Godzilla

Gareth Edwards' 2014 reimagining of Godzilla is a film of almost aggressive cultural neutrality, a monument to the apolitical blockbuster at a moment when such things were still possible without comment. The narrative concerns itself exclusively with spectacle, family drama, and the logistics of destruction, treating its ensemble cast as functional units within a disaster apparatus rather than as vehicles for any particular social consciousness. Ken Watanabe appears in a supporting role, Sally Hawkins and Juliette Binoche populate the margins of the frame, and Elizabeth Olsen serves primarily as the anxious wife awaiting her husband's return from danger. These are not casting choices made in service of any progressive sensibility, but rather the normal functionality of a major studio production.

The film's thematic substrate, such as it exists, concerns the hubris of human scientific endeavor and the indifference of nature to our machinations. This is presented as a matter of physical spectacle rather than social critique. There is no interrogation of power structures, no meditation on systemic injustice, no suggestion that we might examine our relationship to environmental degradation or corporate malfeasance. The monsters destroy cities, the military responds, and we are asked to admire the scale of the destruction. This is pre-woke cinema in the truest sense, not because it is reactionary, but because it has not yet internalized the frameworks of contemporary social criticism as a necessary element of mainstream entertainment.

What we have here is a film that operates within the safety of pure spectacle, asking nothing of its audience except that they remain seated for two hours and accept the premise that large creatures will collide with buildings. It is, in this respect, a kind of aesthetic conservatism, a refusal to engage with the cultural conversations of its moment. For the contemporary critic trained to detect every subtle inflection of social consciousness in the films we consume, this is either a relief or a disappointment, depending on one's disposition.