In my most recent part of my What is Godzilla series, I mentioned how in the wake of Godzilla Minus One, people have been talking about the Godzilla franchise in ways that are, let's call it, uninformed, having authoritative takes on a series they are unfamiliar with or ignorant of. After Minus One, a small industry of video essays discussing the film popped up on Youtube and a lot of them are made by people who, to put it bluntly, only care about Godzilla now that Minus One has become the hot thing, and yet talk about the franchise like they know what they're talking about when they clearly don't. I already talked about James Rolfe and The Critical Drinker, and alluded to Chris Stuckmann, but while on Youtube the other day, I got recommended a video that might be the worst take on the Godzilla franchise of all time, a take that is so radioactively hot that I almost can't believe it exists. This post will not be very serious, but hopefully it will be fun to see just how wrong someone can get. And the usual is in order, I don't intend to harass the idiot in question and wouldn't encourage anyone else to harass them.
The video in question is titled; Godzilla Doesn't Work In America... and was uploaded by one Doktor Skipper on the 29th of January 2024, and in the video, Skipper discusses Godzilla in America. Unlike Skipper, I won't claim authority and expertise in an area I am ignorant in, I don't know who Doktor Skipper is and I've never watched any of his videos, I assume that his channel caters to the video essay side of Youtube, as he talks a lot about Hollywood and Disney, often with clickbaity thumbnails and titles, maybe it's also wrong of me to assume that his takes almost always full under the categories of either woefully misinformed or pointlessly inane, maybe I should "research the things I watch." The comment section under the video is a slaughterhouse with basically every commenter calling him out on his nonsense, and criticising and berating him for his complete lack of understanding of this franchise. We Godzilla fans can be an obsessive and overly passionate bunch, so it'd be easy to see the reaction as overblown, until you watch the video and see just how pathetic Doktor Skipper is in his commentary.
The bulk of the video consists of Skipper's commentaries on the original film, 2014 and Minus One and even here, there are problems that we'll get to, but I suppose we'll give him what little credit he might deserve. His commentary on 1954 and Minus One are, in isolation, not entirely terrible, though they are the most basic, by the numbers takes you've ever heard, so it is ironic of him to say the 2014 film has nothing meaningful to say when his commentaries on the 'good' Godzilla films are so unoriginal and tame. But for someone who admits to learning most of what he's learned about Godzilla from video essays on Youtube, it's hardly surprising that his own commentary on the films is so weak. The 2014 segment of his video is where things get more interesting, though not in a good way, as he claims the film is just US Army propaganda. This isn't a throw away statement either, he goes on a long rant about how the US Army funds Hollywood movies that portray them favourably or heroically to drive up recruitment. And for some reason he frames this as a uniquely American thing, despite talking about how Toho made propaganda for the Imperial Japanese during the War earlier in this video, which isn't the first time he contradicts himself. Then there's his take on the film's monsters, which is just bizarre. According to him, Godzilla is an American Patriot that nuked a Japanese threat that was forced out of hiding and attacked Hawaii, which I'm sure was a super clever take in his head, but one that doesn't even vaguely reflect the events of the film.
The Mutos are not an allegory for Japan, they're not even Japanese, they were found in the Philippines, and his framing of them as the vilified victims of the film is completely off; yeah, sure, they just wanted to breed, except the film establishes pretty clearly that them breeding would be apocalyptic, Godzilla's fight with them is framed as nature's balance being restored, as in the Mutos are a threat to balance, Ishiro Serizawa literally says this several times in the film. Meanwhile Skipper talks about how the US Army is positively portrayed in the film, and that they side with Godzilla as an American hero, never mind the fact that it's the Army's plan to nuke the three monsters which ends up making everything worse in the third act. Never mind the fact that the US Army tries and fails to stop Godzilla at the Golden Gate Bridge, after which point, and after the loss of a live nuke to the Mutos somewhere downtown, they finally decide to get out of the way and let Godzilla do what he came to do, with the understanding that when the Mutos are gone, Godzilla will leave. But his assessment that the Mutos are an allegory for Japan is what really gets me here. In what possible way are the Mutos representative of Japan, in what possible way is Godzilla representative of America. He harps on about collateral damage in San Fransisco in 2014, while also arguing that Godzilla loves America and isn't depicted attacking America, while showing footage of him standing over the ruins of Boston in King of the Monsters, while also saying that he doesn't care about China because of his battle with Kong in GVK.
