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| The striking, retro-styled, boosted look of its gargantuan title character adorns this awesome poster for Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi's Shin Godzilla |
When a mysterious earthquake occurrence in Tokyo Bay turns out to stem from the resurgence of a prehistoric giant monster, the country's government gets busy trying to come up with an appropriate response and salvage what they can.
Shin Godzilla is written by writer/co-director/co-editor Hideaki Anno (Zaku (1980)) with Sean Whitley (Over Your Dead Body/Kuime (2014)) making English-version contribution, co-directed with Shinji Higuchi (Minimoni ja Movie Okashi na Daibouken! (2002)). It is the 31st film in the long-running Godzilla franchise that began with Godzilla/Gojira (1954) and now spans 35 movies, with more on the way. It is the 29th Toho studio Godzilla movie, the first since Godzilla: Final Wars (2004), effectively rebooting the franchise in Japan, - unrelated to the great American reboot Godzilla (2014).
Shin Godzilla is an exciting major motion picture, which gives us a new Godzilla story that feels as no-frills fact-based and realistic as is imaginable now. It stays coolly distanced from anything romantic or family-centered, from emotional or very recognizable characters and instead focuses on the nation's worried top of more or less nerdy men. - As well as a single representative of the fairer sex, in round numbers, who is a babe that pretty incredibly imagines a future for herself as president of the US!
Overall the admiring relation to the American super power stand as one of the film's few weak points, - together with the fact that none of the film's characters (probably due to its concept) really stand out.
- Except, of course, for Godzilla, who is the whole show in Shin Godzilla: Fantastically designed in a transformed version, a kind of destructive god. The effects are impressive, and the film glistens with boyish military fascination, hardware and mechanics, coupled with an orchestral, terrific, sometimes retro-cool score by Shiro Sagisu (Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance/Evangerion shin gekijôban: Ha (2008)) - Shin Godzilla rocks!
Related post:
Hideaki Anno: The Wind Rises/風立ちぬ [Kaze Tachinu] (2013) - Miyazaki's beautiful but languid last film (voice actor)
Watch a video from the film's Japanese premiere here
Cost: Reportedly 15 mil. $
Box office: 78 mil. $
= Big hit (returned 5.2 times its cost)
[Shin Godzilla premiered 25 July (Tokyo, Japan) and runs 119 minutes. 'Shin' means 'true', 'new' or 'god'. Development began in 2013. Shooting took place from September - October 2015 in Tokyo, Japan. The film opened #19 to a 458k $ first weekend in 34 theaters in North America, its peak in the market, where it grossed 1.9 mil. $ (2.4 % of the total gross). The film's 3 biggest markets were its production country Japan, where it debuted #1, which it held for a total of 3 weeks, spending 8 weeks in the top 5, grossing 75.3 mil. $ (96.5 %), becoming the year's 2nd highest-grossing title at the Japanese box office (behind Your Name). 2nd biggest was North America, and 3rd biggest Thailand with 322k $ (0.4 %). The film was commended in Japan for taking inspiration from recent Japanese nuclear and natural disasters as well as political malaise. It sold more than 675k home video copies in Japan and more than 106k copies in North America, the latter totaling an additional 3.4 mil. $. The film won 1/2 Asian Film award nominations, 7/11 Japanese Academy awards and other honors. Due to Toho's contract with American Legendary Pictures about the Godzilla property, they are unable to release another Japanese Godzilla film until the contract ends in 2020. They have instead made an animated Godzilla trilogy in the meantime (2017-18), while Legendary have released their Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) and their coming Godzilla vs. Kong (2020). Anno has returned only with a 2019 short in the Evangelion franchise for which he is making the concluding feature for a tentative 2020 release date. Higuchi has returned with a video game and a TV-series and is set to return to features with Shin Ultraman (2021). Shin Godzilla is certified fresh at 86 % with a 6.74/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of Shin Godzilla?
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