Rebirth of Mothra III (1998)
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Rebirth of Mothra III (モスラ3 キングギドラ来襲 Mosura Surī Kingu Gidora Raishū, lit. Mothra 3: King Ghidorah Attacks), is a 1998 tokusatsu kaiju film and the final entry in Toho's Rebirth of Mothra trilogy. It was released to Japanese theaters on December 12, 1998.
Plot
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Moll, Lora, and Belvera, the Elias sisters are at odds again. Belvera seeks the secret power of their ancestors, tiny triangular power units that transform the sisters' small daggers into powerful swords. She fails to retrieve the proper triangle for her sword, each power unit will only work for a specific sword, but Moll and Lora end up with a unit that transforms one of their swords.
Shortly after the Elias sisters face-off, a meteor shower brings a strange object to Earth, a huge meteor that disrupts gravity near it. As it crashes to Earth at night, a family watches. The next day, the oldest of the children, a teenage boy, plays hookey from school, and goes to investigate the object at Aokigahara. Meanwhile, school children on playgrounds and around the nearby city begin to mysteriously vanish as a huge shadow passes overhead. Moll and Lora examine the remains of the crashed meteor, realizing that something has escaped, and sensing a great evil has been released. King Ghidorah, a space monster who visited Earth in its past, returns with the captured children to a secluded spot near where the meteor crashed, trapping them in a huge, pulsating organic dome. Belvera, intrigued by King Ghidorah's arrival, and hoping to use him for her own ends, gets too close to the dome, and is drawn inside. Later, Moll and Lora encounter King Ghidorah, and Lora is infected with the monster's evil as she stares into one of its eyes. Lora attacks Moll, under the evil influence, and Fairy falls from the sky with Moll and Lora, saving Moll before she is also trapped in the dome. Lora joins Belvera inside the dome, where the captured children are screaming and huddling together, terrified. A battle between Belvera and Lora takes place, with Belvera begging for Lora to see reason and to work with her, but Lora is still being influenced by the spell of King Ghidorah.
Meanwhile Moll, riding Fairy, encounters the teenage boy, and tells him about King Ghidorah. She explains that King Ghidorah needs the childrens' life force to feed upon. She convinces him to accompany her and meet their only hope, Rainbow Mothra, who is now recovering from a battle with King Ghidorah. Moll and Rainbow Mothra communicate telepathically, discussing their options. It is agreed that Rainbow Mothra cannot defeat King Ghidorah in its current form-- it is too powerful-- and so it is decided that Rainbow Mothra must travel back in time to a point where King Ghidorah was not so powerful, to a time when the dinosaurs still walked the Earth, and when King Ghidorah had visited from space for the first time to feed upon the Earth's life-force. Rainbow Mothra turns in to Aqua Mothra and then with Moll giving Aqua Mothra all of her power, the massive insect is able to turn into Light Speed Mothra and break through the boundaries of Time and travel backward to confront King Ghidorah, some 65 million years in the past. Moll, her power totally depleted helping her friend time-travel, falls into a state of suspended animation, her body taking on the appearance of frosted glass. Light Speed Mothra appears in the age of the dinosaurs and turns back into Rainbow Mothra. Another fight between Rainbow Mothra and Cretaceous King Ghidorah, King Ghidorah's younger form, takes place, and Rainbow Mothra, nearly dead, manages to immobilize Cretaceous King Ghidorah long enough to pick it up and drop it into a nearby volcano, but not before a severed slice off Cretaceous King Ghidorah's tail burrows itself into the ground. Rainbow Mothra is hurled out of the exploding volcano, where prehistoric Mothra Larva cover him in a time-capsule cocoon in which the injured Rainbow Mothra will sleep for many millions of years, and metamorph into a new form.
Back in the present King Ghidorah roars in outrage as it disappears from existence. The children are released, and the boy joins Belvera and Lora (now recovered from her infection by King Ghidorah, thanks to the love of her sisters) as they kneel by the body of their sister Moll, unsure of how they can save her. Suddenly King Ghidorah appears in the sky amidst a massive fireball. This is the other King Ghidorah which grew from the severed tail of the Cretaceous King Ghidorah killed by Rainbow Mothra in the past. The tail regenerated over time into a full-grown King Ghidorah. The new King Ghidorah starts to capture children again, when suddenly the time-capsule cocoon explodes from a mountain, and Rainbow Mothra emerges, this time as Armor Mothra, a formidable version with armour plating all over it. Yet another battle takes place, and this time King Ghidorah is not even a close-to match for Armor Mothra, who first slices King Ghidorah's wing off, and then proceeds to completely disintegrate the monster. Armor Mothra then communicates with Belvera and Lora, telling them to join their powers, and so using the sword bring Moll back to life. The touching reunion between the sisters is short-lived, as Belvera calls for her winged henchman, Garu-Garu, and flies off, promising more conflicts between the sisters, who disagree over how the Elias should interact with (or have power over) Humankind. The children are reunited with their parents, and Armor Mothra transforms into his final form, Eternal Mothra, and flies into the sunset.
