Submitted by Iain McLachlan 
(Sep 25, 2004)GANHEDDO
(Jap 1989)
Alternate Titles: GUNHED; GODZILLA II; GOJIRA 2; GODZILLA VS GUNHED; GUNHED BATTALION.
Colour
RT: 101 mins
Pro Co: Toho/Sunrise/Bandi/Kadokawa Shoten Publishing/Imagica.
Dir: Masato Harada;
Pros: Yoshishige Shimatana, Tetshisa Yamada;
Wrs: Masata Harada, James Bannon; orig st: James Bannon;
Exec Pros: Tomoyuki Tanaka, Eiji Yamaura.
Phot: Jinichi Fujisawa;
Film Ed: Yoshitami Kuroiwa;
Pro Des: Sunrise Inc;
Art Dir: Fumio Ogawa.
Special Viz FX: Koichi Kawakita; Imagica Group, 3D SPFXX Studio; Q Productions; Tsudo Kobo;
Anim Sup: Tatsuya Masuzawa, Tervo Tsuda;
Optical FX: Masahi Nakamura, Masaharu Sekiguchi, Masaaki Hiraoka;
SFX: Noburo Watanable, Kazusuke Takasu;
Video FX: Masato Aizawa, Nobuya Ishida.
Mech Des: Masahuru Kawamori;
Weapon Des: Matahisa Suzuki.
Cast: Masahiro Takashima, Brenda Bakke, James B. Thompson, Aya Enjyoi, Kaori Mizushima, Yujin Harada, Jay Kabira, Yousuke Saito, Doll Nguyen, Mickey Curtis (=Mikki Kachisu), Landy Leyes (=Randy Reyes); Michael Yancy (narr).
INTRODUCTION
Ganheddo’s existence is the result of a belated attempt by Toho Studios and their long-serving executive producer Tomoyuki Tanaka to mount a sequel to the 1984 revival of the studio’s best-known franchise, Gojira/Godzilla, directed by Koji Hashimoto. To this end, a screenwriting competition was organised during the late 1980s, with Shinichiro Kobayashi’s story outline for what became Kazuki Omori’s Gojira tai Biorante (1989) emerging as the winner, the subsequent film kickstarting a whole new cycle of kaiju adventures.
Runner-up in the competition was a treatment from US-based screenwriter James Bannon, Godzilla vs Gunhed. Although it failed to be commissioned as an entry in the Godzilla series, Toho were sufficiently impressed by Bannon’s material to have him and director Masato Harada rework it to form an entirely new scenario. The resulting production is an example of how much Western, especially American, and Far Eastern popular cultures were beginning to draw from each other in terms of creativity.
SYNOPSIS
Sometime near the middle of the 21st century, microchips and the plastics used in their manufacture are now as valuable as gold or diamonds. A new mineral, labelled Texmexium, has been discovered that is so powerful it will allow computers to effectively take over the day to running of the planet. In a remote part of the Pacific Ocean, a thousand miles offshore of Asia, there exists the ruins of a large manufacturing facility known as 8J30, originally established to produced the planet’s most advanced robots. Established at the start of the century and populated with only a few technicians, scientists and their families, the facility was actually controlled entirely by a master computer, Kyron 5. After some years, the computer suddenly rebelled against humankind and a Gunhed battalion was sent in to battle against Kyron 5 and its robot allies. After more than a year of fighting, the humans were apparently successful in their mission, and the island remained silent for nearly 20 years. A gang of smugglers aboard a transport plane approach J387, intending to strip the facility of its plastics and chips. At the controls is a young man Brooklyn, who is terrified of flying. He is taunted by his superior, Bansho, who believes every member of his crew should know how to fly his aircraft. His second in command, Babe chastises Bansho for letting Brooklyn fly the craft, since he has been hired as merely a mechanic. The rest of the crew are unhappy at Brooklyn’s attempts at piloting and are glad that they are due to land in five minutes. On the radio, a garbled message about robots and nuclear reactors is heard, along with a reference to the island they are headed. Unaware they are being observed, the smugglers land on a landing pad on the roof of the tower complex which makes up the manufacturing facility. Upon leaving the craft, readings are made and it is determined that their objective, the area housing the Kyron 5 computer is located some ten levels below them, near the top of nearly 400 other levels. Some strange readings on their instruments disturb the crew, and in the distance the burning wreckage of a Texas Air Rangers helicopter can be seen. Bansho tells his crew to concentrate on their objective, retrieving the chips and leaving. A hole is discovered near the landing bay that appears to lead into the lower levels of the tower. Brooklyn takes the lead and enters, with the others following behind. Inside the complex, everything is silent, with the place obviously lying unused for many years. Up on the roof, one of the two remaining smugglers is concerned that her partner has gone missing. Unseen by her, he is trapped in an opening in the floor, which quickly swallow him up. The rest of the group manage to break into a lift and begin the journey into the lower levels. Suddenly Bansho disappears through