Godzilla shall be defeated by committee!
What They Say:
It’s a peaceful day in Japan when a strange fountain of water erupts in the bay, causing panic to spread among government officials. At first, they suspect only volcanic activity, but one young executive dares to wonder if it may be something different… something alive. His worst nightmare comes to life when a massive, gilled monster emerges from the deep and begins tearing through the city, leaving nothing but destruction in its wake. As the government scrambles to save the citizens, a rag-tag team of volunteers cuts through a web of red tape to uncover the monster’s weakness and its mysterious ties to a foreign superpower. But time is not on their side—the greatest catastrophe to ever befall the world is about to evolve right before their very eyes.
The Review:
Audio:
The audio presentation for this film brings us the original Japanese language mix and the newly produced English language dub, both of which are encoded using the Dolby TrueHD lossless codec in a 3.1 design. Yes, that’s rare (and largely unheard of from what I can see) but it’s just chalked up to what the creative side wanted to do in order to capture a kind of old school film feeling to it similar to the visual design. Both tracks are pretty straightforward and solid where the dialogue moves effortlessly across the forward soundstage as needed and handles all of its levels well. The bigger moments certainly are louder and there’s some solid rumble in the subwoofer but it’s obviously not an enveloping mix for those with a tight 5.1 setup looking to feel a part of the action. That said, everything comes across well here and it achieves what it sets out to do with a clean presentation.
Video:
Originally released in 2016, the transfer for this film is presented in its original aspect ratio of 2.35:1 in 1080p using the AVC codec. THe film is one that works a familiar almost washed out kind of approach to it where it feels like it could easily be a very clean 1970’s work, which is what they were going for in some sense. The scenes with Godzilla are the more colorful pieces and even that’s fairly limited to the action pieces or some of the bloodier moments with the other kaiju. When the night sky is lit up or Godzilla uses its energy attack there’s a great use of color to give it an intense feeling, but even those attacks are reminiscent of the style from the older works. The costume designs are very flat in tone and it’s conveyed well here. Even when we get to the brighter exteriors and some of the citizenry of the city there isn’t anything that feels particular bright or colorful, making for an interesting exploration of the palette used.
Packaging:
The packaging for this release is a pretty good one as it uses the familiar main visual for the film with the shadowed form of Godzilla across it with the logo along the top. Both of those pieces are done up with the raised element for the o-card and that’s something that along with the black stripe along the top really does help to sell it. The red background is a really strong shade to work with as well. The back cover is traditional in that we get some carnage for the visuals and a brief summary of premise. The usual space for the UV element is included (bleah) and we get a solid breakdown of the technical aspects of the DVD and Blu-ray discs included. What I really like is that the case itself is a black one as it replicates the o-card design as that just gives it a welcome difference. Though there are no show related inserts included with the release we do get two-panel spread of Godzilla on the reverse side with a really large logo that just makes it look powerful.
Menu:
With nearly half of the screen given over to the navigation bar, this is one of those awkward menus that just doesn’t work all that well. Functionally, it’s easy to navigate and everything loads quickly and without a problem both as the main menu and as the pop-up menu. The logo takes up a decent chunk of real estate in the navigation bar and it’s a rare Funimation release with the navigation itself being vertical and with some larger than usual text and design to it. The top part of the menu uses a variety of clips from the film but it just feels so weird with the scale used for the navigation that it left me just feeling like it didn’t set things up well for the experience.
Extras:
While we do get the trailers here there’s nothing else from the Japanese side in regards to the extras. What we do get is a thirty-four minute bonus extra recorded at Funimation with a trio of Godzilla geeks and a moderator talking about the film. It’s a fun piece, though you might get more out of it if you’re enmeshed in this world more, but it’s basically four guys that talk about their favorite things with the property in a casual way that’s very friendly and fun. I really wish there was more produced from this from the Japanese side or some really good historical pieces exploring the franchise and its origins, but those are costly to produce. Keep in mind, the Japanese release has 193 minutes of bonus content that was created.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Growing up outside of Boston in the late 70’s and early 80’s, one of the things that dominated one of the half dozen or so TV channels we got was the Channel 56 Creature Double Feature event on Saturday afternoons. With so little available to watch and VHS tapes still mostly a limited thing because of cost and pay channels still not a mass market thing, this event was a big part of the weekend. I can still visualize all of the promos and a lot of the films. That said, even though I watched a lot of them they were things I simply couldn’t get into. With terrible dubbing and the whole rubber suit side that really didn’t appeal to me as a part of the Star Wars generation, I struggled hard with the Godzilla and other monsters franchise and still do. The only film that I actually liked was the recent Hollywood relaunch that hit a couple of years ago.
