I'm always most interested in how Ishiro Honda is going to take his next bit of science-fiction nonsense in the limited new direction he could find. It's almost always in the setups, usually in the first act, and Atragon, the story of a Nemo-like captain who built a powerful submarine, puts a toe back into the realm of the Japanese culture's continuing efforts to deal with its legacy after WWII. And then there's science-fiction nonsense buoyed by adorable model work that almost never makes a whole lot of sense. Rushed together from concept to completion in four months, Atragon represents the limits of what Toho could push out using their assembly line process: moderate entertainment. There are worse things.
Mysterious humanoid figures rise from the sea and try to kidnap Japanese citizens. The focus falls on former Rear Admiral Kusumi (Ken Uehara), now the president of a large company, whose assistant is Makoto Jinguji (Yoko Fujiyama), the daughter of a WWII submarine captain, Hachiro Jinguji (Jun Tazaki, in a role written for Toshiro Mifune which he couldn't take because production on Kurosawa's Red Beard was taking forever), who supposedly died when he took his submarine in a revolt that Kusumi covered up to protect Jinguji. When the police capture one of the mysterious figures, an agent of the ancient lost continent Mu, Number 23 (Akihiko Hirata), with threats of raising the Mu Empire and bringing the entire world under their control once more, as well as with orders to find Hachiro, the only man Mu considers a threat.
Kusumi, despite knowing that Jinguji isn't dead (a secret he kept from Makoto for twenty years), has no idea where to find the old sub skipper. They get that information, though, from a spy Kusumi sent to ensure the safety of his daughter, caught by the police coincidentally just in time for him to give the information over to Kusumi. So begins the quest to find Jinguji...which ends pretty quickly because they have a guide.
Alright, so the most interesting thing about this film is when we finally meet Jinguji. He's been removed from the changes of the world for twenty years and still acts like the war is on (no mention of America, though). This is, of course, a parallel with real Japanese soldiers hiding out on tiny islands, waiting for orders for decades after the unconditional surrender, and that Honda and his writer Shinichi Sekizawa chose to deal with it in this context is fascinating. I mean, they do very little with it seriously, but it's interesting to watch.
Essentially, it becomes this argument between old-school nationalism and new-school internationalism (with Japan leading, of course, because, you know, nationalism didn't die). That the film doesn't quite see the irony in that is probably more of a blindspot to the filmmakers than anything else. It's not that important. All that's important is that we get some dramatic tension when Jinguji demonstrates the power of his new submarine called Atragon which can fly and has a cold ray and then refuses to use it to help. He's there for Japan, not the international order, you see.
One curious decision was to make the Mu Empire Egyptian in design. According to the graphic shown on the screen, the Mu Empire was a giant continent roughly the size of Asia in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, very far from Egypt. The decision to make it Egyptian was probably just a quickly made one to find a way to make it exotic to Japanese audiences, but it also creates one of those weird situations where a highly advanced civilization is decked out in silly, ancient garb, dancing ancient-looking dances in ancient-looking halls, while sliding it aside to reveal switches and buttons from time to time. It's always weird to me.
Speaking of the look of things, this is a special effects movie made by Ishiro Honda, so there must be time dedicated to talking about the work for Eiji Tsuburaya. This isn't his best work. The problem is that it's honestly too ambitious. The Mu Empire is a miniature, but it never feels like anything else because it's mostly filmed alone. What helps make the miniatures work in the other stuff is when there's actual action going on, so the long, dreamy shot through Mu that doesn't have a single person or thing moving just looks fake. However, in the spectacle-laden ending, when the Atragon shows up to cause destruction, including some halfway decent compositing of people in the foreground from time to time, it works better. It's still not believable, but it's more effective.
I should also note that since the movie brought up WWII itself, I don't think it's untoward to bring up WWII regarding its ending. Japan is attacked. They have a secret superweapon. They use this superweapon to literally destroy an entire continent, including civilians, to end the conflict and protect themselves. If that's not a parallel to what happened to Japan in WWII, I don't know what is. I do wonder if either Honda or Sekizawa recognized the connection.
