Starring Hiroki Hasegawa, Satomi Ishihara and Yutaka Takenouchi

Directed by Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi

Manga, out August 10

An enormous creature emerges from the depths into modern day Japan, causing havoc as it crashes through the streets. As the authorities seem powerless to act, paralysed by bureaucracy and red tape, a small group of people thinking outside the box may represent the last best hope to stop the monster before it’s too late.

Here in the West, Godzilla is a somewhat misunderstood property, as demonstrated by the terrible 1998 Roland Emmerich effort. The original Godzilla was born as a metaphor for the terrifying and uncontrollable destructive power of the nuclear bomb, still so fresh in the cultural memory of the only country to ever have been on the receiving end of that power. It was a potent reminder that for all our advancement in understanding certain powers, we still needed to recognise our limitations in controlling them. This message was gotten across by acres of dialogue interspersed with brief, yet terrifying scenes of the giant beast running amok in urban Tokyo, before it was finally brought low by (for the time) clever scientific thinking on the part of the main characters. It was a film about humanity, which just happened to have a monster in it.

Shin Godzilla (here: Godzilla: Resurgence) revisits that original core message once more, while updating it for a new generation. Here we are touching on the relatively recent memories of the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster, with the opening sequence of earth tremors and disturbances below ground being eerily reminiscent of some of the news footage from that time. That’s not to say that the thread of the atomic bombs and their effect is not also picked up here – it very much is – but Toho have elected to reboot the franchise in a way that they have not tried before, literally taking a page out of the Hollywood book and re-imagining their iconic character for a new age. This is a world in which Godzilla has never been seen before, and added to that, this is a Godzilla we have never seen before.

From its first appearance, the creature ‘evolves’ throughout the movie, not becoming the fully familiar silhouette until roughly halfway through the run time. The use of CGI, puppets and motion capture combine to both recreate and expand upon that familiar profile, and whereas I can’t say that it always looks as polished as I might have liked – the eyes in particular are just odd – it does for the most part look like what it is: a traditional Godzilla movie with a modern budget and FX department.

That tradition carries through into the structure of the movie as well. Unlike an American equivalent, where square-jawed military commanders immediately take control of the emergency and shoot first, second and third before even contemplating a question, this movie tries hard to represent the culture from which it is drawn and the way in which that culture might respond to such a threat. The evacuation and safety of civilians is always the paramount concern of those in charge, and the use of military force is only undertaken after much deliberation. There are points in the film where it seems that the traditional deference to authority and strict adherence to custom and rules ingrained in the culture may well end up spelling the end of the world, and then the Americans turn up to lend a hand and it all seems for a moment that Toho may have given in and gone down the traditional Hollywood route.

And it’s here that the movie really starts to hit home its message. As the rest of the world – led by the USA – focuses on a maximum force solution that will devastate the country all over again, physically and spiritually, the team on which the movie focuses race to find a more scientific alternative. As with the original film, it’s likely that the ‘science’ is a lot less solid than the cast valiantly try to make it sound, but that’s not important. The key message here is about finding solutions other than war and destruction to problems. It’s a message slightly derailed by some of the finer details of the ultimate plan concocted by the team, but nevertheless, it’s clear that this is a film which seeks to elevate the Japanese culture of honour and respect for tradition and protocol rather than denigrating it. The team at the centre are self-described as ‘rebels’ and ‘pains in the bureaucracy’ but they’re still a million times more restrained and thoughtful than the American Generals all impatiently stood with their fingers over the triggers.

Verdict: Like its original ancestor, it’s a study of humanity, which just happens to have a monster starring in it. Despite accessions to modernity like the updated CGI effects and the modern-day hard reboot setting, this is a Toho Godzilla movie through and through, and fans of the franchise will not be disappointed. 8/10

Greg D. Smith