Inventor Goro Ibuki (Katsuhiko Sasaki), his younger brother Roku-chan (Hiroyuki Kawase), and the friend racecar driver Jonko (Yutaka Hayashi) find themselves targeted by nameless henchman who are presumably after the robot prototype Jet Jaguar that Goro is building. At the same time, the entire world is experiencing an unprecedented amount of Earthquakes. The Earthquakes are in actuality attacks by the undersea kingdom of Seatopia whose Emperor (Robert Dunham) has declared war on the surface world for atomic testing and seeks to steal Jet Jaguar to use as a foundation for a robot army to attack the surface along with their giant burrowing monster Megalon.
Godzilla vs. Megalon is the 13th entry in the Godzilla franchise with Jun Fukuda returning as director from Godzilla vs. Gigan. At this point Toho still saw Godzilla as a lower tier asset and would often farm out the rights to the characters to outside studios hence why Godzilla appeared in TV series such as Zone Fighter. Supposedly another Godzilla movie was going to be made under Tsuburaya Productions who produced the successful children's kaiju film Daigoro vs. Goliath with Noboru Tsubaraya (son of the recently passed effects artist Eiji Tsubaraya) able to persuade Toho to license him the character for a film that would recycle various assets from Daigoro vs. Goliath. After the Tsubaraya film fell apart for undisclosed reasons, the Godzilla team at Toho were tasked with hastily putting together a replacement with director Fukuda writing much of the screenplay himself due to Shinichi Sekizawa not having time to write a full treatment. While the film continued the downward trajectory of attendance for Godzilla films in Japan becoming the first film in the series to sell under one million tickets, the film still managed to pull in $20 million worldwide against its $1 million budget. Uncharacteristically for a Godzilla movie at this time, the film was given a massive promotional push in the United States theatrically, and was the first Godzilla film shown on prime-time with host segments featuring SNL comedian John Belushi (which have since been lost). Critical and audience perception of Godzilla as cheap kiddie material can mostly be traced back to this film, and while cheap, juvenile, and lacking in production value there's still some entertainment value to be had.
While Godzilla vs. Megalon is sometimes said to be the closest we've gotten to a Showa era Gamera like take with Godzilla, I don't think we can go that far. While the movie does have a garish color pallet at points with the exterior of the Ibuki's house looking like the set of either a hippie commune or a cheap kid's educational show Roku-Chan doesn't have the same level of dialed up "pwecociousness" that many of the Gamera children were written with and while the choice for his voice dub didn't do any favors (an issue with child actors even in good foreign movies like A Fistful of Dollars) I can't say he's that bad and all the characterization is just bland.
As with the last film Godzilla vs. Megalon features hefty amounts of stock footage (quite possibly as much if not more than Godzilla's Revenge ratio-wise) as pretty much every scene where Megalon destroys either the military or cities is taken from prior films including Godzilla vs. Gigan which was already heavy with stock footage. As for Godzilla, don't go expecting him until the last 20 minutes or so because we instead follow Jet Jaguar the magic robot (pretty much magic as he "programs" himself to be bigger during the climax in one of several instances of sticky tape used to patch a slapdash plot). Jet Jaguar has become a point of fascination with Godzilla fans mostly due to his creation as part of a contest Toho held for children to submit their own giant robots (and apparently to the dissatisfaction of the winner whose drawing looked nothing like Jet Jaguar and was called Red Arone) but at no point was the movie actually intended to be featured exclusively around Jet Jaguar. Once Godzilla enters the fray and gives us some new footage (along with Gigan) the final monster fight is fun if over the top and ridiculous complete with evil laughter from Megalon.
Godzilla vs. Megalon is about as dumb as you've heard and outside of All Monsters Attack/Godzilla's Revenge is probably the zenith of the franchise's kiddification. It's cheap, it's stupid, it has holes Godzilla can walk through, but if you go in with a certain mindset it makes for enjoyable silly viewing.
Godzilla vs. Megalon is the 13th entry in the Godzilla franchise with Jun Fukuda returning as director from Godzilla vs. Gigan. At this point Toho still saw Godzilla as a lower tier asset and would often farm out the rights to the characters to outside studios hence why Godzilla appeared in TV series such as Zone Fighter. Supposedly another Godzilla movie was going to be made under Tsuburaya Productions who produced the successful children's kaiju film Daigoro vs. Goliath with Noboru Tsubaraya (son of the recently passed effects artist Eiji Tsubaraya) able to persuade Toho to license him the character for a film that would recycle various assets from Daigoro vs. Goliath. After the Tsubaraya film fell apart for undisclosed reasons, the Godzilla team at Toho were tasked with hastily putting together a replacement with director Fukuda writing much of the screenplay himself due to Shinichi Sekizawa not having time to write a full treatment. While the film continued the downward trajectory of attendance for Godzilla films in Japan becoming the first film in the series to sell under one million tickets, the film still managed to pull in $20 million worldwide against its $1 million budget. Uncharacteristically for a Godzilla movie at this time, the film was given a massive promotional push in the United States theatrically, and was the first Godzilla film shown on prime-time with host segments featuring SNL comedian John Belushi (which have since been lost). Critical and audience perception of Godzilla as cheap kiddie material can mostly be traced back to this film, and while cheap, juvenile, and lacking in production value there's still some entertainment value to be had.
While Godzilla vs. Megalon is sometimes said to be the closest we've gotten to a Showa era Gamera like take with Godzilla, I don't think we can go that far. While the movie does have a garish color pallet at points with the exterior of the Ibuki's house looking like the set of either a hippie commune or a cheap kid's educational show Roku-Chan doesn't have the same level of dialed up "pwecociousness" that many of the Gamera children were written with and while the choice for his voice dub didn't do any favors (an issue with child actors even in good foreign movies like A Fistful of Dollars) I can't say he's that bad and all the characterization is just bland.
As with the last film Godzilla vs. Megalon features hefty amounts of stock footage (quite possibly as much if not more than Godzilla's Revenge ratio-wise) as pretty much every scene where Megalon destroys either the military or cities is taken from prior films including Godzilla vs. Gigan which was already heavy with stock footage. As for Godzilla, don't go expecting him until the last 20 minutes or so because we instead follow Jet Jaguar the magic robot (pretty much magic as he "programs" himself to be bigger during the climax in one of several instances of sticky tape used to patch a slapdash plot). Jet Jaguar has become a point of fascination with Godzilla fans mostly due to his creation as part of a contest Toho held for children to submit their own giant robots (and apparently to the dissatisfaction of the winner whose drawing looked nothing like Jet Jaguar and was called Red Arone) but at no point was the movie actually intended to be featured exclusively around Jet Jaguar. Once Godzilla enters the fray and gives us some new footage (along with Gigan) the final monster fight is fun if over the top and ridiculous complete with evil laughter from Megalon.
Godzilla vs. Megalon is about as dumb as you've heard and outside of All Monsters Attack/Godzilla's Revenge is probably the zenith of the franchise's kiddification. It's cheap, it's stupid, it has holes Godzilla can walk through, but if you go in with a certain mindset it makes for enjoyable silly viewing.