Shin Godzilla Review-ette

WARNING: SPOILERS

After years of drought it seems we are having a flood of kaiju movies with an upcoming sequel to Pacific Rim, an impending show-down between Legendary's Godzilla and King Kong as well as their upcoming solo movies, Nacho Vigalondo's new kaiju movie Colossal, and, now, a brand spanking new Japanese Godzilla movie. After 2004's  Godzilla Final Wars, Toho Studios retired the big guy to allow room for another attempt at an American made Godzilla franchise, resulting in the well-received 2014 Godzilla  but much as they did in the 1990's, the company doesn't seem content to leave Godzilla to Hollywood. Toho has always been competitive about their biggest star and even with the relative quality and success of the recent American version, they apparently felt that the time was right for the Japanese Godzilla to assert himself. Perhaps, also, a new Godzilla movie was a way to process some of the recent events in Japan through the popular consciousness. The resulting movie,  Godzilla Resurgence (Shin Godzilla in the US) has been a huge hit in Japan and now has a limited run in the United States. This is the first time a Japanese Godzilla movie has been released in the US since Godzilla 2000.

Much like the original 1954 film which was very much a reaction to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and nuclear testing in the Pacific, the new movie is charged with imagery and thematic content relating to the recent Fukashima disaster and the government's reaction to it. While this certainly gives the movie a resonance (perhaps more so to a Japanese audience) it spends a lot of time in the political arena with innumerable meetings, conferences, and "walk-and-talk" scenes. The movie seems to intentionally walk the line of comically demonstrating the absurdity of slow-acting Japanese institutions and being genuinely boring at times. 

In its obsession with the political, Shin Godzilla  is almost a kaiju movie by way of Aaron Sorkin. The movie also borrows a bit from modern kaiju movies such as The Host and Cloverfield.  Its examination of the complicated relationship between the US and Japan resembles that of The Host which did similar thing with the US and Korea. To Cloverfield it owes an emphasis on first-person and on-the-ground disaster sequences.

Shin Godzilla joins Gojira and The Return of Godzilla as movies in the series that don't feature any other opponents for the King of the Monsters. For me, these tend to be among the least fun of the series as a big part of the franchise is kaiju combat but your mileage may vary. These movies also tend to emphasize the human stories more and Shin Godzilla doesn't necessarily shine here. There are few stand out or memorable characters, with the exception of one character who is supposed to be a high ranking American official of Japanese background who was apparently raised in America with aspirations of becoming the US president but who seems to be speaking her English lines phonetically. While this may not have been noticeable to the average Japanese audience, it might have been nice to have re-dubbed her English dialogue for the international release. Unfortunately, this character stands out as the most memorable one in the movie.

The good news is that when Godzilla actually is in the movie he is quite remarkable and the visual effects in this movie are, for once, Hollywood quality and about as good as those of the recent American Godzilla movie. The notoriously conservative Toho Studios has made a lot of uncharacteristically bold choices with their most famous creation. The studio had been very CGI resistant in its Millennium series of Godzilla movies, only using it sparingly to do things that were absolutely impossible to do with a suit (such as shots of Godzilla swimming under water) but Shin Godzilla features a mostly CGI/motion captured performance, albeit one that is very beholden to the character's classic silhouette. 

Despite a final design that from a distance hearkens back to early incarnations of the character, there are some rather remarkable changes and departures from classic depictions of the character. Perhaps most surprisingly is that Godzilla is given a new origin story and much like classic Toho monsters like Hedorah and Destoroyah, Godzilla goes through a multi stage transformation in the movie, which is a first for the character. When he first makes his way out of Tokyo bay Godzilla turns up as a truly bizarre looking creature that looks like a cross between a fish and a stegosaurus. This was a genuinely surprising sequence and the creature design is genuinely gross and weird, looking a bit like the ungainly monster from The Host.

Godzilla's final form in the movie has the familiar triangular body shape with huge thighs tapering up to a relatively small head. This version of the character is much bigger even than the 2014 Godzilla (take that America!) and has perhaps the longest tail we've ever seen on a Godzilla design, which ends in a weird quasi-club (much more on that later).  Overall, the proportions are a little weird, particularly in the lower body. Ironically, the recent American Godzilla was mocked as "fat" in Japan but he seems more muscular than this rather tubby design. Godzilla's dorsal plates are traditional but don't go down to the tail as they have on recent designs. Godzilla's arms are much thinner than we have previously seen and end in twitchy, angry-looking claws.

The head recalls the original 1954 design a bit but features very small eyes and an oversized mouth with rows of uneven needle-like teeth. Overall, the head and mouth proportions are a little weird. With the beady eyes and the messy mouth area, it is a little hard to read the face and this ends up as one of the least expressive Godzilla designs ever.

One thing that is emphasized in this version of the character is his toxic, radioactive nature. When we first see him, he leaves behind a weird ruddy wake in the water and the first form of Godzilla basically excretes a disgusting red substance from his gills. This version of Godzilla is dangerous even if he doesn't step on you because he is leaking radiation all over the place. Visually, the design takes a cue from the great Burning Godzilla design from Godzilla Versus Destoroyah and his flesh scarred and glowing red from the radiation that powers him. 

Another area where this version of Godzilla departs from previous incarnations is in his power set. This is perhaps the most destructive version of the character ever. He not only has his trademark atomic breath (purple here and his lower jaw splits to emit the ray) but he also has a kind of atomic fire or plasma that can flow out over a huge area like lava. Most controversially, perhaps, this Godzilla has the ability to shoot an array of lasers out of his spines and out of the end of his tail, which...okay. 

I'm not a Godzilla fundamentalist by any means (my favorite version of the character is Godzilla 2000 which was widely mocked for its "extreme" dorsal spines) and I really respect the attempts to redesign the character, much of which is really fascinating and are properly in the spirit of Godzilla being a nuclear Hell Beast. This is probably the scariest Godzilla since the 2001 version of the character and certainly the most horrific with a lot of gross and weird touches. Particularly memorable is the disturbing and enigmatic final shot of the movie which is a close up of the end of Godzilla's tail which features frozen skeletal humanoid forms with Godzilla's trademark spikes growing from their backs. While Shin Godzilla is a bit of a mixed bag and is not necessarily a "fun" Godzilla movie it definitely takes the series into some new places, introducing an element of biological horror into the series which has surprisingly been only a small part of a series of movies about a giant nuclear mutant.