In anticipation of the last (ha, I hope so) Evangelion movie coming out in January, my friend and I are rewatching the Evangelion Rebuild movies. I suggested we do this (1) in reverse order, from 3 -> 2 -> 1 and (2) starting with director Anno Hideaki’s 2016 live action film Shin-Godzilla as though it is an Evangelion film. Why did I suggest this? Because I have a deep instinct for weird film curation connections, okay, I don’t know. My friend was like, well, huh, okay, Caitlin, whatever, but of course I was proven to be a genius. Because Shin-Godzilla is an Evangelion movie—it’s a live action version, more or less, of Evangelion episode 06’s “Operation Yashima.” It even uses (arguably overuses) the distinct Evangelion background music “Decisive Battle.”
Evangelion performed by the Japanese Self Defense Force marching band. I don’t discuss this in the post, but the politics of Shin-Godzilla are 👀dubious.
That + versions of the original Godzilla theme and other music by Ifukube Akira are the main music cues and they are distractingly recognizable and temporally confusing. There’s a great book chapter by Shuhei Hosokawa on sound design and the Godzilla theme in Off the Planet: Music, Sound, and Science Fiction Cinema, edited by Philip Hayward.
You know this one. You don’t have to click play on this, but you want to.
I’m fascinated by Anno, given a major live action franchise, deciding to make something that feels almost shot-for-shot, at times, of his older work. It reminds me of Hosoda Mamoru weirdly remaking his Digimon movie as Summer Wars.
But I’m not here to talk about that. I’m here to talk about my new love.
Godzilla early evolution: Kamata-kun! He looks weirdly like my cat.
Of course, I love all monsters. I have a Gritty t-shirt and I don’t watch hockey. I have always felt moe for Godzilla and his children and friends. Controversial stance: monsters are good. And the Godzilla franchise has long encouraged feelings of love and friendship to our God-Gorilla-Whale-King-Destroyer. Disclaimer here, I am not a Godzilla expert and will surely make up some things about Godzilla canon here, but I do love Godzilla. Not as much as the girl who recently went on a date with him, but a healthy familial respect and affection.
People say Godzilla only got friendly in the later movies, but he was a bro from the early tie-in manga.
But the Shin-Godzilla version is special because he’s so freakin’ weird. He’s gross and terrifying. His early evolution, pictured above, when he makes landfall in Kamata (hence his nickname, Kamata-kun), has giant eyes and textured bloody gills. He evolves into something moderately more Godzilla-shaped but then his splits the the bottom of his mouth open to evolve atomic breath. He shoots beams of energy haphazardly from his spines, his fins, his mouth, his gills. I do not know what the heck is going on with his neck. His tail is freakishly long. Does it need to be that long? Is it for swimming? I felt a genuine what-the-fuck body horror revulsion when I looked at him. And he keeps changing! He’s eight Godzillas in one, a Pokemon of Godzillas. The final shot (apologies for spoilers) is some gruesome humanoids evolving from his tail. Eh??? What the fuck?? I shouted at my TV.
Hmm, um, hmm.
One of the wacky scientists repeatedly says they can’t get a good analysis of his behavior because all this Godzilla does is move. He moves through the city in a straight line, destroying, leaving a trail of radiation behind him. But more than move, this Godzilla stays still. He stops. He sits there. This is when he is tired or preparing to evolve. He is this weird mystery body in the middle of the city. He is still while the people scream and the politicians meet. He comes, he goes, he waits. His stillness, rather than his movement, is how he is finally defeated-but-immortalized: frozen with magical science coagulant in the middle of Tokyo.
Much ado was made about having Nomura Mansai, a Kyōgen actor and icon of Heian period homoeroticism with his starring role in the Onmyōji films, play Godzilla through motion capture. Some balance of this Kyōgen-style performance and the decision to make Godzilla fully CGI despite an initial push to make him partly puppet/suit/animatronic results in a very different Godzilla. The original Godzilla was a man in a suit, Nakajima Haruo, a genius stunt performer; once at a talk at Anime Boston, he described his acting style like this: “I stomped where they told me to stomp.” There is something human about the suit-man Godzillas—some flexibility, some texture, some real maneuverability that the CGI Hollywood Godzillas lack. Instead the CGI Godzillas allow a hugeness and an alienness that, perhaps for some, is a superior Godzilla form—they have a supernatural smoothness in movement and in the way they smother the space they occupy.
Shin-Godzilla somehow has the texture and jerkiness of a human Godzilla combined with the size and invasive strangeness of a CGI Godzilla. He moves less and more awkwardly than a man in a suit—this Godzilla really doesn’t know how to walk on land, he just evolved legs yesterday. He plows direct through buildings to save himself the inconvenience of walking around them. In my own youth, I was in a Nō theatre club and, same as Kyōgen, every step you take is plodding, deliberate, weighed down by a heavy costume, before the dance becomes quick and furious in a burst of energy. That is how this strange Godzilla moves, adjusting to open air after evolving under the pressure of water, and then bursting out with literal energy beams. Godzilla’s cycles of rest, movement, destruction are very JO 序 - HA 破 - KYUUUUUUUUU 急, the pattern of movement from slow start to breaking out to frenzied speed attributed to traditional Japanese arts—also the subtitle of the Rebuild of Evangelion films 1 to 3.
Beyond his physical weirdness, this stillness-frenzy is what makes Shin-Godzilla’s Godzilla so horrifying—and endearing. Because of course, my revulsion turned quickly into delight. I just love to see weird things doing their weird things. I’m not sure if I can reconcile my love of Godzilla the monster with the reading of Godzilla as nuclear meltdown in this film, but, well, our feelings about monsters can never be fully suppressed.