Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah (1991-Film)

## Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah (1991)

***Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah*** (ゴジラvsキングギドラ, *Gojira tai Kingu Gidora*) is a 1991 Japanese *kaiju* film written and directed by Kazuki Ōmori and produced by Shōgo Tomiyama. The film, produced and distributed by Toho Studios, is the 18th film in the *Godzilla* franchise, and is the third film in the franchise's Heisei period. The film features the fictional monster characters Godzilla and King Ghidorah, and stars Kōsuke Toyohara, Anna Nakagawa, Megumi Odaka, Katsuhiko Sasaki, Akiji Kobayashi, Yoshio Tsuchiya, and Robert Scott Field.

The production crew of *Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah* remained largely unchanged from that of the previous film in the series, *Godzilla vs. Biollante*. Because the previous installment was a box office disappointment, due to a lack of child viewership and alleged competition with the *Back to the Future* franchise, the producers of *Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah* were compelled to create a film with more fantasy elements, along with time travel.

*Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah* was the first *Godzilla* film since 1975's *Terror of Mechagodzilla* to feature a newly orchestrated score by Akira Ifukube. The film was released theatrically in Japan on December 14, 1991, and was followed by *Godzilla vs. Mothra* the following year. It was released direct-to-video in North America in 1998 by Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment. Though *Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah* was more financially successful than *Godzilla vs. Biollante*, the film became somewhat controversial in the United States as a result of perceived anti-Americanism stemming from a scene where Godzilla kills several American soldiers.

## Plot

In 1992, science fiction writer Kenichiro Terasawa is writing a book about Godzilla and learns of a group of Japanese soldiers stationed on Lagos Island during the Gilbert and Marshall Islands campaign. In February 1944, while threatened by American soldiers, the Japanese soldiers were saved by a mysterious dinosaur. He theorizes that the dinosaur was subsequently mutated into Godzilla in 1954 after a hydrogen bomb test on the island. Yasuaki Shindo, a wealthy businessman who commanded the Japanese soldiers on Lagos Island, confirms that the dinosaur did indeed exist.

Meanwhile, a UFO lands on Mount Fuji. When the Japanese army investigates, they are greeted by Wilson, Grenchiko, Emmy Kano and the android M-11. The visitors, known as the "Futurians", explain that they are humans from the year 2204, where Godzilla has completely destroyed Japan. The Futurians plan to travel back in time to 1944 and remove the dinosaur from Lagos Island before the island is irradiated in 1954, thus preventing the mutation of the creature into Godzilla. As proof of their story, Emmy presents a copy of Terasawa's book, which has not yet been completed in the present.

The Futurians, Terasawa, Miki Saegusa, and Professor Mazaki, board a time shuttle and travel back to 1944 to Lagos Island. There, as American forces land and engage the Japanese forces commanded by Shindo, the dinosaur attacks and kills the American soldiers. The American navy then bombs the dinosaur from the sea and gravely wounds it. After Shindo and his men leave the island, M-11 teleports the dinosaur from Lagos Island to the Bering Strait. Before returning to 1992, the Futurians secretly leave three small creatures called Dorats on Lagos Island, which are exposed to radiation from the hydrogen bomb test in 1954 and merge to become King Ghidorah, which then appears in present-day Japan. After returning to 1992, the Futurians use King Ghidorah to subjugate Japan and issue an ultimatum, but Japan refuses to surrender.

Feeling sympathy for the Japanese people, Emmy reveals to Terasawa the truth behind the Futurians' mission: in the future, Japan is an economic superpower that has surpassed the United States, Russia, and China. The Futurians traveled back in time in order to change history and prevent Japan's future economic dominance by creating King Ghidorah and using it to destroy present day Japan. At the same time, they also planned to erase Godzilla from history so it would not pose a threat to their plans. After M-11 brings Emmy back to the UFO, she reprograms the android so it will help her.

