YMMV / Godzilla: The Planet Eater

• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • For the past two films, Godzilla was called the most evil monster who drove humanity to oblivion, but ever since The Reveal about King Ghidorah and his servants, the Exif, his actions take a more different light if he is aware about the interdimensional beast. If he did, is Godzilla the Big Bad, or a Well-Intentioned Extremist who had to destroy humanity to stop Ghidorah?
  • Adding to the above, was Godzilla specifically hunting down Haruo's group or just Metphies.
  • The below also throws Haruo's sacrifice into question, as whether it was a Heroic Sacrifice or selfish Senseless Sacrifice is entirely dependent on how one reads Metphies. Given Haruo's own mental state, is the vision he gets an actual message from Metphies/Ghidorah or a delusion? However, his concern about mankind abusing destructive technology with the nanometal Dr. Martin got working again from Yuko's catatonic body, and Haruo's subsequent seeing to its destruction, is valid. One just does question if he had to destroy it in a way that killed himself too.
• Anti-Climax Boss: Despite all the build up to his appearance, and all the cool abilities he has and could have thanks to the gimmick of being immune to a foreign dimension's laws of physics as long as he has his tether, Ghidorah is seen as this by many fans. He spends most of the movie just biting Godzilla in a static fashion and lifting him slightly (by Godzilla Earth standards) off the ground, then he gets completely curbstomped and banished in a few attacks the moment Godzilla can actually interact with him.
• Awesome Music: live and die, another great song by XAI which captures the raw emotions of the Downer Ending perfectly.
• Base-Breaking Character: This film's take on King Ghidorah is perhaps the most polarizing and controversial portrayal of the Three-Headed Monster since GMK. Some fans loved the unique approach towards the character, with praise going to its return to its alien roots from the Showa era, and a much closer connection to cosmic horror with its reveal done in a way reminiscent of H.P. Lovecraft. Others found it to be too much of a departure from past forms, with many criticizing its physical form for being nothing but three tentacle-like noodles with spikes. Then there are those who Take a Third Option and say that they're fine with the changes to the previously established mythology and admire the Chtulu-esque approach, but were disappointed that they didn't utilize it enough for a proper fight against Godzilla.
• Contested Sequel: The movie has proven extremely polarizing. Some reviewers feel this entry is the best of the three, with the characters feeling more rounded, an interesting religious theme, actual Kaiju action and an emotional ending. Others consider it the worst of the anime trilogy, if not one of the worst Godzilla films, period (which is saying something, considering one would have to try hard to be worse than All Monsters Attack or the TriStar remake). Reasons cited are Ghidorah's design and how once the fight with Godzilla starts he just bites Godzilla for the rest of the movie without really moving before being killed with ease, Haruo managing to have romantic encounters with every named main female character except Mothra before the first third is over (and the Bait-and-Switch with which twin he's going to get with), the Sudden Downer Ending and the Aesop that accompanies it feeling very forced, and that in the end it feels like nothing at all was accomplished throughout the entire trilogy, and that its sole purpose was to "subvert expecations" without regard for telling a coherent story.
• Critical Dissonance: The Planet Eater has received a generous amount of positive reviews from many western critics who saw the film as the best of the trilogy for integrating more interesting human drama and themes, more onscreen monster action, and consider it an overall solid and conclusive end to the trilogy, some even going as far as to say it vindicates the trilogy as a whole. Fans, however, are torn on its quality, with some agreeing that it was the best, whereas others consider it the worst of the three, and one of the worst of the franchise.
• Fandom Rivalry: A small, yet bizarre inter-fandom example between this film and Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019). Fans of Planet Eater are quick to denounce KOTM as it wasn't produced by Toho originally and that it lacked any sort of development with the human characters in favor of having big action scenes and monster fights trying to please the die-hard fans. Fans of King of the Monsters were quick to fireback, criticizing Planet Eater for taking too many liberties with the Godzilla mythos and not delivering on a true monster on monster fight, and that KOTM at the very least had a sense of enjoyment to it as opposed to the cynical & nihilistic tone throughout this one. Much also comes from the portrayal of Godzilla as outright antagonistic, as opposed to the anti-hero nature of the Monsterverse version, leading to some believing that Too Bleak, Stopped Caring quickly set in once there was no character to root for.
