I stopped watching Shin Godzilla

3.27.2022

Published in G-Fan Magazine #136 Thank You!

Another powerful earthquake struck the Fukushima area on March 16, 2022, five days after the eleventh anniversary of the nuclear meltdown following the earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011 (known as Japan 3/11). I was reminded that “Shin Godzilla” is still standing over Tokyo Station thawing out. Since the release of Shin Godzilla (July 29, 2016), five years after 3/11, the two have become synonymous for me.

I was motivated to write because recently, a fellow fan said to me, “I just couldn’t get it.” And that makes perfect sense to me because Shin Godzilla is not the typical Godzilla movie. It makes perfect sense if the moviegoer does not know and cannot see the relationship between Shin Godzilla and the events of 3/11. The film is unlike the fan-favorites of the Showa and Millennium eras and of the Legendary Monsterverse. Shin Godzilla stands head and shoulders above them because it is the closest and most connected to the story, origin and identity of the tragic beast in the original film Godzilla (1954).

Of all 32 films Shin Godzilla is most faithful to the meaning and significance of Shodai Godzilla but repurposed for the contemporary crisis facing Japan. And like the first film, I now found myself unable to watch it regularly as I do with the other films which I grew up watching over and over again. Like Godzilla, Shin Godzilla cannot and should not ever be divorced from its historical context. Every scene prods the moviegoer to recollect their memories of 3/11. Like the original Shin Godzilla become an instant classic because it was immediately relevant to its Japanese audience. Godzilla was used to embody their fears and concerns, yet the film offered hope and a way forward through purposeful, responsible and informed government.

Steeped in the tragedy, pain and memories of 3/11, Shin Godzilla has become a metaphor and representation of that day. It has come to embody my memories of that day. I don’t watch the film to be entertained. So I don’t think of Shin Godzilla as entertainment. The film repeated that dreadful drumbeat of death marching toward us on that day. Shin Godzilla was impersonal evolving in front of our eyes as the hours went by. He threatens to sweep away everything in its path using its many forms such as an earthquake, tsunami or radiation. This is not entertaining. The seriousness tone of the film is set in its opening moments which follow the suicide of man in despair because his warning of impending doom had fallen on deaf ears. Shin Godzilla tells us to pay attention to our victims, scapegoats and neglected because their pain will be our pain in the near future if we are not careful.

Shin Godzilla is not entertainment. It is a serious film and deserves to be approached, seen and understood as such. The film is a retelling of a shared experience of those living in Japan on 3/11 through Godzilla. To watch Shin Godzilla for entertainment is not the way to watch this serious addition to the Godzilla movie series. Going to the movies is supposed to be an entertaining experience and an escape from reality. And this is true most often but it is not the rule. Although creation of Godzilla was inspired by King Kong (1933) and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), Godzilla (1954) was born out of tragedy from the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki nine years earlier in 1945 and the Bikini Atoll hydrogen bomb tests in March of 1954, nine months before its release. Japanese moviegoers, worried about eating fish contaminated by radiation, were not entertained and did not escape when they saw Godzilla spew radiation across Tokyo. They were uncomfortable as their worst fears conjured and reimagined in Godzilla on the big screen.

I believe Shin Godzilla is also a drama. The twenty-ninth Godzilla film is certainly a horror and monster film. A horror film seeks “to elicit fear or disgust in the audience for entertainment purposes” and a monster movie “uses a deformed or supernatural creature or set of creatures, to introduce elements of horror.” But Shin Godzilla is easily at home as a drama that focuses “on emotions and defined by conflict, often looking to reality rather than sensationalism.”¹

Some have described the film as a political satire to the point of eclipsing its rootedness in 3/11. I vigorously push back on that. A political satire “specializes in gaining entertainment from politics.”² and that plays out in front of the camera parodying the fumbling and failure of the Japanese government officials mishandling of the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster. But Shin Godzilla is representing a national crisis and how the country responded and should respond going forward. Since the 1995 the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake (Kobe earthquake), the government had taken measures to established the Emergency Disaster Countermeasures Headquarters much more quickly. The Shin Godzilla directors investigated the movement of the government during 3/11 in great detail and utilized it in the story. The film’s critique of the government is part of a much bigger project.

