Sodium for Godzilla

I figured we should check out Shin Godzilla (2016) since we enjoyed Minus One so much. It was completely different in every way, except that it was a novel re-imagining of the concept. Also, very fun.

It starts with news reports of an abandoned yacht in Tokyo Bay, then a leak in a subway tunnel. There's an investigation, but it doesn't get very far until the monster starts showing up, in the bay and soon, the city. The monster looks very weird, not Godzilla-like at all. 

The governments response team is led by the unconventional but handsome Hiroki Hasegawa. America sends Japanese-American Satomi Ishihara as liaison (note: the actress doesn't do that well with the English dialog - just roll with it, she's great otherwise). She tells them about surpressed research on radioactive mutations, including the code name they gave a hypothetical monster: Godzilla. She lets them know that the monster would mutate further - and it does, looking more like her classic Godzilla self each time they encounter it. 

The fun part is that most of the movie is a bureaucratic procedural, showing how Japan's institutions would deal with a threat like this. There is a lot of responsibility shifting in the first part. There are solutions offered up by the lower levels, which are brought up to higher and higher levels, until the Prime Minister has to decide. Halfway through, he is killed (by Godzila's atomic breath), and replaced by the sleepy, unambitious Farm Minister. This man, though completely out of his league, makes the right decision at a crucial time.

You see, Ishihara-san has assembled a misfit ragtag team of outsiders and nerds, who plan to use blood coagulants in industrial amounts to freeze Godzilla. Now, he literally gives a speech about how they are all ragtag misfit outsiders who need to think outside the box. Heck, his character's name is "Rando". And the solution they come up with is coagulants? Clearly, this is a comedy, a spoof on bureaucracy and disaster movies. At home, we just kept saying "sodium" (ref. MST3K #817, Horror of Party Beach). 

So, like Godzilla Minus Zero is largely a post-war neo-realist film, this is a movie about how the rigid Japanese system deals with disasters and novel situations. And, of course, atomic monsters.