Deathdrop,
Yautja,
10 years ago
I think the irrelevance of humanity was kind of the point, though. The monsters are treated as walking natural disasters and the human characters are just reacting to them. All you can do is try to survive and hope for the best.
What's telling for me is that Godzilla's origin has been changed from "awoken/mutated by nuclear testing" to "woken up by yummy food source and the nuclear testing was an UNSUCCESSFUL attempt to kill it." Godzilla isn't a mutated dinosaur or prehistoric beast awakened by nukes or a divine punishment for WWII or any of that. Godzilla just happened to wake up because he smelled a food source, which the tiny little things running around (ie:us) just happen to be using as a fuel source.
It makes the bomb not a big deal, basically. Not in terms of human history (OBVIOUSLY it's a big deal in that context), but in terms of the history of the planet. No, small fleshy things, you will not destroy the world with your silly little bombs. You might destroy yourselves, you might wipe out 99% of all life and render the Earth uninhabitable for millions of years... But there are things that will thrive in that environment.
Most of the Japanese Godzilla movies implied Godzilla was some sort of penance, or gave him a motivation like "he's angry at mankind for burning the Earth." They tried to justify his presence, basically. Here? Godzilla pre-dates the fucking dinosaurs (let alone humanity) and his conflict with the other monsters has nothing to do with humans. Yes, humans woke the MUTOs up, but that would have eventually happened anyway, once the planet got radioactive enough again.
To put it simply, it erases all human agency from the equation. In the face of cosmic forces, we're kind of irrelevant. BUUUUUUUUT.... We've got each other. That sounds corny, but it's true. That's why the emphasis on family is so overblown in that movie: Yes, there's no point to any of this, and nature is bigger than any of us and the sun could explode tomorrow for no reason and the entire universe will one day just collapse into itself and OH MY GOD IT'S ALL FOR NOTHING-But god damn it, we've got each other. We're on this fucked up rock, but we're here together.
Pretty humanistic for a movie that says we're irrelevant.
EDIT: Also, I loved for how un-jingoistic it was. Name me one other movie where the American military is as absolutely irrelevant as they are int his film. They cause as many dangers as they resolve, and their stupid plans put a fucking NUKE into play in a populated area. The most they accomplish is getting wiped out to a man in the process of getting the nuke they put into play away from San Fransisco (which has already been leveled by the giant monsters they failed to stop), which they only accomplish because Godzilla saves Ford's ass.
Hell, name another blockbuster sci-fi movie that demonizes nuclear bombs as much as this one does. There's a lot going on here, and when you add how ASTOUNDINGLY restrained it was (I couldn't believe how long it was before there was a monster battle), well, you've got an uncommonly good Summer action movie.
and also godzila shot beam at teh other monster an it was sum tight shit bro holy fuck that scene gave me a boner.