The Rebirth of Mothra Trilogy: A Retrospective

After successfully rebooting the Godzilla franchise with a series of films in the 1980’s and 90’s, Toho decided to try the same thing in the late 90’s with one of its other popular giant monster characters, Mothra. The resulting trilogy of films, Rebirth of Mothra 1-3 is a mixed bag. The films skew towards a much younger audience. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but the films try to appeal to children in the most basic and irritating way, which is frequently the trilogy’s downfall. The three Mothra films never quite reach the heights of the rebooted Godzilla series, there are still moments of fun to be had.

Rebirth of Mothra (1996)

The first film starts off on the wrong foot by centering the film on two obnoxious kid characters. There’s nothing wrong with casting kids in movies, but the children in this film are utterly annoying. They whine and act like twerps the whole time. That’s not exactly the type of character I want to spend a whole movie with. To make matters worse, the DVD copy I have only featured the English dub,  which features particularly grating performances by adults using high-pitched voices to try to pass for children.

Essentially, the father of the two kids brings home an engraved stone he found while out working on his landscaping job. Unfortunately, that stone was a seal keeping an ancient evil from escaping. The evil in question is Desghidorah (literally, “Death Ghidorah”), the edgy, solid black, four-legged cousin of Godzilla’s gold space dragon arch nemesis, King Ghidorah.  Unfortunately for the residents of Japan, Desghidorah is released from his prison and sets out to wreak havoc.

The giant beast is released because of a spat between the Mothra sisters, diminutive humans who serve as the guardians of the giant moth. In the original Mothra movie, as well all other Godzilla films featuring Mothra, there were only two sisters, a pair of identical twins. The Rebirth trilogy adds in a third Mothra sister, Belvera, who looks like Rita Repulsa from the Power Rangers TV show and is evil for the sake of being evil. Belvera gets mad at her sisters, Lora and Moll, and after a protracted (and poorly green-screened) aerial chase between the sisters, Belvera releases Desghidorah. It’s also worth mentioning that the Mothra twins ride around on a tiny version of Mothra dubbed “Fairy”, while Belvera has a similarly-sized dragon for transport.

This is all an elaborate and convoluted setup to get two giant monsters to battle one another. I tend to evaluate Godzilla films on the strength of the fights, and the tolerability of the human story, and I feel the same metric is appropriate here. Luckily, the monster fights here are actually fun. A miniature model forest is set ablaze as Desghidorah goes on a rampage, which is a sight to behold. The whole Rebirth trilogy has an environmental slant so naturally the bad guy monster is also guilty of deforestation. During one of their battles, Mothra is mortally wounded. One of her larva undergoes metamorphosis and emerges as a new Mothra, thus the “rebirth” title. Two Mothras for the price of one!

The human parts of the first Rebirth of Mothra outweigh the fun of the fights. Annoying kids really put a damper on the fun of watching a giant moth puppet fly around on wire supports. It doesn’t help that the portions featuring the human characters frequently feel like something out of a direct-to-video kids movie you’d find on the tenth page of Redbox rentals. It’s all broad slapstick and characters yelling or shrieking. It feels like the whole first third of the film consists of Belvera chasing the two children around the house, smashing furniture and dishware in the movie’s attempt at physical comedy. Conversely, the last third of the film is pretty much just a brawl between Desghidorah (who has grown wings by this point) and Mothra Junior. The good and the bad of the first Rebirth cancel each other out. The end result is a movie that is approximately 50% fun, 50% intolerable.

Rebirth of Mothra II (1997)

Sadly, the ratio increase towards intolerability with Rebirth of Mothra II. This film doubles down on everything that didn’t work in the first film. That means more annoying kid characters, more annoying performances in the English dub, more corny environmentalism, and more subpar CG effects. This film centers on a group of kids who are on the search for an Atlantis-type lost civilization, who supposedly had a hidden treasure that could be used to save the environment.

Along the way, the kids pick up a cutesy sidekick named Ghogo. It’s one of those archetypal fuzzball puppets, like the Tribbles from Star Trek, or the Krites from Critters. Unfortunately, Ghogo is not a killer alien, he’s a big-eyed whatchamacallit with a phallic antenna sticking out of its head. Oh, and it has the ability to heal people with its urine. There’s even a POV shot of a wounded character getting peed on by the disgusting little furball. I sure wasn’t expecting to see that, especially not in a Mothra movie.

The Mothra twins aid the kids on their journey because a rise in global pollution has awakened Dagahra, an evil sea turtle sort of monster with beak-shaped laser cannons on its shoulder. The oversized sea creature also has the ability to release toxic starfish into the sea, which are poisoning the local sea life. The kids journey off into the ocean, Ghogo in tow, with only the Mothra twins for adult supervision. 

Belvera is back, too, with an even more ridiculous outfit than before, and a bunch of cyborg augmentations on her dragon (which may or may not actually be a robot, it’s not really clear). She’s following the kids along with a pair of dimwitted fishermen, in hopes of finding the treasure first, because it wouldn’t be a lame kids movie without dopey adult villains.