a hole in the floor, throwing his team into a panic, especially when the elevator picks up speed. Just as they come to a halt and the salvage team escape, one of their number is impaled on a metal shaft which bursts through the roof of the lift, which then closes its doors and starts ascending. While desperately considering their next course of action, the team stumble onto a woman pinned to a wall by a metal rod. Upon Brooklyn removing the rod, she is revealed to be Sergeant Nim the only survivor of the Texas Air Rangers crash. Nim informs them that some biodroids had gone berskerk in Dallas and attacked a nuclear facility, stealing a vial of Texmexium in the process, before escaping and making for J387. She and her colleague manage to plant a tracking device onto the droid, and now she intends to go after it. The smugglers follow her, their original intention to grab plastics and chips, still intact…
REVIEW
Film critic-turned-filmmaker Masato Harada spent most of the 1970s and 1980s living and working in the United States, absorbing a great deal of knowledge and inspiration from Hollywood cinema, some of which can be found in his later productions. This is especially true of Ganheddo, whose overall appearance owes a great deal to some important genre releases from the previous ten years.
The most obvious influences on the production appear to be the industrial-gothic settings borrowed both from Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) and its direct sequel, James Cameron’s Aliens (1986), with the emphasis on filtered and diffused lighting, vast factory-like interiors, emissions of water of steam and off-kilter architectural features. The importance of Aliens on Ganheddo is particularly pronounced, especially in the atmospheric earlier scenes where the smugglers wander about the now deserted industrial complex, unnerved by its desolate atmosphere. Other sequences reminiscent of the Cameron work include the Gunhed vehicle racing erratically through the cavernous corridors of the complex, and the hero assembling an enormous cannon to deal with a hostile robot.
Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) also seems to have made an impact on the makers of this film, especially the way the exterior of the industrial complex has been designed, at several points resembling the Aztec temple-like structure used for the Tyrell Corporation, while the high-angled shots of the area surrounding the complex seem designed to evoke memories of the heavily industrialised city of Los Angeles that Scott’s picture takes place in, notably the way in which the horizon is periodically lit by chemical fires.
Another James Cameron vehicle that probably had a bearing on how Ganheddo turned out is James Cameron’s The Terminator from 1984. That movie’s futuristic sequences are here recalled with Masato Harada opening his film with a camera prowling over the devastated ruins of the industrial complex, littered with bodies, and the first appearance of the Gunhed war machine moving into action, protected by a small group of heavily armoured soldiers, seen falling victim to the firepower of enemy robots. The connection with the earlier venture is further emphasised by scenes taking place in a robotic graveyard, featuring the corpses of human custodians of the plant, as well as robots.
The biodroid who works as Kyron 5’s servant, meanwhile, appears to have been inspired by the “Brundlefly” creature from David Cronenberg’s The Fly (1986), the result of molecular integration between human and insect. The distinctly insect-like appearance of the hybrid is retained, although in this case, the entity is apparently created by the fusion of human DNA and biotechnological components, directly controlled by the master computer.
Other movies from which material appears to have been reworked for Harado’s purposes include a sequence where the Gunhed vehicle uses a system of pulleys to manuever itself up the side of the complex’s tower block, and is later seen avoiding laser fire by using the roof of a corridor, both possibly inspired by the then recently released Batman movie, directed by Tim Burton. Interestingly some scenes, such as the attack by a biodroid on Bombbay (Jay Kabira), with attention to such details as chains, hooks and other sharp implements, as well as the style of cinematography, evoke Clive Barker’s Hellraiser (1987).
Finally, a much earlier work that the director and his team seem to have drawn on for inspiration may be Fred M. Wilcox’s Forbidden Planet (1956), which like Ganheddo featured a fully automated environment. This is underlined by a number of high-angled shots showing the scale of the industrial complex, with some machinery, such as elevators and machinery still going about their chores, and with some of the design features of the complex’s interior obviously recreating those seen in Wilcox’s picture, although given a techno-gothic makeover.
