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Category: Science Fiction

Godzilla Minus One

Kurt Dietrich

I’m not sure what I expected when I sat down to watch Godzilla Minus One this weekend. I’d heard about it of course, but all I knew was that it was supposed to be amazing based on what I saw on social media with incredible special effects for its relatively low budget. Somehow I’d even avoided seeing the trailer so my sole reference was one picture I’d seen with the gigantic kaiju stalking what I thought was a small fishing boat.

What I got was a film that hewed much closer to the original 1954 Godzilla in theme and tone than most of its more current American brethren. That’s not a bad thing. I have fond memories of those old Toho Godzilla movies that ran on repeat on Saturday afternoons (along with Mothra and Gamera.) and I watched them more times than I care to admit. Like the original, this Godzilla is more an allegory about the nuclear age and man’s inability to control natural forces. Gone is the campy Godzilla that emerged in later Toho films and so is the anti-hero he became as the series progressed and has resurfaced again in the MonsterVerse films and Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. No, this is an angry, city-stomping Godzilla who exists only to destroy the city of Tokyo and act as a manifestation of the protagonist’s (Kōichi Shikishima played by Ryunosuke Kamiki) guilt over having chosen to live rather than fulfilling his duty as a kamikaze pilot and over doing nothing to stop Godzilla from killing his fellow soldiers on Odo Island where he had landed after faking mechanical issues with his plane.

I’m no scholar of Japanese film but I’ve also always thought of Godzilla as a metaphor for the United States of America and I see that again in G -1. In the original 1954 Godzilla it was America who unleashed devastation on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and it was US tests on Bikini Atoll who create the irradiated kaiju who then stomps across the Japanese landscape and unleashes nuclear fire upon the Japanese people. As Japan’s relationship with America changed during those post-WWII years so did how Godzilla was portrayed. He shifted from destroyer to anti-hero protector, not unlike the US relationship with Japan. And like the giant monster I think there’s always a fear that the relationship with the US could revert, especially now in our highly polarized political climate where one US candidate for president has stated that he’d remove the US from various political and military treaties, including the ones that keep American fleets in the South China Sea. As Captain Tatsuo Hotta said while planning Operation Wada Tsumi, “We cannot rely on the US … government. So the future of this country is in our hands.” That seems like a comment the Japanese people could utter about the US today as we’ve become a somewhat unreliable partner to our allies.

Well, that’s enough philosophizing for now.

Overall I really enjoyed the film. It’s plot was simple and direct but carried the action forward in a way that complimented its story and themes. I thought most of the actors put on solid performances and while some moments skewed towards over-acting, in my opinion, it felt right, again, hewing close to those early Toho films and their tone. And of course, the special effects. What Takashi Yamazaki, as both director and special FX supervisor, accomplished with a limited budget was simply amazing. His Godzilla calls back to the early representations of the monster when it was portrayed by Haruo Nakajima in a rubber suit but still felt modern, full of menace and, possibly the hardest thing to accomplish with a creature entirely created out of digital ether, substantial. At no point did the FX created Godzilla or its environment seem like an animation or feel low-budget. Hollywood could maybe learn a thing or two about creating an action-packed, engaging move with great effects on a limited budget from Yamazaki. Not everything needs to have a budget of $100 million dollars. I highly recommend Godzilla Minus One for fans of sci-fi or just big stompy monsters.

Promotional art for the Disney+ show, Andor. (Image: LucasFilm)
Image: LucasFilm

What I’m Watching: Andor

Kurt Dietrich

Or, in this case, what I was watching since the season for the latest Disney+ Star Wars show ended last week and I just caught up with it last night. Now, with the season finished, I’ve come to the conclusion that Andor might be the best thing since the Original Trilogy to hit this galaxy from that other one far, far away.

All twelve episodes were filled with action and intrigue and immersed you Star Wars in a much different way than any of the other shows or movies have been able to do. Andor offers a grittier look at the Star Wars universe filled with people who feel more real than most characters in George Lucas’s creation. From the working-class people of Ferrix like Cassian and Maarva Andor and Bix Caleen to the high society wealthy Coruscanti Luthen Rael and Senator Mon Mothma to evil middle manager Syril Karn and Space Gestapo officer Dedra Meero everyone is a person struggling to make their way in a world of crushing oppression. Some, like Karn and Meero, are trying to exploit that oppression for their own professional advancement and benefit. Others, like Luthen and Senator Mothma are trying to avoid the gaze of the Imperial Security Bureau while they foment rebellion right under their nose. And then there’s Cassian Andor, who, at the beginning of the series, and like many other citizens of Ferrix and the Empire, are just trying to keep their heads down and survive under the boot of their oppressor, only to learn that keeping your head down will result in being crushed by that boot in the end anyway. And unlike most of the rest of Star Wars there are no prophecies, chosen ones, or Space Wizards to thrill us with laser swords, mind tricks and telekinesis. Instead, as we watch the fledgling rebellion take root, it’s just normal people for whom the stakes feel tangible and the consequences, even if, at first, their participation is out of self-interest, are dire. All of this adds up to Andor having a pathos that grounds it, humanizes it, in the way the rest of Star Wars isn’t.

