The 2016 Toho film Shin Godzilla is about an inept
bureaucratic response to the monster's arrival in Tokyo. That alone makes it
one of the rare Godzilla movies that offers an actual interesting story in
which humans play a real role in the drama.
Shin Godzilla is excellent, a social and political satire wrapped neatly
and adroitly in a giant monster movie. It’s wryly observant about the way
bureaucratic confusion, ego-stroking and timidity generally fk things up. The
politicians matter-of-factly regard the disaster as secondary to their
political ambitions. Boy, is that true to life.
The film is really quite smart,
and holds together thematically in a way most Godzilla movies don’t.
The appearance of Godzilla’s
nuclear breath is deliberately delayed, and incredibly dramatic and formidable
when it’s finally used.
For my money, this is the best
Godzilla movie since the first, and my friend Nicholas Swaim may have answered
the question of why that is. “It’s a comment on the 2011 tsunami/meltdown in
Japan, much like how the first film is on the atomic bombings and Lucky Dragon
irradiation,” he observed.
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