Negadon: The Monster from Mars



Negadon, The Monster from Mars is a short CGI film that pays homage to the Giant Monster movies from the 1960s. This includes having a grainy-old-film look, spaceships that look like toy models, etc. Despite this, its story is played completely straight (and it's a Tear Jerker too) and the quality of the graphics is very high.

The story takes place in the future, when humanity begins exploring Mars for colonization. They find a strange object there and, of course, bring it back to Earth, where it turns into a monster and starts destroying Tokyo. A scientist named Dr. Narasaki, who has been in seclusion ever since the accidental death of his small daughter, is stirred into action and brings his old giant robot out of storage to fight this menace.

You can watch it here: http://www.hulu.com/watch/117925/negadon-the-monster-from-mars-negadon-the-monsters-from-mars

Tropes in this film

 * All CGI Cartoon
 * Dead Little Sister: Dead Little Daughter in this case.
 * : Predictable, but still very moving.
 * Humans Are the Real Monsters: Narasaki blames mankind for bringing Negadon upon themselves. Then again he's not exactly in the mood to be fair.
 * Narm: To be honest, the monster looks like a giant umbrella...
 * Pre-Ass-Kicking One-Liner: "May my final gift to humanity...be sending you to oblivion!"
 * Retro Future
 * Shared Universe: With Planzet, that takes place 22 years later.
 * Shout-Out: A close up of a moth might be a homage to Mothra.
 * Narasaki is a scientist with a missing eye (he has a bionic replacement) and has the only weapon capable of killing the monster but refuses to use it, sound familiar?
 * Special Effect Failure: Subverted- the film intentionally imitates the old Kaiju movies complete with their bad SFX, but the movie itself is very detailed; even its human characters manage to avoid the Uncanny Valley for the most part.
 * Starfish Aliens: Negadon is an alien monster that's not even vaguely humanoid and resembles some form of shellfish more than anything else on Earth.
 * Super Robot: The Miroku was created to be an exploration and construction device, not a weapon, but it still came even with built-in drills and a (sort of) Rocket Punch.
 * Terraforming: What people planned to do with Mars.
 * This Is a Drill: The Miroku 2's primary weapon is an arm mounted drill.
 * Tokyo Fireball: Negadon lands in Tokyo like a meteor, causing a huge crater, then proceeds to obliterate everything in its path.
 * Twenty Minutes Into the Future: The story takes place in 2025.
 * The Un-Reveal: The alien monster is never named within the film itself.
 * The Woobie: Narasaki.