Godzilla vs. Mothra

Godzilla vs. Mothra (1992)

ゴジラvsモスラ

Earth S.O.S.! The battle over the future of the human race begins.

Mothra's dark counterpart, Battra, emerges to eliminate humanity on behalf of the Earth. Two tiny fairies called the Cosmos offer their help by calling Mothra to battle the creature. Unfortunately a meteorite has awoken a hibernating Godzilla as a three way battle for the Earth begins.

Date of release
1992-12-12
TMDB
6.9 / 10 (244)
Runtime
1h 42m
Genres
Action, Adventure, Science Fiction
Director
Takao Okawara
Collection
Godzilla (Heisei) Collection

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: Nagoya and Japan

Godzilla vs. Mothra is a 1992 Japanese kaiju film directed by Takao Okawara, with special effects by Kōichi Kawakita. Distributed by Toho and produced under their subsidiary Toho Pictures, it is the 19th film in the Godzilla franchise, and is the fourth film in the franchise's Heisei era. The film features the fictional monster characters Godzilla, Mothra, and Battra, and stars Tetsuya Bessho, Satomi Kobayashi, Takehiro Murata, Megumi Odaka, Shiori Yonezawa, Makoto Otake, Akiji Kobayashi, Koichi Ueda, Shinya Owada, Keiko Imamura, Sayaka Osawa, Saburo Shinoda and Akira Takarada, with Kenpachiro Satsuma as Godzilla and Hurricane Ryu as the Battra larva.

Production

The idea of a film featuring a revamped Mothra dated back to a screenplay written in 1990 by Kazuki Omori entitled Mothra vs. Bagan, which revolved around a vengeful dragon called Bagan who sought to destroy humanity for its abuse of the Earth's resources, only to be defeated by Mothra, the goddess of peace. However, following the poor box office performance of Godzilla vs.

After the success of Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah, producer Shōgo Tomiyama and Godzilla series creator Tomoyuki Tanaka proposed resurrecting King Ghidorah in a film entitled Ghidorah's Counterattack, but relented when polls demonstrated that Mothra was more popular with women, which makes up a larger percentage of Japan's population compared to men. Tomiyama replaced Ōmori with Takao Okawara as director, but maintained Ōmori as screenwriter.

Ishirō Honda, director of the original 1954 Godzilla film visited the set shortly before dying. Director Tim Burton visited the set during the first day of special effects filming while he was in Japan promoting Batman Returns.

Koichi Kawakita continued his theme of giving Godzilla's opponents the ability to metamorphose, and had initially intended to have Mothra killed off, only to be reborn as the cybernetic moth MechaMothra, though this was scrapped early in production, thus making Godzilla vs. Mothra the first post-1984 Godzilla movie to not feature a mecha contraption.

The remains of the suit were recycled for the first battle sequence. Godzilla's roar was reverted to the high-pitched shriek from pre-1984 Godzilla films, while Battra's sound effects were recycled from those of Rodan. In designing Battra, which the script described as a "black Mothra", artist Shinji Nishikawa sought to distance its design from Mothra's by making its adult form more similar to its larval one than is the case with Mothra, and comb…

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