Shin Godzilla (2016)

Shin Godzilla, Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi's 2016 update of maybe the most famous monster franchise in the world, is the series' most overtly satirical entry. It's also arguably the funniest, and much like Gareth Edwards' 2014 installment has gone straight to my top 3 - almost just for its atomic breath, which is the best in the franchise (as well as the most destructive).

In 1954, Godzilla was a warning symbol come to giant, rubbery life. Given the source of its powers, the common reading of the King of the Monsters as a specifically anti-nuclear reaction is really just a result of the atomic bomb as the only weapon of mass destruction the world had seen (yet). The Dr Serizawa subplot - and specifically its resolution - paint a broader warning about the misuse of science for destructive ends. (It's hard to think of a non-violent application for the Oxygen Destroyer, but Serizawa spends much of the film debating whether he should share the technology even to save his country.)

It's harder to draw a specific parallel for the role of the big G in Shin Godzilla. Really, the film is an idictment of the sluggish reactions of Japanese bureaucracy to disasters. The film opens with an increasingly ridiculous series of meetings about forming committees to hold meetings about dealing with what is, initially, a minor incident. When Godzilla does eventually appear on-screen, its rapidly-mutating powers instantly outpace the govermnent - whose eventual response is far too little, much too late. Tokyo is devastated around them while bureaucrats wring their hands about departmental responsibility.

There's an argument to be made that this Godzilla represents a much more modern threat - its sudden, devastating emergence and subsequent disappearance, coupled with its evolving capabilities, bring to mind terrorism. The origin of the monster - a side-effect of short-sighted convenience - could be an analogue for any number of Western governments' ill-advised meddling which resulted in a devastating, agressive response.

But this doesn't really hold up in the slightly saggy back half of the film, which loses a lot of the forward momentum that builds during and in the aftermath of Godzilla's emergence. A race between American nuclear bombers and a scientific effort to freeze the monster by cooling its blood is oddly airless, as it's mostly carried out by mid-level aides call in political favours to delay the US military response.

At the end, very little is resolved. The frozen body of Godzilla still looms over Tokyo, with the American countdown merely paused. For all the politicians' ambitious for their own future political glory, Tokyo is left in the shadow of its imminent destruction, and ultimately the people of Japan don't seem to have much say in the matter.

Rogue One

I want to talk about AT-ATs.

There are a lot of other things I love about the trailer for Gareth Edwards' upcoming Star Wars spin-off Rogue One: the grounded aesthetic that harkens back to the original film's "lived-in" universe; the shots of Jyn that bookend the trailer, one in cuffs on a Rebel Base, one disguised in the Death Star cell blocks; the use of handheld cameras that give it a more personal feeling than we're used to from the series; Mon Mothma's smirk at Jyn's "I rebel" joke.

But I want to talk about AT-ATs, because the way Edwards uses them in this one brief shot at the end of the Rogue One trailer says a lot about why I'm excited for his take on this universe.

The best film in the Star Wars saga (so far) is The Empire Strikes Back, which is also the first place we saw Imperial Walkers.

During the Battle of Hoth, a number of these barely-mobile artillery platforms attacked the rebel base on Hoth, targeting it's shield generators. Impressive in scale but lumbering, they didn't seem to pose much of a threat to troops on the ground, and were eventually defeated using ropes.

It's difficult to see them as scary, mostly (I believe) because of the way they're shot.

Gareth Edwards, for my money, made the best Godzilla movie since the 1954 original (this is a hill I'm prepared to die on - fight me, scrubs).

Few other directors are as good at communicating scale as effectively as Edwards; even as blockbusters ramp up the "disaster porn", they get more and more clinical about it. We're watching cities being ruined, but it all lacks dramatic weight because the scale isn't relatable.

Edwards always puts his camera ona very human level; the kaiju in Godzilla are almost always shown with known objects in the foreground or through a bus window, which tells you immediately just how terrifyingly huge these things are. He avoids putting you on Godzilla's eye level because that makes the buildings look small rather than making the monsters look big, which would diminish the awe.

Sorry, I'm supposed to be taking about AT-ATs.

It's a very short part of the Rogue One trailer - Jyn and her band of rogues are running across an open battlefield; at first we can only see the lower legs of the Imperial Walkers, but the camera pans up just in time to show the lead AT-AT turn towards (and open fire on) the ground troops.

That's exciting, in a way the AT-ATs never were before. They're a threat to infantry, not just infrastructure. Instead of walking slowly towards a target on auto-fire, waiting to trip, these machines are reactive - and they react fast.

Rogue One has taken these walking punchlines - big, slow, expensive and easily-defeated - and done something unexpected: it's made them dangerous.