Red Tape Is the Real Monster: Shin Godzilla (2016) Film Review

SPOILERS AHEAD!

Don’t let the initial, frankly goofy-looking creature fool you. This thing undergoes a radiation-fueled mutation that transforms it into perhaps the most immense, all-powerful, and menacing Gojira to ever grace the screen. If only the humans trying to stop it were half as compelling.

Visually, the film is a mixed bag. When Godzilla is fully, terrifyingly realized, it’s the best-looking iteration of the monster I’ve seen so far. Yet, especially in the beginning, it’s painfully obvious that some shots are just lazy CGI pasted over normal footage with little effort to blend them. The graphics are mostly impressive, but the commitment wavers.

The down part wasn’t effected much by the CGI, which gave the frame its realistic look

There’s even a bizarre moment where a character unfurls a map, and the scene is sliced together with hyper-fast edits, seemingly to mimic an anime-effect, but it just lands as… an effect.

The film’s real monster, however, isn’t the one stomping on buildings; it’s the bureaucracy. This movie is drowning in blabbering. It’s not just “show and tell”; it’s “tell, tell, tell,” and then tell again in another meeting. We are bogged down in an endless quagmire of conference rooms.

I appreciate the attempt to show how bureaucracy is utterly ineffective in an emergency, and to explore the power dynamics within Japan and the wider world. But the sheer, unnecessary amount of talk stalls the film, and the discussions themselves have a veneer of “acting” if you know what I mean; they just don’t feel real. This sterile focus on process over action leads to the film’s most glaring logical failure: the Prime Minister aborting the initial order to shoot. There was zero convincing reason for this. It was clear that killing the creature at its early, weaker stage — even with the risks — was the only logical choice to save more civilian lives.

Thankfully, the final resolution is genuinely smart, interesting, and pleasing. When the film lets its monster be a monster, it has its fun moments. But be warned: it’s also absurdly technical. I felt like I needed a degree in nuclear physics just to parse the jargon, but you’ll get the general idea of how things were done. It’s this clinical approach that ultimately defines the experience: a fascinating, (mostly) great-looking Godzilla film that, despite its smarts, sometimes feels like it was executed without soul.

Enjoy the film here. #ad