Anyway, it's...okay. It has some interesting ideas that it doesn't explore in any serious way, but the ideas are there. The action is silly. The character-based storytelling is thin and unpursued. It's pretty typical fare, but it's not the worst thing. Spectacle has some benefits.
Mysterious humanoid figures rise from the sea and try to kidnap Japanese citizens. The focus falls on former Rear Admiral Kusumi (Ken Uehara), now the president of a large company, whose assistant is Makoto Jinguji (Yoko Fujiyama), the daughter of a WWII submarine captain, Hachiro Jinguji (Jun Tazaki, in a role written for Toshiro Mifune which he couldn't take because production on Kurosawa's Red Beard was taking forever), who supposedly died when he took his submarine in a revolt that Kusumi covered up to protect Jinguji. When the police capture one of the mysterious figures, an agent of the ancient lost continent Mu, Number 23 (Akihiko Hirata), with threats of raising the Mu Empire and bringing the entire world under their control once more, as well as with orders to find Hachiro, the only man Mu considers a threat.
Kusumi, despite knowing that Jinguji isn't dead (a secret he kept from Makoto for twenty years), has no idea where to find the old sub skipper. They get that information, though, from a spy Kusumi sent to ensure the safety of his daughter, caught by the police coincidentally just in time for him to give the information over to Kusumi. So begins the quest to find Jinguji...which ends pretty quickly because they have a guide.
Alright, so the most interesting thing about this film is when we finally meet Jinguji. He's been removed from the changes of the world for twenty years and still acts like the war is on (no mention of America, though). This is, of course, a parallel with real Japanese soldiers hiding out on tiny islands, waiting for orders for decades after the unconditional surrender, and that Honda and his writer Shinichi Sekizawa chose to deal with it in this context is fascinating. I mean, they do very little with it seriously, but it's interesting to watch.
Essentially, it becomes this argument between old-school nationalism and new-school internationalism (with Japan leading, of course, because, you know, nationalism didn't die). That the film doesn't quite see the irony in that is probably more of a blindspot to the filmmakers than anything else. It's not that important. All that's important is that we get some dramatic tension when Jinguji demonstrates the power of his new submarine called Atragon which can fly and has a cold ray and then refuses to use it to help. He's there for Japan, not the international order, you see.
One curious decision was to make the Mu Empire Egyptian in design. According to the graphic shown on the screen, the Mu Empire was a giant continent roughly the size of Asia in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, very far from Egypt. The decision to make it Egyptian was probably just a quickly made one to find a way to make it exotic to Japanese audiences, but it also creates one of those weird situations where a highly advanced civilization is decked out in silly, ancient garb, dancing ancient-looking dances in ancient-looking halls, while sliding it aside to reveal switches and buttons from time to time. It's always weird to me.
Speaking of the look of things, this is a special effects movie made by Ishiro Honda, so there must be time dedicated to talking about the work for Eiji Tsuburaya. This isn't his best work. The problem is that it's honestly too ambitious. The Mu Empire is a miniature, but it never feels like anything else because it's mostly filmed alone. What helps make the miniatures work in the other stuff is when there's actual action going on, so the long, dreamy shot through Mu that doesn't have a single person or thing moving just looks fake. However, in the spectacle-laden ending, when the Atragon shows up to cause destruction, including some halfway decent compositing of people in the foreground from time to time, it works better. It's still not believable, but it's more effective.
I should also note that since the movie brought up WWII itself, I don't think it's untoward to bring up WWII regarding its ending. Japan is attacked. They have a secret superweapon. They use this superweapon to literally destroy an entire continent, including civilians, to end the conflict and protect themselves. If that's not a parallel to what happened to Japan in WWII, I don't know what is. I do wonder if either Honda or Sekizawa recognized the connection.
Anyway, it's...okay. It has some interesting ideas that it doesn't explore in any serious way, but the ideas are there. The action is silly. The character-based storytelling is thin and unpursued. It's pretty typical fare, but it's not the worst thing. Spectacle has some benefits.