SHIN GOJIRA thoughts and impressions

As some of you may have noticed, I spent almost 2 weeks in Japan this last month.

My agent wanted to make a big event at Wonderfestival (in Tokyo) to synergize with SHIN GOJIRA’s release the following week. Working out a deal with veteran kaiju illustrator Shinji Nishikawa, we produced a Japanese edition of the first two issues of RULERS OF EARTH, complete with a collaborative cover between myself and Nishikawa-sensei. The event was huge and we had a massive line all day. It was truly special. The following weekend, on Friday at 7:40 pm, I was joined by a smattering of Japanese and American fans (17 folks total!) to go to the Godzilla hotel in Shinjuku to watch the new movie at the Toho Cinema (I was especially thrilled to be joined by Ultraman director/producer Takeshi Yagi and the great guys from Kokubunji Studios!). Actually, my buddy Alan and I got up at about 8 am that morning to go hunting for theater exclusives. We managed to grab some red-colored Godzillas and a few more items, only to find out that, by day’s end, most of the theater goodies were sold out! Lucky us!

As night wore on, we scrambled to get inside, as a few of our party were running a bit late. But we got in, grabbed some snacks, and scampered into the theater mere minutes before the film rolled. After marveling at the tiny cup-holder-that-converted-into-a-tiny-table (I don’t want to be one of those guys who says Japan is better than America but HOLY SHIT THEY HAVE TINY TABLES IN THEIR THEATERS) I was struck with elation as both the modern and classic Toho logos came onscreen.

Thunderous, 1954-style footfalls shook the theater, and a thunderous Shodai-Gojira roar blasted from behind the stark white katakana spelling “SHIN GOJIRA."

So this will not be a full review. Rather a series of impressions. Why? Because I simply don’t speak fluent Japanese. I can get by, but the majority of this very talky flick was a blur of sounds that left me somewhat lost until I managed to catch a word or simply see the result of the character’s actions to put everything into context. If you’ll allow me then, here is a quick bullet-point list.

- Yes, the film is very dialogue-heavy. So much so that even Japanese speakers are somewhat lost on the rapid-fire dialogue and dense terminology being used. It didn’t bother me much at first, until a rather loooooong stretch towards the end before the final act.

- While the characters are pretty much all governmental employees working purely in response to Godzilla’s threat, they are varied and oddball enough to keep them engaging. For me, anyway. Some will take issue with that there are no actual "arcs” for anyone in the movie.

- it’s a rather simple story: Godzilla appears, the government responds. There’s apparently quite a few layers to what statements are being made by the film, be the pro-government or pro-Japan or otherwise. But there is certainly a “Japan has to solve its own problems” message here.

- there are “Americans” in the film, and while one or two of them aren’t bad, the majority are stiff and their dialogue hilariously melodramatic. Poor Satomi Ishihara, playing an “American-born Japanese,” is trying her damnedest, but she just doesn’t quite have a grasp of the language. It ultimately doesn’t matter too much, since this is a film for Japanese audiences, but her costar Hiroki Hasegawa actually speaks better English than she does. Bummer. She’s a fun character though!

- The film is FULL of the kind of quirky characters that Anno seems to love so well. Eva fans will see shades of NGE’s casting peppering the production. - speaking of Evangelion, the film not only takes several musical cues from Akira Ifukube, but at least one or two from NGE.

- Okay, now for the part that you all actually give a shit about: GODZILLA. I don’t want to spoil too much, given that many already HAVE been spoiled, but here’s the thing: most of the kids on the internet right now simply don’t remember what it was like when the Millennium films were coming out, and we KNEW that we had to wait months, even YEARS, for the films to come out stateside. So we just devoured everything we could read and hoped that the execution would be cool enough to justify being spoiled. Still, I know how touchy everyone is on spoilers these days, so I’ll keep it simple. This flick features some wildly creative use of Godzilla. I would describe it as being in a similar headspace to G'98 - a total reinvention of the character. But whereas G'98 was made with open contempt for the rest of the franchise, G'16 loves it some Showa Godzilla. The classic sound effects pulled from the old films, including explosions and stomps and roars, are sumptuous for the ears. Godzilla is…well, again, I don’t want to give much away. But he is a BEAST. A weird, WEIRD beast.

- The finale was great. Clever and fun and surprising. Dat Ifukube too.

Overall, while I think US audiences will lose patience with the amount of dialogue in the third act, I genuinely enjoyed it. I desperately want to watch it again with subs, because then I feel like I could give a proper review. Stay tuned for updates and maybe a podcast review too!