GORATH (1962)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *cosmological, sociological*


If one can get past the thoroughly unscientific resolution of GORATH, which reads like something most comic books wouldn't have tried in the early sixties, the film provides a painless forum for director Ishiro Honda's favorite theme of "alien menace unites quarreling Earth-nations," which was given such poor treatment in 1959's BATTLE IN OUTER SPACE.

That said, the character-arcs in GORATH are somewhat clunky. The action takes place in 1980, and not only has Japan become a significant player in the space-race, all of the countries have access to an "ion drive" that makes interstellar travel possible. One such Japanese craft, the Hawk, is captained by the respected scientist Doctor Sonoda, and the rest of his crew are also top-notch scientists. However, this Hawk is doomed to fly no more, for it comes across a gigantic star, later named "Gorath." Sonoda determines that the star is on a collision course with Earth, but the Hawk, caught in Gorath's gravitational pull, is doomed to be the celestial body's first victim. Sonoda tells his fellow scientists that despite their inevitable fate, they can still serve their planet by transmitting all the data they can back to Earth.

No one on the homeworld has any inkling of Gorath's approach, and it's at this point that Honda introduces three of his viewpoint characters. They have different names in different translations, but I'll go with the ones in IMDB: two young women named Takiko and Tomoko, and a young man, Tatsuma. Takiko and Tomoko don't yet know about the Hawk's destruction, but they know two of the crew-members, since Takiko is Sonoda's daughter and Tomoko is engaged to a younger officer. Tatsuma, despite being another scientist who works for the Japanese astronaut-program, interrupts the two women while wearing a robot-costume (he's apparently paid so poorly that he takes on street-advertising for spare cash). Tatsuma goes his way, and Tomoko mentions that she had dated Tatsuma for a while, but found him clownish and thus attempted to find a more upscale boyfriend.

In due time, everyone finds about Gorath's menace, and a new scientist, Tazawa, becomes the go-to guy for strategies to avoid total destruction. Though Tazawa's important in terms of setting up the action, he never becomes a dramatic figure. Some drama inheres in Takiko mourning for her father, but the real narrative result of the Hawk's destruction is that now Tatsuma is free to make a move on Tomoko again. In fact, Tatsuma is a bit of a jerk about the way he transparently hopes that Tomoko will just kind of forget her previous fiancee and date Tatsuma again. However, the clownish Tatsuma, not the sober Tazawa, is the one who comes up with the idea that will save the Earth. Tazawa dismisses the possibility of destroying Gorath with nuclear bombs, for the planet is in essence a runaway nuclear bomb (this may be the script's attempt to give Gorath a resonance akin to that of Honda's greatest success, Godzilla), Then goofy Tatsuma suggests that maybe they could just move the Earth-- and bingo, Tazawa begins setting up plans to mount rockets on one side of the Earth in order to move it out of the way.

Of course, if that was the only thing the Earth-people did to battle the crisis-- and they do seem to deal with it with admirable equanimity-- GORATH would be a pretty dull film. So a new crew of astronauts, including Tatsuma, takes another spaceship, the Eagle, to survey Gorath and gain as much info as possible. In addition, in a short scene deleted from the American edition, a cadre of scientists working to install the Earth-rockets run into a giant walrus. This critter was apparently added to appeal to kaiju-lovers, though even in the Japanese version the monster is quickly slain.


Surprisingly, though the Eagle survives its brush with Gorath and eventually returns to Earth, Tatsuma doesn't exactly cover himself with glory. He's so traumatized by the sight of Gorath that he loses his memory, and although there's some suggestion that he will reconcile with Takiko once they're reunited, Honda doesn't really wrap up the romantic arc. He's concerned only with portraying the noble unification of humankind. To this end, Honda really hypes up the tension in the final scenes when the rockets successfully move the planet out of Gorath's path-- although Gorath does manage to destroy the moon as it passes. Indeed, the planet is far more the central character than any of the human agents, and the tale concludes with Tazawa wondering if they ought to thank the nuclear planetoid for having brought all Earthlings together (though it sure looks like the Japanese are the only ones who are truly responsible for saving the Earth).