Yes, 2004 marked the golden anniversary of the world's most famous irradiated star of movieland as Godzilla turned the big five-oh. Half a century of city smashing, monster mashing, fire breathing, population eating mayhem. As with any career, the Big G's gone through some highs (Godzilla Vs. Megalon! Wooooooo!) and some lows (*cough*Godzilla's Revenge*cough*) and after starring as everything from a man in a suit to a hand puppet to a CGI (Computer Generated Iguana), Toho has decided to "retire" the mighty kaiju... for at least 10 years anyway.

Then again, considering they "killed" him in Godzilla Vs. Destoroyah just 9 years prior, we'll see how long a simple "retirement" actually sticks. I mean really, how many times have we seen Michael Jordan, Deion Sanders and Hulk Hogan come back from their so-called "retirements"? Christ™ on a Pop Tart™, Tube-Sock McCoors was killed in '96 and he's still making the proverbial "dollar dollar"!

Anyone who's been watching the Big G film library since G2K knows that each movie (with the exception of Tokyo S.O.S.) has been based in "alternate universes", all in which the events of the original Godzilla occurred and after which there's usually a quite period of 40 years of so until Godzilla reemerges for whatever reason to fight a new monster. Final Wars mixes this up a little, starting off instead with a nod to Godzilla Raids Again as the battle ship Atragon (which is actually called "Gotengo", but since the US version of the original film was translated to "Atragon", I will hence forth refer to the ship as "Atragon" for the length of the review), piloted by crew men and crew women working for the UN created Earth Defense Force, dukes it out with Godzilla amidst the frigid backdrop of an arctic glacier, all happening in those way out '60s. The fight doesn't go well for the self-proclaimed king of the monsters, as he winds up falling through a fissure in the glacier he was standing on, ignoring those always important "Maximum Weight Allowance" signs. This leaves him as little more than a Gorilla Whale Popsicle in the frozen goods section of the (Arctic) Circle K.

Hopefully enough people got that "gorilla whale" reference that I don't need to add an addendum to this review later.

In the aftermath of the Godzilla situation, the united governments of the world decide to update their "In Case of Kaiju" plans from "run around screaming and mobilize army of toy tanks" to "run around screaming and mobilize army of genetically enhanced superhuman soldiers". Yes, the EDF decided that is was time to give Mother Nature a pinch on her ass and ramp the evolutionary process up a few thousand years, playing genetic Legos™ by exploiting a race of humans mutated by global nuclear yadda-yadda who now possess a special sauce known as the M-Base (hence their new branch being known as M-Organization). This genetic hiccup endows it's owners with abilities far beyond those of mortal man... meaning their natural kung-fu wire skills and ability to throw a thousand kicks and punches in mid-air just got an upgrade of Matrix sized proportions... just like the characters in any other Kitamura flick.

These mutant hero types were assumably born of the fallout from all those years of radioactive weapons testing, which also gave way to Big G and the challengers for his throne since his big cooling off. All of those other rubber beasties (namely Varan, Gezora, Gaira, Baragon, Titanosaurus, and Megaguirus, as shown in stock footage-montage during the opening credits) were taken down by the EDF though, so up until now it looks like mankind has actually gotten it's act together since their days of wind-up tanks and model planes launching fireworks. Speaking to the kaiju, our first non-G encounter comes from Manda, who has been upgraded from a worn out dragon puppet of sock proportions to a fully computer generated serpent of golden fire... though remember, this is not Hollywood money we've got here, so Manda still doesn't look all that convincing.

The fight is short and fairly sweet, as Manda wraps itself around the Atragon 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea style. With no ship-based tasering system apparently available to the Atragon though, Captain Douglas Gordon (how white bread do you need to get people?!) pulls his own modified Nemo on the big snake, suicide diving the ship into an exposed thermal ass crack in the English Channel's floor.

Or "an underwater volcano" for you picky types.

