The Rebirth of Mothra Trilogy

[TokyoVigilante]

Since I've recently watched all three (in one sitting at that) of these, I'm interested in some casual discussion around them. Made likely in response to the successful Gamera Trilogy at the time, RoM concerns the adventures of a recently born "Mothra Leo" and his various environment defending adventures.

RoM-1: In fact, a very enjoyable film. Could have easily dissolved into a "Save the Trees/Hate the Man" film, but is saved by the the father character Mr. Goto. A foreman of a logging facility who despises the wasteful use of paper. The presence of this character I found refreshing and surprising. So I give it props for that. Secondly, Kawakita's effects here are pretty sharp, with an entertaining aerial battle through the Goto house between Belvera and the Elias that was filmed quite convincingly.

However, the real special effects highlight is Desghidorah. One of the greatest creations Kawakita has ever committed to film. What a great looking creature.


RoM-2: Blah. Awful movie. I'm not one to hate on a monster, I generally enjoy and embrace all movie monsters for their design originality and unqiueness, but I despise Dagahra. An absolutely awful design. It never even looked good from the concept art. It's just a stiff, bloated prop with a dragon head. It's everything wrong with Heisei design philosophy as Spacegodzilla is.


RoM-3: A vast improvement over the second, but I found it still weaker then the first. A plot that goes all over the place and never focuses on any one thing for long enough. The effects though, are strong. While the CG employed remains cringe worthy, Special Effects Director Kenji Suzuki has a solid opening film in charge of the effects. In particular, the battle between Leo and the Cretaceous Ghidorah was engaging and dramatic, and while I'm not as big of a fan of Grand King Ghidorah as some (Some of the the design aspects, such as the small heads, and the chunky, low set wings just turn me off of it), I see why he's popular.


Discuss!

[Mini-Godzilla]

Rebirth of Mothra: Probably my favorite Toho monster movie of the 1990s, edging out Destroyah and G2K.

Rebirth II--The Quickening: My vote for worst Toho monster movie of all time. Incompetence all around.

Rebirth III--The Final Chapter: About on the level of the typical 90s Godzilla film. Okay.

[Hellspawn28]

I enjoy these movies since they are enjoyable, and I think the second or 3rd one is the best series. I wish Sony would release them on DVD since I can watch them in subs.

[HedorahLives]

I like this trilogy.

Rebirth of Mothra

Pro:

Mother Mothra's death scene in part 1. I'd compare it to Godzilla's demise in Godzilla vs Destroyah. Say what you will about Kawakita, but he knew how to milk a good kaiju death scene.

Mothra Leo. Obviously the entire trilogy rests upon him. A plucky kaiju superhero, similar to Godzilla's characterization in the 70s but with all the traditional Mothra elements too.

Grand King Ghidorah. Maybe my favorite incarnation of the King of Terror, though the 1964 and 1991 versions are also dear to me. What I especially love is that ROMIII let's him be his own man for the first time since his debut. Screw aliens!

Desighidorah. Not a patch on the king, but still a pretty good creation. Basically he's part Ghidorah, part horse. He's the king's steed. =) Either way, he was a good initial villain to begin the trilogy with.

The running subplot of the two good fairies versus the evil older sister didn't always work, but it made for a nice little arch throughout the three films. It's pretty much something you'd see on Power Rangers, but it's good for what it is.

The plot of ROMIII. It makes little sense on paper, but I dug it. Mothra goes back in time. King Ghidorah wills himself back into existence after being wiped out. Don't know why, don't care why, just dug it. The monster action in this movie was top notch too. The mudhole stomping that Mothra takes early on is brutal. Also, part 3 had less "annoying children character" moments than this first two.

Cons I'll get into later.

[HayesAJones]

I enjoy all three films , even if I'm not a big fan of Mothra. We got some very cool villains from them, particularly Grand King Ghidorah. The Elias and their battle with Belvera were interesting too.

[TokyoVigilante]

The plot of ROMIII. It makes little sense on paper, but I dug it. Mothra goes back in time. King Ghidorah wills himself back into existence after being wiped out. Don't know why, don't care why, just dug it.

I agree. I like how the film wasn't to concerned with the small details of the time travel, but just focused on the primary purpose of it. (killing the young Ghidorah) it was very efficent about that, so I think the result is a stronger time travel story then what we got in GvsKG.

