Godzilla, a franchise that inspired the creation of an entire subgenre of films called kaiju films, was first released in 1954 and written and directed by Ishiro Honda. The film functions as something of a golden age science fiction story, our two novums being the discovery of Godzilla and the invention of the oxygen destroyer. Godzilla, a 2 million year old dinosaur that is in an evolutionary stage between land and sea creatures, destroys a few fishing boats and eventually returns to earth after its natural habitat was destroyed by bomb tests. hydrogen. The lead scientist, Kyouhei Yamane, follows Godzilla everywhere, and he is amazed as a biologist and does not wish for Godzilla to be killed, even after seeing all the destruction caused. The other scientist in the film, Daisuke Serizawa, is the creator of the Oxygen Destroyer, and he initially opposes its use against Godzilla because he believes the world's governments will use this weapon after its discovery. He eventually gives in, uses the weapon on Godzilla, and commits suicide so that no one can recreate the weapon. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why violent video games should not be banned"?Get the original essay Shin Godzilla, Shin meaning "new" in Japanese, is a film directed by Hideaki Anno, who also directed the famous series animated television show Neon Genesis Evangelion. The film functions as something of an homage to the original film, in that it involves a monster named Godzilla arriving on earth from Tokyo Bay and destroying the city, before ultimately being defeated by human ingenuity. This is contrary to most of the 33 Godzilla films, many of which treat Godzilla as a hero of humanity, as opposed to a natural disaster caused by humans. Additionally, just like the original, it also contains a deeper meaning than just a Godzilla movie. I argue that the original film functions as a golden age science fiction story, and specifically as a disaster story. The character types follow the patterns of Golden Age science fiction, and the problem is ultimately solved by new technology created by humanity. Although Shin Godzilla has similar points on the surface, I argue that the film is a satire of the Japanese government's handling of the 2011 earthquake, as well as the subsequent tsunami and Fukushima disaster. I argue that the movie is saying that there are far more people in government than necessary and that many politicians are incompetent and selfish. The first point to compare is the characters. In Godzilla, even though the character types don't quite match what we expect, they still follow a pattern. The lead scientist, Kyouhei Yamane, turns out to be not a heroic scientist, as he put Godzilla's life ahead of those of his kind. The man who at first seems like the mad scientist, Daisuke Serizawa, turns out to be the one who sacrificed himself for the good of humanity, making him the true heroic scientist of the story. He created the Oxygen Destroyer by accident while researching oxygen, and decided never to tell anyone about his discovery, because of what would happen if such a weapon fell into the wrong hands. Ultimately, he uses the weapon on Godzilla, but commits suicide so that no one who knows how to make the weapon will be alive. Kyouhei Yamane's daughter Emiko is the love interest, and Hideo Ogata is a coast guard who functions as a common man. Godzilla is our bug-eyed monster, spending almost all of his time on camera lookinglook at things that are threatening and need to be destroyed. When you look at Shin Godzilla, the difference between the characters is striking. The discovery of Godzilla is still a novelty, but it is much more difficult to classify the characters as normal types of sci-fi characters. I believe part of what the film is trying to say is that much of the Japanese government is unnecessary, and this is partly shown by the large cast of characters. The film begins with a cabinet meeting being held in the Prime Minister's office to discuss the extremely high water temperature in Tokyo Bay, and we are introduced to several characters, along with their titles. After this scene, however, many of them have no more lines. Our main protagonist, Rando Yaguchi, is one of the lower members of the cabinet and suggests that it could be a living being causing the heating. His idea is quickly rejected and many other members make fun of him. The meeting is moved to a conference room for no apparent reason, which is common in the film, and immediately afterwards a giant tail comes out of the water, proving Yaguchi's point. Another important character is Hiromi Ogashira, who is also a lower cabinet member. His statements, although accompanied by supporting arguments, are also often considered impossible. The first example is where Hiromi suggests that although many biologists have stated that this creature arriving on earth is impossible, it is possible. This is ignored and a press conference is held to calm the public, and when the Prime Minister announces that the creature will not return to earth, he is immediately informed that it has made landfall. Because Hiromi's suggestion was ignored, citizens in the area where Godzilla came ashore did not have enough time to evacuate, resulting in many casualties. This scene parallels a press conference that took place during the 2011 Fukushima disaster and will be discussed later as to how the film functions as satire. These early scenes also show us what each member of the cabinet is worried about. Some members, like Yaguchi and Hiromi, are genuinely worried about the problem at hand, while other members, including the Prime Minister, are busy trying to save face and clearly have this at the top of their priority list. When Godzilla comes ashore, the Prime Minister is angry that he just announced something false, and this concerns him even though his word is necessary to successfully evacuate civilians from the area. This will be discussed in more detail later. The idea that government and seniority slow down appropriate response to disasters continues when we look at how decisions are made in the first half of the film and compare it with the second half. At first, the Prime Minister does not give a real opinion and he only makes decisions when he is asked to make a specific decision. However, to launch an attack, or mobilize the military, or even form a special team to find a solution to this problem, confirmation from the Prime Minister is required. Each order issued must go through more than dozens of people before anything can happen, clearly slowing down response time to disasters. In the second half of the film, the Prime Minister, along with many senior members of his cabinet, are killed while aboard a helicopter, and although an interim Prime Minister is appointed, decisions are made much faster. rate, which further reinforces