“A perfect organism surpassing man.”
An abandoned yacht is found in Tokyo Bay. The Japanese Coast Guard goes to investigate. While on board something in the water destroys the yacht and the Coast Guard vessel. Then the Tokyo Bay Aqua-Line is flooded. A massive tail emerges from the water. Then a creature rises and heads toward Japan. It crawls onto land and trashes a chunk of Tokyo. It then stops and evolves from a crawling creature to a bipedal animal. Heat radiates from the creature and it returns to the bay to cool.
The government is flummoxed. There was massive destruction, human casualties and an evacuation that resulted in mass hysteria. While things in Tokyo begin to stabilize the government has no idea if the creature will return. If it does, they need a strategy to deal with it. A task force is put together to figure out what the creature is, how it came to be, and the best method for dealing with it. Due to its high radiation readings the team believes it is energized by nuclear fission.
The US sends Kayoco Anne Patterson (Satomi Ishihara) to assist the team. The team is led by Rando Yaguchi (Hiroki Hasegawa). Kayoco reveals that the yacht found in Tokyo Bay belonged to an anti-nuclear zoology professor named Goro Maki. He had been researching animal mutations caused by radioactive contamination. His theories on the existence of the creature brought him ridicule. His notes were found on the yacht. The task force attempts to figure out what Goro was doing but his notes are in code. He named the creature Godzilla.
Godzilla appears again on land. He is twice the size he was and fully formed. The Japanese military attempt to kill him, but the monster keeps coming. They ask the US for help. The US bombs the shit out of it with stealth bombers. Godzilla begins to glow and spits fire. The fire then changes to an atomic ray. Then his spikes also shoot out atomic rays. The stealth bombers are cooked and so is a fair amount of Tokyo. Having spent a lot of his energy Godzilla goes dormant, but he’s not done.
“Shin Godzilla” AKA “Godzilla Resurgence” was released in 2016 and was directed by Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi. It was produced by TOHO pictures. It is the 31st movie in the Godzilla franchise, the 29th produced by TOHO and the third reboot of the franchise. It is also the first film in the Reiwa period. The film was nominated for ten Japanese Academy awards and won seven of them. It is the first TOHO Godzilla that is computer generated and not a “guy in a suit”. This is the first Japanese-made Godzilla film since Godzilla 1985 (1985) where Godzilla does not fight another monster.
This is probably the scariest looking Godzilla I’ve seen, even though at times it looked a lot like a Halloween parade float. The creature is extremely destructive but not exactly mobile. He has a tendency to plod along, but when you’re the size of Godzilla, and still growing, a plod can take you a long ways. Despite that small flaw it is a cool looking monster.
Godzilla goes through four evolutions during the movie. First it is a prehistoric sea creature similar to an eel. Then it comes on land and crawls along the ground having trouble breathing through its gills. Third it starts to develop stumpy arms and begins to develop legs in the back that are wobbly at first it then it stands up. It returns to the sea to cool itself having spent so much energy mutating. Fourth when it comes out of the water again it is a fully formed dinosaur-type mutation much larger than it was and fully formed with a muscular body and longer tail. It is suspected that if the monster is not stopped it will continue to mutate and since it is asexual it will create lots of little creatures with no problem.
When you get to the end of the movie. Keep an eye on the tail.