Toho's Godzilla Films (Shin Godzilla & Minus One)

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Harbinger O Great Justice
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Oh, don't worry – Japan's got that covered! :monster:

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More images of those two friggin' awesome figures here: http://gigazine.net/news/20160724-gvse-wf2016s/




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Also:


It also seems that this film is a commentary on Fukushima and other things where the people spend far too much time discussing things bureaucratically, rather than taking immediate action to deal with the crisis, which just makes me even more excited for it.




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E-mailed my favourite theater asking if they got showings for Shin Godzilla — they did, and I'll be seeing this Oct 11th! Fuck yeah! Also, tickets go on sale through the main site with all locations on the 9th if you need to find a place, also Fandango has some if you need to hunt down locations.




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So, my girlfriend and I have just about finished our full chronological 30-film Godzilla Marathon leading up to the US release of the new film. (We're watching Tokyo S.O.S today, Final Wars tomorrow, and then the US 2014 Godzilla on Sunday, and finally seeing Shin Godzilla in theaters on Tuesday). It's been really interesting seeing the evolution of Godzilla – who started as a commentary on the dangers of nuclear weapons after the tragedy of the Lucky Dragon 5 – and see him grow and change in his portrayal as a thematic plot entity and commentary, and even eventually as a character throughout the films and their various continuities. I'm really looking forward to seeing how Shin Godzilla takes this on, what with it being a commentary on Fukushima, since it's likely to be very VERY different than any of the Godzilla films have been in a while, and I've been trying to avoid any information about the film itself (haven't read any new reviews despite seeing them being posted frequently, and haven't rewatched trailers or anything from the film in about a month or so).

Also, for anyone interested (especially if you're intrigued by the first link I added), while it has changed in a few films near the end of the Heisei Era, and I believe that it's also different in Shin Godzilla, there's a very specific reason for Godzilla's atomic breath, as well as it and his spines emitting a blue glow. If you're interested in reading about it, I think it's quite fascinating. The first bit iis the story of the Demon's Core – which was going to be used for the 3rd bomb dropped on Japan, but was used for testing in 1944-1946, and details of which were likely key in inspiration and design for Godzilla's atomic breath. The second bit is about Cherenkov Radiation which is what causes the unique glowing blue colour.

But yeah. I'm in full hype mode at this point, and got a Godzilla statue from Sideshow Collectables for my girlfriend to sort of commemorate our run through the films together, since it's been more than a month-long undertaking at this point, and one that I've always wanted to do, but haven't ever properly completed, and I'm really looking forward to doing so this upcoming Tuesday.




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I have a massive headache right now, but I have nothing but ridiculously high praise for this film that I'll tl;dr about later.

EDIT: Here it is for now:


Shin Godzilla is, without question, my favourite Godzilla-as-a-metaphor film — even including the original. It also ranks up in the top of my overall Godzilla films (though I will eternally have a nostalgic soft spot for Godzilla as a kaiju character from growing up with him, and can't quite tell if it's taken the top spot because of that, yet).

The takes the tone and idea of Godzilla as a message from the original 1954 and adapts it to modern day with the Fukushima incident masterfully. You get to see the frustrating difficulties and simultaneous impressive victories of organized democratic bureaucracy within the modern world, and a stage of tension that holds weight with a version of Godzilla unlike anything that's come before it. It utilizes tense music, haunting silences, Akira Ifukube's original scores, and even Evangelion-like themes at times. The movie is everything you could imagine of its component parts and it refuses to slow down or progress how you expect without feeling as though it's intentionally subverting your expectations.

•Bureaucracy:

- You get a very quick love/hate relationship with it, and you see the humor embedded in exceedingly long descriptions and titles, even if it isn't really humor that makes you laugh, nor is it really absurd, but just exposing the ridiculousness of function. You see the passionate people, the dedicated career politician, and everything in between.
- It simultaneously manages to point out the massive flaws in the system, while also showing how much it is capable of when things go from bad to worse. The same politics and red tape that made everyone so slow to take action and understandably timid in the face of a new and unprecedented situations and lead to the disaster spiraling out of control, is later used to delay the window of a thermonuclear strike against Godzilla in the heart of Tokyo to let the scientific team make their own move.
- You always see big feats of organization in Godzilla films to move power or other things, but seeing the technical side of it makes them feel exponentially more impressive.
- Watching the move of everything from small committees into full-blown global politics from Japan's point of view was astonishingly tense and felt real in the same way the setting of the original 1954 film does. It isn't science fiction at all like so many of the films are, so much as Godzilla erupting in the real world.


•Science:

- I love how far in detail they go into Godzilla's extremophile biology and even talk about how they expect the creature to be crushed under its own weight if it attempted to make landfall. All the really significant details are there, but they're not lingered on, so much as they're just presented as facts with professionals talking to one another — again, it never has the taste of science fiction jargon to it so much as something incredible and never encountered.


