Hail the King

Over the course of the few days since the theatrical premiere of Gareth Edwards’ film Godzilla, a lot of the criticism and response to the movie has been highly positive while a lot, ranging from sources as varied as “Joe Armchair” to NPR have claimed that the original 1954 film is a dramatic classic built around symbolic dread of the atomic bomb while the 2014 reboot is an insubstantial monster mash. Not liking the new film is entirely fair, but calling the film superficial or out-of-step with the original is only ignorant hyperbole from critics who either haven’t actually watched the films being contrasted or who fail to understand the new film.

Most of the naysayers of the 2014 Godzilla seemingly base their criticism on a misplaced expectation that the film stars Godzilla. Just like the 1954 original, Gareth Edwards’ film is about Godzilla; it doesn’t “star” Godzilla. The giant monster only appeared on screen in a small percentage of the original 1954 film, just as he has only cameo appearances in the 2014 film. Moreover, the titular monster’s limited on-screen appearance has just as much symbolic justification in the new film as it did in the original. The original film premiered only nine years after the Hiroshima & Nagasaki bombings. The destructive power of nuclear energy was a threat to the entire world. In 2014 nuclear power has been domesticated, the bomb relegated to a remote threat lurking in the shadows of terrorism, cyber crime, and political corruption. So posing Godzilla as an icon of atomic power no longer has the significance in 2014 that it had in 1954. As the new film’s Dr. Serizawa repeats multiple times, for the benefit of viewers lacking the interpretative faculty to grasp the symbolism for themselves, 2014’s Godzilla is a force of nature. Director Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla is the embodiment of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the 2011 Tohoku tsunami, 2012’s Hurricane Sandy, the 2013 Philippines typhoon. The 2014 Godzilla movie is thematically not a film about monsters versus monster; it’s a film about man versus nature. As Ken Watanabe’s character literally states in the film, “The arrogance of men is thinking nature is in their control and not the other way around.”

The new film has been widely criticized for not including enough scenes of monsters battling. The film is criticized for revealing Godzilla fighting via second-hand television news footage. Yet how many of us actually see natural disasters first hand? The average person sees forces of nature at their most devastating via TV news footage, just as we see Godzilla in action. Like natural disasters that strike with little warning then dissipate just as quickly, Godzilla in both the 1954 and 2014 films arrives suddenly, wreaks havoc, then retreats as quickly as he came. Just as nuclear bombs are malicious instruments designed to terrorize human beings, 1954’s Godzilla deliberately ravaged humankind. Natural disasters, however, are heedless of human beings. Similarly, the Godzilla of 2014 totally ignores human beings. But a Godzilla that totally ignored humans would not reinforce the movie’s theme of nature versus humans. So the film introduces the MUTO, monsters that use EMP fields to literally stamp out the forces created by humanity: TV signals, cell phones, computers, airplanes, the things that do not naturally occur in nature. The MUTO, like Godzilla, are not actually antagonistic toward humankind. The 2014 movie goes out of its way to demonstrate that the MUTO behave strictly as instinctive wild animals. Humans merely perceive the MUTO as antagonistic because the creatures instinctively oppose the artificial forces, devices, and constructs that mankind has created. Another common criticism of the new film is the blandness of the acting performances from Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen. However, perhaps these subdued performances are an intentional effort to underscore the film’s theme of humankind’s inefficacy in the face of natural destructive forces. Human action can’t stop hurricanes or earthquakes; likewise human actions can’t stop Godzilla. Like the victims of devastating natural disasters, characters Ford and Elle Brody look on, shell-shocked and awed, doing what little they can to mitigate loss and damage but unable to prevent the impending disasters. Even during the film’s human climax, Ford Brody can only manage to minimize damage rather than avert it. In a climactic scene that pays homage to the theme of the 1954 original movie, the nuclear bomb is a power that we can only direct, not completely contain.

Criticism that Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla is a thoughtless pale shadow of the classic 1954 film is itself a thoughtless assertion borne out of misunderstanding. Not only does the 2014 film have just as much symbolic depth as the 1954 original, the new film even includes a character, Dr. Ishiro Serizawa, whose exclusive duty is to explain the movie’s symbolism to non-intuitive viewers. As an origin film, a re-introduction film, Godzilla appears on screen exactly as much as he needs to in order to convey the movie’s message. The titular monster certainly doesn’t appear on screen as much as he does in later Japanese films like “Giant Monsters All-Out Attack” or “Final Wars,” but those films weren’t reboots or re-introductions, nor did those films have the weighty referential conceptuality of the 1954 or 2014 movies, so direct comparison is inappropriate. Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla is not the juvenile sound & fury destructive spectacle that countless viewers expected and desired. Godzilla (2014) is a far more considered, thoughtful, meaningful, and substantial movie that we probably didn’t deserve but which we should be grateful that we got.