So my interest in Shin Godzilla was certainly tempered by my past but also definitely intrigued because of the positive buzz that it was getting. And a pretty fun couple of trailers that have been put out as well. With this being the 29th film produced out of Japan for the character there’s certainly a sense of familiarity about it, even with Hideaki Anno directing. The general premise is what you’d expect as we suddenly have the creature appearing out of the bay, causing trouble, and mysteriously ambling and progressing throughout Japan toward Tokyo as the government tries to deal with it. Godzilla, or Gojira as we also get it called so that it plays to all audiences, is certainly fun to watch as we see it evolving as it makes its way out of the bay and through its journey. I don’t recall seeing it played that way before and even with the heightened speed it works pretty well with its iterations and how they’re presenting its background.
In a way, there’s only so much you can do with a live-action Godzilla film because you’re kind of limited by budget and the general Japanese approach to filmmaking, something that doesn’t work for more more often than it does. It’s one reason I’m more interested in the upcoming animation project. This film presents us a decent looking Godzilla in terms of its visuals but it’s also something that doesn’t feel as part of the live-action segments as it should, though that’s less of a thing compared to the old rubber suiter films. Anno’s Godzilla stands out, however, when the action sequences hit as there are some creative choices to it with how it handles its power and strength. Though we don’t get a deep background as to how Godzilla came about (can you say sequel?), there are teases here and there about it and it makes it clear why the beam powered attacks exist, but it’s best to not look too deeply at it.
As we do see with the special effects laden monster films, the monster moments are few and far between overall. That happens here as well but at least some of the budget is thrown to some big destruction of the city sequences as well, an area that Anno brings to life really well with the beam attacks that Godzilla employs. The early stages of Godzilla at first leaves you wondering if this is a different monster that Godzilla will later appear and fight but I liked the evolution side of it. But it wasn’t until an hour in that I actually really liked watching the creature as we get the night time attack and the real chaos in the city. The final act action sequence is pretty good as well as there are some creative ways in trying to deal with stopping Godzilla but it’s also something that feels like it lacks real power and impact because of the approach used. After having a big military push that didn’t work you know they’d have to go elsewhere but it just plays weaker after all of that.
The biggest problem that I had with the film, though, is that it’s so empty on actual character elements. There are a lot of characters in the film but it’s focused almost exclusively on government and military characters and they’re nothing more than archetypes at best. There are a lot of intense scenes of research and paperwork to figure out Godzilla’s origins and how to defeat it but since it works such a range of characters that have no depth there’s nothing to really connect us with it. There’s a distance between viewer and character that it’s hard to become invested in it. As problematic as the character storyline was with the Hollywood Godzilla film, they at least had characters involved in the chaos. Though there’s obvious commentary about the top-heavy government aspect here in how to deal with things, that’s not particularly compelling. That said, Godzilla defeated by bureaucratic maneuvers is an amusing way to watch it all play out.
In Summary:
Shin Godzilla is a film that has some really great moments that delivers what the property can do when it comes to monster chaos and destruction of Tokyo. It’s certainly filled with some interesting ways of bringing it all together and though I may joke with the “by committee” aspect of it there are some good areas to explore within that as well. But it lacks any characters to make it engaging on a personal level – we don’t even follow any of the civilians caught in this outside of a minute or two total – and Godzilla itself doesn’t have enough to latch onto make its story compelling beyond obvious monster smashing. I suspect that fans of the property will find a whole lot to like here but casual observers may struggle with it more, perhaps not during the viewing but afterward.
Features:
Japanese Dolby TrueHD 3.1 Language, English Dolby TrueHD 3.1 Language, English Subtitles, Trailers, Godzilla Vs. the Nerds
Content Grade: B-
Audio Grade: B+
Video Grade: B+
Packaging Grade: B
Menu Grade: C
Extras Grade: C
Released By: Funimation
Release Date: August 1st, 2017
MSRP: $34.98
Running Time: 120 Minutes
Video Encoding: 1080p AVC
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 Widescreen
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Sony PlayStation3 Blu-ray player via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
