godzilla vs mechagodzilla & shin godzilla
godzilla vs mechagodzilla & shin godzilla

One of these is not like the other… I knew that 1974’s Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla was one of the guys-in-rubber-suits movies and nothing about 2016’s Shin Godzilla. Whether intentional or not the 1974 film was wonderfully campy and hilarious and couldn’t be more opposite than the 2016 film. The monsters in the GvMG squared off with one another like WWE wrestlers and fought like dudes in rubber suits. I also noticed that the idea of fight choreography whether with the human characters or monsters clearly wasn’t a thing in this 1974 movie. A gun would be knocked out of the hand of a bad guy by a good guy fighting him and the other good guy in the room would just stand there watching the other two fight instead of picking up the gun and ending it. I guess 20 years and 13 films after the original and efforts to make the threat of the monster “believable” was less important than continuing the story that only Godzilla (and friends) are able to protect the earth from unwanted intruders and space simians. I didn’t realize that Godzilla as “the guardian of nature” was already a thing by the 1970s incarnation of the creature. The film was a ridiculous fun experience where every character is pretty much a stereotype and the good guys somehow win in the end.

[Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla viewed at The Beverly Theater on 2025-08-18 with Debra Aarens]

2016’s Shin Godzilla is an altogether different kind of monster story beginning with the huge scope of the story, the use of CGI for the monster and a cast of literally thousands. Pretty much the only thing that this film had in common with the 1974 version (and 1954 original) is the use of the “Godzilla” musical theme and that the story involves a giant creature coming from the sea and tearing up the city. And for some reason, while the first creature seen in Shin Godzilla is a very detailed CGI creature, the film makers kept the plastic looking/unblinking eyes of the previous versions of the monster. There were other aspects of the creatures anatomy that were odd. It’s locomotion was weird in that it moved like a crawling creature but it only had a single pair of legs and pushed itself on it’s belly. But the unblinking eyes were a jarring throwback to rubber-suit creatures, to me. 

Also very different from the 1974 and earlier versions, this story was not told from the point of view of a scientist and his daughter and her love interest (kind of small group), but was told through an endless series of government meetings and news broadcasts. Eventually a young protagonist (junior government official) would emerge, who would eventually find himself working with a young attractive Asian woman who was rumored to have her sights on some day becoming the President of the United States(???), so part of the story tropes were maintained. But, in as much as this story was about the government’s inability to quickly respond to this emergency everything was done with large rooms of people, politely asking for permission to act, even when it came to who was going to speak to the public and what were they going to say about this ongoing story. By the time the designated government official spoke to the public it was too late and they got their information wrong. And while Godzilla was a “threat,” the real danger to be overcome was the government inefficiency. And the problem got worse and worse the more they delayed, to the point where when they finally authorized a military strike the monster was too powerful and none of their weapons, including missiles was at all effective. 

They had to figure out a way to neutralize the threat and couldn’t use brut force, but the creature was so enormous that it was going to require mobilizing a huge fleet of machinery to get the job done. The solution needed to be “government sized” but had to be well planned and executed, none of which had happened with prior encounters with the monster. This creature was in the process of wiping out the whole city and nothing militarily could get close enough to do anything to it. It was turning into an unstoppable “god” that they were about to be unable to do anything about. 

Shin Godzilla had the “realism” and damage scale that I “enjoyed” from 2023’s Godzilla Minus One, but it lacked the emotional impact of seeing this tragedy through the eyes of its victims and the small group that worked to defeat the threat. I watched a video that discussed that Shin Godzilla was partly inspired by the 2011 Japanese 9.1 earthquake, tsunami and Fukushima Power Plant disaster and the government’s poor response to the event and this seems to fit with the tone and delivery of this story. It’s a huge departure from the 1974 fantasy film, but it’s well told and an interesting addition to the Godzilla canon. I will probably add it to my personal media collection. Enjoy. JBB 

[Shin Godzilla (2016) viewed at the Cinemark Orleans on 2025-08-19]

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Tags: 2025 movies, Godzilla, movie review, video Fridays, who is Godzilla

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