Year: 1973
Director: Jun Fukuda
Special Effects Director: Teruyoshi Nakano
In The Suit: Shinji Takagi (Godzilla), Kenpachiro Satsuma (Gigan), Tsugutoshi Komada (Jet Jaguar), Hideto Odachi (Megalon)

This movie has Godzilla at his most adorable.

It's also probably our favorite Godzilla movie, or at least it's the movie that got us watching Toho's films as obsessively as we do. This puts us at odds with most of the internet, who seem to like a more "serious" Godzilla. This movie is Godzilla at his campy, fun, best, but i can understand why people think that it's too kiddie oriented and silly.

I'm sorry, but there is no way Godzilla vs. Megalon is sillier than Son of Godzilla or, god help us, Godzilla's Revenge.

This is also the movie that, in America, for a while defined the Godzilla franchise as guys in cheap rubber suits fighting each other (...this is a bad thing? It's pro-wrestling with costumes, people!). Around the time of this release there was also a highly publicized remake of King Kong, and Toho tried to ride on those coattails by heavily promoting this movie in the US. So in America more people saw this movie than any movie since the first one. And as i mentioned, it's a goofy, campy affair. So i can see why serious Godzilla fans would have wanted to back away from it.

This movie is awesome. I don't know why you're talking nonsense.

Ironically, this wasn't even originally intended to be a Godzilla film. This movie co-stars a robot called Jet Jaguar.

And it was originally intended to be a solo Jet Jaguar venture, with him fighting the monster Megalon. Godzilla and Gigan were added to the film when Toho got cold feet about a movie starring the robot (or maybe because they wanted to take advantage of the King Kong opportunity by having Godzilla in a movie). Jet Jaguar came about thanks to fan submissions to a Toho contest, but the character is obviously based on Ultraman, who was a popular television show character in Japan. Jet Jaguar is one of several Toho Ultraman clones, but more on that in the Zone Fighter entry.

This movie starts with an announcement that "the effects of the explosion affect even Monster Island" [emphasis mine}, and then some mostly stock footage of Rodan and Anguirus covered in dust.

Anguirus is shown falling into a crevice, not to be seen again in this film.

We then cut to a boy riding a toy boat that we can all be jealous of (and also mystified by).

Everything in Japan is just better.

The affects of "the" explosion reach the lake that the boy is in, and he points his dolphins towards the shore but is unable to make it there thanks to a crack in the bottom of the lake that is sucking in all the water. Luckily the boy's (much older) brother and his friend are on shore.

The boy on the dolphin boat is Roku (played by Hiroyuki Kawase, the kid with all the answers in Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster). His brother is Goro, an inventor. And the friend is Jinko, but Mystery Science Theater fans know him as Rex Dart, Eskimo Spy.

The two men on shore are at first at a loss as to how to save Roku, but suddenly they remember. "Hey, the rocket!" Sure. I hope you bring your grappling hook rocket with you whenever you go on a picnic by the lake. So Roku seems saved, except now there's a glowing blue light coming out of the crevice that all the water is flowing into, and Goro and Jinko seem too mesmerized by that to do anything.

Any time...!

Eventually they do actually fire the rocket off to Roku, and it's a perfectly executed shot, landing right in Roku's hands. They pull him to shore and pull him off his boat.

Save the dolphin machine!

But they don't save the dolphin boat, and it gets sucked into the crevice as the entire lake dries up.

GODDAMMIT!

The picnickers then pack up their car and casually drive home. No one thinks to report anything to the authorities, but i guess the feeling is that there's nothing anyone can do about it. The radio says that the quakes are believed to be due to nuclear bomb tests, and Jinko says that we're inevitably going to destroy ourselves, "Just like Mu and Lamoria [sic]".

They get back to Goro's strange modern house, and find that the door has been left ajar. Inside, someone has hung strange cubes from the ceiling...

...but apparently that's normal. The problem is that the house has been ransacked. And indeed the intruders are still in the house. They fight their way out. Goro and Roku inspect the house, confirming that the (still incomplete) robot that Goro has been working on has not been tampered with...

...and Jinko gives chase to the intruders.

The chase is set to the tune of some groovy music and it features the most dramatic K-turns in history, but it's cut short when the bad guys toss a grenade, and Jinko has to stop to avoid driving into the explosion.

