Shin Godzilla (Godzilla Resurgence) Review

I cannot remember a movie with two official names, but the latest Godzilla movie has just that: Godzilla Resurgence and Shin Godzilla. It is from Toho, creators of the kaiju franchise, and is playing in select theaters this week. Is it a good film, worthy of the twelve year hiatus (not counting the American one)? Well, if you are excited about seeing the cultural phenomenon on the big screen, then you have nothing to fear; if you are not excited, you will not be excited during any minute of the two hour long creature feature.

Playing as a precursor to the franchise, we watch the Japanese government, army, and public, try to deal with the sudden appearance of the building-busting behemoth. Only it is not quite the Godzilla we all know and love, and in the interest of keeping things spoiler free, shows that even decades later, Toho keeps pumping out new little tricks and twists to the dorsal finned beast.

But here, like Gareth Edwards' 2014 film, directors Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi focus quite a bit on the human characters, unfortunate, considering the English release is subtitled and not dubbed. This leaves your eyes scattering from reading the sometimes, whether intentional or not, awkward dialogue to observing in glee as tall towers crumble to the titular man in a rubber suit. It does not help that these long sequences of conversations are constantly introducing characters and changing locations. The quick zapping from set piece to set piece should keep keeping kiddies from becoming bored during the otherwise drawn-out pieces of dull dialogue. But all this while exploring interesting camera angles and almost humorous quick-cuts, it becomes a disorientating experience, particularly while quickly scanning the screen trying to read what the next new politician is saying, only to find our growing group of actors are in a completely different location.

Illusions to current Japanese and world events, the film is smarter than what you would expect from a giant monster movie, but like real-world politics, there are simply too many people to keep track of to truly feel any connection with them, rendering Godzilla's fairly sparse screen time a minor disappointment. He at least looks fantastic, a good mixture of CGI, animatronics, and good old fashioned rubber suits, all with a refreshingly retro and rather menacing look. But his movement is robotic, and he exploits none of the moxie of earlier films; he seems almost pleased to just be walking in an almost straight line, and destroys a building only on occasion. He is on screen much more than the aforementioned America movie, but most of the time, he is just standing still.

Its unique cuts and camera movements give this film a very modern and a superficially fast paced feel, but audiences have already seen, many many times, men in suits discussing how to eliminate the threat. There is a scene when the current "way to kill Godzilla" is to use a blood coagulant, and we witness canister after canister of the stuff; why did we need to see this? I would have rather the budget for all those canisters go towards another building for Godzilla to destroy.