Shin Godzilla Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.0

Shin Godzilla Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson August 5, 2017

After the massive worldwide financial success of Gareth Edwards's Godzilla (2014) ($529 million at the box office), Toho envisioned it commercially ripe to launch a reboot of its own series. Hideaki Anno (Neon Genesis: Evangelion) was tapped to direct with Shinji Higuchi (Gamera Trilogy) serving as special effects director. Shin Godzilla had a modest budget of $15 million and a final cast list attributes an astounding 328 speaking parts in the film. According to research conducted by movie reviewer James-Masaki Ryan, Shin Godzilla marks the twenty-ninth picture in the series of official Toho Godzilla films, which exempts the 1958, 1985, 1998, and 2014 installments. Toho's 2016 production has gone on to gross ¥8.25 billion (around USD $80 million) at the Japanese box office. It was nominated in eleven categories at the Japanese Academy Awards, garnering seven wins, including Best Film and Best Directing statuettes for Anno and Higuchi. In the US, Shin Godzilla has performed moderately well among all Godzilla films, placing fifth at the box office behind Godzilla 1985.

The movie opens with the Japanese Coast Guard's search for missing scientist Goro Maki aboard a boat in the Tokyo Harbor. The Coast Guard only finds the scientist's slippers amidst the vessel's clean and sparse interiors. The boat then rocks abruptly as a result of an explosion outside. In an ominous sign of the widespread disaster to come, blood crashes into an underwater tunnel, causing several car accidents. Newsreel footage on a local telecast shows a huge serpentine tail flapping in and out of the ocean. Several divisions of the Japanese government work frenetically to determine the cause of the accident and ascertain what initially appears to be a deep sea creature. Prime Minister Seiji Okochi (Ren Ôsugi) begins to made a public statement but at mid-speech the giant creature ascends from the bay and proceeds to terrorize the streets of Tokyo. Destruction of buildings, ships, and cars occurs at a rapid rate as the monster imposes its spiky dorsal plates and clawed arms on its targets. At this juncture in the film, no one in Japan knows its name but after perusal of Goro's research, government officials discover the American military has branded it "Godzilla". Fortunately, the Self-Defense Force arrives with big weapons to try to neutralize it but the Prime Minister is hesitant to open fire because his people tell him there are civilians in the area. The Self-Defense Force pulls back and although Godzilla begins to retreat, it destroys a big building enroute to its temporary descent into the sea.

Better move way back city dwellers so you can clear the way for Godzilla!

Various committees come together to consolidate research on the monster and learn as much about it in order to thwart its wrath. Shin Godzilla is very much an ensemble piece and this is the film's greatest weakness. As noted earlier, it has over 300 speaking roles and while some characters become more prominent and important to the story in the second half, the viewer is inundated with technical jargon from so many of them that it lacks a sustained focus. It also detracts screen time away from the titular figure which is what cinema patrons paid a price of admission to see.

The section where the Prime Minister has to make a decision about whether to launch airstrikes on Godzilla is preposterous for at least a couple of reasons. For one, his advisers give him very limited information on the repercussions an attack would have on the city. When the P.M. hears about the presence of citizens in the vicinity, he never asks how many nor is he given a number. To the discerning viewer, there are not a lot of civilians that would be part of the "friendly fire." Another fault of the script is that it takes at least halfway through for the involvement of a joint US intervention to become a reality. Yet there is an American embassy stationed near Tokyo. Why has it taken so long for the US Air Force to jet its planes in for an aerial assault?

The star attraction is obviously Godzilla, although it takes some time to get used to this "new" appearance done through motion capture of kyogen stage actor Mansai Nomura and later animation work. Series fans describe the sea creature as an amalgamation of a moray eel and a frilled shark. It bleeds from its gills, which shrivel up and enclose. The tough elastic texture on its yellow skin morphs into an agent-orange tone. This beast contains a lot of radioactive energy as a result of nuclear fission that generates the heat inside but is cooled off by the dorsal spines on its back. The most spectacular images in the film are of Godzilla spewing out the B2 bombs from its fire-breathing mouth. It also emits purple beams from its dorsal plates, which block and send back the incoming missiles. It's too bad that the movie spends so much time theorizing about Godzilla's composition and makeup rather than just showing us more of it.

Shin Godzilla Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Shin Godzilla has already been available on Blu-ray all over Asia and makes it North American debut courtesy of FUNimation on this MPEG-4 AVC-encoded BD-50. The label gives the main feature a healthy average bitrate of 32000 kbps, with the full disc sporting a bitrate of 39.64 Mbps. The movie appears in the aspect ratio of 2.40:1, which approximates the framing of its theatrical exhibition. Skin tones appear consistently well-rendered with no traces of manipulation in post. The movie incorporates mini-DV camcorder footage in the beginning (see Screenshot #17) and filmed images of simulated TV news broadcasts on HD tubes (see #18). Anno also superimposes Japanese characters or numbers from computer data screens on to various characters (see #16). The only flaw that I could detect is vertical aliasing on buildings (watch #15 in motion). Both the special effects and the visual effects are seamlessly integrated for the action scenes and appear flawless on this Blu-ray. My score is 4.75.

FUNimation has encoded the feature with fifteen chapter breaks.

Shin Godzilla Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

FUNimation has supplied a Japanese Dolby TrueHD Audio 3.1 mix (1523 kbps, 16-bit) and an English Dolby TrueHD Audio 3.1 dub track (1536 kbps, 16-bit). I sampled the English track a little bit but the Japanese is the go-to master for the film's true and authentic sound track. Dialogue is directed toward the center channel while Shiro Sagisu's score gets spread out to the two front speakers. The LFE is where the f/x rumble, including Godzilla's march across downtown Tokyo and the crumbling sounds his large feet produce as he smashes vehicles and thrashes edifices. FUNimation has included a large amount of English subtitles for the Japanese track. Most of the film is spoken in the native tongue but Kayoko Ann Patterson (Satomi Ishihara), the Japanese-American daughter of a US senator and an aspiring POTUS candidate, often utters her lines in English (which are subtitled anyway). There is also one scene of German dialogue. FUNimation has done a commendable job of placing descriptive white captions near the top of the frame in order to identify locations, buildings, and/or the names of specific characters. Toward the bottom, there are subs translating the spoken words. (See #s 19 and 20). Occasionally, there are so many subs on a single image that viewers may be inclined to pause the film to read them all. This textual pattern seems to mimic what was on the DCP prints of the movie. As critic Mark Schilling of The Japan Times observed, "I couldn't help feeling sorry for the non-Japanese fans forced to read a blizzard of subtitles for this extremely talky and densely populated film."

Shin Godzilla Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Godzilla vs. the Nerds (33:05, 1080p) - three Funimation employees and Godzilla comic artist Matt Franka participate in a round-table discussion in which they discuss Shin Godzilla. In English, not subtitled.

• Previews - several bonus trailers for other FUNimation titles.

Shin Godzilla Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

As a disaster epic, Shin Godzilla gets only half-baked because it belabors for much of the film with the preparations and reactions of petty bureaucrats and emergency response teams to the monster's onslaught, which is slighted. Granted, the filmmakers probably designed it this way to make it an allegory for Japan's social consciousness five years after the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. However, the stiffness and mechanics exuded by the politicians forsake a veritable portrayal of humanity that the film lacks. FUNimation delivers a nearly flawless transfer and an odd 3.1 sound track that seems to be the movie's original mix. The BD doesn't offer much in the way of extras except for a FUNimation exclusive video podcast. RECOMMENDED for the dazzling and arresting images of Godzilla rather than for the narrative.