By the way, we're never given any indication as to what Jinko does for a living or why he'd personally decide to chase the two villains. No one at any time in this film attempts to call the police, even as the bad guys' villainy increases to include kidnapping and more. The best explanation is that Jinko really is Rex Dart, Eskimo Spy, assigned to protect Goro, who maybe was building Jet Jaguar as part of a funded military project or something.

Jinko did manage to pull a button off one of the bad guys, and Roku, in standard issue short-shorts, discovers that the button is made of the same material as some sand that he finds on the floor of the house. And the sand is confirmed to come from a strata deep within the earth.

Later, Goro puts the finishing touches on his robot.

Min: That is a horrible creepy face.
Fnord: But you like Jet Jaguar!
Min: Yeah but.... that is the face of a robot that will turn on its masters.

Meanwhile, we get confirmation that our bad guys are from the underground sunken kingdom of Mu, or at least "Seatopia", which is 30 miles beneath the sea. And they also have an outpost on Easter island.

They are very similar to the Mu kingdom seen in Atragon. Their society has the same blend of high technology and togas, and just like in Atragon they've created their own oxygen supply and later constructed their own sun.

Min: They used their advanced technology to build all that stuff instead of just going back up to the surface.
Fnord: All their stuff was down there!

Also like in Atragon, they're really into dancing.

A kind of sad thing is that their leader is Robert Dunham, who was the Diamond G-Man in Dogora.

At that time they had such high hopes for Dunham's character, Mark Jackson, that they were going to turn it into a franchise. But Dogora flopped (prolly due to the lack of space dogs) and now Dunham is reduced to running around in a toga playing a genre villain. Dunham does have a kind of legacy in the sense that the speech he gives to his people was sampled in the Cornershop song England's Dreaming (it's from the English dub, and it's been sped up slightly).

As you can hear from that speech ("People, we finally have to fight. We don't want to, but the people of Earth leave us no choice."), he and the Mu kingdom aren't really bad guys. They are just reacting to the surface people's nuclear testing. That said, they aren't really handling it in a way that befits a supposedly advanced kingdom. For one thing, they don't seem to make any attempt to say "Hey, we're down here!" before unleashing their god of destruction. And they also focus their attack on Japan, who surely wasn't at the forefront of nuclear testing.

Anyway, here's the god of destruction that they unleash.

Hello!

His name is Megalon and among his many powers is the ability to turn into a plastic model and fly up a tube leading directly to the surface of the Earth.

Meanwhile, Roku goes for a ride on the world's tiniest motorbike, which he calls his Baby Rider. While he's out, Goro names his robot Jet Jaguar.

Then the Mu agents make another attack on Goro's lab. I wish the camera guy wasn't in on the fight too. They kidnap Roku and Goro and reprogram Jet Jaguar with punch cards fed into a computer. There's also another car chase, this time with Jinko leading the bad guys down a steep flight of steps (in cars!) and then a sheer cliff wall, ending with a guy on a motorcycle getting paint dumped on his head. It's impossible to describe.

Megalon, meanwhile, is just rocking out, shaking and dancing all over the place. Then Jet Jaguar shows up to lead him to where he's supposed to go. It's worth noting that while Megalon has beetle wings that are able to open and close, when he flies he's completely static. No wing flapping. That's for show. He must fly by jet power.

Megalon's rampage is accompanied by Toho's favorite evacuation stock footage, and plenty of other stock footage as well. Here are some familiar looking high-tech tanks.

Min: We totally just saw all of this!
Fnord: And it was reused footage that time, too.

As Toho's go-to footage is now getting older, the quality of the video varies wildly from scene to scene. A lot of this footage is taken from War of the Gargantuas, and that's funny because that battle took place at night while the events here are happening during the daytime, so we're constantly switching from day to night during the rampage.

Megalon uses his star antennae to blast the tanks...

...and the blast that melts them looks suspiciously like King Ghidorah's laser breath.

We meanwhile see some truckers hired by one of the bad guys to dump Roku and Goro down a crevice into Seatopia. You can see some naughty pictures hanging from the back of their truck cab.

As the truckers drive, a radio reporter calmly announces Megalon's rampage. Attention, everyone. It is Tuesday.

