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Paul le Fou

24/7 lofi hip hop man to study/relax to
(He)
I really like Shin for what it does in making Godzilla terrifying again. A gigantic, horrifying monster destroying everything in its wake for completely inscrutable reasons, like an angry god bringing down its wrath. For so long, Godzilla became a hero, which I totally get because it's cool and fun and we love big monsters, but Shin pulls the rug back out from under us. It takes away as much familiarity as Anno and crew were allowed to while still making it recognizably Godzilla in order to make it all the more uncanny and frightening.

Also the way the smoking fire breath heats up into the focused purple laser is cool.


The monsterverse movies try to toe that line, making Godzilla more of a force of nature, a Very Large Animal, and humans are just observers who try to minimize damage, usually ending up on the same side as him. But really, they're not fooling anyone. King Kong was already positioned to be a human-relations monster, and I think they tried to make this happen with GvK, but it was a pretty flimsy setup.

Note: I love the monsterverse movies and want more of them (were they done? I was under the impression GvKK was going to be the last one?), they're just more squarely in the "Godzilla is a hero! A scary hero, but a hero nonetheless!" camp.


FWIW, the anime movie trilogy did manage the "Godzilla is a terrifying monster destroying everything we hold dear" angle pretty well, it's just that literally everything else about them was utter trash. The first was passable, but the second was bad and the third nigh unwatchable.

I do want to see Singular Point though.
 

Paul le Fou

24/7 lofi hip hop man to study/relax to
(He)
My Godzilla hot take is that I've never liked the classic theme song all that much.
 

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
Gotta admit that the theme song really doesn’t work when Godzilla is supposed to be a terrifying force of destruction incarnate.

Works great when he’s a nuclear lizard superhero
 

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
I didn’t like Shin as much as others, but it did great job establishing G as being something completely bizarre and horrifying
 

air_show

elementary my dear baxter
I didn’t like Shin as much as others, but it did great job establishing G as being something completely bizarre and horrifying
Where I get hung up is... why is that a thing now? Is being completely bizarre and horrifying a Godzilla Thing? I'd say no. Yeah, the first movie is kind of scary because of the bleak tone and black and white and Godzilla certainly is monstrous, but he's not a hideous Un-Creature that Should Not Be. Not to the degree Shin Godzilla is at any rate.

Like, what irks me is when people say "Shin Godzilla brings back the classic tone of the 54 classic" and I'm like... how?? This creature has far more in common with Hedorah than the '54 Godzilla. It's Hedorah cosplaying as Godzilla.
 

Falselogic

Lapsed Threadcromancer
(they/them)
I think you, me, and everyone else might be inured to the horrors of nuclear weapons? The original Godzilla is supposed to be horrific. His skin texture intentionally made to resemble keloid scarring that survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had. I think Shin is trying to recapture that but audiences, especially international ones, have no context for that kind of horror. So, they really tweaked the design of Godzilla so that once again the viewer is arrested by the horror of the creature.
 

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
Also, while I agree that I never really *wanted* a Godzilla that is a bizarre and horrifying monstrosity, Anno did, and he did a *real* good job of realizing that image.
 

Paul le Fou

24/7 lofi hip hop man to study/relax to
(He)
Is being completely bizarre and horrifying a Godzilla Thing? I'd say no. Yeah, the first movie is kind of scary because of the bleak tone and black and white and Godzilla certainly is monstrous, but he's not a hideous Un-Creature that Should Not Be. Not to the degree Shin Godzilla is at any rate.
You'd be wrong. That's entirely the point of the first movie. it's a response to the overwhelming horror of the atomic bombs; the G-man of the first movie has always been meant to be viewed with the same awed, incomprehensible terror as watching an atomic bomb go off and witnessing the aftermath.

It's made in cheesy-looking rubber suits with not even the height of 1954 technology and can't land anything close to that effect on today's audiences. But that doesn't mean that's not the intended effect, or what the effect was (closer to?) at the time.

Bringing that feeling back is what Shin is trying to do. I think it worked! It also became an incredibly popular design and has basically replaced the Toho suits as the studio's official image of Godzilla, which I find strange, but the film was monstrously successful (I swear to god that pun was not intended but you know I have to keep it) in Japan, so, I guess it makes sense. Still surprised there isn't going to be a sequel, but Anno is working on a Shin Ultraman and Shin Kamen Rider to fit into a "Shin cinematic universe" or whatever, and it seems Toho is still making movies, so I guess that works.
 
