Long Live the King: A Review of 'Godzilla: King of the Monsters'

**Mild spoilers from recent Godzilla: King of the Monsters**

The title of the post comes from one of the characters in the recent Godzilla movie before she is vaporized by King Ghidorah. Her response comes after the movie establishes a number of plot points. First, Godzilla is the apex predator of the entire global ecosystem, and thus is Earth's rightful king of the monsters. Second, King Ghidorah is also an apex predator of the highest order, but he's alien and not from Earth. Thus, whereas Godzilla balances the Earth, and keeps the various "titans" (kaiju) in line, Ghidorah wants to annihilate the Earth and reshape it into his own dominion (presumably without humanity). The fight between Godzilla and Ghidorah is who will become the ruler of Earth, whether as protector/balancer or destroyer of Humanity.

Now, I went out to see this movie because I like a good B-movie involving kaiju/monsters, especially the Godzilla franchise. But what I found myself surprised to find in the movie was numerous monologues that pursued an explicitly theological angle. While underdeveloped, and used to world-build (though it's misplaced, and the movie takes itself way too seriously), the mytho-poesis of Godzilla represents the post-secular turn to back to theology as a means to solve our current problems. One of the main character remarks that all of her research depended upon a resourcement of ancient myths and legends to discover the "titan" monsters that exist. There's also constant reference to discovering the original or first gods. At one point, the main team discovers Atlantis, which gives a showing of ancient murals and statues depicting Godzilla as a being receiving worship and devotion from prostrate and kneeling humans. Early on in the film, one of the main characters remarks to a Senate panel that there are numerous cross-species symbiosis. The senator snorts that the man thinks Godzilla is a pet. The main character replies that we humans, not Godzilla, are the pet.

Thus, the movie promotes a Green theology of ecological balance and the governing hand of Nature (with a capital-N). There's a cosmic order that Nature has provided to create (?) a kind of divine like entity worthy of adoration and worship which protects the natural order (consciously or not, it's not clear). In someways, Godzilla is basically an Arian Christ, which one character basically identifies in stating that Godzilla fights for us and died for us. Of course, in this eco-theology humans are a part of the picture, and they contribute to their own salvation, and give Godzilla the shot in the arm necessary to defeat his adversary. But their contribution is mainly in the realm of putting their man (lizard) back on his feet so he can win the day. In the end, Godzilla restores his crown, becoming an erstwhile friend of humanity (though with a foreboding "for now...").

Godzilla is the original, and thus true, god that Mankind grasped in its fragmented myths and legends. There's even a dig at "western" ideas. One character remarks that only western myths believe in slaying dragons, whereas eastern myths saw dragons as benevolent allies, bestowing luck and fortune on the mortals who discovers them. And to add to the clearly Christological counter-claim of the movie, there's a scene where Ghidorah takes his "throne" as king of the kaiju, juxtaposed as reigning in glory above, and over, a cross. Christianity does not receive open criticism, but it appears as just a silly man-made myth, erected in hubris, ignorant of the truth of things, both of Ghidorah and of Godzilla.

All of this, to me, is not terribly surprising if you're paying attention. There's been a strong turn, in some sectors of American (maybe/probably western) society towards post-Christian/post-secular spirituality. What that means is a turn to myths, legends, and theology in the crafting of human sociality and polity. Of course, in the hands of academics of religious studies, the point is to latch onto, or craft, a theology that is liberative. Some have undertake this project through a liberal Christian or post-Christian lens. In Christian key, the Spirit (who directs this age) is leading mankind to greater heights, allowing one to cast down the entirety of Christian history, including even the Incarnation (integrated through an evolutionist metaphysics). In post-Christian key, God's death is the solution for mankind's constant and incessant idolatry. Of course these approaches are a bit old-hat, emerging from the 60s and 70s viz. Niebuhr, Tillich and the "Death of God" theologians. Newer strains try to see beyond the Christian horizon, whether in strict abandonment or in some synthesis. The former is clear enough in literal neo-paganism, but the latter involves the far more subtle perennialism that doesn't so much deny, but add. As popular evangelizer of Rome, bishop Robert Barron said, in an interview with Ben Shapiro (rabbinic Jew), that Catholicism was "the best way" for salvation. The result is the catholicity of Rome is subtly redefined to encompass all faiths, relativizing the concrete factors of Christian faith. Similarly, this approach is taken in more culturally left directions as well. Christianity is not denied, but transcended. 

