I Watch Films: Shin Godzilla
A goofy looking giant lizard emerges from Tokyo Bay. It keeps changing as things happen to it, eventually becoming much less goofy and much more of a raging monster.
Meanwhile quite a lot of the film happens in meetings, as the Japanese government tries to get a handle on things. As it is subtitled, and they all speak quickly, and often their name and position appears (some of which use non-obvious acronyms) there’s quite a lot of words on the screen. This is fine, but means that a certain amount of concentration is needed.
Despite this there’s plenty of explosions and destruction, with a giant lizard fighting the Japanese Self Defence Forces (and Americans too) and revealing a new and more horrible way to wreck things every time they up the attack. It’s a film much more about disaster response management than the American versions of Godzilla. There’s a lot of senior ministers trying and failing to figure out what is even going on, so they can work out how to find out what the response will be. A meeting in the Prime Minister’s office becomes a formal cabinet meeting for some important reason, and when one character brings up his outlandish theory that it might be a big animal, he’s told off because his nonsense will be officially minuted.
Watch This: For a giant lizard wrecking Tokyo and a bunch of people in suits not knowing what to do about it.
Don’t Watch This: If giant lizards or machine gun fast subtitles don’t so anything for you.
Comments