Manda gives up his death grip, but continues the chase when Capt. G and crew head off in their now damaged ship. Not wanting to leave their business unfinished, they pull a U-ey and zap Mandy with their sub-zero frostbite beam. There's no time to question why they didn't just do this in the fucking first place though, as they take the opening to turn the monster into a kaiju Slush Puppy™ with their drill, size XXXL of the "big ass" model class. Upon return to their base though, Captain Gordon is put on trial for endangering his crew and defying orders from a superior with jail time being cinched when he hauls off and pops a fellow officer. Everybody loves a rebel folks, cuz it's what we all wanna be: cool, masters of our own destinies, making our own rules, waving our big bushy moustaches in the face of authority like teenage asses out of a pick-up truck window. Damn I love that Captain Gordon...

Anyway, after this we watch some mutant soldier combat training to give us a glimpse of the rampant bullet-time and chop socky in store for us later. From this, resident genetic anomaly and all around heart throb Shinichi Ozaki is introduced as the M-Organization soldier who's bound to find love and destiny before this romp is said and done. Speaking of love interests, he's assigned to be the Kevin Costner to a female molecular biologist named Miyuki Nemu's Whitney Houston as she travels to Hokkaido. Seems that a giant, mummified monster carcass has washed up on shore and she's been called in to perform the autopsy. Who exactly is this latest oversized bio-lab subject? Here's a clue: it's not a pig fetus, nor is it a frog or an earthworm. Give up? It's Gigan.

Yes, everyone's favorite cyclopean, sickle handed, buzzsaw bellied, kaiju cyborg from space has arrived, dead as a... uhm... really dead thing. Initial analysis uncovers that the deceased beast has a special something in it's genetic make-up, namely the M-Base... yes, the same gene fart found in M-Organization's super soldiers has now been discovered in a giant monster from outer space. Anyone else here have premonitions of "hey wait, they're not mutants because of radioactive tampering, they're just alien hybrids!", cuz my b-science synapses are firing off in "bukake-overdrive" mode.

There's more to the story here though, as our intrepid purveyors of science (Shinichi, Miyuki and the paleontologist that discovered Gigan) suddenly share a three-way hallucination and find themselves hosting two very familiar and very tiny sisters as they take a magical journey to the island of sunshine, lollipops and friggin' huge bugs. Your travel agent would refer to it as Infant Island, but we know it better as the home o' (and no, not "homo") Mothra, a.k.a. Toho's eternal attempt to grab the little girl market... ewww, that sounded wrong for all the right reasons. As the fairy twins enlighten our people of logic as to the true workings of the world, it turns out that the mummified Gigan actually did battle with Mothra twelve centuries ago when it came from space to wreck the Earth. We get an all too small snippet of this, as carved into a cave wall instead of played out in beloved flashback form, leading me already to believe that the monster action is going to be all too fucking short for my taste buds. Hopefully the rest of the rubber lovin' fight scenes will be performed as opposed to badly illustrated.

Before they plant our trio back to their work though, the tiny twins give the group a mystical dagger bearing Mothra's corporate logo. Once back in Hokkaido though, we in the audience are dragged on a world tour of mayhem as various giant monsters start pounding pavement in cities through out the globe! Rodan violates New York City's anti-noise pollution laws, the giant praying mantis Kamakiras shows his hatred for frogs in Paris, Kumonga gets the short end of the stick when he decides to spray his stickiness over Arizona, Anguirus goes barreling through the streets of Shanghai, King Seesar scratches his nuclear fleas in Okinawa, Ebirah utilizes the power of the prawn in Tokai and a certain radiated iguana finds himself on the other side of the world from his typical stomping grounds, unleashing CGI hell on Crocodile Dundee's countrymen in Sydney! Meanwhile, everyone's biggest kaiju annoyance, Manilla, appears near Mount Fuji, surprising a Kenny and his grandpa... who's dressed like some kind of samurai and toting a rifle...

The EDF sends out a few battle ships to take on some of the invading monsters, while the M-Organization soldiers are dispatched to turn Ebirah into 300 tons of spicy dancing kani! But, no sooner is the killer shrimp ("I'm not a shrimp, I'm a King Prawn!") beaten down like the black sheep of the big monster family reunion, then he's suddenly teleported away by a mysterious beam of light! No sooner is the catch of the day gone then the other attacking monsters find themselves following suit, all being abducted by alien ships who then converge on Tokyo, where they unite to make one super ship.

