For someone as pedantic and desperate to be seen as intellectual as Doktor Skipper is, he certainly has a very childish view of movies. “Movie has American military? Movie must be propaganda! American people clap for Godzilla? That means Godzilla is hero who cares about America! Original movie doesn’t delve into Japanese war crimes? That means movie bad! American Godzilla doesn’t symbolize nuclear weapons and instead is about the relentless and unstoppable qualities of the natural world, against whom we are but leaves in the wind? American Godzilla means nothing!”

He very much sounds like a child in the throes of “look how smart and adult I am,” which is a sign of immaturity.

And his automatic stance of “American movie bad, big budget movie bad, foreign low-budget movie good” smacks of elitism. Do I think Godzilla Minus One is superior to Legendary’s? Yes, I do. Does that mean Legendary’s is bad, meaningless or fails in what it set out to do? No. I kinda suspect that along with his “oh yeah, baby, criticize the government!” perspective, he only likes Minus One because it uses the only symbolic value that he believes the character should have, and because it’s a low-budget foreign film. Because he seems like the kind of person that will only admit to liking films he thinks will make him look good.

Actually, the whining about America in general is kind of tiresome. He came into this project with a predetermined thesis (“America bad, America no can do Godzilla!”) and then warped the plots, characters and facts around it to support that thesis. Doesn’t make for very good analysis, does it? If I were a teacher and a kid turned this in, I’d give him a pretty bad grade.

And some of the blatant mistakes he makes make me wonder if he fast-forwarded through the movies or played on his phone during them. Because the flask in Godzilla Vs. Kong did not contain water, and that fact was stated IMMEDIATELY after it was emptied.

And there are so many claims he makes that are easily disproven with the slightest amount of research. Like claiming that Japan replaced “Gojira” with “Godzilla”… no, they didn’t. To my knowledge, all the Japanese films have called him Gojira. The English subtitles/dubs might call him “Godzilla,” but that’s just the translation and not indicative of what the Japanese call him. Even the hideous 1998 movie had a Japanese character calling him “Gojira”!

Or the idea that people don’t know Godzilla is Japanese, when he’s best known for stomping around Japan. Or the public domain thing. The fact that ONLY Legendary is making American Godzilla films shows that that is not true, even without looking it up. If Godzilla were public domain in the US, he would be in SO many movies.

And considering that he all but says the Japanese deserved what they got, it’s very sinister that he laughed when talking about the Lucky Dragon, and flippantly described Hiroshima and Nagasaki as “turning that bitch into Fallout 3.” Funny how he demands that the effects of the nuclear bombs be used as a metaphor in every Godzilla production, or be dismissed as empty and meaningless, and claims the original symbolism makes it impossible for Americans to depict the character… but can joke and sneer about the actual bombings themselves. It’s not a terribly good look.

He also seems to think that the depiction of a country without explicit condemnation of its sins or government is political propaganda. The American military in Godzilla 2014 is… not glorified at all. They are, like all humans, ineffectual against the Titans, and they’re hesitant and anxious about the potential apocalypse if they get it wrong. Only one member of the American military contributes anything to the conflict. And Godzilla is not helping the American military – he spent 98% of the movie IGNORING them, because they are not a threat to him. It just so happens that his goals coincide with those of the American military – they both want the Mutos dead. He’s indifferent to what we tiny squishy ants think. THAT is the whole point of the Titans.

Which makes it even more annoying that he misrepresents American Godzilla as some kind of patriotic symbol. No, he doesn’t care about America, and such an idea is never even suggested. He doesn’t care about any country. And he’s not even FROM America in it – he only comes to the US because he’s tracking one of the Mutos there. As soon as the Mutos are dead, he dusts himself off and trundles back into international waters.

Not to mention “We know he’s American propaganda because he messed up a city in China!” despite the fact that he leveled an American city for the same in-story reason at the beginning of the movie. And Boston. And San Francisco. If he was a symbol of America only there to protect America alone, why would he have destroyed three major American cities, showing zero concern or remorse? Riiight, it doesn’t make sense.

Also, the Mutos weren’t Japanese. They were from the Philippines. One of them cocooned in Japan, but one of them also cocooned in Nevada.

It’s also notable that he leaves out entire ERAS of Godzilla’s reign, where the stories became darker, grittier, and did address the events of World War II. Or those very dark and gritty anime films. Instead he posits that it started dark and gritty, every movie after it was dumb and cartoony kids’ fodder, and then it became dark and gritty again recently. But that would involve watching the movies instead of playing them in the background while he romps through Fortnite.

I’m also not sure where he got this idea that the American public has ignored Godzilla Minus One because it’s too deep and smart for them. It topped the US box office for a week! That doesn’t happen to many foreign-language films! But it was #1 for a week, before being dethroned by another complex and beautiful Japanese movie. Its run was originally supposed to be very brief, but the rave reviews and popularity caused them to extend the run!

He also doesn’t seem to be aware that he himself is what is wrong with a lot of fandoms today – something becomes popular, and a lot of tourists who don’t actually like the property want to come in and change it into what THEY think it should be, rather than what it is. See Rings of Power and its Twitter fanbase of “Tolkien fans.” Or they just show up to complain about it, as if their viewpoints have importance and the actual fans should bow. I’m not really a Godzilla fan. But I don’t demand that all Godzilla movies be revamped to fit my sensibilities or what I like, without experimenting with other themes or metaphors or plots.

You can really see his film analysis perspective in how he claims the Mutos were innocents “unfairly vilified” by an empty simplistic stories, when it is literally a fight for survival. The Mutos are threatening to overrun the earth with hundreds of their spawn, and it is literally a matter of killing them or dying ourselves. Also, the movie does show empathy towards the Mutos – when the eggs are destroyed, the camera lingers on the female Muto grieving, and then flying into a rage.

I also find it amusing that he praises Godzilla Minus One’s depiction of Godzilla as a “natural disaster”… when that is literally how he is depicted in the Legendary films. He’s depicted as a dominant force of the natural world that cannot be stopped by anything less than King Ghidorah, above the machinations of mere mortals. He is indifferent to humans and our struggles, because he is a force of inhuman power. The films effectively state this is what the Titans are, and he is the one who stands above them all… so, yeah, he is as much a natural disaster as a hurricane or an earthquake.

He also doesn’t seem to realize that Godzilla Minus One does not have a $15 million dollar budget (inaccurate, because it was actually more like $10 million or $12 million) because it dares to criticize the American military… which it doesn’t do. It has that budget because it’s a smaller production from another country where budgets are drastically lower in general. If it depicted the American military in a positive light rather than mostly ignoring them, it would not have a $160 million budget.

“What is art?” Art is not just one thing, or represented by only one perspective or goal. It’s like saying “what is food?” and then claiming that a cheeseburger cannot be considered food because it isn’t a finely-marbled steak festooned with truffle oil.

And hey, Doktor Skipper? It’s “new-cleer.” Not “nuke-u-ler.”