Arbok wrote:For me the negative was that the serious tone of the series left after Biollante. Both of the 1980's entries had both a serious or gothic take on things, and that felt like it was totally gone by the 1990's. I enjoy all of them, but I can certainly say as a kid I was beyond disappointed in Godzilla vs King Ghidorah and its departure from the two prior films in tone.
Both Return of Godzilla and Godzilla vs Biollante are bit rough around the edges, though it would have been better to continue in that direction and perfect the new style. If Toho was concerned about it being too dark for mainstream appeal, it's possible to inject some levity without completely abandoning the atmosphere. Would have helped the Heisei films to further distinguish themselves from what came before. I would have preferred that over the trilogy of poorly executed nostalgia wanking we got instead. Everything post-Biollante suffers from various degrees of blandness, inexcusably sloppy special effects, mundane acting, poor pacing, ill-advised homages to Hollywood blockbusters, and underdeveloped scripts (that wasted interesting concepts) undeserving of the increased run times. Godzilla was never subtle about its themes, but Godzilla vs Mothra took things to levels previously inconceivable. All of the fight scenes after Godzilla vs King Ghidorah leave me feeling bored. Switching between shot/countershot and long shots of borderline immobile monsters spamming beams or sparking as they bump into one another with little concern for pacing doesn't do much for me. Akira Ifukube did his best to make the images onscreen seem important though there's only so music can do to uplift such material. Compare anything after Godzilla vs King Ghidorah to the final battle of Guardian of the Universe or the Shibuya district fight in The Revenge of Iris. But I do appreciate the inclusion of animatronics in the Heisei Godzilla films.