Godzilla: King of the Monsters (Review)

Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019)

Christians are accustomed to the resurrection story. We all review it at least one obvious weekend every year. Most of us sprinkle in some eggs and candy for good measure, to ensure that it's "accessible," and that our children won't feel like freaks when the Easter bunny comes to visit most of their friends. Some will throw up a golden-hued image of an empty hole in the ground on their Facebook page, add a pithy quote and call it good. Others will go to church and get caught up in the swell of the music, practically screaming like banshees about empty graves and broken chains, and then hurry to their favorite restaurant afterward, hoping to beat the crowd. As Christians, we have done our fair share of sentimentalizing the resurrection of Christ, of turning a disturbing, macabre, yet somehow hopeful historical account into a tamed thing, boiling it down to a sappy emotion captured in the thrumming of the bass. And while these are not necessarily wrongheaded ways to approach the story of Christ's death and resurrection, we Christians can nonetheless be very good at taking the most astounding, jaw-dropping, silence-rendering moment in human history and making it quaint. Perhaps we're not as good at allowing ourselves to be caught up in the true awe-inspiring element of the resurrection story.

That's probably because we've never seen the resurrection story told with such rousing spectacle like it's told in Godzilla: King of the Monsters. And before you write this off as a desperate, far-reaching attempt to Christianize a hokey movie on my part, I want you to study this image, captured from an early preview of the film:

This image, which can be seen contextually during the film's climax, depicts the primary villain, the three-headed serpent called Ghidorah, rising from the hellfire of a Mexican volcano in the shadow of a cross. The scene occurs mere moments after the film's titular monster and heroic figure, Godzilla, is seemingly killed. The point here is not subtle, and it doesn't take a person with a degree in film studies to understand exactly what kind of imagery is being evoked. With Godzilla dead, the serpent is now free to do what he wills, which, the film's characters tell us, is to reshape the world "in his own likeness." As Ghidorah's history is revealed, we learn that, unlike Godzilla, he is not from our world, but is a dark invader from the black depths of space. In a moment of horror, the arrogant humans realize that, in attempting to destroy the monsters and preserve their own lives, they have killed Godzilla, their only hope at stopping the serpent. The parallels with the narrative of Scripture are spelled out in no uncertain terms here.

But the story is not over, and the image of the cross is not the final shot of the movie. Instead, we are treated to one of the most visually stunning and powerful resurrection tales ever put to screen. As the human characters realize their error and hope slips away, Godzilla returns and shows them mercy. Rallying to his cause, the humans—who are clearly indicted as the ones responsible for things going awry in the first place—finally choose a side in this mythic conflict between gods and monsters. "This time," says Dr. Mark Russell (Kyle Chandler), "we join the fight." And when Godzilla returns to confront Ghidorah, he's flanked by fighter jets and battleships. This, like many other scenes in this remarkable film, is a sight to behold.

Godzilla is, as I have said before, one of the most fascinating Christ-figures in all of cinema, because he represents a dimension of Christ's person we rarely see depicted: that of the apocalypse. The moment he comes stomping into view, he is simultaneously venerated as a heroic figure and feared for the judgment he represents. He renders humanity's achievements null and void. No one can stand before him, yet no one can seem to look away.

Obviously, this metaphor cannot be mined for perfect one-to-one correlation. Godzilla's death does nothing to atone for man's sins, for example. The film is not a text to exegete, but a piece of large-scale blockbuster entertainment to be viewed and interpreted. But I suspect most mainstream film critics will miss the point of this story. I suspect they will criticize the film for its lack of imagination, for being humdrum and boring. Everyone is entitled to his or her opinion, and I'm entitled to think those opinions are shallow, misguided, and profoundly mistaken. Godzilla: King of the Monsters has more on its mind than any movie about big monsters slapping each other around should, and it's all the better for it. 

There are lines in this movie taken straight from the pages of Scripture. In an interview recorded by the Gawker Media blog io9, the film's director, Michael Dougherty, said he wanted to make the Godzilla mythos "more biblical" in this film. In that respect, he has succeeded admirably. And while Godzilla: King of the Monsters is not an explicitly Christian film, there is no question that Christian iconography permeates this movie perhaps more than any major blockbuster in recent memory. And, frankly, it captures the sweeping, earth-shattering dimensions of the resurrection story by making the central figure a giant lizard with a personality better than most of the cheaply-produced Bible movies that prefer to spend their time relishing in the bloodlust of Christ's death. 

C. S. Lewis was famously converted to Christianity due in part to J. R. R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson convincing him that the myth of the dying and rising god, which had captured him when reading the pagan stories, wasn't merely an interesting tale, but was the story that had actually occurred in time and history. This film is another one of those myths of the dying and rising god, but the Christian connections here are more intentional, more pronounced. I seriously doubt that the film's writers and directors have a firm handling on Christianity. But they understand the power of the imagery, and are clearly spellbound by it. As Christians, we should be grateful for this. Because now we have a movie that can catch the imaginations of our non-Christian friends and family members, a movie that embraces the mythic convictions of the Christian story, rather than rejecting them. Even for those of us who have found ways to appreciate the hellfire and brimstone, the film serves to remind us that there is a way to survive the coming judgment, which is to align yourself with the one who is going to bring it all crashing down in the first place. Godzilla: King of the Monsters is an epic salvation story and apocalyptic drama in one, perhaps the most effective evangelistic tool we could hope for from the Hollywood machine, however unintentional it may have been.

And it deserves to be seen on the biggest screen possible.