I saw the new Godzilla last night with a friend. Both of us
went in with high expectations and left disappointed. I felt it was a lumbering
mess. As I told my friend it was an example of great special effects in search
of a plot. Both of us had issues with what seemed like pointless things the
humans were doing.
Then, thanks to a link
provided on Watts
Up With That, the quote provided below from an interview with the director
of Godzilla helps explain what he was trying to delicately say (while indelicately
destroying virtual cities). It’s not the plot that’s important. It’s the
narrative, something my friend Robert Bidinotto has consistently pointed out: http://bidinotto.blogspot.com/2011/04/narratives-that-guide-our-lives.html,
http://bidinotto.blogspot.com/2012/03/meditation-on-progressive-narrative.html,
http://bidinotto.blogspot.com/2013/11/how-wizard-of-oz-refutes-liberal.html.
Your version of Godzilla seems to be more rooted in current
events, and centers on mankind’s tenuous relationship with nature, and the
environment.
Yeah. Man vs. Nature is the predominant theme of the film, and I always
tried to go back to that imagery. At the beginning when they find the fossils,
it was important to me that they didn’t just find them—it was caused by our
abuse of the planet. We deserved
it, in a way. So there’s this rainforest with a big scar in the landscape with
this quarry, slave labor, and a Western company. You have to ask yourself,
“What does Godzilla represent?” The thing we kept coming up with is that he’s a
force of nature, and if nature had a mascot, it would be Godzilla. So what do
the other creatures represent? They represent man’s abuse of nature, and the
idea is that Godzilla is coming to restore balance to something mankind has
disrupted.
Whether or not you agree or disagree with this message I think many
people are oblivious to the fact that even so-called “mindless” monster movies smuggle
an embedded message. I think many moviegoers miss the message and just enjoy
the CGI-created mayhem. I do think, however, that the constant exposure to
these hidden messages eventually leaves their mark on our collective
consciousness. Or at least that must be the hope of the moviemakers because
they keep doing it!
Getting back to man’s “abuse” of nature I would agree with this message
if these movies showed truly unnecessary destruction of nature for no
productive purpose (such as someone who dumps toxic waste into a lake instead
of having it treated). Instead these critics throw all human uses of
natural resources into the same category. In other words they don’t make a
distinction between using resources and wasting them. They’re treated as the
same. To me when legitimate and illegitimate uses of nature are treated the
same the purpose is simply to instill guilt for our very existence.
