Director/Screenplay – Satoshi Miki, Producers – Hiroko Furukubo, Yuta Nakai, Yasushi Suto & Umihiko Yamao, Photography – Haruyuki Takada, Music – Koji Ueno, Visual Effects Supervisor – Koichi Noguchi , Special Effects Supervisor – Hiroshi Butsuda , Production Design – Toshihiro Isomi. Production Company – Shochiku/Toei Company, Ltd.
Cast
Ryosuke Yamada (Arata Obinata), Tao Tsuchiya (Yukino Amane), Gaku Hamada (Masahiko Ame), Eri Fuse (Sayuri Renbutsu), Toshiyuki Nishida (Prime Minister Kan Nishiotachime), Seiji Rokkaku (Hiroto Sugihara), Joe Odagiri (Ryo ‘Blues’ Aoshima), Toshihiro Yashiba (Manabu Takenaka)
Plot
A kaiju (or giant monster) has rampaged across Japan before being killed by a mysterious surge of energy from orbit. Its massive carcass lies in the countryside as government ministers argue about what to do and whose agency the responsibility for doing something falls under. There is concern about whether it presents an environmental hazard, while others want to preserve the body for scientific study or tourist money. As attempts are made to dispose of the kaiju, it emits a noxious cloud of fumes and a bad smell. Other attempts to deal with it go disastrously wrong.
‘Kaiju’ is a Japanese word that means ‘strange beast’. Almost exclusively it has come to refer to the body of giant monster movies that has been produced by Japan (while I have also seen some instances that use kaiju to refer to Western-made giant monsters such as King Kong, , while in Pacific Rim (2013), it was used so directly). The kaiju genre began with Godzilla (1954), which produced an enormous number of sequels that are still being made to this day, along with other monsters and crossovers between them, while a number of other Japanese companies tried to create their own monsters, the most successful of these being Daiei with the Gamera films. (For a more detailed listing of kaiju films see Japanese Monster Movies).
I have always had the amusing idea for a superhero comedy – of a harried insurance executive who has to deal with the mass destruction of property caused by the constant superhero battles in the city. What to Do With the Dead Kaiju? has a not dissimilar idea – the undeniably amusing question of what happens in the aftermath of a Japanese giant monster battle.
What to Do With the Dead Kaiju? has a slightly different take on things. Rather than the aftermath of all the mass destruction, it is merely concerned with what exactly do the various government agencies do with the corpse of a giant monster lying in the middle of the countryside. There is no mass destruction depicted, nor are there any monster battles – possible for budgetary reasons ie. minimising on displays of effects. The monster is merely seen killed by a mysterious blast of energy from orbit on a tv news clip. The end sort of hints at an Ultraman-type superhero who may have been responsible but you feel that this needed far more explanation than it gets.
The carcass of the kaiju as emergency crews try to deal with it
What to Do With the Dead Kaiju? could almost have been construed as a comedy take on the recent Shin Godzilla (2016). Shin Godzilla smartly reconceived the Japanese Monster Movie in terms of showing government departments and the apparatus of civil emergency struggling to deal with the threat. This could be construed as a parody that is exactly the opposite – the country is left with the carcass of a giant monster and each agency is trying to pass the buck to another agency and later seeking to gain what they can out of the situation, while every solution that is applied ends up being an unintended disaster.
The film ended up with a very bad reputation. To which I can only it either shows that people don’t have a sense of humour or they haven’t watched enough other kaiju films – efforts such as Toho’s Godzilla’s Revenge (1969) or Daiei’s Gamera Super Monster (1980) descend to far worse depths than anything here. I don’t think What to Do With the Dead Kaiju? is a terrible film. However, it could have been better.
The effects showing the carcass of the monster are fairly good. On the other hand, the amusement of the central concept of government departments playing Musical Chairs is given a fairly broad comic playing. The main issue is that once the drama itself takes over, proceedings are dragged out far longer than they need to be with a 115 minute runtime.
