Son of Godzilla is the last movie I have to watch to bridge the gap between the original film and second one that will be covered in the double feature episode of the podcast I used to listen to, you know, back before I took a seven movie digression. It will be weird to get back to that, perhaps.
On the one hand, this movie is every bit as weird as some of the prior recent ones, and for some of the same reasons[1]. I think the reason it doesn’t work here is because the writers are no longer taking themselves seriously. Godzilla should not be a punchline, and yet he has become one. I mean, in this case he has not specifically become one, but since his son is, it feels like nearly the same thing.
Let me break it down. 1) There are scientists on an island trying to build a weather control balloon, to make things cold, to… I forget why. To transform deserts into livability? To harvest water? Something related to climate change before that was quite a thing, anyhow. 2) There’s a reporter who just randomly parachutes onto islands in search of news stories, which on the face of it sounds ridiculous, but then when you remember that some islands have frozen Godszilla and some islands have miniature twin prophets preaching the good news about Mothra, maybe it’s fair to say that this is a reasonable way to build a career in the northwestern Pacific. 3) There’s a mysterious lady on the island that none of the scientists know about, and possibly vice versa? 4) There’s a big egg. 5) Something goes wrong with the weather balloon experiment (again, not entirely clear on what, which is a defect in my character rather than the film’s), and when that something goes wrong, instead of making things cold, it makes things both hotter than ever and also radioactive, because why not? 6) So now there are some newly giant praying mantises attacking the egg, which hatches to reveal Godzilla’s son. Why Godzilla is only referred to as male and his pudgy kid is also only referred to as male are mysteries beyond mortal ken, especially when you consider that an egg is a plot point.
The rest of the movie is Godzilla’s son making pratfalls, and kind of bonding with the mystery lady, and learning how to breathe atomic breath, while a giant but not apparently recently-grown-due-to-radioactivity spider re-proves that Godzilla’s main weakness is being coated in silk.
What I still don’t know: does this mean there’s a third Godzilla coming when the old one dies or nobly sacrifices himself or something and then the son grows up, or does it mean the son will eventually expire in some similar way, or does it mean forever after until the series ends that there will be two of them? And man, can you imagine a teenaged Godzilla? That will be a bad time for everyone.
[1] Which are mostly: let’s see just how many disparate details we can cram into a single plot.