Gamera 3: Revenge of Iris - Shusuke Kaneko
This is the final instalment of the much-hailed revival of the Gamera series in 1990's made by the guy who later made the super-duper Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah.
Revenge of Iris is a wierd mix of genres, a Cronenberg meets Kaiju thing, and between fulfilling all its directions comes off somewhat messy, but is nonetheless an interesting effort.
The story begins with newspersons reporting the sightings of firebird creatures aka Gyaos in different parts of the world. The main character is Ayana a teenager who maintains a hatred for Gamera after he crashes through a building killing her parents (and her cat) during one of his confrontations with his nemeses, the Gyaos. A sullen loner and on the cusp of sexual awakening, Ayana moves an unbenknownst to her sacred rock, which leads to a hatching of a mutated Gyaos-like creature with tentacles. Ayana shares a psychic bond with the creature whom she names Iris after her lost cat, and nurtures it with the intent of sending it to kill Gamera. In a sequence that gets as close to tentacle sex as it can in a no-nudity film, she bonds with the creature sharing her genes to give it a new form that is much more powerful than the traditional Gyaos.
Paralleling this story is that of a monster attack researcher (I kid you not here), trying to understand the essence of Gamera, in the course meeting up with a totally wierd quasi-diabolical game designer who appears to have the inside knowledge of Kaiju-mayhem. She also meets up with a girl who is Gamera's soulmate and the counter to Ayana's Gyaos. In the midst of all this Gamera and the super-Gyaos collide and wreak chaos over the Kyoto landscape.
The storyline is fairly convoluted and the explanations provided don't necessarily make much sense. But certain aspects of it appeal to me, like the idea of these gargantuan creatures psychically connected to these frail girls and drawing strength from them. Also the aspect of Gamera causing destruction even though he is a savior of sort because he is really more connected to the earth itself than to the human race. The film takes a fairly long time to get to the payoff scenes and lot of footage is devoted to scenes of verbal reports of the monster attacks, which can get irksome after a while.
The battles are pretty well-handled nicely emphasizing the size of the creatures and their capacity for mass destruction, but not as good as the ones in G,M &KG. Also another problem is that the creature design of the super-Gyaos relies too much on CGI and glowing lights thereby rendering him much less organic and tangible as a presence; he doesn't exude any personality at all. Gamera fares better although some of his attacks, like the spin attack he has make him look more like a flying saucer (in his first scene I genuinely thought he was a flying saucer) than the giant tortoise he is. Surprisingly in his combat he rarely uses the shell as a defence which kinda obfuscates the entire purpose of him being a giant tortoise. I know this is just fantasy but still.
On the whole Gamera 3 is an interesting movie for Kaiju fans, and the storyline has significant points of interest, but it's also a bit of a hodge-podge and not necessarily a satisfying experience.
This is the final instalment of the much-hailed revival of the Gamera series in 1990's made by the guy who later made the super-duper Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah.
Revenge of Iris is a wierd mix of genres, a Cronenberg meets Kaiju thing, and between fulfilling all its directions comes off somewhat messy, but is nonetheless an interesting effort.
The story begins with newspersons reporting the sightings of firebird creatures aka Gyaos in different parts of the world. The main character is Ayana a teenager who maintains a hatred for Gamera after he crashes through a building killing her parents (and her cat) during one of his confrontations with his nemeses, the Gyaos. A sullen loner and on the cusp of sexual awakening, Ayana moves an unbenknownst to her sacred rock, which leads to a hatching of a mutated Gyaos-like creature with tentacles. Ayana shares a psychic bond with the creature whom she names Iris after her lost cat, and nurtures it with the intent of sending it to kill Gamera. In a sequence that gets as close to tentacle sex as it can in a no-nudity film, she bonds with the creature sharing her genes to give it a new form that is much more powerful than the traditional Gyaos.
Paralleling this story is that of a monster attack researcher (I kid you not here), trying to understand the essence of Gamera, in the course meeting up with a totally wierd quasi-diabolical game designer who appears to have the inside knowledge of Kaiju-mayhem. She also meets up with a girl who is Gamera's soulmate and the counter to Ayana's Gyaos. In the midst of all this Gamera and the super-Gyaos collide and wreak chaos over the Kyoto landscape.
The storyline is fairly convoluted and the explanations provided don't necessarily make much sense. But certain aspects of it appeal to me, like the idea of these gargantuan creatures psychically connected to these frail girls and drawing strength from them. Also the aspect of Gamera causing destruction even though he is a savior of sort because he is really more connected to the earth itself than to the human race. The film takes a fairly long time to get to the payoff scenes and lot of footage is devoted to scenes of verbal reports of the monster attacks, which can get irksome after a while.
The battles are pretty well-handled nicely emphasizing the size of the creatures and their capacity for mass destruction, but not as good as the ones in G,M &KG. Also another problem is that the creature design of the super-Gyaos relies too much on CGI and glowing lights thereby rendering him much less organic and tangible as a presence; he doesn't exude any personality at all. Gamera fares better although some of his attacks, like the spin attack he has make him look more like a flying saucer (in his first scene I genuinely thought he was a flying saucer) than the giant tortoise he is. Surprisingly in his combat he rarely uses the shell as a defence which kinda obfuscates the entire purpose of him being a giant tortoise. I know this is just fantasy but still.
On the whole Gamera 3 is an interesting movie for Kaiju fans, and the storyline has significant points of interest, but it's also a bit of a hodge-podge and not necessarily a satisfying experience.