Before the EDF can bomb some ET ass though, the Secretary General of the UN suddenly appears from the mothership and vouches for the aliens as being friends to all children! No, wait, that would be Gamera. Anyway, these aliens seem to be pro-humanity (riiiiiiight) beings from a far away planet calling themselves Xiliens. They're not here on holiday though, as their trip is one of warning for we simple monkeys. Seems a small planetoid by the name of Gorath is currently hurtling toward Earth, and only through the combined destructive power of all the Earth's weapons fired in unison can the speeding mass be blasted out of it's deadly trajectory. Going on global television, the world's populace falls in love with the Xiliens like they're a whole race of white rappers. One reporter by the name of Anna Otonashi isn't so sure about these intergalactic charisma machines though, especially since the leader of the UN didn't blink once during his entire "let's do what the aliens tell us to!" speech...

When our journalistic heroine shares this with Shinichi and Miyuki, the science patrol goes to question UN Secretary General Daigo about his lack of eye lid function. Suddenly the suit is assaulted by a knife wielding assassin! Before he refuses medical attention and runs away suspiciously ("By the way, I'm not an alien!"), Anna manages to get some of his blood on a spankerchief. Analysis of the blood of course reveals the General not to be of the human persuasion, but when they try to take the findings to superior officer Commander Namikawa, they learn that she too has become a Xilien bitch, along with her EDF escort. Where do you turn when your leaders have been taken over by the enemy? You let the big angry American out of prison so his moustache can kick some body snatcher ass!

Free from his cell and ready to displace his prison anger on an appropriate outlet, Captain Gordon goes on live television to unveil the Xilien invasion to the world. How do you catch the attention of the global viewing public? By shooting the highest ranking leader of the United Nations and revealing him to be a space fish-cockroach-humanoid! Trying to salvage their rep, the Xilien leader stand to address the Earthlings, but gets shot in the head himself... by his own Xilien minion! Since they lack names, allow me to call this mutinous Xilien Mr. Charmin. Don't ask me why, just make sure you don't squeeze him otherwise he'll shoot you in the head and eat your face...

Charmin then bogarts the cameras like some Xilien he-diva, hijacking the air waves to premiere the new Xilien ad campaign: a life of deliciousness through human cattle! This is to be done by complete domination of the human race through their army of mind controlled super monsters! On the plus side, all this "humans will be bred for food" means that a lot of us not getting any will now be getting plenty! And to think, mom always told me "Anubis, you better start showering more than once a week and stop using mustard for deodorant, otherwise you're never gonna get any poontang". Thank you my new Xilien masters! Cattle Anubis Von Mojo reporting for breeding duty, sirs!

Captain Gordon calls forth the mutant soldiers to stem this Xilien meat market plot before it can go any further, but numbers mean shit in the face of superior genetics slavery technology as Charmin chooses now to reveal that the reason the Xiliens control the kaiju is because their DNA was spliced with the mind controlling M-Base... the very same M-Base that imbues the M-Organization with their powers... and now makes them mindless fighter drones for the Xilien take over. Somehow, only Shinichi and the M-Organization commanding officer Kumasaka can resist the Xilien mind control though, so while Shin rushes Captain Gordon and the others to safety in a moving van, Kum (yeah, I know, but what are you gonna do?) stays behind to hold off the newly evilized mutants. The van is attacked by M soldier Kazama who takes the heroes down with his motorcycle, leading to one of the flick's coolest fucking action sequences when Shin grabs a motorcycle of his own and the two duel rice burners on a highway ala The Matrix Reloaded! As you can imagine, Shin wins out when he smacks him upside the head with his moto, knocking Kaz out and somehow knocking the Xilien control out of him too...

Obviously the Xiliens haven't worked out all the kinks on this M-Base thing.

What they seem pretty good at is letting giant rubber monsters wreak havoc on populated areas though, so they go back to what works and return the prior property damage dealers to their respective areas of chaos and debris. The released beasts smash the EDF attack ships sent after them with ease while swarms of Xilien mini-ships swarm the cities like big metal locusts shooting lasers out of their faces. With technology proving ineffective in the face of the purple people eaters, Captain Gordon decides the Earth's only hope lies in one of it's greatest defenders: Godzilla.