  • The portrayal of Ghidorah in both films has also led to some fan debate. Detractors of the Monsterverse Ghidorah percieve him as a generic-looking Smaug expy and the portrayal of his three heads bickering made for some significant Nightmare Retardant. In return, detractors of Anime Ghidorah complain that Ghidorah's design is too radical a departure, and that the fight is not even a proper fight unlike in King of the Monsters, where Godzilla and Ghidorah fight three times, in visually stunning battle sequences.
• Fight Scene Failure: The "fight" between Godzilla and Ghidorah consists of Ghidorah biting Godzilla for a large portion of the film with the two more or less completely static, then Ghidorah is dispatched with ease. Ghidorah's general lack of emoting and the lack of anything really happening also means the only real way to tell Ghidorah's hurting Godzilla or winning the fight is the characters telling the audience he is. Which means large chunks of the film involve the audience watching some people standing basically motionless and commenting on a fight in which nothing is happening.
• Franchise Original Sin: A common criticism the movie faced by many fans was that it ended on a rather depressing and cynical note. While the Godzilla series is known for having downer endings going as far back as Godzilla (1954) ^note Dr. Serizawa sacrifices himself so the Oxygen Destroyer won't be used again and Tokyo is in ruins, forced to remember the tragedy that struck that day , that film still ended with the monster in question being killed, making the struggles the main characters went through matter. It was a problem here because the characters tried (and failed) to do what they set out what they planned (take Earth back from Godzilla), making their journey and fight entirely pointless, leaving many to dislike the idea that there is no real resolution to the conflict, as well as the fact it was a three film long story, rather than a single contained story, where the situation just gets grimmer and grimmer, making it seem as though investment in the whole trilogy's plot was ultimately pointless.
• Magnificent Bastard: Metphies is an Exif who serves as the archbishop of their religion. Using his status as a colonel of the United Earth Military to convert numerous people on board the Aratum into his religion, he would mold one of them, hero Haruo Sakaki, into his own personal weapon against Godzilla by exploiting Haruo's hatred for the beast. Leaking Haruo information about Godzilla, he sent him and a squadron down to Earth to kill the beast, before convincing Haruo to turn against Mulu-elu Galu-gu when the latter's plans to assimilate the Earth with Mechagodzilla's nanometal interferes with Metphies' own plans for the planet. After saving Earth from Mulu-elu and Mechagodzilla, Metphies persuades many of the survivors into helping his cause, having them summon Ghidorah — an Eldritch Abomination that destroyed the Exif homeworld — to the planet by telling them it could destroy Godzilla. When Haruo and Miana learn of Metphies' intentions to sacrifice Earth to Ghidorah, Metphies subjects them to mind breaking visions and hallucinations to prevent them from stopping him. Only losing to Mothra's sudden intervention and Haruo gaining the determination to resist him, Metphies proves that with his intellect and charisma alone he can become a threat on par with the King of Monsters.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • When early promotional material described Ghidorah as an "interdimensional planet eater", fans were quick to jump on the conclusion that Ghidorah would just be "the Galactus Cloud from Rise of the Silver Surfer".
  • Ghidorah 'killing' the bridge crew 40 seconds before they actually die has drawn comparisons to "Omae wa mou shindeiru" from Fist of the North Star.
  • Many jokes online compared Ghidorah to noodles or spaghetti.
    • With Godzilla Earth essentially being a tree, many have joked that Ghidorah looks like a string of Christmas lights and that the final fight is just "holiday decorating".
  • Ghidorah being called the Golden Demise and emerging from three round portals have drawn joking comparisons to Giorno Giovanna's Golden Experience and his three circular loops of hair.
  • The sexual encounter between Haruo and one of the twins has also drawn much mockery from the fans in being a "sex scene in a Godzilla movie", with some even asking if the MUTO courtship in the 2014 film also counts as a sex scene.^note Godzilla: King of the Monsters confirms that the MUTO actually mate that way.
    • Taken even further by people who assumed it was a RAPE scene.
  • With both Godzilla and Ghidorah getting limited screen time, and being far larger than previous versions, some fans have mused about the pattern of monsters getting bigger and bigger but getting less and less screentime.
