Shin Godzilla came out in the States last week under the name Godzilla Resurgence, and it's the strangest Godzilla movie in a very long time. Not since Godzilla vs. Hedorah (aka the Smog Monster) have we seen such a relentlessly and bizarrely political film in this franchise. What's more, we've never seen a complete reboot of the entire series from Toho studios. Yet here we have both, plus a Godzilla monster who is totally unlike its predecessors (it evolves like Pokémon!). The best part is that this new movie works, giving us a whole new perspective on the Big G, along with a whopping dose of Japanese anxiety about the country's relationship with the US.

Like any respectable Godzilla movie, Shin Godzilla is divided between insane kaiju destruction that gets progressively more spectacular, and mundane human drama as Japan tries to protect its cities. The premise is that nobody has ever encountered a giant monster before, so the government is absolutely flummoxed when broiling hot steam starts erupting from the ocean off the coast. At first, the Prime Minister and his top officials dismiss it as some kind of natural disaster. Once an enormous tentacle (actually, the Big G's tail) rises out of the water and starts waving around, however, Japan's calcified bureaucracy begins to crack. Citizens are posting pictures of the monster on social media, and a young cabinet secretary named Rando Yaguchi (Hiroki Hasegawa) is the only politician who is willing to stand up for the truth. There's a giant, unidentified biological organism on the prowl, and it's about to come ashore.

When Godzilla finally does hit the shoreline, there's a major shock in store for fans—the creature looks nothing like the terrifying toothface we have known. Instead it's a bloated, wiggly, bug-eyed beast who can't even walk upright. Sure, it's big enough to leave a considerable trail of destruction and radioactivity in its wake. But it looks almost like a joke version of the Big G, made even more unfamiliar by the use of CGI enhancements. What doesn't feel like a joke are all the scenes of coastal destruction and death as the nuclear-powered kaiju worms its way through the urban landscape. These are deliberate evocations of the Fukushima disaster, echoing a long tradition in Godzilla films of recreating nuclear horrors and other disasters that Japan has endured.

Funimation

Funimation

Funimation

Funimation

The terror of Japan’s government bureaucracy

It's no surprise, then, when we pivot to the human side of the story and find ourselves in an emergency response center that's fallen into confusion. Every minor decision has to be sent up the chain to the Prime Minister himself, who deliberates slowly and misses dozens of chances to drive the monster back with military force. Even the biologists the government brings in to explain the monster are unable to say anything helpful because speculation about an unknown lifeform might undermine their positions in the research community. Soon, we discover that the major human conflict in this story isn't between Japan and the monster; it's between two generations of Japanese leaders with very different approaches to solving crises.

Finally, the young Yaguchi is given the chance to form an emergency committee full of "nerds" and "outcasts" that will deal with the threat by working in a "flat structure" team. Immediately, a geeky female biologist watches videos of the monster that people have uploaded and starts to identify how it walks. Once they realize the beast runs on nuclear power, the committee devises a plan that could only come from a bunch of scientists thinking way outside the box. The agility and creativity of Yaguchi's team is constantly contrasted with the ever-diminishing old guard of ministers, one of whom is more upset about his noodles getting soggy than the destruction of Tokyo. Yaguchi is eventually joined by Kayoko Ann Patterson (Satomi Ishihara), a Japanese-American who values unconventional thinking just as much as Yaguchi does.

There is some inadvertent humor here for American audiences, as we get to see how a mainstream Japanese film portrays Japanese-Americans (Patterson shows up to a meeting in last night's party dress, casually smack-talking the men in charge). The English dialogue is fairly silly, but the underlying issue of relationships between Japan and America is deeply serious. Yaguchi and his colleagues are constantly talking about being under America's thumb, especially when it comes to military issues. A major part of the film is pure military tech fetishism, as every jet, missile, tank, and gun is named in bold text on screen as it rolls out to test its mettle against the Big G. It's fascinating to see anxieties about the US relationship with Japan from the Japanese perspective, especially in the context of the film's larger themes about how the government needs to change if the nation is to survive.

A new evolution for Godzilla

There are some utterly terrific monster fight scenes, accompanied by Godzilla's characteristic roar and a lot of the original "dum dum dum DUM!" music from classic Big G flicks. But again, this is a complete reboot, and we're dealing with a different kind of monster. One of the really creative parts of this film is the way writer/director Hideaki Anno (creator of Evangelion) has given Godzilla the power of rapid evolution. As Yaguchi's team watches in fascinated horror, the kaiju morphs from floppy sea creature to a "fourth evolution" Godzilla with impenetrable skin, cruelly sharp teeth, laser breath, and some kind of motion detection system that allows it to sense incoming attack vessels.

The kaiju may be more powerful in some ways, but this Godzilla also feels more like a metaphor than many of its predecessors. At one point, Godzilla stands stock still for days in the middle of Tokyo, its indestructible body rearing up like a warning over the glittering, radioactive mess of the city. For fans of Anno's metaphysical kaiju anime Evangelion, this will be a familiar scene. Like Shin Godzilla, the Evangelion movies are full of ambiguous giant monsters called Angels who spend as much time looming over Earth in a judgey way as they do attacking it. Also like Evangelion, Shin Godzilla is full of occasionally incomprehensible worldbuilding that hints at cosmic issues we may never understand.

Anno is also a huge fan of tokusatsu (special effects) franchises, which are endlessly rebooting themselves much the way American ones do. Fans say his choice to make this movie a total reboot places Shin Godzilla squarely in the tokusatsu tradition, but there may be a more pragmatic reason as well. The American Godzilla franchise, made in collaboration with Toho Studios, is also a reboot and will eventually involve many of Toho's classic kaiju. Though Shin Godzilla isn't directly set in the same world as the American Godzilla, the two series are now at least vaguely set in the same timeline, and it's fun to imagine a future crossover.

The bottom line is that Shin Godzilla is a must-see for any fan of Godzilla movies, but also for people who are simply interested in where Japanese pop culture is headed in the 21st century. As the nation changes, its fantastical preoccupations are changing, too. The result is a movie kind of like the Big G itself. This is a towering pile of awe-inspiring nonsense, with a complex political subtext that becomes more fascinating the longer you think about it.

Shin Godzilla is playing in selected theaters in the US. It does not yet have a UK release date.