Well, I mean, if you take into consideration Raymond Burr's whole "Godzilla was created by Mother Nature to avenge the nuclear follies man has raped her with", I guess you could call him Earth's defender...

The way Gordon sees it Godzilla's been in suspended animation for the last 40+ years, so when the Xiliens were playing with the genetic Progresso™ of the Earth's kaiju population Big G was overlooked. Meaning? No M-Base, therefore no Xilien mind control! Then again he could just destroy the Earth himself, but right now it looks like the Captain and his scientist buddies are going for the ol' "lesser of two evils" protocol. Before they can putter the Atragon down to the South Pole to free ol' G Money from his fate as a giant frozen fish stick though, the good guys are besieged by the appearance of... Gigan?!

Yes, despite the earlier "mummified corpse" deal, Gigan has appeared. Remember, Gigan's like 87% giant robo, so it probably wouldn't be too hard to create duplicates... or upgrades as the case may be. Atragon evades Gigan 2.0 long enough to crack Godzilla from his ice cube prison. Not one to be hampered by 4 decades of deep freeze, Godzilla wastes no time in thawing out and setting out to reclaim his King of the Monsters mantle. Sadly, this is also the beginning of a series of disappointingly short moments of monster-on-monster action, as Godzilla decapitates Gigan with a chainsaw blast of atomic halitosis. Sure, the new Gigan didn't get a lot of screen time, nor did he even get a chance to use that buzzsaw belly of his, but on the plus side he won't need to worry about needing any more of those little yellow pills any time soon. Still pissed about that whole "trapping him in a glacier for half a century" thing, G sets his sights toward the Atragon now, which would be beating it's feet to the pavement... if it weren't suspended in the air and traveling over a sea of ice.

Godzilla takes his vendetta against the ship and it's crew to the Nth level, following it across the Earth in his determination to save face. If he let's the humans beat him with a flying submarine, his rubber faced cronies would never let him live it down! Captain Gordon planned for this though, as he's baiting the big lizard from kaiju big battel to kaiju big battel and using the Atragon like an over-sized Elk Hair Caddis Beige!

... okay, so I don't know what one of those things is. I Googled "fly fishing lures" and that's the weirdest name I could come up with in a 2 minute window. What do you want from me?!

G satisfies the cries of his fans when he takes out Fakezilla in Sydney, proving grown men in rubber suits beat out computer generated iguanas any day of the week. The big monster on campus then does some eXtreme therapeutic exercises to overcome his latent Arachnophobia by squashing Kumonga around the New Guinea mark of his world tour. Kamakiras is next, as Godzilla returns to Japan and contributes to the further endangerment of the world's already dwindling preying mantis populace. Then again, since most preying manti aren't 20 stories tall or have light-up eyes, I guess Big G just made this particular species extinct...

The Xiliens fall back on the tried and true professional wrestling method of "The Ol' Triple Team", teleporting in Anguirus, the shaggy SharPei (King Seesar) and Rodan (the monster, not the artist) to perform a triple by-pass beat down upon the champ in the shadow of Mt. Fuji. Despite even this overwhelming display of big monster proportions though (which includes a little modified Shaolin Soccer action), the fight is short as the trio play kaiju Shemps and are introduced to their G-spots... okay, that was me grasping really hard at straws and coming up confused and now unable to get the image of kaiju-on-kaiju carnality out of my burning, screaming grey matter.

Running out of monsters to throw at the King, the Xiliens try one more time with the bush leagues, pitting Ebirah and Hedorah against him in Tokyo... lasting all of 7 seconds as Godzilla stomps the sweet meat out of Ebirah and uses him as the sesame side of the bun, sandwiching Hedorah between the oversized crustacean and a skyscraper. I'm gonna say "ouch!" for the Smog Monster.