Premise-wise, much of Ganheddo will seem familiar to viewers with a working knowledge of the history of sci-fi cinema. The concept of a computer attaining some level of self-awareness, and then developing a deep antipathy toward humankind, dates back at least as far as Herman Hoffman’s The Invisible Boy, with well-known examples of the subgenre including Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville (1965), Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Donald Cammel’s Demon Seed (1977). The fact that Kyron 5 seeks to gain power by establishing direct electronic links with the rest of the world’s computers and robots, using the Texmexium mineral, suggests that Harada and James Bannon’s screenplay has more in common with Joseph Sargent’s Colossus: The Forbin Project (1969). There, two supercomputers, one located in the United States, the other in the USSR, electronically link up to control their former human masters’ actions.
In addition to borrowing the look of James Cameron’s Aliens, Bannon and Harada, rework that film’s basic plot. In the earlier production, a group of professional soldiers are sent to remote planet’s mining colony to undertake a search and rescue mission, accompanied by a tough female civilian. Here, the situation is significantly altered, with a group of non-professionals, in the form of smugglers, travelling to an island to steal microchips and plastics, where the find themselves almost wiped out by an unknown foe, and having to rely on an officer, in the form of a Texas Air Ranger called Sergeant Nim, played by actress Brenda Bakke (Terminal Voyage 1994) very much in the manner of a star from Hollywood’s “Golden Age”, such as Lauren Bacall, rather than a mere clone of Sigourney Weaver of Linda Hamilton, and turning in a very sexy performance. The character of Newt, the sole survivor of the mining community in the 1986 production, has been replaced by two characters, again both children, Seven (Yuji Harada) and Eleven (Kaori Mizushima, Youkai Tengoku: Ghost Hero 1990), the children of the facility’s original human custodians who have survived for years foraging among the debris of the ruins. Like Newt, their experience of surviving in such an environment will be put to good use by Nim. A twist introduced by the writers is that the supercomputer Kyron 5 also has plans for one of the children, allowing him to realise his plans to control Earth’s technology.
Yet another source whose influence can be felt in Masato’s work may be videos produced from the late 1970s onwards by a collective known as Survival Research Labs, in which specially designed and constructed mechanical machines would destroy each other in a mixture of art, science and technological destruction, the process often seen as allegorical. The material presented in the videos is somewhat physically similar to the situation at the climax of the film where Kyron 5’s giant robot literally hammers Gunhed into pieces.
If Ganheddo relies heavily on earlier Western examples of genre movies for its realisation, it also contains enough elements to indicate that the project’s origins are also indebted to its Japanese cinematic heritage.
Although there have been a few non-Japanese examples, including Kurt Neumann’s Kronos (1957), David Chung and Tsu Hark’s I Love Maria (1988), and Stuart Gordon’s Robot Jox (1990), the “Giant Robot” subgenre of science fiction is almost universally recognised as a particularly Japanese concern. Considered by some to be an artform, “Giant Robot” stories, in which large mobile electronic entities are given human-like qualities, and interact, often as equals, with human characters against common foes, dates back as far as the early 1960s, when they first began appearing in animated television shows. Aimed at a young adult market in Japan, the shows were extensively reworked and repackaged for a children’s audience in English-language (especially American) territories.
This type of sci-fi adventure had effectively swamped the broadcasting media by the 1970s and into the 1980s, to the extent that examples of it began to appear in cheaply made Direct-to-Video original productions, finally ending up in more upmarket anime features. There are also many examples in manga comics, but as regards live action movies, Ganheddo remains a rare example of the subgenre in this medium. Here, while the Gunhed robot talks in the dull monotone voice normally associated with computers like HAL 9000, he does in fact offer friendly and useful advice to the hero Brooklyn (Masahiro Takashima, Gojira Vs Desutoroia 1995) and, near the end, provides him with a baseball-inspired pep talk to inspire him to stay and fight with Gunhed, rather than continuing alone.
The fact that the Gunhed robot can alter its appearance and armaments to suit the circumstances and environments it finds itself in, from a fast moving armoured personnel carrier, to a tank and finally to a towering, heavily armed war machine, suggests the makers of Ganheddo were keen to exploit the recent success of a range of robotic toys called Transformers. These toys notable for their ability to change their appearance and function by moving, removing or adding the various components used to make up the toys, sometimes from one to the other. Licensed by Hasbro from Japanese manufacturer Takara, the products, in a very unusual marketing move, were provided with an extensive back-story to aid its advertising campaign, this plotline appearing both in Marvel comics and on animated teleseries. Transformers eventually became something of a cultural phenomenon, appearing in a fairly lavish animated feature film, and having new models added on a regular basis, each with their own origin story.
