(Written a few weeks ago, cross posted now because I'm lazy)

Let’s be honest: much of the excitement surrounding the new Godzilla film is pinned to the hope that it will help us forget about the last Hollywood Godzilla film, the Roland Emmerich late 90s disaster that remains a towering embarrassment nearly two decades later. (Do not, however, confuse “bad movie” with “unsuccessful one”. Between foreign box office, distribution rights, broadcast rights, merchandising deals and DVD sales, that movie more than made its pile back.)

And there are good reasons to hate that movie: It’s poorly written, it rips off Jurassic Park, it goes for cheap gags, and it gives us a Godzilla that looks like the unholy love child of an iguana and Pete Rose.

(Seriously. Check the chin.)

But, that’s not the real sin of the film. The reason it’s unforgivable i this: It makes Godzilla play hide and seek. At multiple points, the big G ducks and runs and hides among the skyscrapers of New York, and that’s the problem.
Godzilla, you see, doesn’t run. Godzilla doesn’t hide. And most of all, Godzilla doesn’t go wandering through buildings that dwarf him enough that he can hide among them.

Not our Godzilla, anyway.

Caveat here: I am not a Godzilla fanatic, nor am I a purist. I’m just a guy who grew up with Creature Double Feature on local UHF stations on Saturdays, and the God-awful Godzilla cartoon with Gadzooky, and MST3K taking the piss out of every Godzilla moment ever.

But.

My experience, give or take some Blue Oyster Cult live albums, is not unique. Sad as it is to say, the American love for Godzilla generally did not come from his status as a metaphor for nuclear devastation and the horrors of Hiroshima. No, we - and by we I mean my generation and the ones who came after us whom we forced to sit down and watch “Godzilla Vs. The Smog Monster” - fell in love with Godzilla because to us he represented something else: the loved monster we all thought we were.
I mean, sure, the first time out he’s a bad guy, but in most of the classic rubber suit romps, he was pretty much a good guy. He got to show up, break tons of stuff, smash whatever he wanted, and everybody cheered him anyway because he eventually put the really bad monster down.

That’s us. That’s Max in Where the Wild Things Are, the senseless destroyer who still wants to be loved and to do the right thing, if only we could. I’m sure Godzilla would step over those power lines if he could, but he can’t, and then he makes a mess and gets embarrassed and things get worse, and….

You get the idea. He’s destruction paired with forgiveness, a license to smash paired with the knowledge that we’re needed and wanted. And Emmerich’s Godzilla was none of those things. It smashed very little of New York - the Army did most of the dirty work. It wasn’t a titan towering over the city it threatened - it was short enough to hide behind skyscrapers. And it wasn’t a carefree, happy-go-lucky destroyer whose only focus was on stepping on things. It was a parent, the ultimate buzzkill for what is ultimately a six-year-old’s fantasy.

That’s part of why I’m cautiously optimistic for the new film, directed by Gareth Edwards. And it’s part of the reason I worry, because all of the trailers so far have seemed Very, Very Serious, and part of the power of Godzilla is that kicking over power lines and stepping on buildings is, in its own way, fun. A damaged Vegas version of the Statue of Liberty looking like she’s about to cry? Less fun.

Really, the best western Godzilla movie of recent memory is Lilo and Stitch. It makes the comparison explicit at one point, when Lilo asks Stitch if he can do something constructive, and he responds by quickly building a mock San Francisco and then rampaging through it. In a very real sense, Stitch is Godzilla, the rampaging alien of unimaginable power and destructive capability who nonetheless reins itself in for the sake of a kid and a tiny sliver of belonging. It’s the uncontrolled force of destruction that means well (generally) but screws things up, resents being called on it but still wants to be loved. It’s the joyful destroyer, in or out of its Elvis outfit, but it always wants to be wanted in the end.

So if we’re lucky, we’ll get a Godzilla that carries off an impossible feat: it stands up to the excellent cast Edwards has assembled, and it doesn’t loose sight of why Western audiences fell in love with Godzilla, the 300-foot six year old, in the first place.