[Tyler]

Rebirth of Mothra - Okay.
Rebirth of Mothra II - Pretty bad, but I can still watch it.
Rebirth of Mothra III - Haven't seen it in so long. Come on, Sony.

[Godzilla 1995]

RoM : I enjoy it for the score, visuals, and solid acting coming from the Elias and Belvera. The kaiju themselves were actors as well, and were enjoyable to watch. A pretty good movie, but with some flaws.

RoM II: Just plain bad. That's all that really needs to be said.

Haven't seen RoM III yet.

[Hellspawn28]

GKG was a awesome monster since GKG was everything that Heisei KG should have been. I hope Mothra Leo will return one day, maybe in a Toho Godzilla movie.

[Legion1979]

I have almost no use for these movies.

[HedorahLives]

GKG was a awesome monster since GKG was everything that Heisei KG should have been. I hope Mothra Leo will return one day, maybe in a Toho Godzilla movie.

You know, I never considered Mothra Leo to be "Mothra" any more than Godzilla Jr. was "Godzilla". A clash between those two would've been cool and maybe a whole next generation monster thing could've been cool for a movie or two, but, eh, the window for that was closed a long time ago. Fertile ground for fan fiction though.

Anyways...

CONS

Annoying children characters and character moments. Off the top of my head, the part where the protagonists get to ride Mothra Leo at the end of the first movie is pretty...lame. That's about the worst it got. ROMIII, imo, actually had a pretty good main character and the ROMII kids were just typically kid movie stereotypes.

The fairy chase scene in Part 1. I get what they were going for, but they drug that sequence out far too long.

My biggest gripe, though, is that all three movies end pretty much the same way: Mothra Leo gains a new form and uses it to kick his opponent's ass. In the first movie, it worked best because Leo was just a larva, so of course the full Mothra form would be the ace in the hole. In the case of the sequels, though, I'd prefer that Mothra Leo would need to rely on his wits to finish off his opponents, but I guess different forms and superhero transformations were in vogue at the time and, hell, Toho likes to sell toys. I actually kinda like Aqua Mothra and Armor Mothra, as weird as they both are, but I can't deny that it was repetitious plotwise.

Dagahra...actually, I'm not sure this is a con. He wasn't the most inventive thing Toho ever created and his strategy of covering Mothra Leo with starfish and blasting at him ineffectively wasn't terribly exciting, but it was...original...and I did feel sorry for him when he got beat in the end. So I guess he's not completely worthless in my estimation. Still, he is one of the least popular kaiju creations of all time.

[ZigraDude]

Rebirth of Mothra-This one was decent. It's been a few years since I've seen it but I remember liking it to a degree.
Rebirth of Mothra 2-God, do I despise this piece of crap. It's the worst Toho flick. Ever. And it doesn't help that I've only seen this dubbed. Never again.
Rebirth of Mothra 3-I've only seen it once when it aired on the Starz Channel back in '07. I don't remember much but I did like it. That probably had to do with Grand King Ghidorah being in it, though. Plus, the dinosaurs looked really bad. If I re-watched this movie today I would probably dislike it.

Man, I really need to watch all three movies again but in Japanese with English subs. I've only seen them dubbed (cringes).

[g2kmaster]

ROM:
As first impressions go, I got to say that watching this film for the first time in over 5 years was "magical". Haven't felt like this since the first time I watched G3. The emotions and such...

But enough about first impressions. Originaly, I was wanting to post a personal opinion since I thoguht it was going to be better than my critical, but my critical opinion of this film pretty much got alot better.

Human wise, the characters that are in the film that are not the Elias are pretty good. Two dimentional, but they get the point across. The kids, while sometimes comming off as irrational (the candy scene) offer alittle bit of comedic relief. The actor for the father is bad, but I got to say that I feel in love with Wakaba. She is the most interesting child character in a kaiju film since Banno's "Godzilla vs. Hedorah". You know that she is a smart but manipulative girl when we see the book argument. She cries and she fights and when the mother makes her brother stop, we see her face that she is just faking it and continues to cry to get on her bro's case. Damn.

As far as the Elias go, Moll and Lora are perfect, I wouldn't change them. They both take their roles (softie and hardie) pretty well. I got to complain about the actress for Belvera. I just couldn't belive her. The acting for her was terrible, but she gets points for bleeding. Yay, blood! But other than her, the Elias are cool and their singing is well.

