What strikes me most about this dumb monster movie is how clear it is that the people making it truly loved Godzilla, and how that is contrasted with how they completely miss the point of what Godzilla is supposed to be.
Spoilers from here on out!
If Godzilla is an allegory for mankind’s destructive hubris when they created nuclear weapons, then having two nuclear explosions in your film that HELP the heroes, rather than HINDER the entire world, seems like the most extreme case of missing the point to ever grace the silver screen. Nuking Godzilla at point-blank range for the purposes of reviving him is the silliest thing possibly imaginable, given that it was nuclear weapons that gave birth to him, and gave him the power to destroy San Francisco and slaughter the child of the films protagonist. Then framing Godzilla as a mighty hero for unleashing that nuclear power across America, thus levelling the city of Boston, no-doubt killing hundreds-of-thousands of people for miles around, may be the worst case of misunderstanding a character I have ever seen.
Now, this use of nuclear weapons in the finale may have been justified if Godzilla were a villain, which he was originally portrayed as. But as he was instead portrayed as the now more traditional hero character, it simply does not line up with how nuclear weapons are used in the film. As a villain, Godzilla represents our fears of nuclear technology and, as a hero, he represents our acceptance to live with this terrifying force. But he can’t be the terrifying nuclear hero that we have come to accept, against all of the risks, if he is also literally nuking a city in the finale of the movie that is depicting him to be the good-guy, while the main cast of characters desperately tries to escape.
Now, don’t get me wrong, the vast majority of people aren’t going to see Godzilla anymore because they care about metaphors for nuclear war, as it is no longer a significant contemporary issue; Most people just want to see Godzilla shoot blue fire at a three-headed dragon, which is perfectly fine. If that is why you want to see this movie then you’re in luck, there is plenty of action and plenty of screen-time for the various monsters that appear in it, including Godzilla himself, Mothra, Rodan and King Ghidorah.
My only gripe with seeing the film through this light is that, though lots of action occurs, there is only a fraction of it that we get to see. In many ways this film is worse than the previous film (Godzilla 2014) in how it constantly cuts away from the battles, and seems reluctant to let us see how the monsters get from one stage of the fight to the next. We don’t often get a chance to see the monsters brawling, but instead get to see the action once one of them has gained the upper-hand over the other. My problem with this is that we miss most of the build up of the action, as the film favours only showing the most dramatic moments of the battles, but those moments are undercut by the fact we don’t see that build-up. It’s like watching boxing, but you only see the knock-out punches and none of the rest of the fight! How did King Ghidorah end up winning this fight, since both monsters seemed evenly matched the last time we saw it? We may never know.
It is a small gripe, but compared to Godzilla 2014, which at least gave us a full, comprehensive battle, this film can only be described as delivering action that comes in the form of a jigsaw puzzle with a plethora missing pieces.
But none of this is to say this is just a corporate product of a film pushed out by Hollywood to absorb money; It is my belief that the makers of the film truly cared about these monsters and did do what they thought was best to deliver a film that was as true to Godzilla as they could get. This shines through mostly through the cinematography, which depicts the monsters as hauntingly beautiful forces of nature and is quite awe-inspiring. Coupled with the soundtrack, which borrows from the original Japanese films, made by Toho, you will find that this elevates the presence of all of these massive beasts, and that it certainly feels significant whenever they appear onscreen.
If nothing else, no one can deny that this film was a passionate one, I just felt like that passion came at the cost of misunderstanding Godzilla, for the sake of spectacle, and thus took away from what he is supposed to represent for humanity.
Most Godzilla fans will probably get more out of this film than I did, admittedly, but I still hope we can get a better depiction of this American Godzilla going forward.
Alex Jordan 