[Update] Blu-ray: Rebirth of Mothra I II III (Sony) | rebirth of mothra 3 – Australia.xemloibaihat

The only triple feature from the 2014 Blu-rays from Sony on the Toho monsters. This set contains the first home video release of Rebirth of Mothra III in the US. It also contains the first time all three titles are hitting the Blu-ray format in any market, so two major firsts. Sadly, the three movies are crammed onto two Blu-ray discs. The 1996 film gets its own Blu-ray, while the sequels share the second disc. This means one of the films suffers a bit, but the overall video presentation is good and the audio acceptable. The set also contains some trailers to mill over as some added content.

 Video:

Hitting this film by film, we will start with Rebirth of Mothra, which is given its own disc. The presentation is one of the stronger ones from a color perspective of the Sony Blu-rays. The colors have a gone range and feature sometimes vibrant tones for scenes like the final with the green hills. Still, the colors are nothing like Sony used to give us on their DVD releases of these films. Oddly enough, seeing as how many prior releases were too dark, this film is actually a shade too bright. That’s preferable over their past transfers on the format, though. The details are good, without a lot of noise present either from grain.

The version of the film used has the same opening
with the English title found below the Japanese that was present on the DVD version. It fully translates the ending credits into English as well, even down to the songs as seen here.

Rebirth of Mothra is presented in its
original aspect ratio of 1.85:1.

Rebirth of Mothra II fares worse, sadly. It has better black levels, but is also a little too bright. Sadly the film lacks the nice color range that the 1996 film had, featuring a brown tint to everything. This is very noticeable in some scenes such as those with Mothra that look a little murky. The film does deserve some credit as even though they slammed two films on this disc, the movie still has okay detail without signs of over compression for the HD format. Noise in the frame is also kept minimal, while print damage is non-existant.

As expected, the version of the film used is the same as the earlier DVD, which contains the title below the Japanese in English. It also fully translates the ending credits as well.

Rebirth of Mothra II is presented in its
original aspect ratio of 1.85:1.

Well the two films on one disc had to hurt somewhere, and it looks like the final film took the fall.
Compared to the other movies, the third entry in the series has some signs of compression that are most obvious during the heavy mist scenes at the start of the film or really with any smoke at all. Details are also not as vivid either. Unlike the other two films, the movie is not too bright and has good black levels as well. Unfortunately, the colors suffer on this release a little. This is especially noted with Grand King Ghidorah, who should be a vibrant golden but is instead appearing more like a yellowish brown. The film also has an issue with the noise level, as can be seen on the Elias faces.

The version of the film used is the International one, which sadly overlays “Rebirth of Mothra 3” on top of the Japanese title. The credits at the end are also fully translated into English.

Rebirth of Mothra III is presented in its
original aspect ratio of 1.85:1.

 Audio:

Each film contains two audio tracks, which are the original Japanese and the English dub. Both are presented in 2.0 channel stereo. Audio quality is without discrepancies and, for a stereo release, has okay directionality although nothing to write home about. It is worth noting that the audio volume between the two tracks is almost flawless on the first two films. You can seamlessly switch between them without having the music or sound effects suddenly get louder or quieter.

Each movie has three subtitle options: two English (one SDH for the hearing impaired which subtitles sound effects with a black background on text) and one French. Sadly, Rebirth of Mothra has a case of the dubtitles. The English subtitles here exactly match the dubbed dialogue.

 Extras:

Although light on extras, the discs have a fair amount of trailers for the three films. All of them are subtitled into English as well, although often having mispellings present on the names. The first movie has a total of four trailers, which are lively and portray the concept in a better light than perhaps the final product. This includes the teaser version with the Fairy Mothras flying over Japan that played before Godzilla vs. Destoroyah (1995). The next teaser presents the film as a rousing adventure, and plays it against the same trailer music used for Juvenlie (2000). The next two are similar in tone to the final product. Rebirth of Mothra II contains four trailers for the film, while the third has three. Rebirth of Mothra III starts off with a super generic one, back before King Ghidorah was even revealed to be in the movie. The second and third trailer are sadly in bad shape, showing notable print damage. The subtitles are also pretty awful on these last trailers as well, subtitling the “king of terror” as “Beezlebub”.

