Let's Talk About Godzilla.

So, the trailer for the upcoming Godzilla flick from Legendary dropped... and it fills me with a sort of weird feeling: Hope. This movie might just be fucking brilliant.

The original Gojira is basically a horror movie. The Return of Godzilla is basically a horror movie. The first half-hour or so of Godzilla vs. Biollante has elements of a horror movie. In all of the other films featuring Godzilla made since 1954, the fear just isn't there- the gut-churning dread just doesn't come across. GMK tries, bless its pointed little head.

This trailer makes me think that I'm not alone in my assessment... Yes, Godzilla and the Mutos will be huge and will wreak havoc all over the place... but it won't be in the essentially science-fiction action way that the overwhelming majority of Godzilla films portray said havoc.

And I'm glad of that, because that sense of horror, of dread that dwarfs the ability of humanity, is, more than fire breath or indestructibility, what separates Goji from the bulk of his peers among big-time monsters- King Kong may have been scary, but his story was basically beauty and the beast. Even if he'd escaped New York, there was only so much damage he was going to do- half the time, the poor guy seems to just want to be left alone. The original Mothra was likewise scary, but her motives were simple enough, and the action of the film is driven by very human greed and hubris.

But Godzilla? A force of nature, capable of annihilating cities, and all without the comprehensibly human motives of Kong or Mothra. He's not even motivated by hunger like the ants from Them! He's not even generically "evil" like Ghidorah. He just is. And that, when done right, is friggin' terrifying.