the idea that many of these roles withinof government are not necessary. In both films, the military proves completely useless in killing the monster, and the problem is solved by the scientists in both cases. We'll then compare the historical disaster that each film represents, but some historical context is necessary first. Part of the inspiration for this film likely came from the Lucky Dragon Five incident, which occurred earlier in 1954. After World War II, the United States used Bikini Atoll, an island populated by Japanese citizens, to test hydrogen bombs. On March 1, 1954, a fishing boat called Lucky Dragon No. 5 approached the border that the United States had declared a danger zone. The radius of the bomb was slightly larger than expected, and when the bomb exploded, the entire fisherman fell ill with radiation sickness and died in November of the same year. Godzilla first destroys a fishing boat in the film and leaves radioactive waste everywhere he goes. In this way, the film can be seen as a depiction of the dangers of atomic and hydrogen bomb testing. However, the depiction goes even further when the Oxygen Destroyer is introduced, and the moral dilemma common in science fiction is also introduced. It is a weapon that, just like nuclear bombs, can kill any nearby living thing with incredible speed, and like the nuclear bomb, it was not originally invented with the intention of Being a weapon, it was studied for purely scientific purposes. . As previously explained, Serizawa initially refuses to use the weapon, as he is convinced that people would use it on their fellow human beings. Let us now consider the modern case. On March 11, 2011, the Tohoku earthquake occurred and was the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Japan. The Fukushima nuclear reactor was shut down and the cooling systems activated, but due to flooding caused by the tsunami, the cooling systems were damaged. This resulted in a nuclear meltdown and much of Fukushima Prefecture becoming uninhabitable for a time. At the beginning of the film, Godzilla represents the earthquake, and soon after, the tsunami and floods, as he sucks water up to the shore in scenes similar to the tsunami that occurred after the 2011 earthquake. Once on earth, it leaves radioactive waste in its wake, just like the nuclear leak before the meltdown. Eventually, when he begins using the heat ray from his mouth, he renders much of Tokyo uninhabitable, the same way the nuclear meltdown did to Fukushima. Unlike the original film, the method used to stop Godzilla is not a weapon similar to the hydrogen bomb, but something we already have access to and is not used as a weapon. The moral dilemma of using a weapon to save humanity only to introduce a new monster is not present in the 2016 film, and Godzilla and the film are much less open to interpretation than in the 1954 film. As previously stated, I think Shin Godzilla functions as a satire of the Japanese government's response to the Fukushima disaster in 2011. The first scene where this becomes clear is the press conference, where the prime minister and cabinet members don the blue uniform, used in a state of emergency. The Prime Minister informs the audience that Godzilla will not land, as this is biologically impossible, and just as he says this, he is informed that Godzilla has made landfall. This looks exactly like a press conference held during the 2011 disaster, where then-Prime Minister Naoto Kan surrounded byhis cabinet dressed in blue uniforms, declared to the public that there was no nuclear leak. and that nuclear leaks would be impossible due to the construction of the power plant. However, it was later confirmed that the leak had already started by then. Another point similar to the film is when many factory workers, including the factory manager at the time, Masao Yoshida, stayed behind to make sure the damage didn't get any worse. than they should be, even going so far as to disobey Japanese government orders to do so. This is paralleled in Shin Godzilla, in the scene where Godzilla finally reaches the city of Tokyo. The prime minister and other important cabinet members take a helicopter to safety, and Yaguchi, along with a few other cabinet members, say they will take a car to safety. Following this, Godzilla begins shooting heat rays from his mouth and plates on his back, and a beam hits the helicopter carrying the Prime Minister and important cabinet members. At the end of the film, it is explained that there is a power vacuum due to the deaths of key cabinet members, and that from there we can rebuild the government. This is different from reality, as Masao Yoshida was not a politician and also died of cancer less than a year after the 2011 disaster. I will discuss later the message I think the film conveys as a whole, but more historical context is first needed to explain why this is radically different from what happened after the disaster of 2011. Since the end of World War II, there have been two main political parties in Japan, namely the Liberal Democratic Party and the Democratic Party of Japan (from now on they will be called LDP and DPJ respectively). From the end of the war until 2009, aside from a three-year period when the LDP was part of a coalition with several other parties, the LDP had complete control of both the upper and lower houses. The LDP is very hierarchical and also includes politicians whose families have been involved in politics for a few generations. When the DPJ took control of the lower house, and therefore the post of prime minister, in 2009, it struggled to maintain the trust of the people. From 2009 to 2012, there were three separate DPJ prime ministers, and the last prime minister, Naoto Kan, was prime minister during the 2011 disaster. Many people believed the disaster demonstrated the DPJ's incompetence, and power returned to the LDP in 2012, immediately after the disaster. It's a rather different story than the 2016 film. It's implied that the government following the Godzilla disaster can be rebuilt in a much less corrupt and less incompetent manner, but after the 2011 disaster, the Power went to a party that was arguably more corrupt than the party in power during the government. disaster. In fact, the way the party is portrayed in the 2016 film is closer to how the LDP is portrayed in reality, in my opinion. The messages that these two films attempt to convey are also quite different. Godzilla warns us of the dangers of nuclear bomb testing, but also of the dangers of science in general, as has been done in some earlier science fiction works. The oxygen destroyer, although studied for purely scientific reasons, could easily be used in the same way as the atomic bomb, and this is how the atomic bomb was actually discovered. One of the last quotes in the film, that of Kyouhei Yamane, can be interpreted as.