#8 in my ranking of the Heisei, Millennium, and Reiwa eras of the Godzilla franchise.
Both containing some of the same problems and correcting some others of the Heisei Era, the first Godzilla film in the Millenium Era is something I admire a bit more than I actually like. There’s a real effort to move beyond the overstuffed Heisei Era that led to decreasing box office returns while reacting obviously to some fairly recent American blockbusters, most notably Independence Day. I also have to think that this is the best film to address the dual nature of Godzilla, both as monster and as cultural icon that the audience loves, in a very long time. Alas…the puny humans having no effect on anything but taking up most of the screentime just is still not a good recipe for success.
How this connects to the rest of the franchise is unclear, but Godzilla seems to have been a fairly solitary destructive force since he first appeared, presumably in 1954. It also seems like he’s been absent for a while because interest in the kaiju has dwindled down to a ragtag group calling themselves the Godzilla Prediction Network, pretty much just seismologist Yuji (Takehiro Murata) and his daughter Io (Mayu Suzuki) who coordinate observations from earthquake monitoring stations across the country. They’re joined by a photojournalist, Yuki (Naomi Nishida), when Godzilla arises from the sea once more. This brings the attention of Yuji’s old colleague, Katagiri (Hiroshi Abe), now head of Crisis Control Intelligence for the government. The two split because Yuki feels like Godzilla should be studied while Katagiri feels that Godzilla should be destroyed.
At the same time that Godzilla is getting fought off, scientist Shiro (Shiro Sano), discovers a large foreign body at the bottom of the ocean. Raising it to the surface, it turns out to be a 60 million year old space ship that becomes active once it reaches the surface, immediately picking a fight with Godzilla, which it wins, leaving Godzilla to recover for the rest of the movie until the action-packed finale.
The marked contrast from Godzilla vs. Destroyah and its predecessors in the previous era is that there’s an embrace of realism in the basic visual design of the film. From what look like real locations and realistic looking sets to the use of real footage of Japanese cities to insert Godzilla’s giant foot, there’s a groundedness to the affair that the film hasn’t really had since the very beginning under Ishiro Hondo. There’s also a spareness to the narrative. The cast is relatively small. They have only plot-based tasks to handle. The plot is pretty straightforward (if a bit circuitous). And the only thing that the people have to do is…to figure out the motives of the spaceship (never named in the film but apparently monikered Orga).
And that’s where the frustration comes back. All of the movement of the humans ultimately comes to nothing because it’s just a search for exposition. When Organ settles on top of a skyscraper, there’s a lot of business about connecting to the building’s computers to get information feeding from the spaceship into it, running up against a ticking clock of Katagiri deciding to blow up the building. It only amounts to getting the name of Orga’s plan (Millennium) and the implication that it’s trying for a 1,000 year empire on Earth (seems like a very modest goal for a 60 million year old being, but whatever). If the humans hadn’t done anything, I’m not sure if the ending would have been any different. Orga just jumps over to another building until Godzilla shows up.
The embrace of “realism” in the visual design holds things back here because it’s honestly just hard to see. It makes me miss the completely unsubstantiated backlighting of Godzilla that looked so good even in something I didn’t like such as Godzilla vs. Destroyah. Still, the resolution is inventive and fun, though the movie does succumb to having a god creature facing off against a puny human it shouldn’t have any knowledge of because the puny human is bad and needs punishment for narrative purposes. I mean…whatever.
And I need to make note of the film’s ability to actually straddle the line between Godzilla as destructive monster and hero. Because…the film actually addresses it directly. It’s not subtle in any way shape or form, but there’s an actual debate about Godzilla being a protector or a destructive force that gets resolved dramatically. It ignores any potential history of Godzilla just smashing cities on his own (as is the implied backstory of this reboot of the franchise), treating Godzilla’s faceoff with Orga as a starting point. It’s a nice way to introduce the idea and actually try to intentionally strike that balance instead of just relying on audience appreciation solely.
So, I admire the effort to turn the film in a new direction. I admire the actual effort to treat Godzilla seriously (though, again, I’m not opposed to silly Godzilla that much). I just found characters to be not that interesting, the humans to be largely a waste of space, and the fights often hard to actually see. They’re relatively small complaints considering some of the others I’ve laid against the franchise in the past, but this was fine.
Originally published here
English (US) · 