The truckers hear that Megalon is thought to have come from a crevice, and they start to panic about driving to a similar crevice, so they rebel and throw their Mu handler down a cliff and then drive away (with Roku and Goro still in the back).

Man, truckers are assholes.

One scene that is all new is where Megalon approaches a big dam while the truckers are driving across it. Megalon crashes through the damn and gets swept up by the water and rubble that floods out.

It almost looks like the actor in the suit got in trouble there. Not sure if he was really meant to get swept into the flood or if the director just kept the camera rolling while it happened. In any event, Megalon is supposed to be heading to Tokyo but thanks to the use of all the stock footage he keeps winding up out in the wilderness and now he happens to be at this dam where our main characters happen to be.

What happens next is pure madness. The truckers decide to just dump their cargo off the side of the bridge, but then they get surprised by the arrival of Megalon and flee. Jinko arrives as the truckers are running away, leaving Roku and Goro still captive in the back of the truck. Jinko is unable to get them out of the truck, and the cargo container is slowly sliding off the truck bed, as Megalon (who is supposed to be following Jet Jaguar to Tokyo) inexplicably approaches. The container finally falls off just as Megalon is raising his drill hand, and the container bounces off of Megalon's claw and goes flying through the air for what must be miles. Jinko runs after them to find, miraculously, that no one is dead.

In fact, the fall has transferred some information to Roku's head. He was out riding his baby rider when Goro named Jet Jaguar, but now Roku now identifies Jet Jaguar floating in the sky. Roku has another idea, too:

Roku: If we could contact Godzilla...
Goro: Yes, exactly.

Goro reveals that he has a line of sight communicator that can override the computer that is controlling Jet Jaguar. So they head over to the army base, and the army quickly hands over control to them, giving them a helicopter and a pilot to go chasing after the robot.

The above scene was easy to capture, by the way, because both Jaguar and the helicopter just float there motionlessly for a good minute.

Without Jet Jaguar to guide him, Megalon is left to bouncing aimlessly around in the wilderness.

I think Seatopia's "god of destruction" has ADHD.

This alarms the Seatopians...

I'm being considered for a part in a Harry Potter movie. Who is Severus Snape?

...who therefore contact Star-Hunter Galaxy M-1 and request the help of Gigan.

There's some remarkable consistency there; Gigan was said to come from "Nebula M Space-Hunter" in Godzilla vs. Gigan. You have to love that the Seatopians have made contact with space-cockroaches from a distant galaxy before contacting the people of Earth's surface and asking if they would please stop dropping nuclear bombs on them.

Did i mention Megalon's jumping? He is just an endless amount of aimless jumping.

He seems pretty lost, actually.

But the army keeps attacking. Here's one of their planes.

I think we've got Megalon all wrong. He's not a bad guy. He's just a child who's surrounded by bad influences. Stop shooting at him, stupid army guys!

Meanwhile, Roku and Goro are heading back to their house, and they stop at a model airplane store. It's not really said why, but we'll find out in a second. Here's one of the planes at the store.

Man, compared to the "real" plane above, that's a pretty realistic model.

The airplanes, of course, fly directly at Megalon with no hope of surviving even if Megalon did nothing but stand there.

Do i take a drink for every plane? Because i'll run out of drink.

But Megalon doesn't just stand there. In addition to his drill hands and laser antenna, he engages in some very fancy footwork. It's meaningless, of course, since he doesn't have to try to dodge the planes (and isn't dodging them, as far as i can see), but it is impressive nonetheless.

Megalon continues his rampage, and now we're back to stock footage.

That Mobile oil station takes a lot of abuse.

Meanwhile, Godzilla daintily sits around at Monster Island, awaiting visitors.

Do do-do do dooo.

Is company a'calling? Shall i put out tea?

Company comes in the form of Jet Jaguar, who communicates to Godzilla with semaphore.

Godzilla understands just fine.

Gotcha, bro.

Yep, nowadays when Japan is in trouble they can just send someone over to Monster Island and request help, and Godzilla is happy to comply.

Now remember that earlier i mentioned that Goro and Roku stopped at a model plane store for some unknown reason? Here is the reason. Face full of remote-controlled model plane for you, bad guy!

I don't know, was there a tomato taped to the front of that plane, or what?

No wonder they fly all those planes directly into the monsters. Look how much damage one model plane does.