Frankly, it’s everything I’ve wanted in Star Wars since Disney bought the franchise—a story mostly unencumbered by the Skywalker Saga and all the heavy-handed callbacks to the Trilogies that have been present in the other Disney Star Wars shows. I’m a huge Star Wars fan and I loved Kenobi, The Book of Boba Fett and The Mandalorian but each of those stories has suffered because of the desire to overstuff them with easter eggs and nods to the Luke, Leia and everything else that came before them. The lack of that in Andor was refreshing and gave it freedom to explore new things. It let it feel like its own thing.

They’ve already announced a second season. I suspect that it may also be the last one since they need to lead us directly into Rogue One and Cassian Andor’s final, irrevocable end and didn’t leave a lot of time between when the show ends and the movie begins. If that’s all there is I’m fine with it because it’s been a story really well told. I’d hate to see them try to (blue) milk it for too many seasons and diminish the characters or their stories.

Failed State Cover

Failed State: A Dystopian Future Worth Visiting

Kurt Dietrich

First let me say that Failed State, Christopher Brown’s final novel in his dystopian triptych that started with Tropic of Kansas, is a good book. Like a really good book. It also continues his trend of writing novels that are some of the most frighteningly prescient books I’ve read in recent memory.

It’s a near future sci-if tale filled with economic, governmental and environmental collapse and it reflects a world that could be ours if we don’t heed all the warnings we’re receiving about global climate change, environmental collapse and the weakening of democracy throughout the world and here at home. It’s a novel that after you’ve finished it you can’t just set it aside and forget about it. You continue to think about it after you’ve reached that last page, turning over the themes and characters in your mind—the choices they’ve made, their impacts on the world.

It’s bleak and hopeful at the same time. It’s also disquieting. Moreso, perhaps, than his previous two books, Tropic of Kansas and Rule of Capture. Because even though the novel ends on a (somewhat) hopeful note—that maybe we can make a better future, even after all the damage we’ve done, to our planet and ourselves, it’s not certain.

Set after a second civil war (that occurred in Rule of Capture) the country is fractured and without central leadership. Some are trying to forge a new way but it’s not clear if they can succeed or if it can be better than what came before it. The leaders of this experiment in government are, in their own ways, just as flawed and prone to falling short of their ideals as any political movement is. And of course the oligarchs are still out there, more interested in making money and controlling their own empires than the good of the people and ready to go to war for profit. In between is Donny Kimoe, strip mall lawyer and sometime revolutionary, as flawed as anyone else but he seems to think that maybe, just maybe, the American experiment shouldn’t end just yet and that perhaps there’s a way to bring it all together again.

Brown, who’s also a lawyer by day, writes a legal thriller as taught as any written by John Grisham. With it he brings his experience as urban naturalist and futurist. Together he creates a vivid and wonderfully written world that extrapolates from our own into one that might be closer to what lies before us than any other dystopian future I’ve read. His world isn’t the emotionally numbed, science-focused, caste-driven world of Huxley’s Brave New World, or Orwell’s extreme socialist nightmare of 1984, or even Gibson’s cyber-jacked, gleaming chrome future in Neuromancer. It’s a near future of environmental, societal and political collapse that seems hauntingly close to the future we’re heading towards.

And that’s the other thing I find so disquieting about this book. It’s the timing. I can see where we are in 2020 and see how just a bit of a nudge here or there in our reality could send us into Brown’s imagined world. Our politics are coming to a head. Our upcoming election is the most consequential of our lifetimes. Getting it wrong could mean a slide into fascism. We are already, in many ways, an oligarchy. Our environment is collapsing around use. Global climate change leading to the entire west cost burning. Drought in several parts of the country. A historic chain of storms in the Atlantic. We’re on the edge and I think Brown’s world is a potential outcome if we don’t pull back. It isn’t a world I want to live in but it is one worth visiting, hopefully only in his books.