Shin Godzil­la – first look review

Godzil­la first struck Tokyo in Ishi­ro Honda’s epony­mous tokusat­su kai­ju eiga (live-action mon­ster movie) from 1954, in which the sauri­an mon­ster from the ocean’s depths embod­ied the destruc­tion and after­math of hydro­gen bombs dropped on Hiroshi­ma and Nagasa­ki by the Amer­i­cans at the end of World War Two, and Japan’s endur­ing anx­i­eties over America’s nuclear tests in the Pacific.

Since then, the colos­sal crea­ture has appeared in 29 films pro­duced by Toho (thus hold­ing the world record for longest con­tin­u­ous­ly run­ning film fran­chise), as well as hav­ing sev­er­al Amer­i­can incar­na­tions. You might imag­ine, then, that there can be noth­ing new about the lum­ber­ing lizard king. Yet Hidea­ki Anno and Shin­ji Higuchi’s Shin Godzil­la (lit­er­al­ly ​‘New Godzil­la’, although the alter­na­tive inter­na­tion­al title is Godzil­la Resur­gence) works hard to be dif­fer­ent, and to evolve the series.

For starters, this reboot (Toho’s third) is set in a con­tem­po­rary Japan that has nev­er pre­vi­ous­ly encoun­tered Godzil­la in any iter­a­tion, and that is gen­uine­ly tak­en by sur­prise when a gigan­tic aquat­ic beast sur­faces in Tokyo Bay. Godzil­la fans may be sur­prised too, as this par­tic­u­lar ver­sion of the mon­ster at first looks strik­ing­ly dif­fer­ent from the crea­ture of canon: small­er, and more inclined to hor­i­zon­tal pos­tures, as it crawls along the Tama Riv­er on all fours, send­ing boats and build­ings scat­ter­ing before its shuf­fling for­ward momen­tum. Yet this irra­di­at­ed avatar keeps evolv­ing and grow­ing, soon tak­ing on Godzilla’s more famil­iar form, only with a much larg­er tail and some awe­some new defen­sive capabilities.

If this film rings the changes on Godzil­la, it does much the same for Japan’s 20^th and 21^st cen­turies. For while we do at one point glimpse black-and-white pho­tos of a dev­as­tat­ed Hiroshi­ma, and hear about the unreg­u­lat­ed dump­ing of nuclear waste on the ocean floor, the lat­er express­ly took place ​“60 years ago”, while the for­mer occurred in the time of one character’s grand­moth­er. Which is to say that the real-life events inspir­ing the orig­i­nal Godzil­la now hap­pened sev­er­al gen­er­a­tions in the past. Mean­while the mutat­ing dinosaur has come to reflect more recent Japan­ese dis­as­ters: specif­i­cal­ly, the 2011 triple wham­my of the Tōhoku earth­quake, the ensu­ing tsuna­mi, and the sub­se­quent melt­downs at the Fukushi­ma Dai­ichi Nuclear Pow­er Plant complex.

Those events are evoked not just by the spec­ta­cle of Godzil­la emerg­ing explo­sive­ly from the sea to flood, flat­ten and irra­di­ate near­by pop­u­lat­ed areas, but also by the sight of blue-suit­ed gov­ern­ment offi­cials inspect­ing ruins, con­duct­ing mass evac­u­a­tions, and even­tu­al­ly expos­ing them­selves to radi­a­tion (like ​‘the Fukushi­ma 50’) for the com­mon good. There is also some­thing about the way Shin Godzilla’s sto­ry is medi­at­ed through rapid cut-ups of found footage, news reports, cam­era phone video and more ​‘objec­tive’ film­ing that makes it seem very much a prod­uct of our own times, even as the crea­ture itself com­bines old-fash­ioned pup­petry and ani­ma­tron­ics with new(ish) CGI.

Godzilla’s strange and ever-chang­ing nature goes some way to com­pen­sate for effects that are at times decid­ed­ly ropey, much as the relent­less pace of the action and edit­ing makes up for some very flat char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion. Sato­mi Ishihara’s Japan­ese-Amer­i­can Pres­i­den­tial envoy Kayoko Ann Pater­son is par­tic­u­lar­ly annoy­ing, all chirpy and super­fi­cial when those around her exhib­it a more appro­pri­ate grav­i­ty, and utter­ing some of the film’s dumb­est lines.

Hiro­ki Hasegawa is bet­ter served as hero Ran­do Yaguchi, a mav­er­ick yet morose Deputy Chief Cab­i­net Sec­re­tary whose will­ing­ness to think out­side the box pro­pels a plot that is, despite some mon­ster may­hem, focused for the most part on the human logis­tics and process­es of emer­gency response. And with the adapt­able Godzil­la now under­go­ing con­stant meta­mor­pho­sis, sequels could take on all man­ner of new forms.

Shin Godzil­la has its Euro­pean Pre­mière on 24 Feb­ru­ary, as part of the Glas­gow Fright­Fest.