Shin Godzilla
2025-08-16
Vancouver, BC

Definitely a unique take on Godzilla, at least from what I've seen. The big fella looked like a crackhead when he first appeared here. And all the surrounding political chaos was just as exaggerated. But as it settled in, it did calm down, fully leaning into Godzilla's nuclear origins and exploring what even a team of misfits can accomplish in working together. I do find it haunting how the trauma of the atomic bombings casts a shadow on a lot of Japanese and Japanese adjacent pop culture, across genres, from Akira to Hiroshima Mon Amour to here. One other note, I don't normally struggle with subs, but this thing was moving a mile a minute — I'm not sure how I was supposed to read everything, with the annotations for locations/people clashing with the dialogue captioning. I get that it's supposed to be satirical of governments and their responses in natural disasters, but I can't help but feel I missed some nuances there.

Watched at Scotiabank Theatre Vancouver. 4K theatrical re-release.