He's back

If you disliked the US' 2014 Godzilla because of lack of Godzilla, then you'll be pleased to know Japan's 2016 Shin Godzilla has even less Godzilla, but...

...with 100% more Japanese business meetings! If you live in Japan and enjoy Japanese business meetings where there is men talking, pontificating, and grumbling, then this is your movie.

And in the 2014 version, if you hated the focus on a few human characters, then you'll love 2016's no focus on any of the 300 characters.

And this is no spoiler, NOT A SPOILER! , but...

The real villains in Shin Godzilla is America, and Post-War Pacifism.

Pure propaganda.

harvey pekar: "...with 100% more Japanese business meetings!"

Haha! You beat me to it! I've been to a few movies over the past months and in every one I couldn't stop laughing (and cringing) when the "Shin Godzilla" (a name as bereft in originality as so many things in society, from the "Shin-Shin Tou" political organisations changing names, or even the "Shin Yamaguchi-gumi"!) trailer came on.

But it's a reflection of real life! As soon as the danger presents itself, the military, government, and people all rush to meeting rooms to form panels and talk about what to do about what ideas to come up with. Well, until the joke of a monster enters, of course. It looks like there are some nice shots of when the tail swoops over buildings, but other than that...

I think people will get defensive, though, at any claims it might not be better than the horrible American versions put out lately.

IIRC the last Japanese Godzilla movie only grossed ~1.2B yen in the box office, so it's not like Japan thought it wasn't already any good back then.

So "Shin Godzilla" is intended to be the return to the horrors represented by the original Godzilla in 1954, just set in modern day Japan...ok, then, so:

How come in 1954 the most brilliant scientist had to sacrifice himself and his incredible invention--the Oxygen Destroyer--to kill Godzilla, yet the best modern day Japan can muster is pumping magic coolant into "Shin Godzilla" and ramming bullet trains and JR trains into it to freeze it? Really? That's the best the combined minds that represent the Godzilla "Think Tank" can come up with for a script?

Everybody likes to crap all over Ryuhei Kitamura for Final Wars. Yet his film featured one key thing that "Shin" does not--and that is Godzilla. Say what you will about GFW, but that Godzilla destroyed Gorath, the Gotengo and Ghidorah within minutes of each other and roared into the sea, giving children and adults alike something to cheer about. With Shin, the God is removed from Godzilla, and all we are left with is a rotting carcass at the end. Are we supposed to cheer for this? The death of Godzilla by coolant trucks ?

Godzilla 2014 behaves more like Godzilla. He fights monsters, rips their heads off, brushes off the military and is impervious to weaponry. At least Legendary's Thomas Tull knew what he was doing, since Anno obviously had no clue. Tull linked Godzilla 2014 to nuclear explosions in 1954, unlike Anno who made it a four legged fish mutant who pops up after eating nuclear trash last week.

Toho is now contradicting themselves. After rushing G2K to theaters in 1999 shortly after Sony's Godzilla 1998, Toho stated that the "real" Godzilla is impervious to military weaponry and doesn't die from missiles from a few jet planes. Toho beat this point home multiple times in G2K, focusing on the raw, unstoppable power of the character. Yet now Toho stoops to the same level of Godzilla 1998, actually lower, by killing off the guest star of the film with--not missiles--but coolant trucks. Pathetic revisionist historians are the braintrust at Toho.

And if this movie is made for Japanese audiences, then why spend cycles bragging about selling it to "100 territories"...? Do they really expect those other territories to embrace a film comprised of 95% Japanese government debates? A film where France is depicted as the hero and China, Russia and the U.S. as the nuke happy war mongers? Good luck with that.

The Eva zealots drove the weekend box office success of this film. This is not a Higuchi Godzilla; see Shingeki no Kyojin for a taste of how wonderful that could be. This is a movie for non-Godzilla fans. Next weekend watch it implode.