GODZILLA RESURGENCE (aka TRUE GODZILLA) trailer

[JasonPratt]

Almost 210 theaters booked so far, but none near me yet.



https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?mid=1o92p7TLPg6T7VZjkhJ-byeea8ic

That map is better than Funimation's map search, which on my updated Firefox browser on a Surface Pro 3 anyway shows absolutely no theaters pegged -- and thinks my zip code should be somewhere in the South Pacific basin between Rungata and Baker Island... 

Tickets theoretically went on sale today, Sept 9.

[JasonPratt]

At the Memphis Mendenhall Malco! -- two hours there, two hours back, 1 pm on Saturday Oct 15!  O0 

[mirth]

http://variety.com/2016/film/festivals/shin-godzilla-film-review-1201872105/

[JasonPratt]

Yeah, a few venues got an early promotional release. It's more than a few cities, though. I keep trying to remember to tease a friend of mine that she'll have nine theaters in San Antonio to see a Godzilla film in (she's never seen one), or ten if she counts a theater in the first big town going out on the road to Houston!  >:D

[JasonPratt]

That Latitude Zero promo clip upthread reminds me that I recently learned that Toho not only seriously considered a Batman vs. Godzilla movie, two years before the TV show became a hit (with a few plot points that eventually found their way as the main plot of Son of Godzilla), but they would have been the first production to bring Batgirl (or a version of her) onscreen before the show (eventually) did!

(We're used to Batgirl being Barbara Gordon, daughter of James Gordon, but I don't know if the Toho script would have done that although Robin and the Commissioner would have been in it. Before the TV show, Batgirl was someone completely different and connected to the Batwoman character as a sidekick paralleling Robin.)

The clip mainly reminded me of this because Toho did get Caesar Romero (and his moustache, sort of) to play a crazy supervillain.  O0

[JasonPratt]

So, in accordance with the prophecy, I got to see Shin Godzilla in Memphis Saturday afternoon. (It's still playing in many American cities until tomorrow, Tues Oct 18th.)

Theater was at least 3/4 full, which I was surprised but pleased about. A couple of large groups arriving at the last minute had trouble finding seats. It was a good audience, capable of reading fast enough and understanding nuances enough to appreciate some of the very dry humor sprinkled into the script -- there were many chuckles and several lols at appropriate places.

Also when G first shows up, since as noted above in my collected information list he's more than a little silly looking at first. I was expecting his first form (actually his second, since we don't see his first) to be like some kind of flopping undead thing that cannot die, thrashing around uncontrollably. But he's really more like a destructive puppy -- a comparison that bit home aptly for me that weekend since we had been puppysitting a Goldendoodle for Bro's family that weekend. He just cheerfully wallows forward tossing things in his way, happy to be on land even if he's gushing blood from his lungs occasionally.

That, by the way, was another surprise -- not the blood-gushing thing (that had been in the trailers), but how relatively harmless Godzilla is. As the scientists point out a couple of times in the film, all he seems to do is walk forward, so they're having a hard time trying to get clues to his nature from his behavior. I don't think he even tries to eat nuclear or other energy sources, although the scientists expect him to be trying, and eating nuclear waste was part of his origin. After his playful bout as a baby (and I wonder if the writers and designers had a bet going about whether / how they could make Minya, the often-loathed son of Godzilla, feel threatening), he doesn't go out of his way to destroy anything. It's just an inadvertent side effect of him, well, walking forward. The serious destruction only happens once the military finds a way to truly hurt him. And then he hibernates for a couple of weeks afterward!

The effects were usually good, although a few parts looked iffier than they should have.

I was somewhat wrong about G's origins in the film -- the backstory seems like a combination of one or two of the better storylines from the classic Patlabor anime series (especially the films). If that sounds obscure, it's because I'm trying to avoid spoilers. ;)

Some reviewers suggested G doesn't show up any more often than in America's recent G2014 (about 6% of the run time in that film). The proportion seems more to me, perhaps because the movie itself is 30 minutes shorter. There's a long stretch (of two weeks or more in-film) where 'nothing happens' except a lot of discussion and planning, with occasional cuts back to showing G briefly or in the distance. Even before then, there is a ton of talking, mostly in various boardrooms. (I counted no less than ten of those sets! -- and not science-fiction boardrooms either. ;) )

This brings up the plot, since to quote The Court Jester, "Plot we've got; quite a lot!" There isn't actually a lot of plot, just a lot of plot-time -- but that's subversively part of the point of the film. So let me talk about the main theme, since this is going to make a huge difference whether someone will appreciate the film.

The film is essentially a visual essay, using Godzilla as a colorful prop, about bureaucracy and politics. And the underlying message, from what I could tell, is that politics and bureaucracy aren't inherently bad things. On the contrary, politics is simply people cooperating with each other to achieve goals, and any large organization, including for politics, needs bureaucrats to function.

Sure, inefficient politics leads to disasters, and to disasters being worse than they otherwise would have been, and people suffer and die as a result (this is also part of the hidden backstory of the film). And even when bureaucratic politics are working efficiently, there's a real tendency for the people involved to act to protect themselves and to treat other people as ciphers or statistics. So the film is being critically realistic about that.

But quite daringly, especially for North American audiences, the film still comes down in strongly favor of the importance of humanity's political nature. Politics (and even bureaucracy) are how the human species has risen to triumph so hard over nature, even in the face of a Godzilla-level disaster. We can beat the unbeatable Godzilla because bureaucratic politics can get enough of the right people, including effective scientists, into position to execute effective plans with effective support.

Also, the Japanese-American liaison is a cute burst of fresh air whenever she's on the scene.  And she fits a slightly more American version of the same theme: as the granddaughter of a survivor from Hiroshima or Nagasaki (the film doesn't specify), her family has worked hard and made good marriages to the point where she's seriously capable of being the first Japanese-ethnic American president someday! -- if she doesn't blow this political opportunity. The film likes to use her character to work out the tension between the problems and the strengths of politics, and between ambitious pragmatism and personal care; also between the more flexible American lifestyle and the regimented Japanese lifestyle, both of which are shown to be helpful in different ways.