May
30th
2024
Final status of broken wrist, and thoughts on color · 11:52pm Last Thursday
My wrist is solid. The latest X-ray reveals that my bone has grown entirely together, and the density is surprisingly high - in short, it is healed. This is slightly surprising in that the statistics for women my age (64) would suggest another 8 months to get the kind of bone density I currently have in the healed section where the bone was missing. I healed at a rate equivalent to a 20-30 year old. My best guess is that this is due to my lifestyle: I don't drink or smoke, I take supplements -
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Chatoyance · 106 views
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To be more specific, the horrors of Atomic War, which Japan was still recovering from. I mean, war is something that goes back far further in the evolutionary line, war is not purely the domain of humans. The way Chimpanzees, our closest genetic relatives, wage war upon one another. All the ruthlessness and thirst for dominance had already been laid in the earlier blueprints. A group of Chimpanzees is called a Troop, as in a group of soldiers. Not to mention their notoriously unpredictable behavior, that causes them to go from cute and silly to complete psychopaths.
And if you think it's only primates that are capable of cruelty for pleasure, go check out the Dolphin family, both Bottle Nosed and Orcas are some of the few species that kill and maim not for sustenance or to protect themselves and their kin.
Though I'm getting way off topic, but yeah. Big G is about the misuse of atomic power. There are a lot of creatures in Kaiju lore that seem to center around a theme of vengeance. It seems to be a primary motivator in Japanese Monsters of all sorts. From common everyday objects that get mistreated to the souls of the dead ( or even just individual dead ) killed in a certain way or by certain things.
I just watched Godzilla Minus One.
It is the best Godzilla movie I have ever seen, and I have seen all of them. Yes, the special effects are truly special, yes, the visuals are beyond amazing, yes, the music is perfect and right, yes, it is spectacular - more so than any such film ever has been in the past, ever.
But that is not why it was the best G film I have ever seen. It was just a great goddamn movie, and would have been, even if it hadn't been centered on the Big G. The acting was phenomenal, the story was excellent, and I genuinely cared about the characters and their relationships. Deeply. I felt for the people in this movie, and that made all the difference. There was nothing campy, or pretentious, or Super Sci-Fi about this film. This was humanity against Godzilla, which always means humanity against war and stupidity and the callous indifference of governments and power structures towards the common man. That, of course, is why Godzilla has endured - in Japan, Godzilla, at its best, has meaning. It isn't about a giant mutated lizard. At it's best, a Godzilla movie is always about the evil of war and the bastards who create nationalism and patriotism enough to manipulate humans into atrocity and violence.
In the US, Godzilla is always about a big lizard. Because 'Murica loves explosions and guns.
But in Japan, Godzilla is a metaphor - he is the kami of war, the kami of the destructive tendencies of Man. He is a god, little 'g', not just a monster.
Not always, of course - there was a period, in Japan, where the Big G was marketed to kiddies, and we got hilarity and Minya and beach-ball rock toss with kaiju prawn monsters and giant preying mantises. Bright 60's colors and camp. That happened. But, fun though that was, it was not ever Godzilla at his best.
There was a G movie where Godzilla was literally a kami - a spiritual god that was born from the angry souls of all the dead soldiers of WW2, on all sides, come to take revenge on the nation that started the war. There was a G movie where Godzilla was the physical manifestation of human greed and powermongering, punishing Man for his evils. There was a very silly G movie where Godzilla literally fought the kami of industrial pollution. Godzilla is a cypher, an open variable, into which all kinds of meanings can be inserted.
But the fundamental Godzilla always represents one thing: the horror and stupidity of war existing at all. The atrocity of it. The cruelty of it. The foolish arrogance and greed of humanity for waging war. The suffering of the common man under not just the Japanese government - though that is almost always a prime target of the message - but all nations who wage war. Godzilla has always been a subversive-as-hell anti war character. That is Godzilla's primary message, regardless of anything else: war is utterly evil, it crushes the lives of the ordinary person, and human greed, powermongering and nationalism are together to blame for it.
