‘Shin Godzilla’ roars back into cinemas

Anno and Higuchi have practically made it their mission to relaunch and deconstruct beloved Japanese properties. The Neon Genesis Evangelion creators collaborated on the tokusatsu reboot Shin Ultraman, after which Anno spearheaded Shin Kamen Rider solo, but their cultural reappraisals began with perhaps the best-known fixture of Japanese fiction: Gojira, or Godzilla, the King of the Monsters, whose onscreen history has involved everything from goofy romps to period war dramas (like the recent Godzilla Minus One). The iconic sea-lizard is as malleable as they come, but Shin Godzilla fulfills a distinctly restorative purpose.

Ishirō Honda’s mournful original Godzilla from 1954 was a far cry from later monster mash-ups, since it reflected the sheer, overpowering horror of the nuclear bombs dropped on Japan during World War II, less than a decade prior. Shin Godzilla, meanwhile, was made in the shadow of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that caused a major accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. With the film, Anno and Higuchi place the Japanese government’s inadequate response in their crosshairs, lampooning red tape and bureaucracy with a story whose first half unfolds in various boardrooms. As a disaster unfolds at sea, numerous ministers and heads of department—introduced with increasingly lengthy and ludicrous titles on screen—shuffle between different press conferences and meeting rooms (and even different halves of the same room) as they discuss their response. Much of the initial humor stems from the disconnect caused by the movie’s kinetically edited scenes, in which the flow of information is, ironically, restricted and confused, and the characters grow increasingly ineffectual.

Godzilla

GKIDS Films

Meanwhile, the movie’s take on Godzilla starts out as adorably repulsive. He’s presented as a quadruped with bleeding gills and googly eyes, and is set on a mindless rampage until he evolves in spine-chilling ways. A version we’re slightly more familiar with soon emerges, standing upright and letting out animalistic roars, but Shin Godzilla pulls no punches with its nuclear allegories. This version of Godzilla might have grown by feeding on nuclear waste, but he takes on the sickly appearance of having been burned by radiation, with muscles and tendons visible each time he unhinges his jaw. All the while, his eyes remain plastic and soulless, as though he were less a sentient creature and more an unfeeling, unthinking, and most importantly, uncontrollable force of nature acting on impulse—if not out of the pain of his burning flesh. He’s the agony of nuclear radiation made manifest.

When the creature begins to let loose his full destructive potential, spitting fire through the streets, and shooting laser beams through his tail and spine, the result is soul-stirring, given its epic, larger-than-life presentation. This moves the film away from its send-up of feckless political opportunism, and towards a darker saga of history potentially repeating itself through acts of political hubris. The United States and Japan, having maintained strategic ties, now find themselves in the horrifying position of having to potentially sanction a third nuclear bomb being dropped on a Japanese city, lest the Tokyo government find a creative solution.

Godzilla shooting laser blast

GKIDS Films

This problem-solving is amusing and exciting, accompanied by music that draws from both Evangelion as well as the original Godzilla. But where the movie most succeeds is in its pervading, all-consuming melancholy, as the inevitability of a nuclear holocaust looms—whether now, or in some hypothetical future. The movie’s sickening closing images reflect this theme, hinting at a further, more disturbing evolution for Godzilla along the lines of body horror—a glimpse at twisted humanoid figures protruding from his tail, contorted into screams. These both resemble monuments to the dead, while also embodying the ultimate predator: humanity itself, a creature ready and willing to hasten its own destruction. Just like Honda’s classic, Shin Godzilla’s nihilistic laments revolve around humanity’s arrogance, cementing it as a timeless fable with timely political echoes.

The film would go on to become the highest grossing live action release that year domestically, and would even be nominated for 11 awards at the 40th Japan Academy Film Prize, winning seven, including Best Picture. A possible sequel was also recently teased by Toho amidst the studio’s Asian expansion plans, but regardless of whether the story of Shin Godzilla is ever followed up on (with or without Anno and Higuchi), the movie’s achievement as a smart, dryly hysterical, and ultimately petrifying monster saga is a testament unto itself. It not only made Godzilla scary again, it reinstated his power as a political parable, and a means to process disaster and trauma on a national scale, turning the character’s cataclysmic flame into a vessel for collective catharsis once more.