James Bannon’s original intention for this project as a Godzilla movie is still well conveyed in a number of places. This is especially true of the climactic battle between Gunhed, piloted by Brooklyn, and the Kyron 5-controlled Aerobot. Staged much like a typical kaiju dogfight between Godzilla and another creature, the impression of a displaced Gojira movie is underlined by the very organic appearing design for Aerobot, which at times resembles both a giant scorpion, the mechanical bird from Inoshiro Honda’s The Mysterians (1957) and a fire breathing dragon. The organic effect is enhanced by the presence of three red electronic lights that act as its eyes and its weaponry.
Ganheddo can additionally be seen as being part of a wider cultural movement that attained widespread acceptance in Japan well before it did in the States, known as “cyberpunk”. This term was first used in a short story by of the same name by author Bruce Bethke, but came to be used to describe a group of writers working in the same field of science fiction.
Cyberpunk’s roots can be traced back to Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1926), and examples of proto-cyberpunk include Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971), Norman Jewison’s Rollerball (1975) and John Carpenter’s Escape From New York (1981). Some of the films which influenced or were influenced by cyberpunk in the 1980s have already been mentioned before in this article, but other titles include George Miller’s Mad Max trilogy, Steven Lisberger’s Tron (1982) and Paul Verhoeven’s Robocop (1987).
A number of common threads run through cyberpunk literature and associated media, particularly being set in a dystopian near-future, usually urban, where traditional social orders have collapsed, governments have been all but replaced by continent-spanning mega-corporations, and barely controlled or understood supertechnologies have become omnipresent. In this environment, members of formerly fringe, underground or counterculture groups have entered the mainstream, and are often portrayed as leading characters, or even heroes.
An interesting facet of Ganheddo, along with the later entries in the Godzilla franchise, and probably further evidence of a cyberpunk bias, is the fact that characters continually lapse in and out of different languages, in this case English and Japanese, adding further weight to the assumption that national borders, for some, have ceased to exist.
The final screenplay by Masato Harada and Bannon contains a number of essential cyberpunk elements, the most prominent being the grim, post-industrial location the action takes place in, and the collection of misfits posing as smugglers, all dressed as a combination of punks and Goths. The hero of the piece, Brooklyn, was thrown out of the military where he worked as an electronics engineer since, although he could construct and repair all types of machinery, he had developed a phobia about actually operating it. Another important feature contained in the script is the fact that all the world’s robotic technology appears to have been manufactured by one immense corporation, who also manufacture the Texmexium element, making the Kyron 5’s plan to control all cybernetic activity in the world, so much more attainable.
In cyberpunk media, a recurring theme is the increasing blurring of lines between man and machine, to the extent that the former has grown so reliant on the latter to exist, that they not only become machine-like metaphorically, but literally. This had actually been explored in some pre-cyberpunk television programmes, notably the cybermen from Dr Who, but would really take off in the 1980s with examples including the Borg from Star Trek – The Next Generation and its various spin-offs, the Max Headroom series and films like Shinya Tsukamoto’s Tetsuo (1988) and Irvin Kershner’s Robocop 2 (1990).
Ganhaddo’s future world sees robotic servants so advanced that they are in fact part organic, the most basic being termed biodroid, and given the right conditions, human components can be absorbed into the structure, much in the way that artificial organs and limbs can be made to work with the human body. It is implied that Kyron 5’s plan to take over the world may be easier than presumed, since many humans will possess some form of artificial component within their body, all manufactured by the same company and now, thanks to the existence of Texmexium, all now interconnected electronically.
This is taken to extremes here when the character Babe (Aya Enyoji) falls into Kyron 5’s inactive reactor along with another, more primitive, droid and through a mixture of chemical and electronic processes, emerges as a new generation of droid, still retaining some of her personality. Interestingly, the real Babe can be seen as an electronic simulation seen on one of the biodroid’s visual monitors, conflicted by the demands of her computer master, and looking remarkably like a Borg.
