Shin Godzilla is a weird meditation on the problems with Japanese bureaucracy | Ars Technica
In this reboot, Godzilla is a giant metaphor that shoots lasers.
When Godzilla finally does hit the shoreline, there's a major shock in
store for fans—the creature looks nothing like the terrifying toothface
we have known. Instead it's a bloated, wiggly, bug-eyed beast who can't
even walk upright. Sure, it's big enough to leave a considerable trail
of destruction and radioactivity in its wake. But it looks almost like a
joke version of the Big G, made even more unfamiliar by the use of CGI
enhancements. What doesn't feel like a joke are all the scenes of
coastal destruction and death as the nuclear-powered kaiju worms its way
through the urban landscape. These are deliberate evocations of the
Fukushima disaster, echoing a long tradition in Godzilla films of recreating nuclear horrors and other disasters that Japan has endured.
Soon, we discover that the major human conflict in this story isn't
between Japan and the monster; it's between two generations of Japanese
leaders with very different approaches to solving crises.
One of the really creative parts of this film is the way writer/director Hideaki Anno (creator of Evangelion) has given Godzilla the power of rapid evolution. The kaiju may be more powerful in some ways, but this Godzilla also
feels more like a metaphor than many of its predecessors. At one point,
Godzilla stands stock still for days in the middle of Tokyo, its
indestructible body rearing up like a warning over the glittering,
radioactive mess of the city. For fans of Anno's metaphysical kaiju
anime Evangelion, this will be a familiar scene. Like Shin Godzilla, the Evangelion
movies are full of ambiguous giant monsters called Angels who spend as
much time looming over Earth in a judgey way as they do attacking it.
Also like Evangelion, Shin Godzilla is full of occasionally incomprehensible worldbuilding that hints at cosmic issues we may never understand.
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