As for our human cast, they've taken the Atragon to the Xilien mothership, stopped short when a force field bars their way. Kazama arrives in a jet though, stealing Randy Quaid's noble Independence Day sacrifice scene and kazakames, errr, sorry, "kamikazes" himself into the ship's power core, shorting their protective barrier. No longer hindered by superior alien technology, the Atragon uses it's massive phallic drill to burrow into the side of the ship. Before they can light up the ship with their fancy maser beam though, the Xiliens pull a Scotty and beam aboard the ship. Capturing the crew, the bug people bring them to the Xilien leader, who bores them miserably with a drawn out monologue made all the less interesting by the fact that I can't understand a damn thing that he's saying. Sure, it's probably typical bad guy bullshit about how we're inferior monkeys and we never had a chance against their superior intellect, nor will Godzilla be enough to save us from become Sloppy Joe meat for a bunch of space bugs, but when you can't understand the language it just seems to drag on all the longer...

During the diatribe, Charmin tells Shin that the two of them are special mutations of the Xilien race, hence why he wasn't affected earlier when Charmin took over the rest of the M-Organization soldiers. Yes, that's right, he's a Neo character. Charmin and Shin are both "Kaizers", only Shin hasn't realized his full power potential yet. What kinda power potential? In Charmin's case, he can apparently manipulate energy and we've already seen that he can brain-jack any creatures (big or small) with the M-Base in their system, so I'm guessing something like that.

Again, think Neo.

Back to the titular kaiju, Godzilla has vanquishes all the foes the Xiliens have thrown at him up to this point and is taking a breather in the middle of Tokyo. We almost forgot about the whole Gorath problem, but apparently Godzilla didn't. Planting his feet and his tail to support himself, Godzilla unleashes the biggest burst of nuke breath he can muster, destroying the hurtling planetoid before it can crack the Earth like some big galactic walnut. The resultant devastation leaves the biggest city in Japan a smoldering crater with the king of monsters still standing at the center in one of the most awe inspiring shots you'll ever see in a giant monster movie. This isn't it though, as a big new challenger by the moniker of Monster X (not to be confused with Monster Zero, a.k.a. "Ghidrah the Three-Headed Monster") drops out of the sky. The duo rumble as Mothra, fresh from her own slumber, rallies from Infant Island and comes to join Godzilla in the fight against the Xiliens. She's cut off from her cavalry rescue though by the new and improved Gigan, fresh from the latest episode of "Pimp My Kaiju"!

With his new duel super chainsaw arms, purple flame decals and "La Cucaracha" horn, Gigan III ("The Revenge!") assails Mothra with the proverbial monster truck force, clipping one of her wings and sending her off into a tail spin of oblivion... wow, lotta fucking good the bug was this time... surprised she wasn't distracted by a stray candle on the way over.

Gigan and Monster X then take turns pounding on the G-Monster, who's really wishing he had some more lobsters or dogs or iguanas or pollution to fight. The moth proves she's down but not out though, rejoining the fray and sacrificing herself in a flaming ball of goodness to take out her second Gigan of the movie... after the big retard manages to decapitate himself with his own flying razor blade death discs of doom... Man, I'm starting to suspect the Xiliens were responsible for putting together that defective Rock 'Em, Sock 'Em™ I had as a kid.

Not too concerned with all that crap, Godzilla and X go back to treating each other like Mr. T Bop Bags™. As for the Xiliens, it's time to jump back to them for a while. Charmin blasts Shin with some kind of evolution ray that makes him a Kaizer too, and immediately orders him to kill his friends. Miyuki pulls out the Mothra corporate dagger and sheaths it in Shin, brining him back to his senses, but letting keep all his groovy new matter manipulation powers. Shin of course uses these cool new abilities to take on Charmin, during which the real General Daigo and the other formerly body snatched victims appear with guns a blazin', making an opening through the Xilien soldiers for the rest of the heroes to escape back to the Atragon. As you can imagine Shin wins out and Charmin, despite having had so much more experience with his powers than the new guy, gets his ass kicked. The good guys escape in their penis ship and the mothership goes boom.

As for Godzilla, just when he seems to have won his own bout of fisticuffs Monster X whips out his trump... I don't think we need to see that kids.

When his shoulders dislodge to become two additional heads, he extends his neck, turns his arms into another pair of legs, then grows a pair of tails becoming... dramatic pause... Kaizer Ghidorah! Yeah, that's right, did you think they were going to make a "final" Godzilla movie and not include the tri-headed super dragon in some form?! No. And if you thought different, then you're stupid and I feel sorry for your family. Either way, I guess Monster X had more in common with Monster Zero than I originally gave him credit for...

