Shin Satire

[Lain Of The Wired]

Since Shin oozes political satire, thought it'd make since to have a thread devoted to it.
Discuss the satire of Shin Gojira here, do you think it was done well, do you think it fell short? How effective do you think it was?

[Jomei]

The best example is how it satirizes fans who complain about human scenes and "too much talking." Anno's sublime genius lies in his ability to incorporate the audience into the work, as also seen in another of his triumphs, End of Evangelion. If you don't already know what this means, his satire might be about you.

[Lain Of The Wired]

I'm finally watching the uncut version, and I'm 23:43 seconds in and this movie is way funnier than the edited version I saw.
4 different conference room changes
Asking if they could just let America silently take care of it
Joking about rebuilding the city with form 2's carcass
I dont see why anyone doesn't like the human scenes in this movie, it's really amusing

[Mr_Goji_and_Watch]

I dont see why anyone doesn't like the human scenes in this movie, it's really amusing

Way too many fans have unironically adopted the "only the monster scenes are good" mentality and will fail to recognize the merit the characters have unless a movie finally gets it's critical due like with 54 or to a lesser extant Shin Godzilla.

[Gojira18]

"Way to go, America" lol

[BooLugosi]

I'll be following this topic because I really like Shin Gojira and would love to understand the film better and hear other people's interpretations. I really like how they made most of the leaders so hilariously incompetent myself. It's not exaggerated too much either. It has a dry, restrained sort of humor that I thought was very enjoyable. There's something very pleasing about seeing people in power on movies being treated as if they are just any other dumb human instead of a powerful authority figure and I feel it should be done more. The human plot of this film actually reminds me very much of another great film by the name of Dr. Strangelove which also has awesome satire. I have a feeling Anno is a big fan of this film by watching Shin Gojira.

[Cybermat47]

Something that surprised me is that, while the senior government officials are certainly portrayed as terrible leaders, more concerned with maintaining the status quo and reassuring people than saving lives during Godzilla's first rampage, they are shown in a good light in some cases. One example is when the PM has to be convinced to leave the city, due to his reluctance to "abandon the citizens and make my escape".

Another thing that surprised me was the balanced portrayal of the USA. It's shown to be both over-controlling and dominant (sending it's aircraft into Japanese airspace to conduct combat ooerations in Tokyo, without asking the PM), but also as a protector (volunteering very, very expensive Predator drones to play a vital role in OPERATION: Yashiori).

Of course, the satire is also very amusing. A particular favourite of mine is when the screen cuts to black during a meeting, with a caption reading something along the lines of "the following has been abridged".

Other gems are:

That guy's furious reaction when Ogashira points out that Godzilla is already supporting it's own weight.

"Get my uniform."

"It has?!"

"Right this instant?!"

[Lain Of The Wired]

The sheer incompetence is breathtaking
Without any real research, they blame the accident on an undersea volcano, and are immediately made to look like complete jackasses. The same when they claim its impossible for it to come on land... And I like that before, they can't decide what to do with it, so they even suggest just letting the US deal with it secretly, because they're too stupid to unanimously come up with an answer.
Those biologists in the beginning were pretty hilarious too, namely the one whos like, pffft that videos probably fake.
Soooo much valuable time is wasted having all those conference room changes, going through all those approvals, and public announcements, I know ol Honda really liked making politicians look stupid, but Anno straight up roasts them. I dont know who's more incompetent at the end of the day, the guys in Shin, or the guys in Godzilla vs Hedorah

[SpaceG92]

I don't think anyone pointed this out.

---

When we (America) decided to join the party, we made the problem A LOT worse (Shin's "Awakening") Then instead of picking up our mess, we decided to wave nukes around and basically passive-aggressive a smaller nation into agreeing.

Honestly, that's pretty close...

Added in 2 minutes 16 seconds:
Oh - and then we kinda installed "Big Brother" over in Japan (nuclear device is still armed) and basically decided to "watch over" the area for god knows how long. (War on Terror parody?)

[Inferno Rodan]

When we (America) decided to join the party, we made the problem A LOT worse (Shin's "Awakening") Then instead of picking up our mess, we decided to wave nukes around and basically passive-aggressive a smaller nation into agreeing.

