Another 31 Days, Another 31 Screams: Day 15 (Shin Godzilla)

You know it's powerful because it's purple.

Well, that's a bit of a relief. It's refreshing to not have to do all sorts of mental gymnastics in the form of redemptive readings. We've got a properly good Godzilla movie here, and from Toho even so there's none of this "it doesn't count" stuff going on under the hood. I have the opposite sort of problem now. There's so much goddamn stuff going on under the hood of this movie that I don't even know where to begin. I guess at the beginning would help, we can be all linear. I like how all the Godzilla films I've sat down with so far always begin with boats at sea. Even the 1998 one, after its credits, begins at sea. Then we waste no real time. There's something in the water and bad things are about to go down. It's here where we get the movie's main focus, of sorts: the outside world in the opening minutes is represented almost entirely by found footage-style shots of people filming things. The rest of it? Government meetings. Shin Godzilla's main focus is on how the government reacts to this crisis... but let's take a step back here. Past Godzilla movies have cast the creature as sort of a harbinger of man's nuclear folly. This one has that element in it, deeper under the hood... but there's a more pressing influence in our opening. 2011's devastating tsunami which hit Japan hard. This is Godzilla as a force of nature, a pure natural disaster which just sweeps in out of nowhere and wrecks Japan while its government desperately tries to figure out what to do about it all. It works! You really do feel the human cost in this one, and the destruction isn't entirely all spectacle. Of course, the movie can have its cake and eat it too. The Godzilla that rampages through the city in the opening isn't fully formed. It's a goofy looking thing with googly eyes crawling through the streets. This is the Godzilla that's a natural disaster... but then it evolves. A newer Godzilla, pulsating red and stampeding through town with its roars. That's the Godzilla we know.


God, is the Japanese PM's reluctance to use force against Godzilla refreshing after coming from the American one. Oh, we've got Americans in this movie too, but not until later. For now, we have a movie where not a single shot is fired upon the big monster until almost the halfway point. You get these great wide shots of everything with tiny flares of cannon fire and one big Godzilla. Of course, it all does nothing... and then America gets involved. They do wound Godzilla, but then comes the big spectacle shot of the movie. Atomic breath. My god, the visual flare of this sequence. Could Godzilla always shoot radiation lasers out of its dorsal fins? I don't know, but one laser light show is enough to set a good chunk of Tokyo ablaze. Lest you think this movie's abandoned the science angle, it's covered as well. In tandem with the government stuff, this is all under the same umbrella. There's some implications that a bitter old scientist saw this giant monster coming, or even made it, after his wife died of radiation. Sixty years on and the ghosts of nuclear bombs past haunt this country. Dr. Maki's final note left on his abandoned boat says "Do as you like"... and that's a major running theme. The US does what it likes and orders more nukes to blast the dormant Godzilla. Yes, nukes. Clearly a rational idea in a Godzilla movie, but nobody's trope aware here. The science team's scrambling to figure out a solution, and they do as they like in going over the UN's heads and putting their plan to cool Godzilla down, like you would a reactor, into action.


The finale is brilliant. Military might alone won't stop Godzilla, nor will science alone. Operation Yashinori uses them both, delivering bombs and strategic demolitions to stall out Godzilla long enough to pump a shitload of coolant down the monster's throat. It's a tense finale that makes you wonder if any of this will work... but it does. Standing tall, forever frozen, Godzilla's shell remains as a landmark to the destruction. I mean, wow. This movie's real good, y'all. I'll level with you. I had money and couldn't wait until October to grab a copy of this, so I got it a few months back and gave it a watch. I liked it then, but sitting down with it again with a slightly more analytical mind? It may be the most affecting Godzilla movie since the original. It's a serious-minded film with a lot to say; much more that I didn't even touch upon. I'm barely scratching the surface here, but this is one that anyone who's a fan of the big stompy lizard should fire up and check out. I haven't got much more to say than that. Well, other than the fact that I'm thankful I can move on from Godzilla stuff for the next phase of this marathon. We've made it to the halfway point. Goddamn. What will we do next? I dunno. Let's find out, together.