After beating the King like a scaly bitch, KG latches onto Big Green (a name I've never understood, considering he's always been blue... at least on my TV...) and pulls a Lestat, sucking the monster of his precious fluids in the gayest monster-on-monster action you'll never wanna see. Godzilla's not down yet though, cuz Shin gets the bright idea to send a dose of his new Matrix powers through the Atragon's mazer gun and imbue Godzilla with kaiju super 'roids!

And by that, I mean "steroids" not "hemorrhoids", as I'm not sure that inflamed ass veins, induced by "the One" or not, are gonna be a whole lot of help against a giant dragon with three heads that shoot lightning. Just thought I should specify.

Back from the dead and pissed as all fuck, Godzilla rips ol' Three Heads a new rape hole, beating the M-Base out of him then decapitating two of his heads before tossing him like an oversized volleyball into the air and disintegrating the monster into shit particles with his trusty mouth cannon. During the conflict the Atragon was bumped and therefore downed, making it completely helpless when Godzilla turns his nuclear ("it's pronounced 'nucular'...") rage upon and prepares to finish what these pesky humans started 40 years ago. Minilla pops up and blast-blocks big daddy though, standing in front of the humans in one of those defiant, "You'll have to get through me first!" stances. Instead of just showing the little nuisance the error of his ways and setting Junior on fire, Godzilla figures it's not worth the hassle and heads off for a well deserved nap in the Pacific. Mini says adios to his stupid little Kenny friend and Kenny's fried old samurai grandpa, then follows daddy into the depths of the watery brine. The humans breathe a collective sigh of relief and depart to their homes to clean the mess out of their pants, leaving Big G and Junior to wade away in the sunset like some tortured cowboy hero and his fat, donkey riding, dirt poncho and sombrero wearing, Spanglish speaking Mexican sidekick.

And so, 50 years of peaks and valleys for the king of all monsters ends... well... on a ledge somewhere in the middle.

As Godzilla movies go, Final Wars wasn't the monster jamboree that I, nor probably most of the viewing public, was expecting. Sure, the kaiju sequences looked amazing. There've been some incredible advances in the field of rubber suits and cardboard buildings over the last 50 years. The problem wasn't so much the quality of the action itself, but came instead from the quantity of the scenes in question... or lack thereof. When I sit down for a Godzilla flick, I expect hardcore monster smashing action that lasts for no less than 10 minutes of nonstop rubber suited brutality! What we get instead are too many monsters getting their asses handed to them in too little time. Instead of giving us the battle royale we'd all hoped for (ala Destroy All Monsters), we instead wind up with a series of sad little under card bouts with the Big G wiping the proverbial floor with the other monsters like he was an elementary school janitor mopping up the cafeteria floors on meatloaf day! Sure, this could easily be seen as a testament to how mighty the king of kaiju really is, but it's far from entertaining. It reminds me of the early days of Bill Goldberg at WCW, when he would plow through his waves of challengers like they were a busload of kids from the short bus. I'll admit it's worth a laugh when the first few helmeted heads hit the pavement, but after that it's predictable and kinda sad. You actually feel bad for the losers once you realize how outclassed they are.

And what about Gigan?! After all the build up to the movie and all the talk about the new Gigan design(s) and how much ass he was guaranteed to kick, he gets wasted in under a minute by Godzilla in the first round, then comes back for the double team, only to go up in a ball of moth-powered flames by some pansy-ass butterfly with a busted wing! Boo! If anything, Final Wars has only sullied my love of the cyclopean death-beast from the stars! And he didn't even get to use his friggin' gut-saw! My heart flat out dropped out of my ass after the Ebirah/Hedorah scene, as I realized that two of my favorite G enemies, who I'd been so excited about being able to see again after all these years, were treated like piss-ant little jobbers. I now shake my head in frustration and for every flea that's made airborne from my mane, I hope it leaves an oily blotch on Kitamura's soul...