Did it really make the problem worse, though? It certainly accelerated the rate of damage, obviously, but it still ended up stopping Godzilla for several days. If he hadn't been bombed, he wouldn't have stopped at all and would have just kept on marching along. The level of destruction caused would have been just as bad (if not worse, eventually), just spread out over a longer period. And with Godzilla stopped entirely, it allowed everyone to focus their efforts on figuring out how he worked and how to actually stop him for good.

Though really, that whole thing just struck me as poor writing rather than intentional satire, personally. With Godzilla completely incapacitated by that first airstrike, why on earth didn't they take the opportunity to just bomb him into oblivion while he was helpless?

[ToxicLove]

One of my favorite scenes is the film with the 3 members of various scientific and marine biological divisions, sitting in those chairs, fingers strumming. They then proceed to deeply and elaborately offer absolutely nothing of help whilst droning on and on. Had me in stitches.

https://youtu.be/XQkcP0olmQY?t=6m17s

Phenomenal clip from the Python's that illustrates the notion. Droning on and on until they start foaming at the mouth.

[Cybermat47]

Then instead of picking up our mess, we decided to wave nukes around and basically passive-aggressive a smaller nation into agreeing.

Honestly, that's pretty close...

Added in 2 minutes 16 seconds:
Oh - and then we kinda installed "Big Brother" over in Japan (nuclear device is still armed) and basically decided to "watch over" the area for god knows how long. (War on Terror parody?)

Actually, it was the UN who decided to nuke Tokyo. The US just happened to be a member state with nearby nukes.

That means that the majority of countries in the world decided that nuking Tokyo was acceptable:



As for watching the area, I see no problem with that in itself. If a giant killer organism that could rapidly evolve and survive six MOP-IIs exploding in it's spine was frozen somewhere, I would definitely keep my eye on it.

The depiction of the US in the film is much more complicated than simply positive or negative, as I outlined in my previous post.

Added in 8 minutes 2 seconds:

Though really, that whole thing just struck me as poor writing rather than intentional satire, personally. With Godzilla completely incapacitated by that first airstrike, why on earth didn't they take the opportunity to just bomb him into oblivion while he was helpless?

In a later scene, we see an JSDF recon drone approach Godzilla, only to be destroyed by an atomic beam from his spine. While Godzilla is dormant, his body still has enough energy for a sort of automated defence system, which automatically destroys any object large enough that gets too close. If they sent in more Spirits, they would have been blown up as well.

[Inferno Rodan]

In a later scene, we see an JSDF recon drone approach Godzilla, only to be destroyed by an atomic beam from his spine. While Godzilla is dormant, his body still has enough energy for a sort of automated defence system, which automatically destroys any object large enough that gets too close. If they sent in more Spirits, they would have been blown up as well.

The bold is important. Bombers would have been well outside his targeting range in that state, and by the time the bombs themselves would have entered it they would be impacting him a tiny fraction of a second later anyway. So unless there is literally zero delay between detection and interception, as in faster-than-reflex reaction (which there was no evidence for such), then bombing him would still have been effective.

[Jomei]

We need more satire of fans nitpicking the logic of monster superpowers based on how they imagine these things work.

[Inferno Rodan]

I'd hardly call pointing out glaring plot holes "nitpicking" but hey that's just me.

[Jomei]

That idea of "writing" belongs in the fantasy matches.

[Inferno Rodan]

Nah, I think you just have problems accepting any criticism of Shin.

[Jomei]

In other words, you've given up making the case for the criticism in question. Ever graceful in conceding the point, IR. I like that about you.

[Inferno Rodan]

Given up? I already made the case for it being poor writing. You're the one that never brought a counterargument in the first place and just started with the baiting. It's hard to give up on something that never even really started to begin with, lol.

[Jomei]

It's just funny that you mistake your misunderstandings of details in the film for poor writing. Like I said, you're basing your "criticism" on how you imagine Shin's powers work. It's fantasy match junk. Nerd-wank speculation about the extent of kaiju abilities. It's on the same level of sophistication as discussing how powerful Final Wars Goji's beam is specifically. In other words, such a silly notion as not to merit serious reply.