Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters (2017) - FFF - Through the Eyes of Cat

By Cat

Number Rolled: N/A

Movie Name/Year: Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters (2017)

Tagline: Who will be ruined, Human or Godzilla.    

Genre: Animation, Sci-Fi

Length: 88 minutes

Rating: TV-14

Production Companies: Polygon Pictures, Toho Company, Netflix

Producers: Yoshihiro Furusawa, Takashi Yoshizawa

Directors: Hiroyuki Seshita, Kôbun Shizuno

Writers: Gen Urobuchi, Sadayuki Murain, Yusuke Kozaki

Actors:  Mamoru Miyano, Takahiro Sakurai, Kana Hanazawa, Yûki Kaji, Tomokazu Sugita, Junichi Suwabe, Daisuke Ono, Kenta Miyake

Stunts: N/A

Blurb from Netflix: Faced with a grave dilemma, the crew of the Aratrum decide to return to Earth. There, Haruo and his shipmates make an astounding discovery.

Cat's Point of View: 

I was rather excited to see that a new Godzilla movie was slated for Netflix when we were sifting through trailers for the November 2017 Top 20 list. I even listed it as my personal #17. The fact that it was anime was icing on the cake, really.

While this film does have an English audio track, I chose to watch with the Japanese audio and subtitles. Occasionally, some nuances can get ‘lost in translation’ when you view something in a language other than its original. Don’t get me wrong, some anime out there have excellently translated English dubs – I just didn’t want to take a chance with my first watch-through of this one. To be fair, when I did discover (after the fact) that English was available, I did replay a bit of the first scene to compare and it was fine. In fact, I hadn’t turned the English subtitles off, so it was showing the translation version. The English dub actually flowed a little better. Some of the fun of watching anime, for me at least, is finding the occasional odd translation…but I digress.

I loved the animation style for this movie. The colors were vibrant and there was such nuanced detail. This is my favorite style of anime, to be honest. Sure the cutesy sort where characters in distress have sweat-drops and ultra-cartoony expressions are fine – it’s just not my preference. That’s not saying I like them any less – I just prefer the animation of say Ghost in the Shell (1995) and Wolf's Rain (2003-2004), for example.

Moving on!

I thought the narrative for this film was interesting. Godzilla, and monsters of his ilk, have chased humanity from Earth. When faced with dire choices, do they dare try to return? The movie’s packed with drama, action, and emotion. Some might diss Godzilla’s appearance here for being slow or something along those lines – but I actually appreciated the take on the ‘king of monsters.’ This guy is massive and gargantuan things like that generally wouldn’t move ultra-fast, right? It felt spot-on, to me at least.

This really was everything I hoped it would be – from the classic Godzilla creature aesthetic to the action-packed and emotion-driven story. While there wasn’t a catchy tune laced into the movie itself, I adored the tune playing during the credits.

I’m looking forward to the next 2 installments of this trilogy. If you’re a fan of Godzilla or anime, or want to check either genre out, I’d recommend this movie in a heartbeat. 

Languages:

Speech Available:  English. French, Japanese (original), Japanese (audio description), Mandarin, Spanish

Subtitles Available: English, Japanese [CC], Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Traditional Chinese

Rotten Tomatoes Critic Score – None

Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score – 54%

Metascore - None

Metacritic User Score – None

IMDB Score – 6.1/10

Trust the Dice: Cat’s Rating – 4/5

P.S. There's a scene after the credits.

Movie Trailer: