#846 – Review: Godzilla

I’m a big fan of giant monsters. I loved everything about Pacific Rim; it promised giant robots fighting giant monsters and it didn’t disappoint.

Godzilla promised giant monsters and massive amounts of destruction. It definitely delivered on those promises, but also had a greater human element than I was expecting.

Even though Godzilla is the King of all Monsters, Gareth Edwards’s Godzilla is told mostly from a human perspective. We mostly see Godzilla from the different characters’ perspectives, which helps show how massive he really is.

I really enjoyed Godzilla. I appreciated the human perspective but the monsters blew me away. I’ve always loved Godzilla and this was a good way to forget about 1998’s Godzilla, which was monstrous but in all the wrong ways.

Here are some other thoughts I had while watching Godzilla. 

Creation

Over the years Godzilla and a lot of his monster friends have originated on earth. There were some who came from space, and that’s when things got a little off the rails and a little more awesome. In Godzilla, the monsters are terrestrial-based and a part of the created world. Understanding the creator helps us better understand the created world. Even if there were a giant monster living in the depths of the ocean, he would still be a reflection of God’s glory and strength. If God can create Godzilla, then how much more awesome is God? God is bigger and greater than any ancient dinosaur…even though God doesn’t have radioactive fire breath.

Creation Care

Along with messages about the created world, Godzilla also has a lot to say about our care for the created world. God gave humanity the responsibility of caring for his creation, a responsibility that we have often neglected. So much of the destruction in Godzilla is wrought because of humanity’s reliance on nuclear energy. Originally Godzilla was a cautionary tale about the consequences of splitting the atom and nuclear weapons; I appreciated that Edwards kept those messages in his movie. I don’t claim to know much about nuclear energy or its pros and cons. Apart from that discussion, though, we can all strive to do our part to care for God’s creation. That can be as simple as recycling our recyclables, taking reusable bags to the grocery store or not waking up a dormant radioactive monster.

Tragedy

There’s a lot of death and destruction in Godzilla. We don’t really see it happening and a lot of the people are evacuated, but there still have to be thousands of people dying. Unspeakable tragedies happen all the time and we only hear about the most unspeakable. A personal tragedy doesn’t have to make the evening news to be truly tragic. We have all faced experiences and situations that were tragic, things that we simply couldn’t explain. It’s in the midst of tragedies like those when we most need to place our trust in God. Hopefully we never experience the destruction seen in Godzilla. No matter how big our tragedies, though, our God and his love, grace and peace are even bigger.

Godzilla was great; it was better than I expected. I expected monsters and destruction but got much more than that.

What were your thoughts about Godzilla?