Terasawa discovers that a Russian nuclear submarine sank in the Bering Strait in the 1970s and released enough radiation to mutate the dinosaur into Godzilla. Shindo plans to use his nuclear submarine to rejuvenate Godzilla. En route to the Bering Strait, Shindo's submarine is destroyed by Godzilla, who absorbs its radiation and becomes larger and more powerful. Godzilla arrives in Japan and is met by King Ghidorah. They fight at equal strength, each immune to the other's attacks. With M-11 and Terasawa's aid, Emmy sabotages the UFO's control over King Ghidorah, causing the three-headed monster to lose focus during the battle. Godzilla eventually ends the battle by blasting off Ghidorah's middle head. Before sending King Ghidorah crashing into the ocean, Godzilla destroys the UFO, killing Wilson and Grenchiko before turning its attention on Tokyo, destroying the city and killing Shindo.

Emmy travels to the future with M-11 and returns to the present day with Mecha-King Ghidorah, a cybernetic version of King Ghidorah. The cybernetic Ghidorah blasts Godzilla with energy beams, which proves useless. Godzilla then counters by relentlessly blasting Ghidorah with its atomic breath before Ghidorah launches clamps to restrain Godzilla. Ghidorah carries Godzilla out of Japan, but Godzilla breaks from its restraints and causes Ghidorah to send both crashing into the ocean. Emmy then returns to the future but not before informing Terasawa that she is his descendant.

At the bottom of the ocean, Godzilla awakens and roars over Ghidorah's remains before swimming away.

## Conception

Although the previously filmed *Godzilla vs. Biollante* had been the most expensive *Godzilla* film produced at the time, its low audience attendance and loss of revenue convinced executive producer and *Godzilla* series creator Tomoyuki Tanaka to revitalize the series by bringing back iconic monsters from pre-1984 *Godzilla* movies, specifically Godzilla's archenemy King Ghidorah.

*Godzilla vs. Biollante* director and writer Kazuki Ōmori had initially hoped to start a standalone series centered on Mothra, and was in the process of rewriting a 1990 script for the unrealized film *Mothra vs. Bagan*. The film was ultimately scrapped by Toho, under the assumption that, unlike Godzilla, Mothra would have been a difficult character to market overseas. The planning stages for a sequel to *Godzilla vs. Biollante* were initially hampered by Tanaka's deteriorating health, thus prompting the takeover of Shōgo Tomiyama as producer. The new producer felt that the financial failure of *Godzilla vs. Biollante* was due to the plot being too sophisticated for child audiences, and thus intended to return some of the fantasy elements of the pre-1984 *Godzilla* films to the series. Ōmori himself blamed the lackluster performance of *Godzilla vs. Biollante* on competition with *Back to the Future Part II*, and thus concluded that audiences wanted plots involving time travel. His approach to the film also differed from *Godzilla vs. Biollante* in his greater emphasis on developing the personalities of the monsters rather than the human characters.

Akira Ifukube agreed to compose the film's score on the insistence of his daughter, after as he was dissatisfied with the way his compositions had been treated in *Godzilla vs. Biollante*.[*citation needed*]

## Special effects

The Godzilla suits used in *Godzilla vs. Biollante* were reused in *Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah*, though with slight modifications. The original suit used for land-based and full body shots had its head replaced with a wider and flatter one, and the body cut in half. The upper half was used in scenes where Godzilla emerges from the sea and during close-ups during the character's first fight with King Ghidorah. The suit used previously for scenes set at sea was modified with rounder shoulders, a more prominent chest, and an enhanced face, and was used throughout the majority of the film's Godzilla scenes.

The redesigned King Ghidorah featured much more advanced wirework puppetry than its predecessors, and effects team leader Koichi Kawakita designed the "Godzillasaurus" as a more paleontologically accurate-looking dinosaur than Godzilla itself as a nod to American filmmakers aspiring to direct their own *Godzilla* films with the intention of making the monster more realistic. Ōmori's original draft specified that the dinosaur that would become Godzilla was a *Tyrannosaurus*, though this was rejected by creature designer Shinji Nishikawa, who stated that he "couldn't accept that a tyrannosaur could become Godzilla". The final suit combined features of *Tyrannosaurus* with Godzilla, and real octopus blood was used during the bombardment scene. Because the Godzillasaurus' arms were much smaller than Godzilla's, suit performer Wataru Fukuda had to operate them with levers within the costume. The creature's distress calls were recycled Gamera cries.