Staff
Staff role on the left, staff member's name on the right.
- Directed by Okihiro Yoneda
- Written by Masumi Suetani
- Produced by Shogo Tomiyama
- Music by Toshiyuki Watanabe
- Cinematography by Yoshinori Sekiguchi
- Edited by Nobuo Ogawa
- Assistant directing by Masaaki Tezuka
- Special effects by Kenji Suzuki
Cast
Actor's name on the left, character played on the right.
- Megumi Kobayashi as Moll
- Misato Tate as Lora
- Aki Hano as Belvera
- Takuma Yoshizawa as Shota Sonoda
- Ayano Suzuki as Tamako Sonoda
- Atsushi Ohnita as Yusuke Sonoda
- Miyuki Matsuda as Yukie Sonoda
- Koichi Ueda as Principal Kocho
- Tsutomu Kitagawa as King Ghidorah / Cretaceous King Ghidorah
Appearances
Monsters
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Weapons, Vehicles, and Races
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Development
According to an interview with special effects director Koichi Kawakita, Toho planned to produce a new film featuring King Ghidorah as early as December 1995. The film was initially planned for release in 1999, but King Ghidorah was eventually worked into Rebirth of Mothra III in 1998.[2] Originally, Rodan was to be the villain, while Mothra Leo would have traveled back in time to medieval Japan rather than the Cretaceous period.[3][4] Other dropped concepts included explicitly tying King Ghidorah to Nostradamus's "King of Terror" prophecy, and naming the monster as Death Ghidorah's father.[5]
Gallery
- Main article: Rebirth of Mothra III/Gallery.
Soundtrack
- Main article: Rebirth of Mothra III (Soundtrack).
Alternate Titles
- Mothra 3: King Ghidorah Attacks (Mosura Surī: Kingu Gidora Raishū; Literal Japanese Title)
- Mothra 3: Invasion of King Ghidorah (Mosura Surī: Kingu Gidora no shin'nyū; Alternate Japanese Title)
- Mothra: King Ghidorah Returns (Mothra: King Ghidorah kehrt zurück; Germany)
Theatrical Releases
- Japan - December 12, 1998
U.S. Release
Rebirth of Mothra III premiered on the Sci-Fi Channel on May 31, 2003, the same day as Rebirth of Mothra and Rebirth of Mothra II, although they had already been released on DVD three years prior. Sony planned to release the film in its 2009 Icons of Sci-Fi: Toho Collection DVD set, but ultimately removed it.[6] Aside from a stint on the free online streaming service Crackle, TV airings remained the only legitimate way to see Rebirth of Mothra III in the U.S. until 2014, when the trilogy was released in a Sony Blu-ray set with Japanese and English audio options.
Box Office
Rebirth of Mothra III grossed ¥850,000,000 in Japan, a lower figure than the first two entries in the trilogy.
Reception
While the Mothra trilogy is held in low esteem by kaiju fans overall, they generally consider Rebirth of Mothra III to be on par with Rebirth of Mothra. The 2007 readers' poll conducted by G-Fan produced a 5.9 out of 10 rating for the film, ranking it 42nd among 49 kaiju films surveyed, but still the highest in the trilogy.[7] By the 2014 poll, its rating was essentially unchanged, lowering to 5.8.[8] This time, Rebirth of Mothra surpassed it with a 6.2 score. In a 2013 Toho Kingdom poll, 43% of respondents named it their favorite in the trilogy, compared with 53% for Rebirth of Mothra and 5% for Rebirth of Mothra II.[9]
King Ghidorah's design and portrayal routinely garner praise, as do the battle scenes. Targets for criticism include the uninvolved human cast, a convoluted time-travel story, and the low-quality CGI and dinosaur effects.
Video Releases
Sony Pictures Blu-ray + Digital HD (2014)
- Region: A/1
- Discs: 2
- Audio: Japanese (DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0), English (DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0)
- Subtitles: English, French
- Special Features: Four trailers for Rebirth of Mothra, four trailers for Rebirth of Mothra II, three trailers for Rebirth of Mothra III
- Notes: Packaged with Rebirth of Mothra and Rebirth of Mothra II. The English subtitles reflect the dub, not the original Japanese dialogue.
Videos
Trailers
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Trivia
- Despite being replaced as the villain, Rodan makes a brief appearance on the screen of a Sega Dreamcast VMU, after a child playing Collect Godzilla: Monster Large Collection is abducted by King Ghidorah.
- In this film, King Ghidorah became the second kaiju to make his debut in the Godzilla series and later appear in a film without Godzilla, after the Giant Octopus.
- Rebirth of Mothra III was the first Toho kaiju film made without the involvement of producer Tomoyuki Tanaka. A framed photo of Tanaka appears in the Sonoda family's house as a tribute.
- It was also the first Toho kaiju film since 1984 without Koichi Kawakita as the director of special effects.
References
This is a list of references for Rebirth of Mothra 3. These citations are used to identify the reliable sources on which this article is based. These references appear inside articles in the form of superscript numbers, which look like this: [1]
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