People
look at Godzilla at an exhibition in Yokohama, a suburb of Tokyo, to
promote the latest in a half-century of movies about the monster. (Toru
Yamanaka/Agence France-Presse via Getty Images)
KAWASAKI, Japan
— Even after 62 years and 31 ways of destroying cities, it seems
Japanese people still can’t get enough of Godzilla and his catastrophic
ways.
“This is my fifth time to see it,”
Iori Yanagi, a 30-something woman, said before a special screening of
the latest Godzilla movie, released here as “New” or “Real” Godzilla.
Since it opened at the end of July, the film — directed by Hideaki Anno, the renowned creator of “Evangelion,” an anime TV series — has crashed through the box office like, well, like a monster through a metropolis. The film has sold almost 5 million tickets since it was released in Japan and has made $70 million at the box office, making it the highest-grossing live-action film here this year. It will be distributed in the United States starting next month as “Godzilla Resurgence.”
“I
love Anno’s anime, especially ‘Evangelion,’ and I was moved to see how
he created this Godzilla movie,” said Yanagi, who recently attended an
“utterance allowed” screening of the film, during which members of the
audience were allowed to make as much noise as they wanted.
“Be
careful!” they yelled as the monster raged toward the Japanese capital.
“Prime minister, prime minister!” they shouted as the leader convened
emergency meetings of bureaucrats to deal with the threat. And, perhaps
in a uniquely Japanese moment (after all, this is a country where fax
machines are still in widespread use), they cheered as a convoy of
photocopiers was wheeled into a task-force center.
Elsewhere
in the movie house, people wore homemade Godzilla heads and waved
signs, while four men caused an eruption when they showed up in
hazardous-waste coveralls and gas masks. Everyone waved glow-sticks as
if at a rock concert.
