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A meteorite hits earth and awakes both the giant dinosaur Godzilla and
the giant ancient monster Battra. Thank God adventurer/thief Takuya
(Tetsuya Bessho) and his estranged enviromentalist wife Masako (Satomi
Kobayashi) have just found a giant egg on Infant island plus two tiny
earth spirits, the Cosmos (Keiko Imamura, Sayaka Osawa), who tell them the
egg contains Mothra, the giant moth destined to save the earth from
whatever-it-is, and with the help of the Marutomo organisation, Takuya and
Masako even manage to ship the egg to Japan ... however, the shipment is
attacked on the open sea by Godzilla, and Mothra hatches and is almost
destroyed on arrival, wouldn't it be for Battra attacking Godzilla and
giving Mothra a chance to escape. Then though, the Cosmos are snatched by
Marutomo-secretary Ando (Takehiro Murata), as greedy Marutomo head
Tomokane (Matoto Otake) wants to turn them into a major media sensation -
which Mothra does totally not like, so it - still in its caterpillar shape
- attacks Tokyo, where the Cosmos are held, with the army making desperate
attempts to stop the monster, but to no avail.
Fortunately though, thief Takuya has meanwhile snatched the two little
fairies from the Marutomo organisation, and Mothra calms down when it sees
the Cosmos safe and sound - and it spins itself into a cocoon right next
to Tokyo City Hall, and eventually it emerges as a beautiful butterfly,
er, moth (wait a minute, do moths have beautiful coloured wings, and if
yes, then who has eaten all my sweaters) ... and goes right into
hand-on-hand combat with first Battra, then Godzilla - but almost loses
its life when going against Big G. Battra however has in the meantime
changed sides and is now working with Mothra, and togther, the two
monsters are able to defeat and even kill Godzilla (until the next sequel
that is), even if that combat costs Battra's life as well.
The obligatory human subplot concerns Takuya and Masako who
despite everything they went through in the past (the film spares us
details) are still drawn to each other, and Midori, their daughter, who
succeeds in persuading her father to stop being a thief and in bringing
her parents back together.
Megumi Odaka repeats her role as Miki the psychic girl for a third
time, which makes her the only continuing character in the Godzilla-series
besides the Big G himself. However, she has next to nothing to do in this
film ...
Basically, Gojira tai Mosura is little more than a remake of Mosura
from 31 years earlier with a few extra monsters thrown in ... which isn't
necessarily a bad thing since Mosura
was one of director Inoshiro Honda's best monster flicks and some
extra monsters might not be a bad idea, but ...
On the plus side, this film features the usual well-made footage of
monsters destroying (miniature) cities and some amazing monster-bouts ...
on the downside however, the film features an enormously cheesy human
subplot that is not at all helped by mediocre acting, a rather obnoxious
kid getting way too much screentime, a very blunt enviromentalist message
that seems a bit out of place in a monster flick, and the constant urge of
all of the involved humans to comment on the monster action as it
happens. On the camp side though, the Cosmos sing a handful of cheesy
songs that are nothing short of wonderful. I'm not really sure, but like
me you might kind of like this movie ... but not necessarily all of it.
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