Pay attention Gareth Edwards, THIS is how you do it.
photo taken at the NY East Coast premiere of Shin Godzilla
Shin Godzilla (titled Godzilla: Resurgence in some European countries), the first Japanese Godzilla movie in 12 years since 2004's Final Wars, actually has quite a bit in common with Gareth Edwards' well-intentioned 2014 Hollywood blockbuster.
Both attempt to return Godzilla to his darker origins as opposed to the camp character he's become over the course of his many sequels, and both try to modernize the original 1954 film's nuclear bombing allegory by heavily referencing the 2011 Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster. They also both limit the big monster's actual screentime, frequently cutting away from his appearances, and neither one has a fully realized human character (the Hollywood version actually comes closer with Bryan Cranston's performance but doesn't really get the chance to develop his character further).
Despite these commonalities, the two films feel incredibly different, and it's mainly due to how differently they're directed. Both Gareth Edwards and Shin Godzilla's Hideaki Anno are both visually talented directors but they work to different aims and to different levels of success. Edwards' film's main emotional concern is Speilbergian awe, which almost carries the film but is ultimately let down in its middle act by the weaknesses of its human element. Anno's film finds more success by going for a different tone: it's a comedy.
Yep, Hideaki Anno, the director best known for creating Neon Genesis Evangelion, makes his Godzilla film a comedy. This is less surprising when you actually look at his filmography. This is a guy who followed up his depressing masterpiece with the shoujo romcom His and Her Circumstances, and who made a live-action version of Cutey Honey of all things. Even Evangelion, for all its legendary pain and angst, was actually quite adept at humor in its early episodes (remember the Dance Dance Revolution one?).
Getting into depressing material once again for the Evangelion Rebuild films, Anno needed a break to have some fun, and Shin Godzilla reinvigorates him. The movie doesn't lack seriousness. Its thematic concerns are treated with appropriate weight and when it gets scary, it's actually scary (the final shot is a classic WTF image up there with some of Evangelion's shocking imagery). But Anno's screenplay is able to find humor in the mundane fallibility of the political, military, and scientific bureaucracies thrown into this bizarre horror scenario and joy in the successes that come through in spite of all the odds.
Godzilla himself, a mix of CGI and the traditional man-in-a-suit effects, looks as cool as ever when he's rampaging in his full form (he also has a sort of twisted baby Godzilla form that's not quite as cool as the classic design but certainly beats the hell out of Manilla and Godzooky as far as that kind of thing goes). Presumably the kaiju action is where co-director Shinji Higuchi, best known for turning Attack on Titan into a series of horribly written but nonetheless awesome-looking live-action movie, spent most of his energy.
The rest of the movie, set mostly in board rooms and conference meetings, is where Anno's visual creativity shines. A movie that's mostly conference meetings shouldn't be this visually dynamic, but Anno must have found every single weird way you can make a conference meeting look exciting. His signature use of on-screen text contributes one of the film's best running gags, introducing every single insignificant character in a cast of what feels like hundreds (really only three of the human characters hold much narrative significance: the plays-by-his-own-rules protagonist dude, the Prime Minister, and the "American" girl who REALLY doesn't sound like English is her first language).
As an American, I don't know if I'm informed enough to say much about the film's politics beyond the obvious environmental allegory at play. The filmmakers have stated their only real political goal was a reflection of the Fukushima incident and the heroism of those who responded to it and saved lives, but there's been some controversy as to the film's relation to Shinzo Abe's push to militarize Japan. Certainly many characters express a wish to be able to act more independently from the US and the UN.
At the same time, the film doesn't read as hawkish as some Japanese media out there: the Self Defence Force is shown as honorably reluctant to take aggressive action, and Japan's plan to contain Godzilla, while still involving some cool-looking destruction of evacuated buildings, is decidedly less militaristic than the US's bombing plan. Without being able to say how well the film comments on current Japanese politics, I can say that it does so entertainingly and in a way that makes sense within its fantasy action movie world.
FUNimation is releasing Shin Godzilla subtitled in 440 theaters throughout the United States and Canada from October 11th-18th. Go see it.
(P.S. For those wondering, the title translates from Japanese to either the self-explanatory "New Godzilla" or the amusingly redundant "God Godzilla". Or, you know, maybe you don't want a translation at all and would prefer to think we're all complimenting Godzilla on his nice shins.)