• Nightmare Fuel: The introduction of King Ghidorah is quite intimidating and fierce. After praying for the "golden demise" to come and kill Godzilla once and for all, the shadows of Ghidorah's heads slowly eviscerate the many on earth who have prayed for it to come, then the heads proceed to attack the Aratrum, killing the remaining remnants of earth's past technology in one fail swoop. While fan reactions towards this take on Ghidorah is mixed at best, many will agree that his introduction is top notch.
• Older Than They Think:
  • The sex scene encounter isn't really a new thing in the franchise as there was an old, obscure manga (which was never exported outside of Japan or officially translated) that also featured it and was way more explicit (indeed, it was more like a manga story about a couple having sex that's interrupted by Godzilla at the very end).
  • The idea of nudity (or partial nudity in this films case) isn't new to the series itself, as some of the past films featured some nudity. Terror of Mechagodzilla featured a scene showing Katsura's breast, Godzilla vs. Megalon has a pinup poster in a truck that features a full on nude female model, even Godzilla (1954) has some National Geographic Nudity.
• Signature Scene:
  • Ghidorah's arrival and the destruction of the Aratrum.
  • Haruo's sacrifice.
• Rooting for the Empire: Since the fight between Ghidorah and Godzilla is basically evil vs evil, and the Earth is wrecked beyond all comprehension, it's difficult not to agree with the idea that it'd be better to just end it all now and have the former destroy the Earth if it means the monster dies too. As we see in the film, the alternative is hiding in caves under the protection of Mothra with the rest of the world being uninhabitable due to monsters, overgrowth and Godzilla's offspring.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: No doubt about it. One of the most-common criticisms regarding the film is the bleakness of the ending. The movie doesn't even end on a happy note, even in the standards of most of the darkest entries of the franchise, the setting is way too bleak, and even the conflict between Ghidorah and Godzilla is tough to care about since these are two apocalyptic generic doomsday villains, meaning, no matter who wins, humanity is screwed either way. Most of the named characters die, and with the Aratrum destroyed mankind is basically extinct or in hiding. Godzilla is still alive and as we've seen, nothing on Earth can kill him, so he'll continue to plague the survivors forever. Ultimately, almost nothing was solved in the film.
• Took the Bad Film Seriously: In spite of the film's several problems in its narrative, it doesn't stop Mamoru Miyano and Chris Niosi from giving their all as Haruo.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Ghidorah's design was seen as this by many fans, as they felt that making him three wormlike energy-beings as opposed to the traditional three-headed golden dragon was too much of a departure to what the character was intended to be.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Many have argued that Haruo's Heroic Sacrifice could've had some more weight to it had he killed Godzilla in the process considering his reason for said sacrifice was to eliminate the last remaining remnants of the past civilization and humanity's hatred towards the creature. Since even this Godzilla was created by the same technology made to kill it in this continuity also, some felt it would've made it a much more powerful and satisfying end.
  • After 2 films that lacked any monster vs monster action, this film finally delivers what fans were waiting for, the confrontation between Godzilla Earth and King Ghidorah... only for the fight to amount to Ghidorah's 3 heads biting Godzilla and levitating him for a painfully long time while Martin tells us what's happening instead. This is especially true, as Ghidorah is introduced with all kinds of crazy, reality and time bending powers...and only uses them to deflect Godzilla's beam and be intangible, that's it. The fight doesn't get any more interesting once KG becomes tangible, since all he does is scream in terror and get taken down by Godzilla in only a few hits.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Haruo again. While the story does try to treat him sympathetically, some lost sympathy for him when he seems to nearly completely forget about the now braindead Yuko for most of the movie and nigh instantly ends up in a relationship with the Mothra twins (in some way both of them), making some agree with Metphies psychic guilt trip involving her. Furthermore, while his suicide at the end is supposed to be a Heroic Suicide, some feel that screwing over what little remains of the human race by destroying their only chance of ever gaining a foothold in the altered world, and leaving his wife and unborn child in the process came across as more selfish than anything. And many point out that how heroic his suicide is is entirely dependent on whether Metphies is right or just a delusional madman.

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