a review of 哥斯拉对黑多拉

2025 CULT MOVIE CHALLENGE WEEK 33: TOKUSATSU WEEK + 2025 CRITERION CHALLENGE #44: HORROR I was pleasantly surprised by this one, which I thought was both more focused on the kaiju action than DESTROY ALL MONSTERS and a much better stab at a social messaging than ALL MONSTERS ATTACK. There's still a lot of the residual silliness left over from the latter movie, with the Big G's stumblebum pro-wrestling hangover antics and improbable "jet pack" sight gags, but the various forms of Hedorah the "Smog Monster" are genuinely creepy designs that are well-implemented in the film. The earnest environmental message -- vaguely hinted in ALL MONSTERS ATTACK's kiddie-focused critique of Japanese industrialization -- might have felt a little preachy at the time but now it feels kind of prophetic. Movies like this show that we knew exactly what we were doing to the planet 50 years ago, and now we're busily dismantling everything that we managed to accomplish in spite of corporate greed and dissembling, all because we re-elected the corporate crook to beat all corporate crooks. We knew what would happen and ended up doing it anyway.