I've absorbed enough knowledge second-hand to have a vague idea of what to expect from Godzilla movies (nuclear bomb metaphor, post-WWII Japan processing its trauma, miniatures getting royally fucked up by a man in a rubber suit) but I'd never actually seen one until last night. This felt like a lot of what I expected, but all very neatly presented, and set alongside a bleak (occasionally very funny) drama about a government struggling to adapt to an unprecedented event while dealing with internal politics and bureaucracy.
Godzilla kinda starts out as a goofy little freak in this one. I don't know if that's a staple as well, but it was a fun surprise to me. He's a nasty floundering squishy thing at first, all bulging eyes and oozing blood everywhere, like a deep-sea organism that's been dragged up onto dry land. Big, but not yet Godzilla big. They have a chance to shoot him, and it might have even been effective, but... oh no! We can't authorise the attack because of a last-second technicality!
There's a lot of that sort of thing. It's simultaneously grounded and absurd—in a way that might resonate if, for instance, you've spent the past few years watching governing bodies across the world fail to protect their citizens from an unexpected but much more manageable threat. The world doesn't suddenly swim out of focus when faced with the patently ridiculous; it's still in sharp relief, full of serious men in serious suits, saying things like "we are absolutely certain the giant creature cannot go onto land" with a straight face as the giant creature goes onto land.
I think there are a lot of very uncharitable readings you could do of this film, if you wanted. There's an ongoing sense of deep frustration with red tape and regulations which is—while totally understandable from the perspective of someone struggling with an entrenched, overwrought bureaucracy—an attitude I chiefly associate with entrepreneurs being little pissbabies about not being able to exploit labour, or people who want cops to have access to railguns. The film also features a vaguely uncomfortable through-line of Japan's military not being powerful enough to defend it, which leads to other countries muscling in to try and control the Godzilla situation (notably the US, which predictably decides the solution is another fucking nuke). I don't think you're supposed to walk away thinking "wow, it'd be so much cooler if our military could act with impunity and had the firepower of the American empire" but you certainly could.
Anyway, it's a good time. Some really cool and evocative shots. Hasn't really sold me on this whole 'movies' thing, though.
