So when did Godzilla become the “Guardian Monster” I grew up with? That would be the fifth movie in the franchise, Ghidorah, The Three-Headed Monster. This was also the second team-up of Toho monsters. While the Showa era films didn’t have the tight continuity of the Heisei films, there is still progression. At this point Godzilla hasn’t been depicted as a menace by choice. He mostly just keeps walking in whatever direction he chooses, and smashes anything in the way. He’s a menace because…he’s a 50 meter monster that’s nearly indestructible and fires a nuclear laser beam out of his mouth when he gets mad. So there actually is room to grow as the franchise was less about warning about atomic testing and to a kaiju superhero story.
Known as Ghidrah, The Three Headed Monster in the US (note the spelling of the monster’s name), a couple of shooting stars crash on the planet. One comes from Venus (Mars in the dub because Venus isn’t as sexy for US space people or something) and warns of the other…take a wild guess who’s in it. Unfortunately the Venusian/Martian is also a princess targeted by traitors to her country, and running around claiming to be an alien prophetess is a terrible way to stay incognito. Meanwhile, Mothra’s priestesses are visiting Japan so they can be in the movie (the last appearance of music siblings Emi and Umi Ito, aka The Peanuts, in the role) just as a new Rodan wakes up and Godzilla also gets drawn in even though his name isn’t in the movie. When the three-headed lighting-spitting dragon appears it’s up to Mothra (apparently one of them died off-screen or they forgot the last Mothra had twins in her last appearance) to convince the other two monsters to join forces and defend the planet. I guess Anguirus and Kong were busy that week.
Again we have the Japanese sub available to post here thanks to YouTube Movies & TV, but this time I have an official link for the English dub…with the usual rights nonsense showing up. See, Shout Factory TV has the original Japanese on their streaming site but if you want the English version they’re hosting it through Tubi. Unless they took it down and I have to scramble through the Internet Archive again. I prefer official releases when I have them. So use that link for English, watch the Japanese here, and if you do both note all the changes.
There are more than language changes between the two. Wikizilla notes the monster’s name of course, and that the alien that takes over the princess is from Mars, not Venus like the original. Also for some reason Mothra is mentioned as male rather than female like in other US appearances, like in the scene at the talk show. I’m not sure why they misgendered her when other dubs got it right, including the one for Mothra’s own debut movie. Also there is lot of scene reshuffling, something fixed years later in a DVD re-edit, at least according to Wikizilla. Whichever version you watched I hoped you enjoyed it. We have one more weekend in this year’s Godzillaween so I guess I’ll finish with the rematch.
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