The sequence with Goro and Roku and the bad guy is a little weird. They make a big deal of going to their house. Then they deliver their plane-full of justice. Then they leave the house. And then a little later, without us seeing what they did in the meantime, we see them again and they suddenly decide to rush back to the house. Some kind of editing mishap, i guess. Or they got the munchies and had to do a chip run. Understandable.

What does happen in the meantime relates to the poor guy with the propeller-chewed face. Without Jet Jaguar to guide him, Megalon is still wandering randomly through the wilderness...

...and while he's out there, he happens to kick a rock. And that rock happens to land on the bad guy, who happens to have wandered into the area.

So that happens.

Min: You know, this movie doesn't make a lot of sense.
Fnord: In broad strokes it does.

And then thanks to our stock footage, Megalon is now back in a populated area. And Min caught a funny thing here. She actually first noticed it in a previous movie, probably vs. Gigan. She saw this footage and said, "LoN? Why would that tower say LoN?".

Then a second later she saw why. It's a reversed version of this shot, where the tower correctly says "No1".

At this point you may be wondering why we say that we like this movie. Well, hold on to your seats, people, because things are about to get awesome. First of all, Gigan is about to show up.

You might say that this is just repeat footage from vs. Gigan, but i'd like to know how else you'd want Gigan to travel through space, if not in a giant sapphire.

Show off.

Meanwhile, Jet Jaguar returns. Godzilla's swim from Monster Island this time isn't delayed by keeping pace with the slow-ass Anguirus (Hey, Anguirus totally didn't want to go that time, but Godzilla made him.), but the flying robot still makes it back faster. So Goro and Jinko try to tell Jet Jaguar to try to keep Megalon busy until Godzilla shows up. But he responds with a thumbs up even before Goro speaks into his line of sight communicator.

I'm going to eat your flesh.

Goro is "sure" that this is because of "the survival program".

You see, Jet Jaguar is programmed for sentience so that he "can't be controlled by humans".

Uh huh. What did i tell you? Robot uprising.

Then Jet Jaguar returns to Megalon. You can see how happy Megalon is. He starts clapping his drill-hands together. Yay, my buddy is back! He'll tell me what to do!

And then Jet Jaguar suddenly starts growing in size.

Whoah, dude. That's awesome!

And then Jet Jaguar walks up to Meglaon, who is just standing there in dumb anticipation, and the robot punches him in the face!

Jet Jaguar, that is such an asshole move!

We've watched this movie many times, but with the most recent watching we had a kind of revelation. First of all, i guess we've always known that the Seatopians aren't really bad guys. Sure they aren't reacting very smartly, but their kingdom has been bombed by nuclear tests from the surface people, so you can understand it (*nod* It's classic WWSMD - What Would Sub-Mariner Do). But it turns out that Megalon really isn't a bad monster, either. He's just confused. A bit simple. Jet Jaguar (controlled by the Seatopians) led him on his initial rampage. And then when Jet Jaguar left, Megalon had a fit and just randomly bounced around in the wilderness. No malice to it. Then Jet Jaguar returns and Megalon is just so happy to see his friend. Who proceeds to walk up and sucker punch him. There's no reason from what we can see that Jet Jaguar couldn't have just led Megalon back to Seatopia. Or maybe just held him there until Godzilla arrived and invited him back to Monster Island for some tea. So Jet Jaguar is really the bad guy in this film. Min is right about this robot uprising business.

Poor Megalon. Now i dunno who to root for.

Of course none of this takes away from the holy whatthefuck awesomeness of Jet Jaguar suddenly growing in size to fight Megalon. And the scientist has a perfectly rational explanation for that.

Yep. Clearly.

So Megalon and Jet Jaguar fight for a bit, and despite the earlier lack of original special effects in this movie, we're now at the start of a really cool fight. First Megalon circles Jet Jaguar, making him dizzy. Megalon is a burrower, and it's cool to see him next going underground, with Jet Jaguar using his eye-lights to try to spot him, and then Megalon poking his drill-hands up at Jet Jaguar. The robot eventually grabs the drill and pulls Megalon up.

Then Gigan arrives.

Gotta love the two monsters communicating with each other. More semaphore.

