SUPERMAN VS THE ELITE

Puss and Boots: The Last Wish closed out 2022, and what a goodbye it was. 

It is hard to discuss the quailty of Puss and Boots without mentioning its jaw-dropping presentation. 

 It's no secret that in this film, Godzilla serves as a direct analogy for the destruction caused by the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, which precipitated the Fukushima nuclear disaster. This gives real meaning and tragedy to the destruction the monster causes, instead of glorifying it.

More importantly than representing this destruction, 'Shin Godzilla' represents our response to it. Infamously, there was a lack of action taken in response to the Fukushima disaster due to the bureaucracy and red tape that hindered immediate action.

Godzilla also becomes a representation of man-made 

bureaucracy. He's never portrayed as evil, but simply as a creature in pain, strained to his biological limit. Similarly, bureaucracy isn't a sentient force; it's a system that does what it was designed to do. Thus, Godzilla in this film represents bureaucracy, something created by humans that has caused so much destruction but are not going away anytime soon."

It's the type of critique and cynicism that many other films fall into. They show the cracks in our countries but leave those holes unfilled. Shin Godzilla doesn't do that; instead, it does what so many other films are afraid to do and embraces optimism. In the end, Godzilla - the titanic obstacle - is overcome, not by some action hero or larger creature, but by everyday people and politicians working tirelessly to save their homes. The movie, however, leaves with a warning. It ends with Godzilla dormant but not dead, his final mutation stopped halfway, which was designed to counter humanity. The final shot shows what Godzilla was becoming: the one thing that could destroy humanity was humanity itself.