And then, after crafting this beautifully half-baked interpretation that the 2014 film is US propaganda, he then calls it a safe interpretation with nothing to say, contradicting himself yet again. But his explanation of why 2014 doesn't work can be found in his analysis of the 1954 film, which is where we run into another problem. In this segment of the video, he talks about how Godzilla originally represented the horrors of nuclear war, later in the video, he discusses how the Japanese Government and the Imperial Army dragged the Japanese people into the War and brought untold suffering upon them. But then he explains that Godzilla needs the context of the bombings in order to work and when removed from that context, Godzilla loses his meaning. This is an unbelievably reductive line of argument when it comes to Godzilla, going back to my own commentary on Godzilla in my What is Godzilla series, the idea that Godzilla needs to be and can only be a villain is wrong. And the only reason this particular argument is being made now is Minus One, which made Godzilla a villain again, and gave a lot of people who know nothing about Godzilla the idea that he can only be a villain. Skipper is of this opinion too, but he goes a step further, arguing that America is the reason Godzilla became a hero, framing it as America warping and undermining the meaning of the character to sell toys, which is not only wrong, it's in bad faith.
Legendary Pictures and Tristar didn't make Godzilla a hero, Toho did, and the reason they did isn't to sell the films to America, but to keep up with the market in Japan. He says that Toho "spammed out" Godzilla films to make money, while showing a list of the films and the years they came out in, and since the video is so obnoxiously edited, you might miss that once again, Skipper is contradicting himself. They "Spammed out" Godzilla films, except for the seven year gap after Godzilla Raids Again, the nine year gap after Terror of Mechagodzilla, and the five year gap after The Return of Godzilla, he then follows this up with footage from GMK, a Millennium film, despite never once even mentioning the Heisei or Millennium series. This is not unique to Skipper, by the way, outsiders to the Godzilla series often have this dismissive attitude to the series after 1954, assuming that they were all crap and had nothing to say. But to then use footage from GMK while making the point that the Godzilla series at large is crap and meaningless is at the very least, uninformed. But this dismissal goes a bit further than others, like I said, he never mentions the Heisei or Millennium series', while using footage from them, while also claiming that the Godzilla films are "cheaply made cash-grabs" and "ninety-eight percent of them suck ass." But he refuses to go into any kind of detail about the history of the series between 1954 and 2014, skipping over all of it to get to his bad take on 2014 faster.
Dismissive isn't the word I would use in this case, I'd say he's talking absolute bullshit; in the video, he talks about Japan's habit of historical revisionism in media while not talking about GMK, a film he'll happily use footage from, or when making the point that the other Godzilla films are stupid, he uses a clip from The Return Of Godzilla, a film with very heavy anti-nuclear themes, and another film he just doesn't mention, probably because that would take research and effort and he can't be bothered for that, and while talking about Minus One, he uses clips from Shin Godzilla, another film he just completely fails to mention, and he even uses clips of Shin Godzilla while specifically talking about Minus One's Godzilla. You might think I'm getting a bit carried away with this one, surely a guy on Youtube having a stupid take on Godzilla hurts nobody, so why get so mad. Well here's the reason, "there's a big thing I need to address in this video, I kind of hate Godzilla if we're going to be honest." Doktor Skipper outright says in the video that he hates Godzilla, which completely kills any semblance of good faith, either from him or from the viewers; why should anything he has to say about Godzilla be considered in any way, what can he, an outsider with no respect or appreciation for this franchise, who can't even be bothered to do basic research, possibly say that is in anyway meaningful or worth listening to. And then he says that the reason he's making the video is because of Minus One, well no shit.
