This Salon feature from two weeks back provides a good overview of the 70+ year Godzilla franchise and its relevance to current audiences. There’s an analysis of where Monarch: Legacy of Monsters fits in the franchise’s themes.
Our relationship with Godzilla changes from movie to movie and age to age. Some films cast the King of the Monsters as a protector unconsciously joining humanity – and occasionally, King Kong – to fend off some mammoth existential evil. More often, he is a reckoning, reminding us of how puny we are in nature’s schemes...
…each springs from the same mutated DNA, mapping the source of Earth’s monster problems to mindless warfare, along with the intellectual vanity compelling man to seek an upper hand over nature instead of figuring out how to coexist.
Godzilla and the other Titans stampeding in his wake are post-World War II creations; Ishirō Honda, who directed the OG “Godzilla,” was a veteran of that war marked by his travel through the ruins of Hiroshima after the United States bombed its civilians and Nagasaki to force Japan’s surrender. The Geneva Conventions’ protocols made such acts illegal, but as we’re discovering with alarming frequency and force these days, laws are only as effective as our willingness to abide by them…
I had wondered how Shaw had failed to see traces of Keiko in Axis Mundi during the Hourglass mission. That’s explained in the most heart wrenching way. Not quite Jim Kirk’s choice in TOS ‘City on the Edge of Forever’ but definitely as personally difficult.
Now, I have to wonder how much of those conversations and events in Axis Mundi Shaw recalled when he returned. He doesn’t seem to remember them consciously in 2017.
I’m also trying to figure out how Isabelle knew that Hiroshi spent time in Axis Mundi and that let Kentaro know.