Of
all the kaiju, he is the only one who could challenge Godzilla for his crown.
Understandably, Japan has a bit of a love hate relationship with the flying
turtle. They can rely on him to destroy even worse rampaging kaiju, but he
often leaves a massive swath of destruction in his wake. Tragically, that
includes Ayana Hirasaka’s parents and Tokyo home. To extract vengeance, she
will psychically bond with a mutant gyaos bird, as troubled teens will do, in
Shûsuke Kaneko’s Gamera 3: The Revenge of
Iris (trailer
here),
which fittingly concludes the Japan Society’s film series, Beyond Godzilla: Alternative Futures & Fantasies in Japanese Cinema.
Gamera
just saved everybody’s butts Gamera 2:
Attack of Legion, but Hirasaka doesn’t want to hear about that. She blames
Gamera for the death of her parents, which he sort of, kind of, inadvertently
really did cause. Such is her hatred for our shelled hero that when she
discovers a gyaos hatchling in the woods, she decides to raise it to fight
Gamera. Tatsunari Moribe tries to convince her this is a very bad idea. Of
course, she doesn’t listen, but she should. As part of an apostolic line of
guardians vigilantly keeping watch for earth spirits, he is pretty well attuned
to monsters and their intentions.
Meanwhile,
Mayumi Nagamine is coordinating government research into gyaos and the
increasing frequency of their attacks. She will find a close ally in Asagi
Kusanagi, a young woman who once had a psychic link with Gamera, but not as
co-dependent and symbiotic as Hirasaka’s connection to “Iris,” the juiced-up
gyaos. However, she will not be well served by the advice of Mr. Saito, a
former video game designer now working as a government advisor, who also happens
to be a borderline psychopath.
Forget
the Gamera movies MST3K used to mock.
The late 1990s Hesei reboot trilogy marked a dramatic improvement in production
values over the more formulaic 1960s releases. In this case, the creature
battles are impressively brutal and Kaneko’s screenplay, co-written with
Kazunori Itô, even features some intentional wit. At one point, the weary
Nagamine turns to a government bureaucrat to ask which monster they will be
discussing at their meeting. He replies: “does it matter?” That pretty much
sums of the totality of life in a kaiju universe.
Although
Gamera 3 still isn’t what you would
consider an actor’s showcase, the cast is consistently polished and professional.
As Nagamine and Kusanagi, Shinobu Nakayama and Ayako Fujitani get to play
relatively proactive and forceful women characters. The film easily passes the
Bechdel test if scientific analysis of the gyaos doesn’t count as a conversation
about men. However, Hirotarō Honda’s catty Saito just cries out for a Dynasty-style slap-fest, but he gets
off too easy.
