Stuff like this guarantees the movie to not do well at the box office (and it still doesn’t prove anthropogenic causation)
Godzilla: King of the Monsters is an unlikely climate change movie
There’s an ostensible comic relief moment in Michael Dougherty’s Godzilla: King of the Monsters that accidentally recalls weather notices in today’s headlines. “Bad news,” declares a member of Monarch, the crypto-zoological agency formed to monitor the activity and habits of giant monsters around the globe. “You can just call it news,” replies chief warrant officer Jackson Barnes (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) with a defeated pout. “It’s always bad.”
The reptilian colossus Godzilla was originally conceived by Tomoyuki Tanaka, IshirÅ Honda, and Eiji Tsubaraya as a nuclear-powered bugbear; Honda’s 1954 Godzilla film reflects Japan’s acute fear of atomic obliteration, a shared cultural terror rooted in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings on August 6, 1945. In the 65 years since Godzilla introduced the radioactive behemoth to the world, he has gradually evolved from antagonist to eco-hero. Where Honda’s original film taps into Japan’s national trauma to give form to nuclear devastation, Dougherty’s film recalls America’s present-day anxieties over increasingly intense weather patterns tearing across the country from coast to coast. Tornadoes are tearing across Indiana to Ohio; temperatures are rising to 100 degrees in Jacksonville, Atlanta, Savannah, Macon, all the way up to Charlottesville, a high for the season; parts of Nebraska, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Arkansas remain under flood watches. Last year, wildfires raged over northern California, taking a $3 billion toll on its inhabitants. Climate change, 2019’s collective boogeyman, is the monster whose name everyone knows but whose existence not everyone accepts.
Godzilla: King of the Monsters couches climate change fears in egomaniacal ignorance. Alan Jonah (Charles Dance), an embittered ex-Britishy Army colonel and determined misanthrope, foolishly believes humans have set Earth on a collision course with extinction, and that freeing the “Titans” — including King Ghidorah, the three-headed alien dragon serving as the film’s villain — will tip the scales in the planet’s favor. He and his team of eco-terrorists seek out the hidden locations of slumbering behemoths, wake them up, and set them loose on the world. Enter Godzilla, cranky at being disturbed from his long rest — he’s been MIA in the five years since the release of Gareth Edward’s Godzilla — and ready to rumble. Jonah convinces Dr. Emma Russell (Vera Farmiga), one of Monarch’s paleobiologists, of his perspective; the film proves them woefully offbase. Only Godzilla can tip those scales by kicking monster butt.
This continues the long-established characterization of Godzilla as a force of nature; when Earth’s natural balance is thrown out of whack, Godzilla emerges from the depths to set things right by roasting foes with his atomic breath, incurring billions of dollars in property damage in the process. Of course, sending in a monster to contain a monster is an extreme answer to an extreme problem. A positive outcome still means countless lives lost, homes and businesses reduced to rubble and ash, and iconic baseball stadiums left smushed into pavement. When the ruckus ends and mankind’s monster triumphs, the damage has already been done. It’s hard to call that a victory. In its extravagant way, Godzilla: King of the Monsters, pleads for environmental stewardship: Jackson’s “bad news” line isn’t a throwaway but a sober acknowledgement. Weather reports are rarely good. In fact, they’re usually dangerous.
It really doesn’t get any better than that in the following paragraphs. In fact, it gets worse. Nutjobs, just complete nutjobs.
Can’t we just get a good movie without a Message anymore?
We can’t even eat a meal without a message any more. Or go to a sporting event or game. Or buy a burger, a chicken sandwich, or a Gucci bag without the left bombarding us. It’s 100% politics 100% of the time. They are obsessed and driven.
Interesting historical fact: When the USA bombed Hiroshima, most of the rest of Japan was already a smoldering ruin. So, if anything, The Japanese people would have had a collective zeitgeist about losing a world war that affected every city, rather than nuclear bombs that only affected a couple of square miles in two cities. Hiroshima was chosen as the target because it was one of the few cities left in japan that still had buildings standing near the city center. The mission planners needed a target that would show the power of the bomb in ways that would show up on photographs, not just make the rubble bounce.
Still, all the Godzilla movies have had a consistent backstory about nuclear bombs or nuclear tests either creating or awakening the monsters. I’ll likely watch it when it comes to cable in a few months. Good monster movies are usually entertaining despite the leftist world view content embedded.
Messages can hurt !! Especially climate denying snowflakes