by Dai » Thu Jun 23, 2016 5:17 pm
I'm concerned by what we're hearing from insiders, but I'm not giving up on this movie yet. Ever since Anno was announced as writer/director, I've been expecting something dry. People who were anticipating this movie to be completely over-the-top bonkers haven't taken a hard enough look at Anno's previous work. Yes, he's done some weird and wacky stuff, but a frequent motif of his work has been to take a genre trope, put it under the microscope, and ask, "Given Cliched Situation X and Seemingly Familiar Character Y, what would really happen?" In the case of Godzilla, I see that as being: what political and logistical problems would the bureaucrats really have to contend with in handling an unprecedented crisis like a kaiju attack? That's a recipe for a dry script, and potentially a dull movie if mishandled. But Anno has a history of using reams of technical jargon to add weight to scenes, control pacing and build tension. He's a film-maker; this stuff might not work on the page, but that's doesn't mean it won't work once it's been shot and edited.