Godzilla Minus One magnifies that essential message to the utmost, all while offering human protagonists that demand to be cared about, and who - through collective cooperation - manage to make a difference against the Power that threatens to destroy them. The true Godzilla message, since the first G film, in 1954.
I should have to say that I mean the original Japanese version, not the Ameri-version that put in Raymond Burr to narrate the movie because the people selling it thought white people couldn't bear to have to watch a movie with asians in it. Not that movie. The original - which is very good, and you would be amazed to see it, compared to the Ameri-version. But I know I have to say it. I bet most American folks haven't ever seen the original 1954 Godzilla, without Burr. And that is sad, on many levels.
This new movie, though. God damn. Seriously, god fuckin' DAMN. I was bawling like a baby at the end, tears streaming down my snot-filled nose, crying my eyes out. No G-film ever made me do that. That's how good it is.
Godzilla Minus One is on Amazon Prime, now, for those that have it, and it will be on blu-ray soon, and of course... there are other ways, for the 'Tarantara' crowd. Which, of course, I know nothing at all about. Because I am the very model of a modern major unicorn.
Anyway - I recommend you give a watch to Godzilla Minus One. It is the first, truly great, G film. It is worth your time. I saw it subtitled, always best if you can read well. I have one family member who cannot, sadly, so... I understand.
BONUS:
I figure that some of you might not know what Godzilla is, or what his powers are. Allow me to help.
Godzilla is a mutated 'Godzillasaurus', a made-up species of semi-aquatic dinosaur that supposedly lived in the Jurassic. In general, one has survived, by whatever reason, for the past 650 million years, at the bottom of the sea (or on an isolated island). He - or his species - is already a mutant in that he has no programmed cellular 'death clock' - Godzilla is biologically immortal. That is why he could still be around since the age of the dinosaurs. But he can still be killed. At this stage.
During WW2, an atom bomb is tested - usually in the South Pacific - and guess who is sleeping in the ocean there? The intense radiation further mutates the poor little Godzillasaurus, and he goes X-Man. The Big G's mutant powers include Wolverine/Deadpool level regeneration from any and all wounds (cellular 'Factor G'), continued biological immortality so strong as to be essentially True Immortality, and the ability to generate energy inside his body from a constant fusion-based nuclear reaction (cold or hot, take your pick). Thanks to that, Godzilla doesn't have to eat food - though he is interested in snacking on any radioactive sources anywhere around - and he also has a really great trick.
The trick? He can throw up a phaser beam of nuclear fire from his guts, at will, and annihilate anything he aims his mouth at. Naturally, his very body is radioactive to the point that everything he touches or walks on is poisoned by radiation. Oh, Godzilla is nothing less than a walking, screaming atomic explosion, written in monster flesh - indestructible, unstoppable, a physical god of rage and death, stomping wherever he chooses. He is capricious - he may spare, or he may fry. But he is the King Of The Monsters because nothing, nothing, nothing can destroy him. If even a few specks of cells survive, he can regenerate entirely back, like a gigantic version of The Thing. There is one movie where he literally is... The Thing, mutating slowly to new forms, including the possibility of budding off countless humanoids to infiltrate and blend in. I am not even kidding. There have been a lot of incredibly cool G films.
Beyond that, he is unnaturally tough, durable, and strong. He can claw and stomp and bite and whack with his tail. He is at least 164 feet tall, and sometimes (a great deal) more. Nuclear weapons just feed him. Conventional weapons cannot even damage him (usually, depends on the movie). Sometimes he is the villain, sometimes he almost seems to protect the planet, and by accident, humanity as part of the package. Sometimes he is silly, or even lovable and cute, in certain movies. And sometimes he is truly horrifying.
That's Godzilla. The King Of The Monsters, and deservedly so. He's a wonderful invention.
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That made me laugh. So true! And thank you for that laugh!
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And I hear some sets have more pieces missing than others.
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