Ten years after the success of “Godzilla”, it became more than evident that the popularity of the kaiju was nowhere near the end and had arguably only just begun. With the commercial acclaim of both “Mothra” and the ambitious “King Kong vs. Godzilla”, producer Toho would continue the franchise with now one more entry per year, staring with “Mothra vs. Godzilla”, which saw the giant reptile with the star of Ishiro Honda‘s movie just a few years prior. While the feature also shows the technical advances when it came to shooting these kinds of movies, it also stayed true to the themes which Honda and co-author Takeo Murata had introduced in the first movie of the franchise, namely the battle of man vs. nature and the danger of nuclear technology, with the director’s skepticism seemingly have grown over the past decade if the story is any indicator.
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Following a devastating typhoon, a giant egg is found swimming in the ocean close to Nishi Beach, Shizunoura. With scientists wanting to find out more about the strange occurrence, and journalists showing up to report on what appears to be a great story, their combined curiosity is put to a halt with the news the egg has already been sold to a businessman named Kumayama (Yoshifumi Tajima), backed by a powerful investor. Upon closer inspection, reporter Ichiro Sakai (Akira Takarada), his photographer Junko Nakanishi (Yuriko Hoshi) and professor Shunsuke Miura (Hiroshi Koizumi) not only find out about the scheme to make the egg, and whatever is inside of it, to be the center of a new theme park, but are also contacted by the Shobjin, two tiny priestesses from Infant Island, telling them the egg belongs to Mothra and when it hatches, could cause a lot of damage and misery in Japan.
Since no one believes the professor or the reporters, the priestesses leave disappointed to attend to the villagers back on the island, a place devastated due to nuclear testing. Meanwhile, Godzilla appears at the Japanese coastline, causing havoc and destruction as he makes his way towards major cities. As the military is unable to stop the creature, Sakai, Nakanishi and Miura come up with a plan to convince the inhabitants of Infant Island to have their god, Mothra, battling Godzilla to avoid further destruction and death.
Although he had worked on the previous entries into the franchise, with “Mothra vs. Godzila”, special effects director Eiji Tsuburaya introduces fans of the movies to some of his finest work. Not only has the suit of Godzilla been overhauled, making it a lot more agile in comparison to the first one, the popular kaiju is also much more of an imposing threat, whereas Mothra is presented in a more positive light, being more fragile and rooted within the nature of the island it supposedly comes from. In combination with Akira Ifukube‘s score, “Mothra vs. Godzilla” probably has some of the best kaiju fights of the franchise up to this point, highlighting the strengths of both monsters, perhaps siding a little bit more with the giant moth given its status as the “hero”.
Apart from these aspects, “Mothra vs. Godzilla” serves as another feature by its director including his firm stance against Japanese post-war economy and its handling of nuclear power. Especially the later scenes taking place in Infant Island present this idea quite strongly, and can even be regarded as a precursor to Honda’s work on Akira Kurosawa‘s “Dreams”. With the fights of the kaiju delivering the kind of entertainment you have come to expect from the genre by that point, the scenes involving the human characters mirror the level of disillusionment with certain elements of society that shoot first and ask questions later or that are merely out for their own profit. Additionally, there are also some hints to the commentary on Japanese media which Honda included in the Japanese version of “King Kong vs. Godzilla”, even though it is only a minor element here.
In the end, “Mothra vs. Godzilla” is a solid entry within the franchise, including some of the best work by the special effects department under Eiji Tsuburaya thus far. Aside from the addition of themes which have by now become common in the works of director Ishiro Honda, the fourth entry into the “Godzilla”-films offers a lot of entertainment and some minor food for thought in between.