The direction of the human scenes are pretty, "average". However, some stuff comes off as above average. The most important scene in the film reguarding the humans is one thing which I am surprised that isn't mentioned more often: the hospital scene. When I hear some people talk about GMK, they claim that they haven't seen the effects of a kaiju battle like that since Hedorah and before that the original Gojira. Obviously this film has been forgoten along with this scene. It is a pretty well directed scene, with the most important part about it being the cell phone scene. We have the journalist talking on his cell phone describing the grim setting to his editor or whoever and then it gets stupid with the fighting over the cell phone. But it gets smart again once we see blame being taken out on the father character. Awesome. Just awesome. It is a totaly well done take on the whole enviormentalist issue. It is different from Godzilla vs. Hedorah and makes up what disapointment there was with Gvs.M92.

That's leads to the score. The score by Toshiyuki Watanabe is a great. No, gorgeous one and I see why he was considered to do the score for GXM before Oshima got into the game. This guy should have done the score for Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla. Just totaly short sighted Hattori's heisei score and even does some stuff that can rival Ifukube's Heisei work (not by much, but alittle). The new rendition of the Mothra song was better than what I remember it being. The other songs are very beautiful (especialy the song which was sung durring the cocoon scene which is up there with my favorite mothra song, Haora Mosura from M3). Just really mind blowing. And like Ifukube, Wantanabe's score really does help increase the imact of the scenes, especialy the tokusatsu scenes. The music just makes you feel emotions.

That is why we are here anyway, isn't it? The tokusatsu scenes. That is why we even heard about this scene. I got to say that I may have been alittle rough when talking about Kawakita in the new topic Gojirakingu posted about if you want another ROM film. As far as techniques go, 90% of what we see are thins that we have seen before. Sparks and such. However, that 10% remind me of why one of the thing which I mentioned a long time ago that I was always wanting to do a biography on Kawakita. I got to say, Kawakita really uped his game in this film, which was his next to last SFX film till he started getting onto the Sazer X sentai series. The forest sets are pretty much the largest sets I had seen Kawakita use for a kaiju film. Mabe the largest he did save the Tokyo set for Gvs.D. These are some pretty large sets. The number of sets also is pretty awesome. The variety of the sets are awesome, including the dam set. Not to mention what is one with the sets. How many earthquakes were there in the film? I mean, Deth Ghidorah just causes the earth to open so many times. Very cool. And the Infant Island set. I love how it was photographed. Pretty original and beats everything except the original Mothra in 1961.

The props for the kaiju are ok. Desghidorah is cool and does something different with the quadroped kaiju idea (I mean, the way the actor would have to move would be different from the way Angruirus or Baragon moves). Desghidorah's greatest feature though is that finaly, finaly, finaly, the fire spray effect was perfected. No longer are there stuff like in the days of 1967's Yongary which we see actual fire being used as a weapon and us having to see the metal tube opening which the fire comes out. Desghidorah perfected it and it is pretty belivable.

Now, Mothra was something pretty tricky. The Mother Mothra prop is pretty much like the one in 1992. Pales in comparison to Tsuburaya's or Wakasa's Mothra props. Especialy the wings. However, you can tell that what they spared on the Mother prop they spent on the Mothra Leo prop. Though still looking like a plush toy (which isn't something that bugs me... hehehe... bugs... and we are talking about Mothra), Mothra Leo pretty much has everything that the Tsuburaya prop had except for articulation at there the head is (like Mothra turning her head and stuff). Very, very awesome. The Mothra larve prop is cool too, but not as good as the 1961 one (but then again, I am sure that the 1961 prop was more than 200 times bigger due to the 1961's larvae was done via suit actors but eh).

The photography reguarding the special effects scenes are pretty good. Yes, there is beam spamming, but there is a good amount of physicality to them. And not just bumping into eachother, I mean some pretty brutal stuff. Like Mothra gore and such. The camera angles and such along with the editing of the special effects scenes just make the melee pop and energetic along with the socre. Making it pretty perfect. Especialy since the beams are still not being done by CG but rather cell animation. It just clicks. And the insane use of glitter pretty much does what it is supposed to. It just adds to the epicness. Not to mention how we actualy get emotional and empathize for the kaiju. Especialy in scenes like the larvae trying to save it's mother. I have not seen a scene that can make the imact it did since some stuff in GMK or G3 or the Shindo scene in Gvs.KG91.

