LSD Jellyfish wrote:Also, I never really understood why Mothra really agrees to help the humans out in the end. At first it’s very clear Mothra is anti-human, and then she just sorta changes her mind. She actually just sortve shows up at the end to save the egg, not really help out, and then the larva get revenge. The whole narrative with the humans trying to convince Mothra to stop Godzilla is irrelevant sortve,
Wow, no, it's absolutely not at all irrelevant. Not even sorta.
The Shobijin try several times to get Mothra's egg returned. They try Kumayama and Torahata first, but those two only want to exploit them. Sakai, Junko, and Dr. Miura try to help them but despite a minor effort they're ineffective. Their cynicism is revealed and the Shobijin give up. (Whether this is frustration or just accepting the circumstances isn't clear at this point.) They return to their home saying that they appreciate the effort.
When the trio then appear on Infant Island to convince the islanders to allow Mothra to fight Godzilla the natives are obviously very much against this. So too are the Shobijin. (This is where it's implied that the Shobijin had given up earlier because they didn't think the Japanese were to be trusted.) They make the argument that, why should they help when the people of Japan were unwilling or unable to help them.
That's what the movie is trying to say: we shouldn't have to have a reason to help our brothers and sisters. We're all human. In a way the Shobijin (and by extension Mothra, although she's clearly not human) have no reason to help. But they ultimately do because it's the right thing. There's literally nothing anti-human about Mothra or the Shobijin here. So having the main characters go to Infant Island and literally beg for help is kinda the whole point of the movie besides having Godzilla and Mothra fight.
Also the Mothra larvae are not really getting revenge. They're just completing what their mother had come to Japan to do: stop Godzilla from destroying Japan.
Edit (again): Kaiju-King, I don't know if you were referring to
my post in the talkback thread but that's basically been my interpretation of that final act drama. I'd never considered LSD Jellyfish's suggestion of having Godzilla turn toward a major population center before but I guess that would work too. What I don't like about that, however, is that the stakes are so high at that point that everyone basically has to act. (I mean, wouldn't you if you felt you had a chance to prevent your home town from being destroyed?) What I prefer about having them rescue a group of children is that they put themselves directly in harm's way to help only a few people rather than thousands. It reinforces that concept of helping others because it's the right thing to do, not because you'd benefit from it. Rescuing children is less exciting and likely more anticlimactic than saving Tokyo or something, but I think it was the right choice to complete the characters' arcs.
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I really do wanna like that film more than I do, but I just can't get into it. 
