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esteeb.art · @esteeb.art@bridge.neodb.net

Rated Shin Godzilla 8/10

<b>LSC 10 Week 6: Strange Beasts Week<b> <i>Shin Godzilla<i> is both not what I would have expected and exactly what I should have expected from Hideaki Anno making a Godzilla movie. So many animation directors struggle making the jump to live action, if they get the chance at all, but Anno doesn't miss a beat. All of his favorite toys are here: the bold white font, the steady unrelenting drums, people on intercoms droning orders while people flip switches and type and whatever, rows and rows and rows of tanks and heavy military ordinance, loose canon government middle managers trying their best to save the world despite the useless ancient bureaucrats holding them back, and a giant unstoppable monster on a mission to render final judgment on humanity for it's many many sins against nature. His ability to use chains of command and the gradual spin up of a collaborative effort to ratchet up tension and interest before unleashing huge explosions of action is on full display. Walk and talks, meetings, brainstorming, checklists all crackle with the same energy as the tanks firing off at a giant lizard (we'll get to the big guy in a bit) at times. It's to the point that if I found out this whole ordeal was a scrapped draft for an <i>Eva<i> prequel or something I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest. Anno's Godzilla, for lack of a better term, whips. He brings the big lumpy lizard back to his roots with a design (in his final form and that's all I'm gonna say about that) that is less "cool fighting dinosaur" than it is "walking embodiment of a nuclear holocaust." His vision for Godzilla is just as much natural disaster as it is supernatural terror raised from some deep pit and the destruction it brings is both beautiful and horrible. Just great stuff. No notes there. The surprise of it all is that for all the anime fantasy nonsense and heavy stylization this movie is probably the most grounded in reality I've ever seen Anno. The pitch for this movie is just "What would a modern Japanese response to Godzilla look like?" and gaming that out more or less straight. There are your more Godzilla movie mainstays like bands of misfit scientists and analysts being humanities last hope and whatever, sure, but these and the devil may care young politician running the show are there to serve the broader point of the movies politics. Namely, Japan's inability to nimbly act in their own interests. An inability born both from an overwrought, aging bureaucracy and the country's lack of any real agency on the world stage. More surprising still is that all of this is handled with a sense of irony, sure, but not nearly as much cynicism as one would expect. The movie is rather hopeful actually. It's a movie that asks us to look to the future and try new things instead of making the same old mistakes, even going so far as to suggest that a country that values age and wisdom so much to maybe let the young take the reigns. Interestingly, while the films critique of Japanese leadership is apparent, it's also shows grace in the sense that it understands that the decisions being made are extremely difficult and being made by real, fallible but (mostly) well meaning people. And for it's many gripes and worries about Japan's geopolitical status, particularly regarding their relationship with the US, it ends up being about how humanity's greatest strength is in the ability to collaborate (not for nothing but the somewhat nationalist bend of <i>Godzilla: Minus Zero<i> is beginning to feel more like a refutation of this movie in this context). It doesn't all work (especially if you are trying to keep up with the subtitles, oy) but Anno ultimately gives a movie that is more than the sum of its parts. He paints a picture that is hopeful, realistic to be sure, but hopeful in a way that is uniquely his.

#lsc10 #lsc10 week6 #movie

Published 2024-10-13 00:00 UTC · bridged from Atmosphere