As far as the actors who played human/humanoid characters, there was a lot of your typical Japanese film fare: screaming, shouting, high pitched whining and facial expressions ranging from "hehe" happy to "I put all my power into this final blow!" intensity to "Godzilla will save the day for us, of this I am sure!" elation. Shin filled the Kitamura "tormented hero" role easily enough, while Charmin played the Kitamura "jumping, raging, over-animated villain" role to the proverbial 'T'. Didn't understand a lick of what they were saying, but hey, who am I to judge the benefit of taking over the world and forcing everybody to learn to speak one global language... aside from the language of deviant sexual acts that is.

Captain Gordon (our resident American with an odd amount of power considering he's working for the Japanese) was played by Dan Frye, who some people (mostly those who live in a trailer park and spend all their welfare on cigarettes and Pay-Per-View "sports entertainment") may recognize as a former Ultimate Fighting Championship uberbeast. Sadly, though his skill with a sword and general bad-assed appearance work for his rough-and-tumble character, his acting made me whimper as a puppy being scolded by a gruff old guy with a monotone voice and a drinking problem would. But, since he was one of the only English speaking link I had to what exactly was happening before my confused gaijin eyes, I've gotta cut him some slack. Hey, he did a favor for me, now I'm doing a favor for him.

Granted, all of 4 people will actually read this review and no more than maybe two of those people will actually care about what I'm saying here, but then I never said it was a BIG favor I was doing for him, now was it?

Further American influences on the film came from the group responsible for the Godzilla Final Wars theme music: Sum41?! What a trio of pop-punk-metal wieners has to do with Godzilla's 50th is an enigma to me, but oddly enough the song contributed fits the tone of the scene in which it played: loud, fast, angry and destructive! I'm not going to say it was the best choice in regards to popular American music, but it wasn't terrible.

I was also annoyed by many of the "people reacting to the monster attacks elsewhere in the world" scenes... greatly annoyed... fire ants strip mining my ass annoyed. These parts of the movie I wish had been voiced in something other than English, as the actors portraying the various roles (New York City pimp-cop-homeless drunk trio, fat Canadian kid with a dirty Sanchez of chocolate and toy versions of the giant monsters that destroy our world daily, two Australian punkers know how to run from a 780ft tall iguana) seem fresh out of Tromaville. Yes, they're really that bad! Maybe these guys were left behind by Troma when they were filming Toxic Avenger II and Toho took them in as their own cinema orphans (i.e. "cheap labor") and they were the only white people available for filming these lame scenes, but even that is no excuse for the resultant sequences. For a movie that seemed to be trying to take itself seriously, these moments just cheapen the viewers with moments of groan-inducing agony that would've been more comfortable on the cutting room floor. Barf.

The general consensus I took from reading other reviews of Final Wars was that most thought the movie mediocre, some thought it was the best thing since Viagra™, while a very minute fraction gave it the full-on thumbs-down-of-doom. Of course, this is taking into consideration that the few people who have seen this movie already are either big time G-Fans who hunted down their own bootlegs, or Japanese people... and since I can't read Japanese, I didn't read any Japanese movie reviews, so I'm sticking with the whole "big time G-Fans" theory. Now, this fact skews the opinions slightly. The ones who loved it immensely I had to pretty much disavow, as their biases had a tendency to show through. I fit into the camp of G-Fans who, though I've been a lover of the King the majority of my conscious life, can also admit when I don't agree with the creative staff of his movies. The plot of the movie was generic, mish-mashing elements of the original Destroy All Monsters with neo-sci-fi mainstream stuff ripped straight out of The Matrix. Aside from the dwindling originality, there was way too much human story going on here. I watch these movies because they're Godzilla movies, so gimme more Godzilla for my fucking money you bastards! It's not called Dan Frye: Final Wars, you pricks!

Basically, unlike some reviewers I'm not bashing the length (2 hours these days really isn't a big deal, and up till the end it seems to gel along with relative "baby's ass" smoothness), but like most reviewers I am going to bash the decision to put so much focus on the whole stupid Matrix cloning (though I'll be the first to admit that the motorcycle chase/fight scene made a bitch out of my sweet tooth), while neglecting the monster fights as little more than "filler", rather than the righteous "killer" it should have been. All I know is that Toho's supposedly got a decade to work out these problems for the next movie and stop pulling a George Lucas by killing their own franchise. If they still don't get the message by then, I think it'll be time we bid a bitter farewell to the all time greatest monster of filmdom.