The kids find a hidden castle, a remnant of the ancient civilization that looks a whole lot like the sets from Legends of the Hidden Temple. Wacky adventure hijinks ensue. But don’t worry, the movie hasn’t forgotten it’s a giant monster movie. Dagahra shows up and whoops Mothra in an underwater battle. Apparently, her Achilles’ Heel is getting covered in poison starfish, so she goes out like a chump and sits around incapacitated on top of the castle while Dagrahra runs amok. 

While Indiana Jones-ing it up in the temple, the kids awaken the princess of the lost civilization, who informs them that their repulsive hairy companion is actually the secret treasure. Ghogo activates his magic powers, which supercharge Mothra, allowing her to shake off the starfish and return to fight the villainous sea turtle. She defeats Dagahra by transforming into a fishlike CG model dubbed Aqua Mothra, who separates into thousands of tiny Mothra that swim inside her foe’s mouth and destroys him from the inside. It’s absolutely ridiculous, but not the fun kind of ridiculous.

Returning to the metric of quality of fights and quality of human parts, Rebirth of Mothra II fails on both counts. The fights are underwhelming because they almost entirely take place in the water. The Godzilla movies have never had success with water-based fights, and the Mothra series is no exception. There’s no sense of scale when the only thing around the monsters is water, which makes the effects look faker than they usually do. The CG effects for Aqua Mothra are distractingly bad, too. It goes without saying that the human story for this film is just as obnoxious, if not more so than the first. There are three kids this time, which is one more annoying kid than the last film, and of course their gross little urinating companion. The adventure component feels cheap and recycled from other, better movies. This even copies the “invisible optical illusion bridge” bit from The Last Crusade. This is easily the weakest of the three films, and one of the weaker Toho monster movies in general.

Rebirth of Mothra III (1998)

After two duds in a row, the old adage that the third time’s the charm proves to be correct once again. Rebirth of Mothra III is perhaps the only consistently watchable film of the trilogy, if only because its human story is actually watchable. It also helps that this film brings in King Ghidorah as the antagonist, rather than a new monster. A familiar face is welcome after the edgy knockoff Ghidorah, Desghidorah, and the underwhelming Dagahra. 

This time, Ghidorah has shown up on Earth to kidnap children and steal their life force. He swoops over the city, spiriting away all the children in his path, magically transporting them to a giant fleshy dome.

To the movie’s great benefit, there’s only one kid character this time. He teams up with the Mothra twins to stop Ghidorah with a fantastically ridiculous scheme. Moll uses her magic to supercharge Mothra, sending her back in time to the Cretaceous period. The idea here is that Ghidorah first visited the planet during the age of the dinosaurs, and that Mothra can more easily defeat Ghidorah in his younger form. It’s basically The Terminator, but with a giant moth instead of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Truly, the greatest story of all the Mothra films.

Back in the past, Mothra dukes it out with baby Ghidorah. For whatever reason, the Ghidorah suit used for the Cretaceous era scenes is noticeably a guy in a suit, with his two hands serving as the left and right dragon heads. It’s really unnerving, especially watching him walk around because the Toho movies are generally good at creating the illusion that it’s not just a guy in a suit. It’s a bizarre uncanny valley sort of moment that’s actually kind of fun in its own weird way. 

Meanwhile, in the present, Moll goes into a state of suspended animation after exhausting her powers on the time travel stunt. Things don’t fare better for Lora, who has somehow been possessed by Ghidorah’s evil, an ability Ghidorah has never had before or since. Back in the past, Mothra gets tromped by dino-Ghidorah, but this is only a minor inconvenience. In the present Belvera breaks Lora sister free of the spell, allowing Lora to sing a magic song that powers up Mothra in the past. Mothra gains the upper hand, zapping off part of Ghidorah’s tail with an energy beam and dropping the rest of him in a volcano, but at the expense of her own life.

This would seem to be the end of Ghidorah, but Belvera notices that the present remains unchanged despite the apparent defeat of Ghidorah in the past. Turns out, the severed Ghidorah tail somehow burrowed in the ground like a worm and grew a new Ghidorah, the one still causing trouble in the present. Continuing the zany time travel shenanigans, a bunch of Cretaceous Mothra larvae show up to put the dying Mothra in a cocoon. Cut to the present, where the cocoon hatches with yet another iteration of Mothra, Armor Mothra. This ‘roided out version of the beloved bug blows up the pesky three-headed dragon for good. Also, Belvera turns good for some reason, tying up the trilogy-long Mothra sister storyline that was never particularly important.

Overall

The Rebirth of Mothra trilogy is messy and frequently painful to sit through, but it does have its rewards. If you’re a diehard fan like myself and willing to sit through annoying kid actors, there’s a decent amount of weirdness and quality monster battles. There’s enough monster action in the first film to almost negate the annoying human parts. While that can’t be said of the second one, it has enough bizarre qualities that it might play well to a rowdy crowd of friends. The third one is actually pretty good as far as films on the Godzilla periphery go. You could easily just skip the first two and go straight to the third. You’d miss out on the arcing story of the Mothra sisters, of course, but I don’t think anyone watches a Mothra film because of the Mothra sisters.