- Directors: Hideaki Anno, Shinji Higuchi (co-director)
- Writers: Hideaki Anno, Sean Whitley
- Stars: Hiroki Hasegawa, Yutaka Takenouchi, Satomi Ishihara
- Run Time: 2 hours
- Link: https://amzn.to/3tnrSkb
Synopsis
The Coast Guard finds an abandoned yacht and something explodes. An undersea tunnel collapses. There is some kind of steam eruption in the bay— could it be a volcanic eruption so close to the city? An evacuation is ordered, but people are too busy taking photos and selfies to notice the danger. The entire Japanese bureaucracy seems to get involved in the investigation. Something big is moving around out in the water; it’s probably just a whale.
It’s not a whale. It’s some kind of giant tentacle creature. Capture it? Kill it? Run it off? What will they do? They vote to exterminate it while they still can. The experts don’t know what it is. The thing goes into a river and causes untold damage to small ships and bridges. At least the experts say it cannot come onto land; the creature’s own weight should crush it to death.
So it comes up onto the land. It’s like a big, bug-eyed turtle with spikes on its back. It heads downtown as the bureaucracy continues. It could reach Tokyo in three hours. Evacuate! Time for the self-defense force to attack, but the government argues over the legality of the situation.
Finally, they decide to attack it, but before they get to it, the creature falls down. The big turtle-thing mutates and stretches and grows. It roars with a very familiar sound. It now look more like a tall dinosaur shaped creature that walks upright— and it’s bigger. It heads to they bay and disappears into the water.
Time passes, and damage control gets underway. The hunt is on to find the creature. Plans for the next incursion are examined. Rando Yaguchi gathers a group of misfits and weirdos to analyze what they know. They find that it left a trail of radiation behind it.
The US gets involved, and their expert has a lot of information. There’s an old professor, Goromaki, that predicted this creature 60 years ago; he grew from eating nuclear waste that had been dumped in the ocean and continues to mutate. In fact, that was Professor Goromaki’s boat from the beginning. Goromaki is currently missing, but he left records calling the monster “Gojira” or as the Americans call it, “Godzilla.” The creature contains several totally new elements, which makes it quite valuable. It can self-mutate to survive in any environment.
Godzilla finally reappears, and he’s even bigger. A lot bigger. The government wastes a lot less time and immediately orders an attack. They just as quickly find out that it’s bullet-proof, missile-proof, tank-proof, artillery-proof, and bomb-proof. They call for help from the USA, who shows up and drops some larger bombs on it, which actually injure the creature.
Godzilla starts to glow white after its injury and starts blowing nuclear fire from its mouth. Things just got a lot worse; you can tell from the opera music. Then it shoots multiple energy beams from the spikes own his back— this is easily the most powerful Godzilla to ever appear on screen. Yeah. Like it’s just time to give up Japan for good at this point and start over somewhere else.
As the entire government is now dead, they make the Minister of Agriculture the new PM. He’s more concerned about soggy noodles than anything else. Godzilla is asleep as the government tries to cope. Godzilla may be trying to reproduce asexually.
The Americans want to use a nuke against Godzilla. They plan to drop a bomb 75 times the power of Hiroshima right on Tokyo. Bonds and stocks are plummeting, land prices are skyrocketing, and Japan will need international funding to rebuild. These are the things the government is concerned with. There’s also a plan to freeze Godzilla’s blood with coagulant. Godzilla is predicted to resume activity in fifteen days, so the evacuation commences.
The blood-freezing plan gets approved, and it’s a huge undertaking. They run a couple of bullet trains into Godzilla to wake him up. They drop drones to get him to use up his power-beam energy. Now, however, Godzilla can shoot fire from his mouth and his tail. It just keeps changing. Finally, they wear out his beam and he stops shooting. They drop several buildings on him. It’s a really well-executed attack. They hook up the tanker trucks and start injecting the coagulant. It’s going well until Godzilla wakes up, but he is moving more slowly. They train-bomb him again and resume coagulant injections.
Godzilla gets back up, but suddenly his skin freezes solid. Japan will rebuild, with a frozen Godzilla in the middle of downtown Tokyo.
Commentary
I love how the small version just pushes the boats and cars along in a huge pile of debris. The huge amount of politics and ridiculous bureaucracy delays are fascinating, as it seems all too realistic. There’s even a discussion about which areas to defend based on GDP. This is very, very different from what I was expecting due to the politics.
I usually prefer the subtitled version of international films. We ended up watching the dubbed version, and there is so much dialog here that I don’t regret it one bit. It’s a very talky film.
Shin Godzilla adds a lot to the Godzilla mythos. This is easily the most powerful Godzilla ever to show up. This version fighting Kong would have easily sliced the big ape to pieces. The carnage here is just unbelievable. It took a long time for the action to start, but it makes up in volume what it lacks in speed. If you like politics and mega-disasters, this is really good.