Gamera 3: Revenge of Iris
“Gamera 3: Revenge of Iris” is one of the only non-Godzilla kaiju movies I’ve seen sans comedy riffs, and I do not think it will be the last one. It is a movie that has big, weird ideas to go along with its visuals of guys in suits brawling as monsters. There’s something about that aesthetic that is really starting to appeal to me.
This was the third part of a trilogy of “Gamera” films from the 1990s, but the only one from that trilogy I have seen, thus far. I have every intention of watching the first two films, because “Revenge of Iris” left me curious by how the world director Shusuke Kaneko builds to here. This is as good a monster movie as anyone has released in the past couple of decades, even if I found myself a bit lost, at times, with some of the events that take place here.
The film takes place five years after Gamera, the turtle-like monster who is “friend to children,” has defeated a legion of Gyaos, monstrous birds bent on taking over the Earth. In the defense of Japan, Gamera was responsible for the death of Ayana’s parents, and the young woman has nothing but hatred and vengeance towards Gamera on her mind. When the Gyaos return, so does Gamera, and all the while, Ayana (Ai Maeda) finds a nest of baby Gyaos, and raises one as her own, named after the cat she lost five years before. There’s a strong connection between Ayana and Iris, and it drives us towards a major brawl between Iris and Gamera that takes on a particularly personal bent.
One of the things that struck me about this film was not only how personal it made a giant monster epic, with all the cliches that genre entails, but in how good it looked. The next year, Toho has “Godzilla 2000,” and look, when you have people in suits fighting, it’s hard to really make it look like anything else. That being said, though, “Revenge of Iris” does a more than admirable job in doing so, with the final battle looking like it would be right at home in the 1954 “Godzilla” film, and not just as a knock-off. This film takes it seriously while also recognizing the silliness of it all, and serves both well. The final confrontations between Gamera and Iris looks as good as any Hollywood disaster film that came out in these years.
Probably because I have not seen either of the first two films in the trilogy before I watched “Revenge of Iris,” there were times when I sort of lost the plot a bit, but I love that this film, written by Kaneko and Kazunori Itô, is more than just a carbon-copy disaster movie blueprint like Roland Emmerich’s atrocious “Godzilla” from the year before. There’s something genuine with this film, and how it goes about its business, beyond just “two guys fighting in suits.” Now granted, when that does happen, and the creatures are at the forefront of the story, this is kind of bonkers to watch, but the way it sets up Ayana and her bond with the Gyaos she names Iris, and raises as her own, has some real feeling going on that allows it to earn what feeling we get out of the end. There’s real storytelling, and a desire to present Ayana as a character that isn’t just a one-dimensional bystander, and we feel that in the performance by Ai Maeda, even when it gets very cheesy in the end.
This is the fifth kaiju movie- including American versions- that I’ve watched in a short time in preparing for a couple of podcasts. It will not be the last. I think I’m starting to see why they are so popular in Asia, and with fans around the world. It’s not just because of wanton destruction; it’s because that, every once in a while, somebody comes up with a story that has a little more to say, much like the original “Godzilla.”