Yeah, not that I blame you because it's not really second nature to most people/can often be difficult to do, but you're not coming close to putting yourself in the position of a regular joe in 1954 - regarding their expectations, the culture they're in, the context of the war they just came out of, the novelty of this kind of movie having really never been made before, etc, etc. Kaiju movies morphed into something else the way most media does over the years as they balloon in popularity/get sanitized for general audiences/beloved by kids and families/etc etc. But yeah, that was the whole original point of the original Godzilla film. Shin nails it. I personally think Singular Point nails it as well.
 

air_show

elementary my dear baxter
See I'm still gonna have to go ahead and still disagree with you there. While I can agree that:

Yes, Godzilla in 1954 is deliberately designed to look like something of a victim of a nuclear blast, charred and scarred as such like something wounded and angered by our reckless civilization. And yes this Godzilla is meant to evoke an existential sense of smallness and hopelessness against something ancient and terrible that dwarfs our place of superiority on this world (until we invent something equally existentially terrible to kill it). However:

No, Godzilla was not designed to be some grotesque nightmare mutant right out of classic David Cronenberg body horror. He's not supposed to be a disgusting Lovecraftian Thing that looks like a bunch of shoggoths got together and decided to morph themselves into the vague shape of a dinosaur. He especially wasn't desgined as a big gross ugly looking floppy fish salamander that quickly shapeshifts into a more recognizable form.

I submit that Shin Godzilla is not successfully recreating the tone and atmosphere of the original 54 film at all. It's a brightly lit movie with an ultimately optimistic tone about dutiful civil servants doing their best to save their country in a surreal disaster situation. The original film's climax involves a tragic figure sacrificing himself to protect the world from the weapon he's using to kill Godzilla. Shin Godzilla ends with THE TRAINS' REVENGE.

Shin Godzilla is not an old and angry wounded creature lashing out against a world that doesn't understand him. He's a gross dead-eyed walking pile of young mutated slop because Anno is an edgelord who thinks making him more alien and grotesque means making him "scary" again in the way that the original was scary. And I don't think it even achieves that. Shin Godzilla looks like something Junji Ito drew (which is praise, I'll grant that) but the things he does are relatively tame. He walks through buildings, roars occasionally, blows stuff up with a breath attack, and shrugs off artillery (but flinches at trains crashing into him somehow). Pretty standard stuff we've been seeing for 60+ years, he just made the breath attack more anime, which is *checks notes* not scary.

I'm aware that there are storyboards and concept art implying a very gruesome fate for the civilians caught in this Godzilla's path, and if the movie had actually had the guts to show those fates I would at least respect it for the full pivot into horror territory, though it would also reinforce my suggestion that this monster has more in common with Hedorah than Godzilla. I don't know if I'd blame the filmmakers directly for this though, seems like more of a Toho mandate not to let things get too ugly. Between that and the third anime film copping out of the implied Mothra Twin Cannibalism, it seems like that might be a thing with Toho.

Anyway that's my TED Talk about why I don't think Shin Godzilla is a Very Good 1954 Remake, Actually. I'm not trying to start a big back and forth argument for the record, my opinion doesn't invalidate anyone else's feelings on the film. I just had to get this out of my system once and for all.
 
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I'm aware that there are storyboards and concept art implying a very gruesome fate for the civilians caught in this Godzilla's path, and if the movie had actually had the guts to show those fates I would at least respect it for the full pivot into horror territory
My understanding is that yes, Toho very explicitly doesn't let that kind of violence happen in Godzilla-anything. It's a shortcoming in Singular Point as well, where there are very important character deaths that are only very softly implied but never stated overtly or acknowledged because again, that's apparently not allowed. It sucks, but I wouldn't chalk that up to cowardice on the part of the movie or people making it. But the implied violence in S.P. is very much real and terrifying.

Anyways, I see where you're coming from. I don't agree with it, but I see it now.
 

Bongo

excused from moderation duty
(he/him)
Staff member
Shin Godzilla is not a remake. It is, however, riffing on the themes of the original in a way that isn't done by any film where there are multiple kaiju that fight each other. Consider, for instance, how in 1954, Big G is defeated with a weapon of mass destruction, whereas in 2016, he is defeated with civilian infrastructure.
 

Adrenaline

Post Reader
(He/Him)
I don't think Shin Godzilla is trying to directly recreate Godzilla, I think they are both intended to be horror films reflecting the times and cultures in which they were made.
 

Kirin

Summon for hire
(he/him)
Well that certainly explains why I couldn’t find any footage or even screenshots from them. Wild.
 

R.R. Bigman

Coolest Guy
I know I’m late to the discussion, but wasn’t Shin Godzilla more of a reaction to the 2011 Earthquake/Tsunami/Nuclear Disaster? Isn’t that why Godzilla was only stalled at the end, since the Fukushima plant was and still is a big problem that has no solution?
 

Bongo

excused from moderation duty
(he/him)
Staff member
I don't think I would agree that the Fukushima plant is a problem with no solution, but it's easy to suppose that it was on Shin Godzilla's creators' minds.
 

Paul le Fou

24/7 lofi hip hop man to study/relax to
(He)
Do we know anything about it besides the trailer? The Godzilla design looks cool from what we see. Similar to Legendary's depiction.
 
I for one am ok with Godzilla's glow being different colours in each subsequent movie. Running zilla kinda makes it look smaller and lighter though, which doesn't feel right for this iteration.

In sadzilla news I will arrive back in the UK two days too late to see Minus One in IMAX, bah.
 
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