lbishopkyo Before R.o.M.: I was at my local video store and they just happened to have the entire trilogy on Blu-Ray. I can't even find the movies on DVD, so all three movies on Blu-Ray? That's gotta be a treat, I thought. After R.o.M.: This movie sucks. I hate this movie a ton. There are a few good things about it, being that it's a kaiju film and whatnot, but the flaws are too strong to be looked past. The first 2-3 minutes of the film are very promising, as we are introduced right away to Mothra. No build-up. However, as soon as that's done, we are taken right to, without warning, the absolute worst part of the whole movie: annoying, bratty, screaming, whiny kids. There is nothing in this world I hate more than children that aren't well-behaved. These two kids are our main characters, and they are Randy from Christmas Story (1983) and Gertie from E.T. (1982) times a million. They scream, wail, fight, and bicker constantly. I know that's common with little siblings, but they fight so much, it's to the point where their fights are just sporadic. No joke, there's one scene where the kids are just being normal (for once), then they just randomly start fighting and crying again! Well actually, it's more the girl that cries than the boy, and I tell you, she is probably the most annoying crying girl in a movie I have ever heard. That one scene in Pacific Rim (2013) with that crying kid may have been annoying enough, but this makes that scene look normal.The other biggest, most unforgivable flaw in the whole movie is the CGI. There are these familiars and tiny monsters that appear from time to time, but they are CGIed so badly, they are Birdemic levels of bad. Normally, I could forgive them for being bad since it was the mid 90's, but keep in mind that this is Toho, who previously used CG for Godzilla's fire-breath and lasers in prior films, and they actually looked really convincing! This film's CGI is totally unconvincing. Oh, and even before CGI, Toho was able to make anything look real. This movie's CGI is just a complete joke...yeah, you get the idea.Halfway into this movie, you'll also notice, that just when you were expecting a run-of-the-mill kaiju film, that this is a kiddie movie. Now, to make a kaiju film for the youngsters to enjoy isn't a bad idea, but aren't there plenty of 6-year-olds into kaiju films already? Overall, Rebirth of Mothra is just about one of the worst films of all time in my opinion. You can't defend it. You just can't. It was so bad in fact, that I actually stopped watching it 1 hour in. I just couldn't take it! It's too bad! Annoying kids unforgivably bad special effects make this a joke entry in Toho's long line of giant-monster movies. I wish I had spent my money on a Quizno's sub than this.

FilmExpertWannabe After ending the Godzilla series with the Heisei series, Toho wanted to maintain a higher grossing monster movie. The one that drew in females in what's admittedly a pretty male-centric genre was Mothra. Mothra is definitely known for her numerous roles as a hero of sorts in Godzilla films ever since her first role in a Godzilla movie (Godzilla vs Mothra, 1964). But actually, Mothra had her own movie before all of this, like some other monsters best known for their role in Godzilla movies (Rodan comes to mind). Her 1961 movie is something to check out, but getting that history out of the way brings us back to 1996's Rebirth of Mothra. Unlike the Heisei series of Godzilla movies, Toho decided to cater more towards kids with the Mothra series.Mothra received a huge intake of power with her Heisei Godzilla redesign, and that continued even more so with this RoM series. Boy, even the larvae can beam spam! Mothra looks okay, but a bit fuzzy in moth form. Her offspring, named Mothra Leo, looks pretty good and doesn't fall apart like the larvae of the Showa series. This is also the first time we have a distinctly male Mothra, Leo. In moth form, Leo looks notably different from the female Mothra. Mothra also has blue circular eyes, whereas Leo has more angled green eyes and other design tweaks. I like that. How about the villain monster in this movie, Desghidorah? He's an interesting take on the Ghidorah family, relying on four legs and with an almost elephant-like roar. He sure makes you hope for his death the way he heartlessly attacks Mothra and Leo in larvae stage. Kinda graphic actually if the kids are too young. Overall the monsters are a plus and the action is pretty good. The drawback is that the final battle between Leo in moth form and Desghidorah is just way too easy. Desghidorah overpowers the aging Mothra in the beginning, but then Leo just comes in and gives him a good one-two. Easy peasy. Except it was annoyingly easy. Maybe this has something to do with the kid-centric theme.Moving on, what else does the film bring? Well, the RoM series has one distinctly annoying trait for me, at least with the region one release: the women just scream and scream and SCREAM. It gets old. The pacing is a bit iffy here too and a number of scenes could've been cut entirely or trimmed.What we have here is a decent movie, and you might certainly be emotional when you see the larvae desperately trying to keep its dying/dead mother alive. It's probably worth more than a 6/10 for younger people, but if you're a much beyond perhaps a teenager you may not enjoy as much. Its sequel, Rebirth of Mothra II, is arguably even more child-themed, so it doesn't get better here on out in that sense. But for all this kid theme talk, I still like the movie and have a copy on DVD.

