TV Review: 'Godzilla Singular Point' Puts A Cyberpunk Spin On A Kaiju Story
But does the new series live up to its source material?
By Eric Shorey
Godzilla emerged from the ocean depths in 1954, rattled from his slumber by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima only a few years before. The giant lizard was at first imagined as a metaphor for post-nuclear anxieties, but over the course of endless spinoffs he slowly became a sort of benevolent protector of Japan, defending the island nation from the onslaught of other oversized beasts. In more recent years, reboots of all kinds of fantasy mythos have gotten annoyingly trendy, resulting in Godzilla returning to his role as an antagonistic behemoth. (I refuse to dignify the American spinoffs of Godzilla with any comment on their place in the larger Godzilla lore.)
Netflix’s Godzilla Singular Point is the latest entry in the expanded Godzilla universe, and it starts the story from scratch. In this re-imagining of the greatest kaiju, Godzilla emerges in the year 2030 as a result of space-time distortions caused by super-computers reaching from the past into the future (or from the future into the past?), thus bending the rules of reality and bringing forth waves of hideous monsters carrying a toxic red dust on their backs.
The return of Jet Jaguar, a lesser known robotic entity in the Godzilla pantheon, was lauded by kaiju enthusiasts when the show’s trailer dropped back in April. In GSP, the weird looking automaton is created by a rogue team of machinists, but really comes alive when a curious AI hops into its controls in order to fight a flock of Rodan. (“So this is what it’s like to have a body…” proclaims the AI upon inhabiting the mech.) Armed with a spear made from the tusk of a defeated rhino-like creature, Jet Jaguar is undeniably cool, and the fight scenes featuring the robot are the best parts of the show. The animation itself — which combines a more traditional anime style with 3D, CGI renderings of extra-dimensional monsters in some clever ways — is consistently pretty good quality throughout.
Unfortunately, a lot of time in GSP’s 13 episodes is spent on characters attempting to solve pseudo-scientific physics puzzles related to the nature of time and space. The conversations on this topic are sometimes incoherent and all that energy would have been better spent on world-building or expanding the subplots about the various semi-sentient AI that populate the story. Similarly, there’s actually not a lot of Godzilla in this show — and there’s woefully little by way of big monster battles in the first eight or so episodes.
It’s easy to trace the influence of anime like Cowboy Bebop and Neon Genesis Evangelion in GSP — and adding some cyberpunk storylines into the Godzilla legacy is an interesting approach (the super-computer / time travel stuff is actually very reminiscent of William Gibson’s latest novels, The Jackpot Trilogy), but as far as post-modern deconstructions of kaiju movies go, Godzilla Singular Point is inferior to recent shows like SSSS.Gridman and SSSS.Dynazenon — and it isn’t nearly as well constructed as Hideaki Anno’s Shin Godzilla film.
Ultimately, Godzilla Singular Point is a fun binge-watch, but what’s the point, really? Although the new show riffs on the original Godzilla themes about the ramifications of technology, it doesn’t actually say anything particularly new or add anything of note to the legend of Godzilla — although the fan service sure is fun (especially the askance reference to Mothra in the final episode).
FINAL JUDGEMENT: B-
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