The one, single, only thing that Godzilla Minus One did wrong was make it cool to care about Godzilla and have takes on Godzilla, and morons like this guy are jumping on that bandwagon for clicks and clout. They never cared about Godzilla, they in fact hate Godzilla, they think its cheap, stupid rubbish and that the original and Minus One are the only ones that matter, and can't be bothered to do even the most basic research about the films in this franchise. And this makes all the factual errors in this abortion of a video so much more infuriating, with such claims as Godzilla being in the public domain, or Gojira being renamed and rebranded to Godzilla in Japan, or that Americans don't know that Godzilla is Japanese, or that Bernie spilled water on Mechagodzilla's motherboard in GVK, not the Whiskey his dead wife gave him and that he had on him for the entire film, or that Castle bravo destroyed the Lucky Dragon No.5 and killed her entire crew, or that America rebranded Godzilla as a hero instead of Toho. Or even the little things like saying that Oppenheimer came out in 2022, or that Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla was called Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla, or that ninety-eight percent of the films "suck ass" when two percent wouldn't even be one film. What about the aforementioned using of footage from films he doesn't even mention; Shin Godzilla, The Return of Godzilla, GMK, King Kong vs Godzilla, Godzilla vs Hedorah, all of these films have something to say, these films completely invalidate his entire argument, and so he just ignores them, even though he claims to have watched the Godzilla films after coming up with the idea for the video, even though he hates Godzilla, you're fucking lying, Skipper.
And the contradictions, the fucking contradictions; he only knows about Godzilla through its cultural impact, but Godzilla had no cultural impact, Godzilla 2014 is US Army propaganda and an allegory for America's victory in the Pacific War, but has nothing to say, Godzilla flattened Honolulu, San Francisco, Boston and Pensacola, and killed lots and lots of innocent Americans, but loves America and never attacks America, Godzilla's really popular and his identity is intrinsically linked to Japan, but no one knows he's Japanese, and Doktor Skipper has a big appreciation for Godzilla, but also hates Godzilla. And to cap off this turd, Skipper has the balls to tell his viewers to always research what they watch. Are you kidding. Are you seriously going to tell me to do my research after listening to you talk utter nonsense for nearly half an hour, after you claimed that Godzilla is public domain, after you dismissed and talked shit about how meaningless the Godzilla franchise is, while failing to even do the most basic research on any of said films. There is no excuse for not knowing that Godzilla is not public domain, There is no excuse for not knowing about the political themes and cultural impact of Shin Godzilla. There is no excuse for saying that nearly the entirety of the longest running film franchise in history is unimportant trash. There is no excuse for getting Shin Godzilla and Minus One confused with each other. There is no excuse for telling your viewers to do research when you can't even be bothered to do your own and will proudly sit here and make shit up about this franchise that you hate.
And while we're here, there is no excuse for the level of over-editing in this video, did you hand over editing to a coke addict or are you the kind of idiot that thinks fast talking, snarky attitude, memes and shitty jokes equals good content. It is also rather interesting that the video is so schizophrenically edited that you don't really have time to think about anything he is saying. In a little contradiction of my own, aspects of Skipper's take are really not that hot, the "Japanese Godzilla good, American Godzilla bad" take is one that's been made a hundred times over at this point, and like anything he could say about Minus One or the original film, it doesn't really mean anything anymore. When he makes a throw away joke about how we don't talk about 1998, he is, ironically enough, being safe with his take, repeating the standard line of these kinds of video assays; that the 1998 film is an abomination and that the original is the best one, two comments that don't mean anything to a Godzilla fan that already knows that, especially after you said that you hate Godzilla. If I could offer a different reading of the 2014 film, Godzilla doesn't represent America, but is instead depicted as both an unstoppable force of nature and a living god. Godzilla is a reminder to the human characters that ultimately, despite all their tanks and jets and nukes, they are still only human, they are weak and flawed, and there are things in the world that they will never be fully capable of understanding or controlling.
