This essay examines darkness, visual style, intertextuality, and the representation of political sovereignty in two versions of Godzilla.

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Abstract:

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The critical consensus around Ishiro Honda’s 1954 Godzilla is widely known: the creature is a metaphor for Japan’s mid-century national traumas, including firebombing, nuclear violence, and Japan’s own war crimes. This essay examines Gareth Edwards’ 2014 Godzilla, arguing that the film both draws heavily on the original’s visual darkness (both films feature sequences of night-time destruction and chiaroscuro contrast, for instance) and substantially modifies the conceptual commitments of the creature. Where Honda’s original was a warning about the perils of unfettered political sovereignty – the horrors unleashed by modern war – Edwards’ reboot emphasizes the demonstration of Godzilla’s worldly authority over all other monsters. No longer a critique of the excesses of power, the contemporary incarnation of Godzilla is an embodiment of the natural rightness of violently enforced hierarchy. Visual darkness is key to this political shift: Godzilla 2014 uses darkness to reference the visual style of the original and to emphasize its ‘serious’ take on the monster genre, to be sure, but what is more, its commitment to a ‘gritty’, desaturated, ‘realist’ war-movie visual style aligns the remake with a set of drastically different political positions to those of the original.