The hottest new movie these days is the latest Japanese longevity monster movie "New Godzilla", which many friends and neighbors have also watched.
However, this piece of douban rating did not perform particularly well, at least my observation, is all the way down, when I compiled this WeChat, it has dropped to 7 points, I estimate that when you see it, it may be lower.
However, Hukel!
At least for me, this is one of the movies I've seen and enjoyed a lot lately. Just because it's different. The film is a bit deliberately far away from the habits of the public, don't you like Hollywood blockbusters? This one is meant to be different from them, including the 2014 Hollywood version of Godzilla, which is completely different in style and rhythm
It's like this Godzilla, fake to the point where I played with toy snakes when I was a kid. However, this deliberate fake and close-up flavor has become the fun of the film, which is completely different from the fun of Hollywood special effects blockbusters, and of course, there is also the taste of childhood memories. In particular, the director of this film, Hideaki Anno, the anime god who single-handedly created "EVA", also shows the creator's considerable bad taste in this work.
In short, I liked this "New Godzilla" very much, so I specifically found a friend to help me write this manuscript. Introduce this "New Godzilla" and the story behind it. I hope you can enjoy such stories more, just because of the memories, or different.
Text: Zhou Zhi
In 1954, Toho released two masterpieces that would later become famous in Aoshi, one was Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai and the other was Godzilla. As a result, monster movies, like samurai movies, became one of the hallmarks of the Japanese film industry.
Godzilla producer Yuyuki Tanaka originally wanted to co-produce a story with Indonesia about the Japanese troops stranded in Indonesia participating in the Revolutionary War, but the collaboration ended in failure. In order to make up for the loss, he hastily came up with the idea of a monster film. In March of that year, the United States detonated a 15-million-ton hydrogen bomb near the Marshall Islands, exposing Japanese fishermen to intense radiation. This is the third radiation that the Japanese have received after the two atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, known in history as the "Fukuryumaru Incident". In this context, the novelist Shigeru Kayama wrote the original work of Godzilla. Tomoyuki Tanaka adapted the original book into a more realistic plot and decided to have Honta inoshiro as the director and Eiji Marutani as the special director, who was the father of the later Ultraman.
Infographic: The islands affected by the hydrogen bomb at the time of the Fukuryu-maru incident
Eiji Marutani later became the father of Ultraman
In the first game of "Godzilla", Godzilla was a terrifying survivor of the Jurassic, who had been sleeping on the bottom of the sea, and the incessant nuclear experiments brought him to land. Then everyone found that the target of this monster was Tokyo. This also opened up the history of "many disasters and many disasters" in Tokyo.
As stated in the first game, "Godzilla is the hydrogen bomb that weighs on the heads of our Japanese", Godzilla did not flinch in the face of various weapons, but instead returned fire with the nuclear energy light in his mouth, which symbolized the nuclear weapons that made all weapons meaningless. On the other hand, it is precisely because of the nuclear explosion that this monster is produced, which also has the characteristics of a victim of nuclear warfare. Just like Japan in World War II, militarists turned Japan into a giant beast that ravaged the peoples of Asia, and this giant beast finally fell to the ground under two atomic bombs of the United States, becoming the only country in the world to be hit by nuclear attacks. It is based on this that Godzilla has the dual identity of perpetrator and victim.
Interestingly, Joe Shimura also starred in seven samurai
It was on this basis that Godzilla had a nationalist character in the 1960s. In King Kong vs Godzilla (1962), Godzilla confronts King Kong, a symbol of America, at Mt. Fuji, and in The Greatest Showdown of the Three Monsters on Earth (1964), Godzilla defends Japan by fighting Ghidorah, the king of the universe, with Mothra and Raton. As a result, these originally frightening monsters also have a cute side.
King Kong vs Godzilla
The Three Monsters: The Greatest Showdown on Earth
In the 1980s, with the rapid growth of the Japanese economy, Godzilla's works at that time deepened his nationalist and anti-nuclear tendencies, and his anti-American characteristics also increased. In Godzilla vs. Ghidorah (1991), Godzilla defeats the robot monsters sent by the United States and Russia to defend Japan's prosperity. This trend did not continue because of the subsequent bursting of Japan's "bubble economy". Later works are also like that era, mostly ordinary monster films, which are full of nostalgia. It wasn't until 2004 that Toho also ended the series with Godzilla: The Final Battle. It can be said that the story of the Godzilla series rises and falls with the pulse of Japanese society.
Godzilla vs. Ghidorah
Godzilla × Mothra × Mechanical Gojira Tokyo SOS (2003), no doubt on the right is Masami Nagasawa
All in all, Godzilla is a fusion of three elements: anti-nuclear, nationalistic, and anti-American.
