Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (2001)

Director: Shusuke Kaneko

Written by: Shusuke Kaneko, Keiichi Hasegawa, Masahiro Yokotani

With humanity acting up again (seriously, there are some real a-holes in this movie) it falls to Godzilla to teach us a lesson in humility.

Godzilla is in full-on villain mode here, with glistening white eyes and a genuine sense of malice that we’ve never seen in the big guy before. This incarnation of Godzilla, resurrected by the spirits of dead Japanese soldiers, goes out of his way to stomp, incinerate, and crush anyone, or anything that gets in his way.

Our only hope lies with three Guardian Monsters, Baragon, Mothra, and King Ghidorah. Yes, you read that correctly, the terror from outer space, Monster Zero himself, now fights on the side of good (just this once).

Baragon is the first to emerge and promptly embarrasses himself in an awful attempt to take out Godzilla which results in a literal curb-stomping. Meanwhile, a larval Mothra drowns a bunch of deserving teenagers before cocooning herself to ready for battle and a depressed man's suicide attempt leads to a hibernating Ghidorah being uncovered.

Ultimately a three-way battle concludes with Godzilla annihilating his foes but the battle leaves a chink in the Big G’s armour which a canny Japanese General is finally able to exploit.

This grim take on Godzilla is arguably the darkest in the franchise and the closest yet to a full-on horror movie. The GMKGoji suit looks fantastic and despite a few ‘power-rangeresque’ camera angles proves a terrifying entity to behold. Mothra has never looked better, improved CGI makes her both nimble and aggressive, easily the best we’ve seen her to date. Baragon shows up. Ghidorah still looks stupid, I just can’t get behind the design, I’m sorry and the C.G.I. used for him just makes him look even worse.

All in all, this is easily the best film of the Millennium Era so far.

The nickname "GMKGoji" originates from the abbreviation of "Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack" (GMK) and "Goji," derived from Godzilla's Japanese name, Gojira.

Director Shusuke Kaneko enlisted Fuyuki Shinada to design a more traditional Godzilla, distinct from the MireGoji design of the previous two films. Shinada incorporated elements from the ShodaiGoji and MosuGoji designs. The suit's skin returned to its original texture and charcoal-black color, while the dorsal plates were smooth and bone-white again.

The suit featured significant muscle definition and extended pointer and thumb claws. Most notably, the eyes were white with grey veins, giving Godzilla a more malevolent and mystical appearance, similar to the unused Ghost Godzilla design. When Godzilla charged and expelled his atomic breath, the dorsal plates on the suit shifted slightly due to a mechanism on its back.

The GMKGoji suit is the tallest Godzilla suit ever used in a film and the second tallest in the franchise's history, only surpassed by the suit from a 2014 Snickers commercial. Shinada and Takuya Yamabe created four Godzilla suits for the film: a regular suit with movable mouth and neck, a more expressive performance suit, an animatronic for close-ups, and a modified MireGoji attraction suit for the scene where King Ghidorah blasts Godzilla into Yokohama Bay.

Actor Mizuho Yoshida drew inspiration from Haruo Nakajima's fight scenes in "King Kong vs. Godzilla" and Kenpachiro Satsuma's walking technique, while also leveraging the improved motion of the suit's claws for his portrayal of Godzilla.

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