Godzilla contains multitudes, and we're not just talking about the people he eats.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the participants in this chat log are not the views of Anime News Network. Spoiler Warning for discussion of the series ahead.
Sylvia
Hey, Jairus! Just want to say I'm happy to finally get to do a column with you! Here's to many more to come. And since it's only your second "This Week in Anime" ever, I thought we could ease you into the swing of things with a nice, easy, and small topic we can cover quickly and comprehensively:
Godzilla.
Jairus
Glad to be here with you! Spooky season might be over, but Big G monster fever is eternal, so there's always time to talk about the big guy.
I am not the most knowledgeable person about Godzilla and will mostly just smile and nod if you try to explain what a Mothra or Jet Jaguar is. Still, it's always been fascinating to see just how much his shadow has continued to loom over the broader media landscape.
Indeed! I would also hardly consider myself a Godzilla Guru, but he's a difficult figure to lose sight of. Everyone knows who Godzilla is, even if it's just through osmosis. Plus, this is an apt time for us to highlight this big angry radioactive lizard, what with Godzilla Minus Zerosmashing records this past weekend.
I have yet to catch a showing myself as of the time of writing, but I'm planning to see the big guy in IMAX before he saunters off those screens here. I want him to loom as large as possible, after all.
Same here, although, even if you can't see him in theatres just yet, part of what's helped to make the big guy so culturally relevant is the variety of media he's managed to stomp his way through over the decades. He's been in everything from comics to cartoons and video games. If you can put a giant kaiju dinosaur in it somehow, odds are Godzilla will be in there somewhere.
This even includes children's picture books, which might seem like a strange place to put a big scary dino, but hey, you gotta reach them while they're young.
Why not?? This is a fun example our editor Rebecca let us know about, and it's exactly what it looks like: Godzilla using his big steppers to ruin a bunch of classic fairy tales. Officially sanctioned by TOHO and everything!
That is one of the really fun and interesting qualities of Godzilla. That he can be both a gigantic monster/metaphor as well as a universally beloved pop culture figure. Godzilla is both an avatar of wanton destruction and a big blorbo whom I buy merchandise of to gift to my Godzilla-obsessed friends. He contains multitudes, and I'm not just talking about the people he eats.
Indeed. Godzilla stories can come in a variety of flavors. Sometimes you'll get ones like Shin Godzilla that serve as an allegory for all the hand-wringing of Japanese bureaucracy, and many a time you'll get big vehicles of spectacle like the recent run of Legendary films, which mainly just seem like an excuse to crash a bunch of giant monster figurines together and see what happens.
Take note: this is an endorsement, not a complaint. I, too, enjoy the delicate art of watching giant monsters pummel each other for 90 minutes.
There are many worse reasons to hit the movies. And honestly, now that the dust is settling on the 2010s' cinematic universe obsession, Legendary's "Monsterverse" has ended up being one of the better examples, if you ask me. 2014's Godzilla was a solid Hollywood blockbuster. I actually thought King of the Monsters was a lot of fun. And I just found out that next year's entry is going to be titled Godzilla x Kong: Supernova, which might be the best film name of all time.
I know these American 'Zillas don't tend to be as highly regarded as their Japanese counterparts, especially in our weeb-saturated circles, but they nevertheless have their defenders—many of them! And I think that's cool that they can go toe-to-toe with the "original" in some ways.
For sure! Of course, considering Godzilla's origins as a post-WWII allegory about the horrors of war and nuclear weapons, there is something poetic about the most critically acclaimed Godzilla film in recent memory being one that takes our favorite kaiju back to his roots.
I went back through this film in preparation for today's discussion, and for checking out its currently trending sequel, and let me tell ya, this one still has some real sauce.
Right? It occurred to me as we were planning this column that we never really covered Minus One on TWIA back when it came out (mostly because it's hard to screenshot a movie theater screen). And since many people, including the two of us, have revisited it recently, I think it's worth delving a little deeper into its contents.
Incidentally, I used this opportunity to watch the "minus color" version for extra retro vibes. It works pretty well! And I think it makes the special effects look and feel even more impressive, under this veneer of an "older" film.
He is the movie's Little Beepo, and his misery is increasing constantly. And yes, the narrative's extremely direct tackling of Japan's immediate post-war era is what gives Minus One a lot of its flavor. In the West, we tend to forget that Tokyo was firebombed basically to hell, which was not that far removed from the destructiveness of the atomic bombings. Here, though, the firebombed ruins of Tokyo show up well before Godzilla wreaks any metropolitan havoc. And of course, Shikishima's shame at being a "failed" kamikaze pilot hangs over his head and his interactions with the other characters throughout the film.
In both cases—the background ruins and the foreground anger/depression—they act as mirrors for the pain many Japanese citizens were feeling after World War II.
There's certainly a lot of awful spectacle to be had here, though the beating heart of this film ultimately lies in Shikishima's character arc. The film opens with him becoming the lone survivor of a Godzilla attack, which further feeds into his guilt about failing to do his "duty" as a Kamikaze pilot. Even as he builds a new life with another survivor named Noriko and a war orphan that they agreed to look after, he can never allow himself to feel as though he deserves to be alive, and it's absolutely devastating to watch.
I know that a big complaint about Godzilla films is usually the humans, but the human drama in this movie is so good that it's almost a shame when Godzilla shows up to do his thing. Almost.
Yeah, the third act of the movie is immaculate, buoyed by Naoki Satō's ascendant soundtrack. Seriously, hearing this in a theater was spine-tingling.
Admittedly, on rewatch, I did have a brief guffaw at Shikishima seeing his little Dead Wife Vision (with the flowing white sheets and everything) right before slamming his plane into Godzilla's gaping maw (especially considering their reunion soon after). But aside from that hiccup, the action and drama of taking Godzilla down hit their marks.
I have seen at least the first two, and they're about as brooding and pretentious as you'd expect from an Urobuchi joint, which made them a pretty good time from what I can remember, although I have heard less than stellar reactions towards the third film.
"Pretentious" is also a word that some would probably use to describe Godzilla Singular Point, which mostly ignores a lot of the usual Godzilla stomping in favor of hard-core science fiction. They're wrong, though, because it absolutely rules.
Yeah, for over 70 years and counting, the original Godzilla has stood the test of time and changed the world. A guy in a rubber suit and a metaphor as blunt and satirical as the "Oxygen Destroyer" still hit hard today. We may be further temporally removed from the atrocities that gave birth to Godzilla, but we're no closer to properly reckoning with our own capacity for self-annihilation.
Until that day comes, we might as well band together with our mutual love for this ferocious fellow.
There are certainly worse ways to go than getting vaporized by atomic breath.
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