spaceinvader501 I've seen that movie last week on TV and was quite disappointed.The story: The bad sister of the sweet little ELIAS ( known from every other movie including Mothra ) wants to steal the "Seal of the Elias", which was found by a family father at a mountain. So she takes her little dragon and flies to the family's house, where the seal is kept. But the Elias can't let that be, take the mini-version of mothra, called "Fee" and also fly there. In the house, a fight between them starts - which is made absolutely ridiculous! It looks like an old ATARI-Game, when Fee and the little Dragon fly through the house and shoot at each other!However, the bad sister is victorious in stealing the seal and uses it to free a three-headed monster: Desghidorah. But wait a moment: three headed monster? (Des)ghidorah? Oh, yes, the style of this monster was inspired by the famous King Ghidorah. But not more! This monster has got no personality and seems not to register it's surrounding-the heads just go up and down, up and down...But what's so cruel about Desghidorah? Well, it absorbes energy from earth, trees and air - which are dead afterwards. Unfortunately, this absorbing isn't visualized - Desghidorah just stamps his feet... To stop Desghidorah from killing all life on earth, the Elias decide to call Mothra - what's done with a song. Yeah, okay, we know the girls like to sing - but they do it three times in that movie! And the songs are awfully kitschy. A funny things about it is the background, which starts to get coloured and coloured flowers flow around - looks like a seventies-music-video!Mothra arrives to fight Desghidorah, but is to weak and old for the strong-growen monster! So the Elias call Mothra's child - with a song, of course. I don't want to tell the whole story here, some people reading this may not have seen the movie yet...So I start with my final judgement: The story of the film is weak - but that's not important in a monster movie. What is important is that the special effects are absolutely ridiculous for a 90's movie! Mothra and Desghidorah have nearly no moveable parts, the flying scenes are bad as hell ( there are better ones in some 70's movies! ). Every scene is clearly visible made in front of a blue screen - and the intaken pictures have another contrast than the foregrund... Through all the movie it's very clear that money was a problem in the making of it. None of the monsters ever gets to a city, all fights are shown in woods - that's cheaper than a miniature city. But it's boring! Not a single building gets crushed! And Desghidorah doesn't radiate enough threat to build somewhat like tension...So the movie gets along boring and tensionless and you get angry about the bad special effects, supporting the bad impressions. According to that, it is far too kitschy and has too much annoing characters!

steelcorpfilms I got this DVD more then a year ago in L.A. Being a long- time Godzilla and Co. fan, and seeing a DVD with a double feature of Rebirth of Mothra, and Rebirth of Mothra 2 was just too silly for me not to buy. Rebirth of Mothra is definitely that, silly. Sometimes it's a good kind of silly, other times it's just a boring silly. The plot was a typical kaiju (Japanese for monster, i.e. Godzilla, Mothra, Rodan, etc.) plot, with a seal being removed and a wicked monster coming out to wreak havoc on the planet. The human acting wasn't that good, really. The special effects were pretty cool in places, and bad in others and there was some pretty good cinematography. Most of the kaijus I've seen, which is a hell of a lot, tie the humans into the story somehow. That way you're not just watching two bigass monsters going at it for 90 minutes. Most of the time, the human plot is cheesy but still entertaining. Rebirth of Mothra is not one of those. The human plot, if I could even call it that, was boring and pointless and pretty much just had a couple bratty kids sitting on a mountainside watching the battle. If that's not bad enough, some of the lines seemed to be spoken in telekinesis, considering it was just blank stares looking at each other. I don't know whether to blame the writing, the directing, or the acting for all the blank, meaningless stares. All the humans were pretty horrible actors, and the bad dubbing didn't help any. The only three who were actually pretty cool were the three faerie girls. They weren't the same as the twin faeries from previous Mothra movies, and they weren't even twins. Actually, they looked totally different, but that's ok. They wore cool costumes, carried most of the story, and even sang a song or two. And the evil faerie sister, trying to use Desghidorah for her own evil ways, was actually pretty cute, so that's always a plus. The special effects had its ups and downs. There were a few really great looking scenes, and Desghidorah (which was pretty much like a black King Ghidorah with four legs) was pretty badass looking. Mothra looked pretty cool in a few scenes, too. There was the usual caterpillar version crawling around for a little bit which looked the same as always, if not a little worse then in older movies. I don't really want to give it away, but the underwater Mothra scene looked really good. The only problem is, there can't be the same kind of action that's in a Godzilla movie, and cause Mothra just isn't as tough or limber as Big G. She can fly around and shoot stuff, but that's about it. This is pretty evident through most of the movie, when Mothra's getting beaten pretty badly. But there is one pretty cool scene near the end where it actually convinces you that Mothra CAN kick some ass. Overall: It's a so-so kaiju, with a couple cool fight scenes. It's mostly pretty boring, focusing on human's who don't really have much to say or do, other then run around, doing silly stuff. It's worth a rental if you're into these kinds of movies.