Director Ryûhei Kitamura
Staring Masahiro Matsuoka, Rei Kikukawa, Don Frye
Rated PG
Score 2.5/6

When the aliens Xilians invade Earth, they release monsters to destroy the big cities. The Earth Defense Force formed by mutants is incapable to defeat the creatures. Commander Douglas Gordon decides to unleash Godzilla that has been trapped for many years to fight against the monsters. Godzilla becomes the last hope on Earth to vanquish the evil aliens and the powerful Gigan

I might not get the full 17 I have set out for myself in the pick-the-order event, but I’ll try.
Godzilla: Final Wars is possibly one of the most clichéd dubbed movies that I have seen in recent years, especially taking into consideration the fact that the voice over artists’ dialogue did not exactly match up with the subtitles on the screen. But considering the subtitles got the basic gist of the audio, it was a case of near enough was good enough?
The overall plot really wasn’t anything that special and it seemed that the third act of the movie was at least partly inspired by the gameplay of Street Fighter 2 with Godzilla traveling the world fighting a collection of monsters from the franchise (including the Gozilla featured in Roland Emmerich’s 1998 Godzilla). There were a couple of interesting plot moments one of which seemed to be inspired from the Death Star run in Return of the Jedi and a point that was made about the fact that sometimes when forgiveness it is important to look to the children of the world.
There was also what could be considered to be an unfortunate choice of colours for Shinichi Ozaki (portrayed by Masahiro Matsuoka) one of the main characters’ costume which was a black military uniform with a red arm band. In my mind that came across as being a tad Gestapoesque.

Who Wore it Better or was it all in my head?

Masahiro Matsuoka as Earth Defense Force Soldier Shin’ichi Ôzaki

Howard Caine as Maj. Wolfgang Hochstetter from Hogan’s Heroes (39 episodes, 1966-1971)