Godzilla vs. Biollante: The Real Monsters

The story picks up immediately after Godzilla’s assault on Shinjuku in the previous movie, with teams of scientists scouring the destroyed city to collect biological cells left behind by the monster as it lies dormant within Mount Mihara, an active volcano. Secretly present amid the devastation, commando-like operatives from a U.S. corporation named Bio-Major are busy gathering their own radioactive material, with the goal of developing a bacterium that will render harmless all nuclear weapons, as well as any ensuing fallout from their use. Once discovered, the covert group engages in a firefight with the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF), escaping before its members are ambushed by a lone assassin from the Republic of Saradia—a fictitious Middle Eastern country in conflict with the Americans—who then makes off with the precious Godzilla biological samples.

We are also introduced to Dr. Genichiro Shiragami (Koji Takahashi), a world-renowned authority on genetic engineering who—along with his daughter, Erika (Yasuko Sawaguchi)—utilizes the stolen Godzilla cells to create a form of wheat that can grow in Saradia’s harsh desert conditions. But a terrorist attack by Bio-Major destroys his work and kills Erika. Disillusioned, Shiragami returns to Japan, where he chooses to live in remote seclusion on the shore of Lake Ashi and cultivate roses made from Erika’s genes—an attempt to keep some aspect of his daughter alive.

Thematically, the original Godzilla and The Return of Godzilla were responses to the Cold War, but tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union had eased considerably by the late eighties. Though nuclear weapons do factor tangentially in the plot of Godzilla vs. Biollante, the film had to introduce a new menace into the franchise in order to maintain the relevance of its social commentary. The first Godzilla movie centered on a weapon of mass destruction called the Oxygen Destroyer, which is devised to kill the monster but yields something even more terrible. A close parallel in Godzilla vs. Biollante can be found in the misuse of biotechnology and gene-splicing to tinker with the beast’s indestructible essence and produce a weapon capable of defeating it, experimentation that ironically unleashes a brand-new danger: a creature that has the potential to become larger and even more powerful than Godzilla. Exacerbating this imminent threat is the struggle between the international powers who want to steal the resulting biological weapon for their own divergent purposes, as well as the willingness of each to use Godzilla as a pawn in pursuit of those ends.

Like its predecessor, Godzilla vs. Biollante returns the King of the Monsters to its roots as the central threat of the series. Far meaner and more enraged than ever, Godzilla is so powerful here that neither military weapons nor an active volcano can hold it back. When engaged in battle, the monster’s human adversaries can only try to direct it away from heavily populated areas. Unlike the Godzilla of the seventies, a figure beloved by children, this updated version is a deadly force to be reckoned with—one so formidable that its only possible match is another incarnation of itself.

Despite not making a full appearance until forty minutes in, Godzilla is a continual source of dread from the start. Early on, in one of the most effective scenes in the entire franchise, gifted children at a psychic-research center are asked to draw what they dreamed about the previous night. The scientists supervising them are aghast when everyone in the group holds up a crayon drawing of Godzilla, an eerie premonition of the monster’s eventual emergence and the fiery destruction it will bring. The children’s exuberance contrasts with the adults’ horror—a signal that the Heisei-era Godzilla is decidedly not kids’ stuff.

Influenced by the pioneering transformation effects in eighties body-horror films such as An American Werewolf in London and The Thing, Godzilla vs. Biollante succeeds in installing a wholly original kaiju in Toho’s stable of monsters: a wildly mutating plant-animal hybrid that harbors a tortured female spirit. Caught inside Biollante is the deceased Erika’s consciousness, eliciting audience sympathy, in a Frankenstein’s-monster-like way, for the abominable creature. This creation embodies the film’s combination of ominous science fiction and more lightly fantastical Showa-era flourishes—a key reason it is often cited as a franchise high point. Omori was aided in bringing this vision to the screen by Koichi Kawakita, who assumed the mantle of special-effects director from Tsuburaya’s protégé Teruyoshi Nakano, an important contributor to the series throughout the sixties and seventies. Prior to Godzilla vs. Biollante, Kawakita had helmed the visual effects for the science-fiction films Sayonara Jupiter and Gunhed, and his darker, more realistic approach—in line with the trendsetting The Terminator and Aliens—corresponded well with Omori’s direction for Godzilla vs. Biollante. Kawakita, who went on to direct effects for several more Godzilla films, made his most indelible mark on the franchise with his highly detailed miniature set pieces, exemplified by a scene in the movie in which Godzilla takes on the Japanese military in the Uraga Channel, and by the spectacle of Godzilla and Biollante confronting each other in a fog-shrouded lake.