Shin Godzilla should not be reduced to politics. We don’t that with Godzilla (1954). In the end, it was young, smart, courageous government formed out of outcasts that saved their country and halted the disaster from spreading. I’ve sensed among some Western critics and fans a fear and suspicion of World War II Japanese nationalism. I believe it clouds their interpretations of the film. Such fear is unwarranted. Consider the following and adjust how you think about the film.

In an interview, lead actor Hiroki Hasegawa, who played Rando Yaguchi, Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary, said, “It [Shin Godzilla] is a fantasy special effects entertainment, and it’s a social question about how Japan should be in the face of a big crisis.” In the same article, Actor Yutaka Takenouchi, who played as Hideki Akasaka, aide to Prime Minister, commented, “It’s been a long time since the first work produced 61 years ago, and this work, which is the 29th work, has become the strongest finish in many Godzilla series, not only for many fans but also for the audience of the world. I think it will be a work that gives a deep message to the heart and to society.”³

Others have called Shin Godzilla “a movie of great significance from the perspective of disaster prevention”⁴ and as “a depiction that makes 3.11 in the work, and the story itself is a reaction to the Great East Japan Earthquake.”⁵ Another wrote, “As is well known, in Shin Godzilla, Godzilla is a monster born in response to the radioactive waste of the abandoned nuclear power plant, and when the second form of Godzilla comes ashore, it reminds us of the Great East Japan Earthquake and the tsunami rushing to Japan.”⁶ One Japanese writer argues Shin Godzilla “is not a monster movie but a “real simulation movie.”⁷

Producer Akihiro Yamauchi said, “Godzilla’s presence in the sense of ‘a raging god’ is a tradition that has been passed down from the first Godzilla. The tradition lives on in Godzilla drawn in the script by Anno. Godzilla in 1954 was a ‘nuclear spawn’ and a symbol of war. The new Godzilla strongly reflects the anxiety that covers Japan after the Great East Japan Earthquake.”⁸ In the same article, it is said, “The government’s response to the Great East Japan Earthquake and the Fukushima nuclear accident was criticized, but on the other hand, some bureaucrats must have made a coherent decision and took action.”⁹

Shin Godzilla Director Hideaki Anno said “that he put all his energy into Shin Godzilla… When creating a new Godzilla, it was the first Godzilla that I was most conscious of… I wanted to get closer to the shock of the first Godzilla…. First of all, Shin Godzilla was made with the Japanese audience in mind, but it has received a lot of attention overseas.”¹¹

Although Shin Godzilla is a monster movie, it is a film based on true events. How moviegoers approach great historical dramas such as Schindler’s List (1993) and Saving Private Ryan (1998) is how they should approach Shin Godzilla. They are serious historical dramas that tell their stories in their contexts of world upheaval and war. Moviegoers didn’t watch those for enjoyment and entertainment but rather to learn lessons and to empathize with the characters, their struggle and suffering. I would argue this is a more appropriate approach to watching Shin Godzilla.

Such an approach rejects the temptation to expect Shin Godzilla to be like other Godzilla movies that came before it. Shin Godzilla is in a different movie genre from its predecessors and demands a different approach. Critics and fans certainly don’t approach and explain Godzilla (1954) as just entertainment. When Godzilla is mentioned, few think of the context of the original film, but rather they remember the entertaining movies of the 60s and 70s in which Godzilla is a friendly monster fighting on behalf of Japan and the world. Approaching a Godzilla film as a serious drama doesn’t fit the expectations of most fans and of those who only know Godzilla as pop culture icon. This approach requires that we make adjustments to how we understand the film, how we watch the film, and how we discuss the film.

We miss the meaning and significance of Shin Godzilla when we are unaware of its relationship to 3/11. The same can be said of Godzilla and its rootedness in the near events of Bikini Atoll atomic bomb test and the Lucky Dragon No 5 (March 1, 1954) and the distant context of the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II (August 6 and 9, 1945). Both films retell of an immediate existential crises facing Japan. Failure to be aware of these contexts diminishes the value and purpose of these films. Unlike any other in the series, Shin Godzilla returns moviegoers to the original meaning of Godzilla. Although inspired by other monster movies, Godzilla’s creators had an important story to retell for their Japanese audience not far removed from memories that they rather soon forget and for international audiences also.