The new Godzilla movie represents this similar imaginary's pivot. Christian symbolism and reference are still obliquely drawn upon so as to subvert them (or, at least, sublate them). The real gods is an amorphous (and quasi-personal) Nature or Mother Earth, not the Creator God. The Savior is a supra-human created monster type, not God made flesh. In someways, the comic book Superman represents a similar entity. And as the recent Batman Vs. Superman movie poorly executed: what shape does Human society take in relation to the Superman? Woefully underdeveloped, there were interesting questions raised in Batman's odd nightmare of the Superman regime, as well as in the graffiti on the Superman statue of "false god". But at the end of the day, the Creator (if we can call "Nature" that) is silent, maybe mindless, and it's up to us, allied to the semi-divine savior figure, to find a way out.

The interesting thing in the post-secular turn is how it rejects the strident confidence of positivistic atheism. Perhaps hard to understand, post-secular people are not necessarily theists. In fact, they might actually be atheists. But they recognize a need for cult, a need for an imaginary in play, to have constructive social and political advancement. Thus, there's an empathy for the theological debates throughout Western history, as a constitutive element of policy formation, even as it's decried as villainous. The fact of these debates makes sense, even if the content and the ruling regimes of power are to be deplored. This is a marked shift from the evangelist atheists, who look at the past as sheer wreckage, of non-sense, and utter absurdity. These polemicists can't comprehend how Byzantine emperors or English kings participated in doctrinal disputes, without accusing them of sheer Machiavellian manipulation. They will argue that these rulers, if they were smart, knew it was all nonsense, and were trying to control public opinion. The post-secular does not need to explain these facts away, only seeking to redirect them. Civic religion and public cult are important for people; let's just make sure we get it right, whether these gods are real or creatures of our collective fears and hopes. In someways, post-secularity can fence straddle like a Carl Jung and his archetypal forms. Jung was popularized through Joseph Campbell, and also saw a revival in the fad of Jordan Peterson. Not all who utilize this post-secular theology aim it for ostensibly conservative ends. But whatever the agenda is, these new theologians hope to tap into something to harness, that maps onto a collective experience, both historically and socio-genetically.

Godzilla won't (likely) become a cult figure, but the movie symbolism does reflect an imaginary shift. Godzilla is an old and true god, one that fits with an agenda concerned with saving the Earth and Humanity's life within it. Now, the vision might be relatively old school, as it's concerned with more objective elements of ecology, and not subjective elements of happiness and fulfillment. Godzilla was a creature of a Japanese quasi-secular paganism, that criticized the West, even as it depended on it, drawing the mind back to the spiritual past of Japan before the Meiji Restoration. It is almost always Tokyo or some major city that Godzilla ends up destroying, not the country-side, for it is the urbanites who've wrecked the natural balance. Even so, it reappears, and does so in the way it does, to make an argument for a particular kind of theological vision. The Earth is our home and we must be shaped by the true gods who will defend it.

This isn't to say the new Godzilla is doing anything unique (it's not), or that it will have substantial effect. But it gestures at the social pivoting towards the mystical and the mythopoetic. It embraces legend to speak the necessary language to convey sacred truths. In someways, movies can operate as a kind of dramaturgy, leading you through a winding adventure, bringing you up to enlightenment by spectator participation. These movies shape the imaginary, making the idea of a Green eco-theology of the old gods a reasonable conclusion from a world that sort of looks like ours and is under the same strains. We're to fear our own Godzilla rising up to balance the equation.