And that is another thing I need to talk about. It is good that Kawakita uses CG to a good amount here. All of the matteing is done digitaly, though it shows. Accouple of good shots of Mothra larvae are done with the larvae being matted into shots of real life forests and such and not sets. However, the matting of the Mothra Fary and the Mother Mothra flying away from Infant Island at night is alittle, eh, "grizly". But, the rest of it is cool.

Bottom line, when I saw the film, I kept a list of pros and cons. I ended up writing more pros than cons down. I loved this film and I can see why Donny loves it so. It is defiently well made and even for a children's film is better than the Showa Gamera films and films like "Megalon" or "Gigan" (that is, not taking nostalga into consideration). But I just love this film and it deserves a 9/10.

ROM2:
Just got done watching this film. I wish I could say the same thing about this film I could about ROM1 but I cannot. I gave ROM1 a 9. ROM2 I am gonna have to give a 6.

First, the human characters. It is a real let down from the previous film. Only the kids are interesting and that is not saying alot. Some scenes like the inflating of the boat should have been taken out. There are some nice moments like the cat attack and the catipillar gettin some clevage but other than that, they are not really interesting. Though I do like the little psyco moment durring the jump scene. It went from funny to serious to funny.

The score is almost as good as the previous one. Another hit for Wantanabe.

The script writing is pretty bad here. The enviormentalist message here is not really expressed properly and never gets the job done. One thing it did right though is breath new life into the "attack from a lost civilization" theme that has been around since ATRAGON or GODZILLA VS. MEGALON. That is a pretty big possitive but the scripts only one.

It is obvious that since this film was done just to bridge the kaiju roll till GINO came out, the only thing that matters here is what was done with the SFX. This was Kawakita's last kaiju outing for a while and it is a mixed bag. First to mention is that G2 seemed to affect Kawkaita the same G1 did for Gvs.D. The barrem are the perfect doppleganger for the symbiotic legion. The pyrotechnics, when not CG or something matted in, are pretty good. But, the matting in this film is pretty bad compared to the previous one. The matting of the kaiju into real-life surroundings is poor. The scale is off and it doesn't look good. And for the most part, Kawakita still does the same stuff he has been doing. But atleast he is experiamenting with CG more with this film. Though not as good as G2's CG, the amount of stuff in here is more plentiful and we get some interesting ideas and photography, including the attack from inside Degarla. However, where CG is not used is painful. This especialy irks me about the underwater scenes. They lack what realistic look they had in films like Godzilla vs. Mothra '92. The lack of matted in bubbles is the biggest problem. The scenes in which had Dagarla all ny himself had the bubbles, not the fight scenes. Fail.

Overall, only thing good about this production is the SFX and even those are average. Hopefully the third film is please me more. 6/10

ROM3:
This film defiently made up for M2's short commings. At first glance, it's kind of like a rehash of the stuff in ROM1, only go from a mana absorbing Ghidorah to a human life source Ghidorah. Though one thing which makes this film stand out is the Japanese aesthetic which is clearly prominent here, almost as strong as "Gamera 3". This effects everything from the different sets to Wantanabe's score.

The human characters are the strongest here of the trilogy. You defiently get alittle feeling for Shota and his family. The shooting of the human footage is especialy the best of the trilogy. Especialy the scenes which I had not seen from the showings on the Sci-Fi Channel. Like the second or third school scene with Shota's syblings. That was a nice touch. The way the begining is filmed is also a nice touch with some more tha usualy complex camera work.

The score is just as good as the last two, maybe alittle better. While the battle scenes music are not exactly as impactful as the stuff in ROM, it gets the job done and the new song, Haora Mothra and the final battle music between Mothra and cretaceous ghidorah is pretty awesome and awe inspiring. There is a feeling, an emotion that comes off the screen.

The special effects are headed by Kenji Suzuki instead of Kawakita this time and though I do think that the digital effects and digital matteing of the special effects shots are better in this film than Mothra 2, the analog effects shot are not as good as Kawakita's, though the direction is quite "grand", something which I really thought that was missing with Suzuki's next two films, G2K and GXMG.

