Horrorfest 2016: Shin Godzilla

I decided to take a break from my "best of" lists and check out the latest Japanese Godzilla movie, SHIN GODZILLA, which was playing at the Hollywood Theatre this week. Japan hasn't produced a GODZILLA flick since 2004, and the last one I saw was the American one from 2014, so the idea of seeing a brand new GODZILLA movie from the country of his origin with 21^st century special effects was pretty enticing.

First thing's first: SHIN GODZILLA is better than the American GODZILLA from 2014. It's also better than the American GODZILLA from 1999, and better than GODZILLA 2000, Japan's last stab at re-introducing the monster to the masses. It's even about as good as the original GODZILLA, covered in a previous year's Horrorfest.

Then again, what do I know? My favorite GODZILLA flick is KING KONG VS. GODZILLA, which I love in spite of the fact that it is a fairly awful movie. But I love it in a different way than I enjoyed SHIN GODZILLA. This new movie is like a real movie that happens to have Godzilla in it, kind of like SKYFALL was for James Bond. It's not the most God-silly GODZILLA flick, but it might be the most cinematic.

SHIN GODZILLA starts fresh, telling the story as if this is the first time Tokyo has seen Godzilla, and taking imagery and story elements from the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster to account for Godzilla's creation, instead of relying on the old atomic bomb origin. There's still plenty of atomic bomb talk in the third act of the film, when the USA intervenes and decides they're going to nuke Tokyo since Japan can't seem to get a handle on Godzilla. That is, unless our plucky team of misfits thrown together in the middle of the disaster isn't able to defeat Godzilla, first.

The movie flies along at a breathless pace and is never boring for a moment, which is a huge improvement over the 2014 American production. Some people complain about the lack of Godzilla's screen time in the 2014 production. I'm sure there's more Godzilla in this new movie, but I doubt it's that much more than the previous one, and I think this points to the strengths of this movie and the weaknesses of the last one: the human scenes are exciting in this one. It's not that there wasn't enough Godzilla in the last one, it's that the human scenes were boring in the last one.

In SHIN GODZILLA, we have the prime minister, his aides, his cabinet, scientists, the afore-mentioned team of misfits, politicians, army guys, etc. all running around speaking rapid fire dialogue like Aaron Sorkin wrote the flick. At first it's a little hard to keep track of the subtitles as we're being introduced to a ton of different characters in a ton of different locations, but if you just relax and let it wash over you, it becomes exhilarating how sure-footed the film is.

Godzilla, the monster itself, goes through a few changes in the film, first showing up as a blubbery bug-eyed creature that crawls along on all fours before flopping back into the ocean, and then returning as a particularly menacing version of the towering inferno we've seen before. This Godzilla is scary, in the sense that disaster films are scary, and even gross in some close ups, which is pretty cool, since I can't remember the last time I was actually grossed out by a monster in a Godzilla movie. I guess it was probably the Smog Monster. #savetheearth

The movie does a very convincing job of giving us an idea of how a government runs during an unprecedented disaster, and very imaginatively works out all the ins and outs of what might happen in this kind of situation. It never backs down or tries to go for simplicity, and even has a sense of humor about all the meetings the various politicians, scientists and army guys have to set up and go through in order to get even the smallest thing done. The movie's as much about the small details of bureaucracy as it is about bigger ideas, like the effects of pollution on an innocent population, the implications of the use of the atomic bomb, and the place of a powerful but small country like Japan on an international stage where the US also exists to throw its weight around.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that SHIN GODZILLA is good.