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This is getting a limited US release this week.  You might want to check your local theaters to see if its playing.  Its good, but not the type of daikaiju film I think a lot of people are expecting.

Some mild spolers in the discussion.

For starters, this is one of the most political Godzilla films.

The movie starts with "an event" happening and the Japanese ministry coming together to deal with it.  Every time there's a new bit of information or change, the cabinet disassembles and then reassemble at a different place.  There's a lot of finger pointing to red tape and how the leader's hands are tied thanks to sanctions placed on Japan after WW II.  It mentioned throughout the film of people getting to where they are by more seniority and political tradition over skill and ideas.

And its not just Japan's politics that are called into question.  The US is shown to be a bit too quick to order a nuclear strike to end Godzilla, (hopefully to help diveret attention to the fact that we basically are responsible for him) and doesn't let Japan have a real say in what happens to its country .  A US advisor refers to using the bomb as "mankind's salvation" against the monster.

Also, outside the the 98 and 14 films, this may be one of the few Godzilla films that shows some of the American military going up against the big G.

The story is  interesting, but does get a little bogged down at times.  And while Godzilla is a preseence throughout the entire film, there are large parts of this film without him on screen.

Also, the rumors are true about Godzilla going through several forms in the film.  The first one is a strange looking stegosaurus/ lung fish with prominent gills.  The second form is a more bipedal version of it.  Finally, its the scarred version you see in the trailers  and marketing.  The head looks good in straight one but the body is noticeably more "hippy" then others.  Strangely, the few design flaws feel reversed in profile, with the head looking strange and the body looking more natural. The red scars he has actually glow in low light and helped provide some of the film more visually interesting shots.

Also, Godzilla has several new powers.  One is to focus his radiation out through his back in a wide burst of beams,  and he can also focus it out of his tail.  The back beams I didn't mind so much, but the tail beam looked silly.

There's more to say but I'll stop here for now.

I will say the movie is much more on the  serious side, so if you like those darker versions of Godzilla I recommend this one.

I didn't like it much.  Too much political crap, not enough Godzilla.  Ok, I get it, Japan is crippled by bureaucracy.  Move on, please!

Not a fan of Godzilla's design or "evolution", either.  I think someone was a big Hedorah fan, but couldn't convince anyone to make his Hedorah movie, so he made a Godzilla movie where the big G has a lot of Hedorah's origin figured in.  The big mouth with the split lower jaw just looked kinda stupid.  His new powers were pretty gnarly, though, and I'm glad they used the classic roars.

Take out the red glow, give him a normal mouth, and do away with the stupid thing on his tail, then we'd have something.

I kept wondering why they kept playing that damn music from Evangelion.  Seems the creator of Evangelion was the writer/director for this movie.  I doubt I'd have watched Shin Godzilla had I known Hideaki Anno was behind it.  (I hate Evangelion more than it's psychologically healthy to hate a work of fiction.)

SPOILERS












I was amazed at the parting shot of the movie, where it looked like Godzilla was actually made of people!  However, I seriously misinterpreted what I saw.  It seems it was just a bunch of little Godzillas about to bud off of the main body.  That's a much less intriguing concept.

Had the chance to see it yesterday...didn't care much for the first couple of minutes, but when the s**t really hits the fan it was amazing. Just watching Godzilla blasting through Buildings, taking down Bombers with his beams etc. satisfied me enough to like the movie. Didn't mind the whole political side...earlier movies always had that to some extent. Not as entertaining as Final Wars maybe but still pretty fun in my book. Let's hope this wasn't the last we see of Godzilla from Toho.

What the hell was that?

At the beginning of this movie I joked "See, we're taking a more experimental approach to our Godzilla film. We're only going to show him through a series of government meetings." I did not know that this was the literal plot. Seriously, 80% of the movie is government meetings.

Occasionally, Godzilla shows up and wrecks stuff. It actually kind of looks good. And then it's straight back to the government meetings.

It's just... Okay, I don't get it at all. They wanted to make a Godzilla version of "In the Loop" but don't really understand humor? It's confusing and not very good.

Actually, I didn't mind the government meetings.  They came across as one of the more interesting attempts at showing the human side in a Godzilla movie and the characters were likeable enough with well developed personalities.

I also liked how the America representative in the movie was Japanese.  It makes sense and it meant we didn't have to rely on whatever American they happened to nearby to be i the movie. 

The evolutions seemed interesting enough.  I especially liked the first one we saw with the goofy eyes and the blood splashing from it's gills.  The multiple lasers it shot from it's body were a bit much though. 



I also really enjoyed the design for Godizlla.   It really looked like something that had been messed up bad by radiation. 

   
That's as valid an explanation as anything the movie gives you, which is no explanation at all.