Version: Eastern Eye R4 DVD - Japanese, English subtitles
Godzilla is back to stomp all over Japan, but this time he has to fight a giant dragonfly... Sounds awesome, yes no?
In 1996, Japan has been running on clean, renewable energy for thirty years, and has not seen Godzilla since 1966. Clean energy can no longer provide enough power for Japan, the government begins research into neutron energy. Naturally, Godzilla takes the opportunity to announce his coming out of retirement and levels the neutron facility while decimating the anti-Godzilla force 'G-Grasper'. Obviously, military's plan was to confuse Godzilla with a funny name, and then fire a few missiles at him. Needless to say, it doesn't work.
Several years later, Kiriko Tsujimori (Misato Tanaka) - a survivor of G-Grasper's 1996 encounter with Godzilla - is now the G-Grasper commander and has a grudge against Godzilla. Obviously G-Grasper need a new weapon to take on Godzilla, and so they turn to Japan's crazy scientists. The result is a cannon called the 'Dimension Tide': a weapon designed to shoot black holes, which they intend to shoot at Godzilla, from space, to minimize the damage to Earth. Obviously no one thought of any possible negative consequences of shooting a black hole - from space, mind you - towards a moving target Earth. The mad scientists have really gone off the deep end here. Of course, they test it first, and open up a rift to another dimension, letting a swarm of Meganuron (over-sized dragonflies) through.
Essentially, 'Godzilla vs Megaguirus' is a lighter, happier version of both 'Godzilla vs Destroyer' and 'Gamera 2'. The Meganuron / Megaguirus greatly resembles the Legion from 'Gamera 2'. The shots of Godzilla being swarmed by the Meganuron, look much like the shots of Gamera being swarmed by the Legion. However, going one up on the other two movies, 'Godzilla vs Megaguirus' has better special effects. The 'Alien' style Meganuron look a lot better than the 'Alien' style Destroyer(s) from 'Godzilla vs Destroyer'. Also, it has mad scientists. A big bonus. They might not look like mad scientists, but they certainly think like them.
There is some nice monster action, even if it is heavily offset by the human characters running shooting black holes at things. The Tokyo showdown between Godzilla vs Megaguirus is fun. It may not come close to one of the best monster fight scenes, but its funny and entertaining. Smart use of CGI ensures the monsters and fights look good, but on the other hand, for a giant dragonfly, Megaguirus does not beat his wing that often.
'Godzilla vs Megaguirus' is a fun Godzilla movie, and should appeal to Godzilla fans. It does drag on a little though - 7/10
