I too am a fan of Radioactive Mutant Sea Lizard Sent To Punish Man’s Hubris, and his rival Lepedioptera Of Unusual Size and her friends Miniature Musical Twins.
I’m a dumb idiot who needed Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria to hit in the same month to realize Kaijus in Pacific Rim were a metaphor for climate change and hurricanes and, like, the movie isn’t even subtle about it
there’s a very long tradition in monster movies (and kaiju eiga if you wanna be specific) of monsters as allegory for natural disasters, pollution and climate change. Godzilla vs Hedorah is a really good example where the enemy is literally sentient pollution, and pacific rim does the same thing it did in taking widesweeping environmental issues and linking it DIRECTLY to the appearance of these monsters, both with the above examples and newt’s dialogue after he drifts with the kaiju brain and points out that climate change and co2 emissions means we practically terraformed our planet for these aliens to come BACK and take over. Monster movies are a LOT of different things and can be very silly and absurd but they can also be built around very serious and specific messages about the condition of our planet, and in many ways messages about human impact on the environment has been built into modern monster movies since the very beginning (looking at the impact the original ‘godzilla’ had on pop culture and monster movies the world over)(its also worth noting that this probably extends into many other monster films and franchises from many other countries that i havent seen)
I really, really want to see a movie about what happens after the monsters. What happens to the economy when WHOLE CITIES need to be rebuilt? Where do all the people who lived in those cities go? Who’s gonna rebuild all our national landmarks that are now in pieces? All those bits of monster lying around, where are we gonna put those? Did the monsters bring anything toxic or otherwise hazardous along with them? Are we sure the President was bitten in half, barbequed by flamethrower and eaten? Should we reach out to our enemies to coordinate relief efforts? Those weird dudes who’re starting to worship the dead monster bones, what should we do about them?
Basically what I’m saying is, I want the first five minutes of Pacific Rim, but I want it to be a two-hour movie.