Now, Megalon may be a dimwitted innocent. But Gigan, he's an asshole. Megalon's clearly just looking for a friend, and Gigan's a bad influence. So the two of them start ganging up on Jet Jaguar and bullying him.

I should mention that Megalon has a ton of powers. He can fly. He's got drills for hands. He can burrow. He shoots lasers from his star-antennae. And he can also shoot exploding pellets from his mouth. And of course Gigan is no slouch, either. So they beat up Jet Jaguar bad, with Megalon delivering an evil laugh, and then Jet Jaguar is so weakened that the two monsters play volleyball with him. Jet Jaguar eventually tries to escape but Megalon hits him with an exploding pellet. And then the monsters high five each other.

Luckily at this point, the champ shows up, doing his champ walk.

Despite the moral complexities of Megalon (and at this point Godzilla just walks in to see two monsters bullying the guy that came to him for help, so i don't hold him responsible for any of that), Godzilla has very clearly made a full transition from monster to super-hero by this film. It's definitely been happening as we've gone through the films, and arguably it was fully in effect in the last film, although you could say that Godzilla was just responding to the sounds that the cockroach people were playing. In this film, his arrival is clearly that of the reigning hero (accompanied by some jaw harp music which is maybe evoking the arrival of a cowboy hero), and when he sees the bad guys he goes straight into a martial arts fighting pose.

The bad guys respond by doing some kind of synchronized sidestep move.

They are sidling away from Jet Jaguar as Godzilla makes his way towards him. Jet Jaguar gets to his feet and staggers over to Godzilla to thank him for showing up. If you subscribe to the robot uprising theory, it's at this point that Jet Jaguar abandons those plans, realizing that he's no match for the monsters he'd have to fight to take over the world.

No...he's still totally going to kill his inferior human masters. It's part of his survival program.

In any event, what follows is an awesome fight. The movie until now has been a lot of human shenanigans, but the final quarter or so of this movie drops any pretense of a plot and just has the equivalent of a Royal Rumble between four giant monsters. One of the highlights is when Godzilla picks up a tree and tries to make Megalon eat it.

Here's a little something i picked up from King Kong.

The fight goes on for quite a while. There are a few moments of the bad guys playing possum, which Godzilla always falls for. There's a scene where Megalon shoots a pellet and Jet Jaguar catches it and tosses it back at him. There's some repeats of the scene of Gigan flying at Godzilla with his belly blade a'buzzing, and Godzilla getting cut up and bloody. Then Godzilla blasts Gigan, who falls on a World Children's Land building (wait, what?). Megalon makes a number of rude gestures with his drill-hands. Gigan grabs Jet Jaguar and holds him hostage with his scythe claws...

...but Godzilla is like fuck that and blasts Gigan with his breath anyway.

Greatest. Godzilla. Fight. Ever!

Eventually Megalon starts using up those exploding pellets like they are about to expire, and soon Godzilla and Jet Jaguar are trapped in a ring of fire. Megalon and Gigan stand on the sidelines laughing as Jet Jaguar staggers around.

Min: Jet Jaguar should program himself to be even bigger so that he can step out of the ring.
Fnord: Don't be ridiculous.

The fire ring actually gives Jet Jaguar an opportunity to be useful, as he's able to use his power of flight to get himself and Godzilla out.

Godzilla can fly, too, you know. We saw him do it in Smog Monster.

The taunting from the bad monsters while all of this is going on is hilarious. It really is like a professional wrestling match. But once Godzilla is out of the fire, the breath weapon comes out and it's nearly all over. Megalon fires another pellet but it somehow winds up going back in his own mouth and exploding.

Seatopia sees how the battle is going and closes up their portals to the surface world. Jet Jaguar breaks Gigan's arm, lifts him, and throws him into the air where Godzilla blasts him (the last part being repeat footage). Gigan then flees for space (again, repeated from the last movie).

Coward!

The fight should really be over at this point, but Godzilla rarely lets his opponents off easily. In this case it's crazier than ever. We've always taken unadulterated pleasure from the scene that's coming up, but with our new insights on Megalon we felt a little bad about it this time.

Godzilla makes a gesture like, "I've got an idea!".

He's definitely not saying, "Peace, brother", considering what he's about to do.

And he has Jet Jaguar hold Megalon up.