Overall, this film I give a 8.5. Not a 9. And in retrospect, I give ROM a 8.5 instead of a 9 also. They are some pretty nice films. Not really "shitty" as what some people call the films. Defiently better than the Heisei Godzilla films save Dessy, G84, and Biollante.

[DaikaijuSokogeki!]

Rebirth of Mothra - This is a pretty fun movie. The score is phenomenal, and it was nice to see the Mothra fairies really come into their own as fleshed-out characters. Death Ghidorah is a wicked design, and Mothra Leo looks phenomenal. It also boasts some of Kawakita's liveliest FX since Mechagodzilla. Finally, who here didn't come close to crying when the larva watched Mothra die? Come on...that scene was sad as hell.

Rebirth of Mothra II - Only seen it once about 8 years ago, haven't seen it since. I remember disliking it, that's for sure (although Aqua Mothra looks pretty cool).

Rebirth of Mothra III - Also only seen it once, but not on purpose. It was also the Sci-Fi Channel edit, so I can't say I've seen the whole product. But yeah, a good first effort from FX director Suzuki (who fell apart in talent faster than Kawakita). Grand King Ghidorah looks neat and Armor Mothra makes me tremble in fear. Its moral of encouraging skipping is a bit ass-backwards, though...

[Hellspawn28]

I still don't understand why Sony never release ROMIII on DVD, and why they dub the movie so late since they dub the movie four or five years after it cameout in Japan.

[Goji]

I still don't understand why Sony never release ROMIII on DVD, and why they dub the movie so late since they dub the movie four or five years after it cameout in Japan.

The International version was dubbed in Hong Kong in 1998. All of Toho's International dubs are recorded the same year as the film is released in Japan. In the case if REBIRTH OF MOTHRA III, we just didn't see the film released here until sometime later, which is why it remained unseen/heard for so long.

[Dash 7]

I don't feel like doing a full analyzation so i'll just sum stuff up in one or two sentences.

ROM: The human characters are pretty likeable, although I feel the opening with the Fairy Mothra aerial battle dragged on wayy too long. And it felt like Kawakita inserted this scene just to show off more CGI beams and stuff. Death Ghidorah is pretty cool.

ROM2: I hate this one. It feels like All Monsters Attack only without the stock footage.

ROM3: Finally the main character is a kid that I find really likeable. Kenji Suzuki does an excellent job on the effects. King Ghidorah is way cool looking in this film, I just wish they brought back his classic bell-cackle.

[Starfishman]

Rebirth of Mothra I: I actually own this movie on VHS and I haven't watched it in about 8 years. When I first saw it as a kid in 1999, I thought that it was one of the best monster movies I've ever seen in my life. Maybe time for me to dust it off soon.

Rebirth of Mothra II: I own this on VHS as well and haven't seen it in 8 years either. I kinda liked it when I was a kid. It was alright but not the best monster film I've ever seen. I didn't like the dragon design for that monster Mothra was fighting in this movie.

Rebirth of Mothra III: I saw this movie when it firsted aired on the SciFi Channel in mid 2004. I loved The King of Terror's new look. He was a terror and a meance and gave Mothra a great fight til the end. The effects and score were very well done I thought. I hope Sony releases this movie on a US DVD soon.

Score for all three films:

Rebirth of Mothra I: 9.50/10
Rebirth of Mothra II: 6.75/10
Rebirth of Mothra III: 9/10

[Lionblaze]

I havent seen these yet, except for bits and pieces on You-Tube and reading it on Monster Archives and Toho Kindom' main page, but I reeeeallly want to see them.
I actually had the chance when I went to Best Buy and they had the ROM1/ROM2 double pack. Well it was just my luck that I didnt bring enough money I was ticked off!
Then about a week or so later I came back and had enough money, so I was all set to get it.
Well with my stupid luck it wasnt there anymore......... I asked them if they had anymore and they said they had removed all the Godzilla material out of the store and you could buy it at their website.
The problem is that they told me months ago that they did the exact same thing, and what happens, I found ROM 1 and 2.
Yeah, Best Buy is not a reliable place to shop in my opinion.

[KaijuSapian]

I dislike all three of these movies. I'm actually embarrassed Toho made this trilogy. And the fact it did well over the Gamera Trilogy... is just insulting.

The only good points of this trilogy are the enemy Kaiju. They're all pretty cool.

And the second movie is still the only dub to make me tear up, and lose all faith in humanity.