Will Shin Godzilla Bring The King of the Monsters Back To The Top?
courtesy of Funimation Films.
by Mikael Trench
Japan’s Toho Studios is back again to bring the world another helping of daikaiju action with their first Godzilla movie since the 2004 “Godzilla: Final Wars”, “Shin Godzilla” (aka “Godzilla: Resurgence”). The film takes place in the city of Tokyo where a monstrous creature known as Godzilla has surfaced and begins to wreak havoc in the city. This causes the government and military officials to try and figure out different ways of taking him down, but that is made difficult due to the fact that the monster is nearly indestructible to all conventional weapons and has a host of wild powers itself.
To say that I’m a Godzilla fan is a massive understatement. I have been obsessed with the over 60 year-old franchise since I was a kid and have been in love with all the films, from the more serious outings such as the groundbreaking original “Gojira” (1954) to the more fun and lighthearted entries of the 1960s and 70s such as “King Kong vs. Godzilla”(1962), “Invasion of the Astro Monster” (1965) and “Godzilla vs Megalon” (1973) and the more action-packed films of the 90s and 2000s such as “Godzilla vs King Ghidorah” (1991) and “Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S” (2003). I, of course, have also seen the two American attempts of adapting the character with the 1998 crap-fest “Godzilla” and the Gareth Edwards 2014 “Godzilla.” The latter film, while flawed with some of the execution of its characters, was the perfect way of introducing the character to US audiences while still treating the franchise with the love and respect it deserves. While I did enjoy the 2014 film, when it was announced the same year that Toho, the studio that created Godzilla, would be releasing another Godzilla film in 2016, I was more than excited to see it, and thanks to the limited US release by Funimation Entertainment, I finally got the opportunity.
Easily the best aspect about this film was Godzilla himself. The King of the Monsters has been brought back to his dark roots here, being shown as a completely unstoppable force of nature. The effect of his rampage is executed greatly here, showing it both on a massive scale such as when he sets the city ablaze or with more detail when they show people actually getting hurt or killed, helping keep the feeling of menace and threat on a very real level. Godzilla’s several forms in the film were also interesting and added to the sense of menace, while also showing opportunities to update the abilities of the character while not changing him to heavily. The special effects were also used very uniquely combining practical “suitmation” techniques used in the previous Toho Godzilla films with very nice CGI. Finally, the music was magnificent. The film not only boasts its own beautifully haunting score, but also takes pieces from the original Godzilla scores done by famed composer Akira Ifukube on many occasions and uses them perfectly.
The sad news, however, is that while “Shin Godzilla” does offer a host of new and exciting elements, it is also a heavily flawed film. Anyone who has seen the other three reboots in the Godzilla franchise (“The Return of Godzilla”(1985), “Godzilla 2000” (1999), “Godzilla” (2014)), will realize that the plot here is very familiar to these films. However, this wouldn’t be much of an issue if the story still offered something fresh and new, which it doesn’t. Other than some of the uses of Godzilla’s character, this feels like the rather generic plot that most people would think of when thinking of a Godzilla solo film; Godzilla attacks the city, the military tries to stop him, they fail, and they consider nuking the monster. The film tries to have moments of being a political thriller, but fails in one key element: interesting characters. Dear lord, are these characters uninteresting. I could not name or identify with a single one of these characters with a gun put to my head and that’s a shame. In a solo Godzilla film, especially, it is crucial to have interesting human characters to balance out with the one monster, but this film fails heavily at it. The reason it fails so much here is because the film doesn’t take the time to develop them whatsoever or show their personal lives, rather only showing them at meetings and conferences, which gets boring very quickly. Sadly, the majority of the second act has a lot of these conference scenes and they only get more and more uninteresting. Rarely do I fall asleep in the theater, but this was one of the few times that I actually did doze off from time to time. Some of the editing during the beginning is also a little odd, abruptly cutting from scenes at a meeting to Godzilla emerging and while I did like how Godzilla was in the film from the very beginning, this entire first scene felt very ill-balanced.
Overall, I didn’t hate “Shin Godzilla,” far from actually. The use of Godzilla’s character, the amazing special effects, the beautiful musical score, and the consistently grim tone make this one worth a watch, but mostly to Godzilla fans. If you’ve never seen any Godzilla film before, then I would recommend you start with the 2014 reboot or, even better, the original 1954 “Gojira.” The human characters and some scenes get rather confusing and downright boring at times and it certainly doesn’t have the same rewatchability factor as many of the other Godzilla films do. Nonetheless, I’m still excited to see where Toho will bring the Big G down the road and I look forward to seeing the King of the Monsters take the world by storm yet again.
