The history of Godzilla, and Japanese monsters in general, is rooted in their use as metaphors for real world tragedies. Godzilla was specifically a metaphor for the dangers of atomic power, but as time went on he and other monsters started standing in for the power of mother nature itself. Unlike the monsters of the West, Japanese monsters cannot be stopped through man-made intervention. Try as we might, we have no power in the face of mother nature's wrath, a harsh lesson Japan is all too familiar with. Say what you will about Garth Edwards, but the man understands this. His film does what classic Godzilla movies do, and uses the monsters as stand ins for environmental disasters. Much in the same way the original Gojira tapped into Japan's fears of the atom bomb, Godzilla 2014 is a modern blockbuster that taps into our fears of natural disasters, a fear that has only increased as we've seen increased frequency of such events. It uses imagery from both the 2011 tsunami and Fukushima power plant meltdown to connect the themes to the real world. Some might call this tasteless, but this is what monster movies are supposed to do. Perhaps the greatest strength of Edwards' Godzilla is how it makes the monster more relevant than he has been in decades. Pay attention to the imagery, and you'd be surprised how much more is going on in this movie than you thought. It is imperative that the sequel not lose sight of the thematic richness underneath all the blockbuster trimmings. Whatever monsters are introduced going forward, they should continue the tradition of monsters as metaphors for the destruction our planet is capable of throwing at us. Speaking of us, the sequel must have...