Meanwhile the Mutos do not represent Japan, but are instead depicted as the natural consequences of humanity trying to play god, a force woken up by human progress, and that humans thought that they had under control, right up until all their failsafes failed and it escaped, becoming an existential threat to the world that the true god of Earth then had to deal with. It is a film about the humbling of humanity, and if you want to make the case that this more universal message is less effective or more toothless than the original's anti-nuclear message, that's fine, I'm all ears, but Skipper doesn't take the time to really think about what he's saying and whether it makes sense, which would be less bad if he didn't call his motivations for making the video into question by outright saying he hates this franchise, and if his logic and research wasn't so pathetically poor. Meanwhile he outright says that Minus One is the reason he's making the video, and then spouts the safest take on Minus One that we've all heard a thousand times at this point, while also using footage from Shin Godzilla, which makes me wonder if he's even watched Minus One, and isn't simply trying to get a piece of that Minus One hype pie. And the confidence with which he says things that just aren't true, and the nonchalant way that he completely dismisses the rest of the franchise, GMK, The Return of Godzilla and Shin Godzilla "suck ass" and are "cheaply made cash-grabs." are they?
His entire premise that Godzilla doesn't work in America is flawed, it was the 2014 film that brought the Godzilla franchise back by being a five-hundred-million dollar hit, and Godzilla is now in the best place he's ever been in, he's more well known, more loved and more accessible than ever, thanks to America, regardless of how you feel about the Monsterverse, we have it to thank for the existence of Minus One. Godzilla fans aren't the kind of audience you can slip this past; they are passionate, obsessive and gatekeep something fierce, so when you, or anyone for that matter, comes along and thinks they know their shit about this franchise, don't be surprised when the fanbase turns on you, especially when you so brazenly out yourself as someone with no respect, no sincerity and nothing worth saying. This is what has happened to Skipper, just look through the comments on the video, the video is slowly racking up as many dislikes as it has likes, and video responses to it are popping up every other day, some of which aren't even proper responses, but just outright mockery of him. In fact the backlash has spilled over onto his newest video about Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III which, its worth pointing out, has come out remarkably fast when compared to his usual upload schedule. Now, is it wrong to harass content creators, yes, of course it is, has Skipper received any harassment, I don't know, I don't have Twitter and I'm not getting twitter just to find out, would I be surprised to learn that this harassment he's apparently receiving is just people calling out his shit take and allergy to research, not in the slightest, and would I take his word on anything again, after all the shit he spouted about Godzilla, no. Doktor Skipper is a trend chaser that jumped on the Minus One hype train for clicks and clout, something many others are guilty of, Skipper's only mistake was getting all of it wrong and admitting he doesn't even like Godzilla, though maybe he's not a soulless clout chaser, I guess I should research the things I watch.
Godzilla Minus One is the reason I made this video
Godzilla Minus One may be one of, if not the greatest Godzilla film ever made, it may have made an entire generation of new Godzilla fans, and I think Minus One's legacy will ultimately be very positive. But through no fault of its own, it appears to have attracted a new kind of fan, one that thinks they understand Godzilla because they watched one film and maybe did a quick google search, though I doubt Skipper even did that. Godzilla fans are a passionate, obsessive and protective lot, and you might say that gatekeeping is bad, who are we to keep out people who love the things we love just because they don't love it as obsessively as us. But I think the Godzilla fandom, and any fandom for that matter, has every right to gatekeep when dealing with fakers, clout chasers, liars and bad actors. And is it any wonder that Godzilla fans in particular are so protective, when it's the very mindset Skipper projects in this video; that Godzilla is worthless and meaningless, that has kept him from being embraced by the very people that are now embracing him only because it's cool now. I guess I'll end on the same note that Skipper ends on, always do your research, and I'll add that when you go kicking a hornets' nest, don't be surprised when you get stung, or perhaps a more appropriate analogy would be don't go tickling the sleeping dragon's tail, you might wake him up.
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