Now, if you know what's coming then you know what's coming. But if you don't, well, i'd say prepare yourself but there's really no point. In past movies, we've seen Godzilla do lots of crazy things. We've seen him dance a jig. We've seen him fly. We've seen him talk. But nothing can prepare you for the Godzilla jump kick.

In fact, these screenshots aren't doing it justice either, so go find a Youtube clip, or seriously i don't know how you haven't gone out to buy a copy of this movie yet.

Anyway, the Godzilla jump kick is the greatest, most wacky thing ever to be seen in a Godzilla film. It doesn't end right there, though. After repeated jump kicks, Godzilla picks up what is clearly an empty Megalon suit and slams it into the ground repeatedly.

I guess Megalon's insides got so jellied from the jump kicks that he's just a hollow shell at this point.

Godzilla's cruel lack of magnanimity in victory is on full awesome display here.

Min: I do feel bad, though.
Fnord: But Megalon did have that evil laugh.

Megalon flees, diving into a crevice before it closes itself back up. It's worth noting that Megalon falls into the category of Ancient Civilization Gods, like Mothra, King Kong, and King Caesar. That's another argument for Megalon not really being a bad guy. And the earlier anti-nukes Godzilla would surely have sided with Seatopia if he had known what was going on.

Godzilla then heads home, and Jet Jaguar shrinks back to human size and reverts back to needing to be ordered around by humans. No self-sufficient sentience for this robot, no sir. Not when there are giant monsters out there that will beat the crap out of you. Jet Jaguar will stick to being bossed around by these dumb humans, picking up their laundry and carrying their stupid kid around or whatever.

We end with the Jet Jaguar theme song, and i'll link to the version with subtitles provided by MST3K.

I said it above but i'll say it again. It may be ridiculous, but it's also the greatest Godzilla movie ever. This is the gold standard by which all other Godzilla movies are judged.

Godzilla Drinking Game
	Someone thinks it's a good idea to drag a giant monster across the ocean on a raft (giant eggs count).
	Attacking planes fly directly at a monster, with no possibility of avoiding a crash even if the monster didn't swat them down.	Yep.
	People refuse to believe in the existence of a giant monster even though they've already acknowledged that Godzilla exists.	I guess we're well past this one at this point. Giant monsters are a fact of life.
	A submarine explodes.
	Teens have a dance party on a boat. Two drinks/head smacks if they get attacked by a monster during the party.
	The government is completely ineffective when faced with a corporation doing something illegal.	What government? It's not like anyone even bothers calling the police about the earthquake at the lake or the repeated break-ins at Goro's house. And then the military completely hands control over to our random civilian protagonists at the first opportunity. Seatopia isn't an evil corporation (although it sounds like an evil water theme park), so it wouldn't count anyway, but just sayin'.
	A humongous lumbering monster manages to sneak up on someone. Two drinks/head smacks if it's the army and they're supposedly using radar.	Thanks to the magic of stock footage, Megalon defintiely manages to get around. And he definitely surprises the truckers, and i don't know what you want to call the scene with Plane Face Guy, but it's worth a drink.
	A scientist suddenly figures everything out with little-to-no information and explains it all to everyone.	Goro's explanations for Jet Jaguar's behavior are classics in the genre.
	A monster suddenly grows in size just because.	"Just because" he reprogrammed himself to, in fact!
	People expose themselves to major amounts of radiation with no concern.
	Everyone suddenly knows a monster's name. Two drinks/head smacks if everyone else nods appreciatively and repeats it.	Roku knows Jet jaguar's name even though he was on his "Baby Rider" at the time the robot was named and he was locked in a truck after that. If it wasn't for Roku knowing Jet Jaguar's name, we wouldn't have gotten a drink for this one, though, because no one but the Seatopians ever say Megalon's name in this film.
	Army missiles can't seem to hit a 150+ foot monster and instead explode harmlessly around it.	I think we're grading on a curve at this point, but we decided that the military actually has a decent hit rate in this movie.
	A woman falls down for no reason.	There are, in fact, no women in this movie. Zero.
	Bad dinosaur science. You have to give a little leeway for the time period, but pretending a children's picture book is a scientific journal is always worth two drinks/smacks.

Monsters Appearing: Anguirus, Gigan, Godzilla, Jet Jaguar, Megalon, Rodan