In 2014, after the sale of the American version of "Godzilla", Toho finally saw the market potential of this series again, and ten years after "Final Battle", the Japanese version of Godzilla also entered the restart agenda. Hideaki Anno named the new work "Shin", which included the meanings of "new", "true" and "god". Although I am a fan of special photography, I do not pay much attention to this kind of subject, and I really know that this is the birth of another monster god work until I see the main film. What can be seen now is the Philippine version, which is 20 minutes less than the Japanese version, which makes it a little unnatural in terms of undertaking, but this does not affect the core of the whole story and the fluency of the narrative.
The story of such big monsters is basically a pattern, that is, there are unknown creatures on the seabed, and when the government department is at a loss, Godzilla generally comes to the "disaster-prone" Tokyo according to the "plan". Forces on all sides began to work on how to destroy this invading monster...
Looking at this plot alone, you will feel that it is another cliché story, but the same ingredients in the hands of different cooks will taste different. At the beginning of the whole film, there is a mutual push between various government departments, and what is even funnier is that there is no specific person in charge.
The experts who were recruited could only speak textbook language, and now most countries have the problem of the division between the elite and the underclass, especially the scholars hiding in the ivory tower, who seem to be authoritative but actually know nothing about specific matters, and Anno spits them out here.
When Godzilla arrived, the government was immediately punched in the face after the guarantee ticket, which also reminded people of the various "safety promises" during the Fukushima earthquake that year.
When the "senior homeless" who plays the deputy chief cabinet secretary proposes the most feasible plan, the prime minister hesitates on the grounds that there is "no precedent". In order to maintain their position, politicians use the safest "precedent" as the basis for action, so that japan now has only politicians, not politicians.
When it is impossible to imagine, it can only be used to make suggestions with a bunch of heresies within the system. "New Godzilla" was filmed at the end of 2015, but in 2016, it encountered a year with frequent special circumstances. When a group of elites patted their chests to ensure that the United Kingdom would not leave the European Union, the United Kingdom left the European Union; when a group of elites congratulated Hillary Clinton in advance, Trump was elected president of the United States. Heresies in the eyes of the elite are often simply because they are telling the truth.
Since there is a big monster in Japan, of course, there must be the figure of "American Dad". As always, The American father was overbearing, not only taking away the samples, but also sending a special envoy to express his lofty lessons to Japan.
The photo shows Kihachi Okamoto, an idol of Hideaki Anno
The American envoy played by Rimi Ishihara, although the drama, but the setting of this thing is 1/4 of Japanese blood
Because the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom signed the Treaty banning nuclear weapons tests in the atmosphere, outer space, and underwater in 1963, there have been no nuclear experiments in the waters near Japan for more than half a century, so the reason for godzilla's birth this time is attributed to nuclear waste. At present, the disposal of nuclear waste is also a worldwide problem, especially japan has experienced the Fukushima nuclear leak, and the Japanese are particularly sensitive to nuclear issues.
Although this film is stripped of the elements of Godzilla's identity and humanity, it still shows the nationalist side of the past story through the people in the play.
Although there is no clear anti-American sentiment here, the U.S. offensive has increased the anger of the monsters, and here, like the United States in other countries, because it is far from home, it can throw bombs and bombs without fear, regardless of whether the country is dead or alive. It was under the agitation of the United States that the Japanese cabinet was completely destroyed. The scene where the dorsal fin glows purple and spews out purple beams can be called classic clips, and if I am in the theater, I may stand up and applaud this big monster.
How to eliminate Godzilla, as the United States has always done, as long as it finds that there is a threat to itself, it will stop at nothing to eliminate him. The frustration of dealing with the Prime Minister's plan to "level Tokyo with nuclear peace" is a microcosm of U.S.-Japan relations. The domestic media has always believed that Japan is obedient to the United States, but in fact, Japan has been trying its best to get rid of its control over the United States, but whenever the prime minister makes a change, the United States will use its invisible hand to put it together. For a specific example, look at the attitude of two re-emerging prime ministers after they were elected.
As for how to destroy Godzilla, it doesn't really matter, but their way is still very unique, but it is also very familiar and very close-up.
Compared with traditional close-up works, another big difference in this film is not only in the full CG monster, but also shows the evolutionary process of Godzilla. This also happens to be similar in the meaning of "god" in the word "Shin", and the only one who can evolve and split into human beings is God, which can be seen in the legends of various countries in the world about the origin of mankind.
Similar to gilled amphibians
Evolved into reptiles
It is about to split into "human" form creatures. The Godzilla of this game was designed by Takayuki Taketani, so there is a strong smell of Hora in this picture
There are only three female characters in the show, and there is no obvious love line, and audiences who are used to watching old-fashioned close-ups may not be accustomed to it
Inertial. Compared with the scenes of disaster films in recent years that are willing to show lone heroes and crowds running wild, this film focuses more on high-level decision-making, and seems to want to evoke the long-lost group consciousness of Japanese people. Unlike another Japanese director, Shigeru Kawasaki, who is willing to use big monsters to blacken ZF, Anno wants to tell a story full of ideas rather than use the edge ball to attract the audience.