Just watched it. Man. Amazing. You take this film seriously as you watch it. And what a well done story beyond the G Man. Yet he is also absolutely well done. Pissed off and angry and honestly truly terrifying yet so fun. And yes, as mentioned before, the use of the original theme was perfect. And they make you wait for it. If I'm not mistaken it's not actually used until the attack on the city.
*********Ok, so here are spoilers and I do not know how to black things out on my phone. So quit reading if you don't want to know more*************
Godzilla originally represented how the A-bomb changed Japan and the world. A new terror of technology and GZ was the reckoning of that unleashed terror. But the G man has represented a lot of things to different movie makers. For instance, Godzilla in Shin Godzilla represented the Japanese earthquake and tsunami of 2011 and the government's problems with responding to that. What's really awesome about what he represents here is that it's a different take than just the A-Bomb. It's part of it, but really overall Godzilla represents the burden and guilt Japan felt with following their defeat in WWII and the movie depicted it so well through each of the characters and how they came to grips with following their government into war all of the way back into the 30s and everything culminating in their homeland being bombed out and devastated and how they had been persuaded to even look at life and the lives of others throughout the war. It's a movie that represents Japan having to overcome this and be able to live again. Making the main character a former kamikaze pilot who decided to not follow through with his mission and lie about engine trouble was also great. Think about it. Japan is all but defeated. It's the last few days of the war and he is supposed to fly into an allied ship in hopes of sinking it. A futile attempt to try to stop the inevitable by killing himself in the process. Japan had lost its mind and its soul trying to wage this war and for what? Yet he felt with the guilt of not being able to follow through with his mission and knowing others had. Combine that with the first GZ attack where he could fire the 20mm cannon at the monster out of fear and it kills everyone but the head mechanic. Granted, doubt he does anything but piss off the smaller yet still powerful creature and he'd have died senselessly doing that as well. A great analogy to his kamikaze mission.
It was such a well done story to see how these characters grew through having to deal with Godzilla. Another point, in real life GZ would absolutely have posed enough of a world security threat that the US military would have very much been involved regardless of the damn Soviets. Hell, if the Russians didn't want to believe why we would get involved, I have no doubt that McArthur likely would have said "fine, lure the damn thing to the Soviet/North Korean coast and let them deal with it." But by using the early Cold War as a way to write out US and Japanese military/government involvement, it represented how the only way Japan could heal from the war was not through US help or government assistance but through each civilian doing what they could to help rebuild the nation. Obviously the US did a lot to help rebuild but the healing had to be done by each civilian their own way. Great stuff.
Wow, so. Many. Words.
Point is, I loved it!
