Directed by: Hiroyuki Seshita, Kobun Shizuno
Written by: Gen Urobuchi, Sadayuki Murai, Yusuke Kozaki
Starring (English Dub): Chris Niosi, Lucien Dodge, Edward Bosco
IMDb Link
Now available on Netflix
DISCLAIMER: Before we begin, this film is essentially useless to newcomers of Godzilla movies. Unlike Legendary's 2014 Godzilla reboot or Toho's recent Shin Godzilla, this film asks its audience to accept far more sci-fi jargon additional concepts that are a lot easier to swallow if you're aware of how they're essentially par for the course when standing next to some of the older films. Giant monsters is one thing, but multiple alien races with even more attached to both of them is only acceptable if you're used to that sort of thing from mid-Showa and some Heisei era work.
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Humanity had to abandon Earth after several giant monsters, including Godzilla, rose from the earth and inflicted destruction upon civilisation. Aided by two space-faring alien races, who had each tried and failed to subdue either humanity or Godzilla in their own ways, humanity retreats in to space. Due to relative light-speed travel, while humanity slowly loses hope in space for the next twenty-two years, life continues to evolve for a further 10,000, the planet's ecosystem shaping itself entirely around the Godzilla species. If that sounds unnecessarily convoluted to you, it's because it is.
The movie is so heavily front-loaded with exposition involving stuff that won't matter until future films in this planned trilogy that all of the potential emotional attachment to the human characters gets lost. There's this early thread about the remains of the government dumping 'useless' members of the population on uninhabitable planets for the sake of the colony that starts as the driving force of the main character's motivation, but it gets re-directed to hatred towards Godzilla because he put them in space in the first place and is largely never spoken of again. Both species of aliens have their own commentaries and solutions on the board, and one species even has history with Godzilla-like creatures, but neither of them do anything for the sake of the actual plot and simply spout religion and allude to MechaGodzilla. There's an environmental message and a theme of change in the film, but both once again get lost in the unnecessary detail of it all, like a guy telling you a gripping tale in between reading you the Apple License Agreement.
The animation doesn't save the film, unfortunately. It's so stiff and it stutters; the actual designs of the humans are fine and the design of Godzilla is excellent, but none of it moves with any sense of fluidity or connectivity. Godzilla's atomic breath is a nice effect, but it comes across as separate from Godzilla himself, as he makes no motion to open his mouth and just spends the entire movie with a slightly agape jaw. I would've assumed that this was a stylistic choice, as they explicitly mention Godzilla's plant-like changes, but when the humans aren't much better, I have to assume it was some sort of limitation.
The film manages to somewhat recover in its final act, as is the case when all that matters to a lot of people is seeing the big guy destroy things, but it still carries with it all of the problems it had before. The film can't even revel in the Godzilla reveal without him looking stiff as a board or interspersing it with one of the alien species talking in vague religious language for attempted dramatic effect.
The Short Version: Planet of the Monsters is consistently lacklustre, with stiff animation, boring characters and an unnecessarily convoluted plot. However, it contains an interesting, if mostly unexplored, concept at its core, and as is the case with kaiju movies, it manages to almost bring it home with an explosive, action-packed finale involving the biggest, baddest monster of them all.
Rating: 4/10
Published January 1st, 2018
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