I
really don't like
Shin Godzilla as either a Godzilla film or a metaphor for inept response to natural disasters. I'll just keep it to these two points as I could spend days on all the topics at play here, from running statistics... "Ok, you're not going to fire missiles at the smallest Godzilla because two people will get killed? OK, how many have died already? 100? 2 sounds like reasonable loses to me..." Later, hundred of thousands die because they weren't willing to kill two people, how awkward... to its almost Swiftian lack of subtlety in its satire... wow, Anno really did that to the majority of Japan's government? Jonathan Swift just resorted to taking the piss, err, literally.
Quote: |
The plot concerns a young official's attempt to mobilize an effective response to a rampaging Godzilla (the result of US nuclear testing this time) in the face of bureaucratic resistance. |
What rampage? He walked slowly... in the scenes he was animated moving... I mean not when he moved by falling forward or the times he stood stuck in place for days, weeks? but those times he was strolling... which somehow only resulted in small number of casualties. A hundred seems too small but it was a really slow walk. Man, it's like he wasn't even trying. But by the time something could be done to it... and in fact the only time it was truly hurt, ended in destruction that far eclipsed Anno's own metaphor in that doing
something was far worse than doing
nothing. So what was his message then? "Forget today, prey for tomorrow"? And no, I didn't misspell it...
What did I like about this movie? The middle section with the said
single attack and not the "let's throw
CGI public transportation at the problem!" ending or the "Godzilla with the googly, googly eyes!" beginning. "He has those eyes because he's was previously adapted to seeing under water!" Convenient then he got those two legs first, huh? Could have just been a snakelike but then without the legs, they're be no notable tail... I guess? And the ending was just...
And I liked the use of previous music. Not the Anno stuff but the Akira Ifukube tracks from previous Godzilla films... in particular the "Terror of Godzilla" track from the still unreleased
King Kong versus Godzilla... over fifty years later and that gem is still stuck in Japan. Yes, there is a version with new footage and an entirely different score but it's just not the same... I've seen that version. In fact, I've seen all of them and the closest one I put Shin Godzilla next to is Godzilla 1998.
"Godzilla in name only" territory.