also implying that they are not the last and that eventually, another monster will rise and threaten us once again. But Rodan lacks the emotional punch of Godzilla, making this sad ending where the monsters die together, refusing to live without each other feel hollow, as spectacular as it is to watch a giant pterosaur burn and scream in pain in a river of lava. I do like Rodan's ending, like Godzilla, there is a sense of injustice to it, and as I said before, it looks really cool, rounding out this little self-contained tale of giant monsters in a fitting, mildly depressing kind of way that's sure to satisfy, but it isn't going to play on your mind like Godzilla's ending, which is a bummer.
The Strongest, Swiftest Creatures That Ever Breathed
If you found Godzilla unsatisfying for whatever reason, Rodan might be more up your street. Gone is the morbid, harrowing depiction of death and suffering and in its place is a much more straightforward and conventional monster movie, one with all the charm and mayhem that entails. Rodan's scenes of destruction are hugely entertaining and its monsters are cool, its effects are amazing and its smaller scale and more personal setting gives the film a very different feel for a kaiju film. But while Rodan is more immediately satisfying and fun than Godzilla, it's not as rich as Godzilla, its characters and world aren't as compelling as Godzilla's, which I feel is a better film. Rodan is a solid kaiju film though, one that's definitely worth watching if you're in the mood for a trip into the good old days of the kaiju genre or 50's sci-fi.
No comments:
Post a Comment