Sometimes It’s Best to Move On
I just came across Scalzi’s review of Godzilla Minus One for Uncanny Magazine. He, unsurprisingly, nails what makes it one of the best Godzilla movies made since 1954:
Godzilla Minus One is terrific in no small part because its Godzilla is not a friend, it is a force, violent, implacable, unable to be reasoned with or controlled in any meaningful way.
Godzilla works best a metaphor. For nuclear weapons in the original and Minus One, for Fukushima in Shin Godzilla.
The problem is, as Scalzi points out, that only works a few times.
Godzilla got domesticated because he became a star. Being an unknowable terror is fine for one film, and possibly for a sequel or two. But apparently the thinking is, if you want to keep people coming back film after film, eventually you have to make your monster someone the audience roots for, even if the monster is still nominally a bad guy.
After a while, you gotta move on.
That’s where Legendary is. Their Godzilla fought the MUTOS, played hero against Ghidorah, fought Kong, teamed up with Kong to fight, um, more Kongs…
Yeah, time to move on.