All roar and no bite

Godzilla is high on action but fails to
speak to us as great sci-fi should, says
Malcolm French
However, Avatar can also be seen as a
metaphor for the ongoing struggles for control
of the Internet, especially in the light of recent
revelations about companies exploiting private

P erhaps the only good thing about watching Gareth data and governments spying. The planet in Avatar
Edwards’ remake of Godzilla is it is a living network that the natives plug into through what
prompted/provoked me to speculate about what appear to be fibre-optic cables. In this metaphor, the violent
really makes sci-fi great. No invaders are the government, intent on disrupting the freedom of
doubt some ambitious movie executive, hearing of the Internet users. Cameron clearly presents an unfettered world-wide
original Godzilla’s box office success, saw the 1950s film, Web as the ideal: the invaders are sent packing and the main human
with its laughably unrealistic monster knocking down a protagonist fully integrates himself with the Web by becoming his
model of Tokyo, and thought, ‘We could do this better, avatar. However, like all the best sci-fi, the film also leaves some
make it more real, more impressive.’ Of course, in terms questions hanging. How real is the online world? Does the Web really
of special effects they have, but with its super CGI and connect and liberate people? Is there no role for external control?
explosions that blast/explode your senses for 90 minutes Unfortunately, the only question Godzilla left me with was: ‘Has anyone
this new Godzilla entirely misses the point. got any paracetamol?’
The original Japanese film, Gojira, was made in 1954
at the time of an accelerating arms race and America
1- F 4.- T 7.- T
testing nuclear weapons over the Pacific Ocean. In the
film, Godzilla was a product of these tests – a sea creature 2- T 5.- T 8.- F
mutated by radiation and roused from the deep to attack 3.T 6-F
Japan. Less than ten years after the devastation wreaked/
by atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the film
reflected the real, deep fears in Japan at the time. Edwards’
Godzilla refers back to these origins, but the film’s message
simply doesn’t carry the same weight. Few people these days
would place nuclear war high on their list of worries for
the world so it all becomes rather meaningless and merely
addresses teenagers’ apparently infinite desire for noise
and violence.
Great sci-fi speaks to the society of the day and for that
reason some films are resistant to updates. The Stepford
Wives is another case in point. The story tells of a vibrant
young professional woman, Joanna, who moves to the small
suburban town of Stepford with her husband. The place
is full of ‘perfect-looking’ women who do housework and
shopping and submit to their husbands’ wills. Joanna rebels
against this and, with two other recently-arrived friends,
sets up a women’s liberation group. As the plot unfolds, we
discover that the Stepford wives are in fact robots controlled
by the leader of a men’s social club, who threatens to kill
Joanna and her feminist friends. When the film came out in
the mid-70s, these tensions between the traditional image
of a wife, a growing feminist movement and an oppressive
male society were very real. Almost 40 years later when it
was remade, these stereotypes had all but disappeared and
so a chilling thriller became a lame/soso comedy.
Still, one story that has stood the test of time is James
Cameron’s Avatar. On its release, the film’s incredible
3D world created much hype/ but more importantly it
also resonated with the political situation of the day. The
depiction of humans invading a planet to exploit its natural
resources had obvious parallels with colonial exploitation
and came in the midst of the Iraq War, which many saw as
being motivated by a Western desire to control oil supplies.