For the menus, it presents the same one across both discs
in terms of design which is similar to the cover. For the second disc, rather than asking you to choose the film before the menu, the same selection is used for both movies. So you can toggle between the chapter stops for both the 1997 and 1998 films for example.

 Overview:

With three films, there is even more bang for the buck than usual and the quality is acceptable. While it would have been nice to see all the films in this line get better treatment, one can’t argue with the price and its nice to have the Japanese versions available (even if its dubtitles) with trailers as well.

It’s always strange to talk about the last entry in a trilogy before talking about the other ones; however  it’s also better to just write about what’s on your mind right?  Right now, for me that’s Mothra 3: Invasion of King Ghidorah. Or as it’s known stateside, Rebirth of Mothra III.  As stated previously this was the last Mothra movie of the Heisei era, and last of the “Rebirth” Trilogy.  For some this is the best choice as it features the return of fan favorite villain King Ghidorah, surely in an attempt to boost ticket sales. It’s rare to see a movie where any monster gets to go one on one with Ghidorah. Up to this point only Godzilla himself had the distinct “pleasure”.  With Mothra also being one of the 3 monsters to originally thwart the terrible hydra it was a fitting choice.  Even beyond this outlook though the major player behind the films choice could’ve been from the movie’s director Okihiro Yoneda.  Yoneda was a chief assistant director  on Godzilla vs King Ghidorah (1991) and well as the main director on the first Rebirth of Mothra film which also featured a member of the Ghidorah family known as Des-Ghidorah, sometimes also called Death Ghidorah. If there was no influence choice on the enemy monster on his part, then it certainly is a strange coincidence.

Other changes in the line up include the actress playing one of the Alias’s Lora. Portrayed in the first two movies by Sayaka Yamaguchi, who was also in a movie called Dreams (1990) which Yoneda was also involved in. The biggest change however is the leave of special effects director Kenji Suzki who had done amazing work on past Toho projects as well the as the first two Rebirth movies.  Taking his place now is Kenji Suzuki. Suzuki had also been an assistant SPF director on Godzilla vs King Ghidorah as well all the Godzilla films following from 1991-1995, as well the past Mothra movies.  This was his first time as the main director of special effects and sadly it does show as that might be the films biggest weakness as the drop in quality is quite apparent, however this can also be attributed to budget restraints. It should be noted however that this is the most lively looking Mothra since the wonderfully done 1964 version for Mothra vs Godzilla.

What the movie lacks in the effects department it makes up for with a fast paced mix of fantasy and action. The plot is nothing really special, but it works as a basic set up for what the title suggests. King Ghidorah is revealed to have been the thing that caused the dinosaur’s extinction and has now returned to earth to feed on the lives of children and destroy modern civilization because…well that’s what he does!  That’s how we like him just plain evil for no real reason.  I should also mention his fiery rebirth is a nice homage to his birth in his debut film Ghidorah: The Three Headed Monster (1964). Mothra Leo is summoned to face the king of terror but soon finds himself overwhelmed by the terrible beasts power. After a crushing defeat the plan is made to send Mothra back in time to prehistoric ages to face King Ghidorah before he get’s to powerful. There are 3 battles in this movie all of them really enjoyable and energetic and are one of the two highlights of the movie.

This brings me to the final aspect of the movie which to me personally is the most impressive part and that’s the soundtrack. For all the well (Or not so well in some cases) executed scenes the movie has the music is spot on every single time, easily adding immensely to the scene.  The composer was Toshiyuki Watanabe  and boy does he deliver. He was the composer for the previous entries in the series and now here he is to deliver yet another whimsical set of music, and whimsical doesn’t mean he can’t add to the action scenes as well. For every magical intimate moment that gets a fantasy type score, the same kind of fitting themes go over the bone crunching battles. Music as fast paced and epic as the aerial conflicts on-screen.

Overall Mothra 3 isn’t the pinnacle of the series it was billed as, however it isn’t really a bad film and certainly good for a kids movie, which is what it was meant to be anyway. It cuts right to the point, the pacing is quick and the movie does not drag at all really and as I said the destruction and battle scenes are all well done given the restraints the crew had on production.  If you’re a Kaiju fan, a Mothra fan or even a fantasy movie fan I’d say you’ll have fun with it.

Share this:

• Twitter

• Facebook

Like this:

Like

Loading…

Related