•Godzilla's Origin:

- Abstract: "Gojira" is a combination of the words for "gorilla" and "whale" that informed the design of the original. Since the US name, "Godzilla" came along, it started to carry a lot of meaning with the character over his history in films, even causing the '98 kaiju to be named "Zilla" because it took the "God" out of "Godzilla." Similarly, "Shin" is interesting, because it can mean, Resurgence, True, and even God — hence the reason it's specifically left as "Shin" in the film's US title.
- In film: There was no creature in 1954 in this film's canon, as it all starts here. To add to that, the US Department of Energy who was investigating it with the Japanese scientist years before the start of the film termed the creature, "Godzilla" within and the Japanese localize it to "Gojira" upon learning about it, as a way of bringing in all the weight of the English name INTO the Japanese name, which is just flat out brilliant.


•Godzilla's Design:
- Godzilla's first two forms give a lot of design information for why he looks as strange and horrifying as he does. Even the incredibly long tail is something that doesn't bother me in the slightest now, like it did initially. Every horrifying aspect of him serves a purpose.
- The sound when they're testing heavier and heavier weaponry against him is stunningly haunting. I wasn't expecting the metallic armored sound of bullets and shells just glancing off of his skin, but it was incredible.
- His atomic breath is. TERRIFYING. It starts off as straight fire-breathing and basically napalming everything around him. Alone, that would be horrifying, but that is just the start before that focuses into a beam that completely eclipses anything in a Godzilla film seen before. Follow that up with him firing tens of those beams out of his dorsal fins and slicing stealth bombers out of the sky before, shutting down, and seeing what I found to be the best scene in the film — the destruction of that single attack viewed from space (which served to put the idea of dropping a bomb on Tokyo in perspective, even before the statements about Hiroshima and Japan's past). The way that it works, you can see his energy levels dropping and the beam going briefly red and then back briefly into flames before ending completely.


•Subversion:
- For a film where Godzilla gets hit by stealth bombers and 3.6 million people evacuate Tokyo, you don't expect to find a way to avoid the nuke. Additionally, you don't expect the scientific freezing via blood coagulation delivered by concrete cranes to feel as spectacular, especially when following up the utter insanity of the second act's military deployment. Also, VERY much unlike any other of the films, Godzilla isn't killed like in the 1954 film as a warning of worse weaponry, nor does he retreat back as a part of the natural order of things. He's left frozen, and acknowledged that it's something that they have to learn to live with, somehow, even though that "how" isn't clear. Panning up to the final shot makes the timing feel all the more impressive and the potential implications all the more interesting and simultaneously unnerving.



I'll probably think of even more later, but that's my initial brain gushing. God DAMN. The only minor criticism is that there is a lot of talking and title/location text that'll be easier if they localize the text on BluRay release, rather than doing supertitles for the locations and subtitles over them, but that's just formatting and me not being fluent in Japanese. Nothing against the film itself.





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Good! You definitely deserve to know none of that stuff until you see it. *^^* Mega stoked to hear what you think of it tonight!!




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Strangelove said:
I don't think it's going to be shown anywhere around here :sadpanda:
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:( Hopefully it's released on BluRay & whatnot soonish then.

ForceStealer said:
What about a Gainax Ending?
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A little bit of one, yeah.
Initially it's got the classic Godzilla, "ponder the meaning of what it's all about" bit that's incredibly well executed. The very last shot un-specifically mentioned in a rushed discussion earlier, but seeing it is meant to give an intentional sense of dread, as well as show just how close they were to being too late to stop it. While the specifics of it are a bit of a mindfuck, it's not unprecedented, but it could also be seen as a hook for a sequel even though one isn't planned, so kinda sorta Gainax-y, but not extremely.

Godzilla's shown to be capable of self-evolution, rather than generational evolution, which is what makes him mostly unstoppable. It's briefly commented that he might be capable of breaking off sections of himself as a means of reproduction. Godzilla remains frozen in Tokyo like a massive statue at the end of the film rather than being destroyed (thanks to them sabotaging his biology), and they comment that they'll have to learn how to live with him somehow. As it pans out, we see the end of his tail is oddly splayed out. As it zooms in on it, we see that there's a whole host of humanoid-like bodies with Godzilla features still attached to it that look like they're attempting to escape, but frozen before they could detach – suggesting that they shut down his biology probably just seconds before he managed to shed off a piece of himself to survive.

This bit of fan art (Via: Twitter) shows his whole evolutionary process throughout the film from bottom to top, and is currently my favourite piece of fan art I've seen for the film.




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So, here's some music from the film. I've paired the tracks I really wanted to point out with certain Akira Ifukube pieces of music that're also used in the film to try and show how the film both directly calls back to Godzilla musically by using his original scores for Godzilla himself, as well as how the film's music by Shiro Sagisu manages to evoke similar tones with the rest of the soundtrack (and also get that NGE feel a little bit in places).


Opening by Shira Sagisu


Classic Godzilla Theme by Akira Ifukube



A tragic piece by Shira Sagisu


A more somber piece by Akira Ifukube


The Neon Genesis Evangelion-style Assembling track by Shira Sagisu


The Military assembling track by Akira Ifukube




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