It will probably come as little surprise to the more aware viewer that at the time Ganheddo was premiered Japanese cinemas, Toho and Sunrise released a computer game based on the title. While there were a few films derived from games software appearing during this period, such as Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton’s Super Mario Bros (1993), Masato Harada’s production actually looks forward to a later period in cinema history when motion pictures would play, at least partially, as arcade games, recent examples of this including Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Alien Resurrection (1997).
As with a games environment, the action in Harada’s picture takes place over a series of levels within a massive tower complex. On each level, the player/performer has to face some sort of challenge, including driving through a level, avoiding a variety of obstacles like laser cannons and aerial mines, locating and stocking up on fuel and armaments, and going head-to-head with an enemy in the form of Aerobot, all the while trying to thwart Kyron 5’s nefarious plans. There even appears to be the option for a two-player mode, with Bakke and Takashima’s characters each taking different routes to reach their objective within Kyron 5’s reactor. The impression that a displaced PC game is being viewed is underlined by the fact that several sequences are shown on by way of a computer monitor, complete with icons and other animation.
This approach presents problems on two fronts. Firstly, games buffs will be frustrated as the lack of control they have over the outcome of the movie’s plot, while conventional audiences may find the way the narrative structure adapted for a games environment, rather fragmented and uninvolving to the point of distraction.
The adoption of a games format for Ganheddo’s use is one of several shortcomings in Masato Harada and James Bannon’s script. Apparently in an attempt to concentrate on the action elements, there appears to have been some script editing, resulting in a number of plot points being underexplained, or in fact proving to be incomprehensible. Possibly the clearest example of this is the disappearance of Brenda Bakke halfway through the plot, after being attacked by the biodroid while scaling the exterior of the tower, only to reappear in the film’s final act, without any explanation for her absence.
Also left unresolved is the empathy between Brooklyn and the Gunhed robot. Although he was a member of the military, subsequently dismissed because of his unique form of technophobia, and may have been aware of the history of the machine’s mission, the relationship seems to go much deeper than this, as implied by the baseball references both characters make. A possibility, not explored in the release print, is that Brooklyn’s father, or some other close relative, was involved in the previous Gunhed mission, explaining some of Brooklyn’s actions and the robot’s final statement. Another problematic area is the exact nature of Eleven’s role in the plans of Kyron 5 and how it is linked to his inability to speak. These and other inconstancies could possibly be resolved by multiple viewings and resultant personal conjecture, but most audiences will not be so tolerant and understanding, instead seeing Ganheddo as a deeply flawed piece of drama.
Apart from being a fascinating cultural artefact, with such a diverse range of influences and elements, much of the pleasure from this movie can be derived from its technical virtuosity.
Once again, Toho Studios prove to be masters of miniature effects work, with superbly detailed models being constructed both for Gunhed and Aerobot. Highly articulated and extremely dextrous in the movements, it is a joy to see such expertise in action. Particularly impressive are Gunhed tumbling down the side of the tower, before being hauled back up again using ropes and pulleys, the machine ploughing through an oil lake and it smashing effortlessly through solid objects and concrete walls. As mentioned previously, the final confrontation between the Gunhed and Aerobot giant robots was based on earlier Godzilla battles and, thanks to the efforts of an effects team headed by Koichi Kawakita, it is easily on a par with later kaiju action sequences, with some incredible pyrotechnical activity and large-scale total destruction.
Other model effects, notably the aircraft used by the smuggler to travel in, the ruins of the industrial complex which forms a large part of island 8J30’s surroundings, and the tower complex itself are all superb in the way they are constructed, along with their attention to detail.
The interior of the tower complex, a mixture of miniatures, process work and full-size sets, is an extraordinary creation, conveying not just the immense scale of the place, but also it organic nature, suggesting that Kyron’s 5 influence extends to ever corner of the building, and that it has evolved greatly from being merely an electronic device into a living entity, awaiting the next stage of its evolution.
Ultimately, Ganheddo can be seen as the product of a master class in technical filmmaking.
Surprisingly, Masato Harada’s work failed to find an audience in its native country and soon disappeared from theatres, to appear to lukewarm reaction on laserdisc and VHS. In the US, the original version of the film, rather than the bastardised English-dubbed version attributed to one “Allen Smithee”, has attracted a fairly substantial following, with James Cameron reportedly among its fans.
©Iain McLachlan 2004
Chroma-Noize cult sci-fi and horror movie reviews: www.geocities.com/bigfatpav2000
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(4 ratings)