Transcript Version - Godzilla Vs Megaguirus: Strengths, Stupidities, And Sophistry PART ONE

 

 

By Joe Gibson

 

Godzilla vs Megaguirus has an interesting place in the discourse surrounding the Godzilla series, underappreciated and overshadowed by both what came before and after. This is the second film of the Millennium series, produced as a response to Tristar’s 1998 Godzilla, and Godzilla vs Megaguirus is actually the only Millennium Era film to actually come out in 2000. However, if someone were to say Godzilla 2000 or Godzilla 2000: Millennium, they would be referring to the previous film titled such from 1999. Godzilla 2000 overwrites Godzilla vs Megaguirus in that one simple way, but also the Godzilla suit in both films is functionally the same one, with a more exaggerated color scheme on the Megaguirus suit. When discussing these suits, MireGoji summarizes both itself and the slightly adjusted GiraGoji. Within the Godzilla series, Godzilla vs Megaguirus represents director Masaaki Tezuka’s first attempt, but fans remember a lot more fondly his later attempt, Millennium series films 4 and 5, fans focusing on how he improved tropes from Vs Megaguirus for Against Mechagodzilla. Megaguirus, herself, is a popular monster, but the discourse often surrounds the potential of bringing her back to fight Rodan as her base form the Meganulon originated in Rodan’s first film. I cannot say with certainty that few people care about the film, but few people focus solely on the film itself when discussing it in a way I find interesting.

 

Because of this, I find it prudent to test out a new format, this Triple S review, on this film in particular. The title of this article invokes Strengths, Stupidities and Sophistry, and, so, my goal is to review the movie per my usual standards and then experiment with some literary criticism to overwrite the film’s meaning myself as is so uniquely popular to do with this Godzilla film.

 

 

I need to lay out a couple terms to clarify what I am trying to achieve with this article before I can get too deep into it. A review is a very odd thing to be as poorly defined as it is within modern discourse. At its most basic, I am engaging with a text to test if it functions properly, such as a peer review for an argumentative essay. But at its most extreme, it can get quite messy.

 

When we review a film, we are trying to encapsulate the entirety of it, its characters, plot, theme work, shot composition, soundtrack, special effects, symbolism, etc, into a single explanation of a score or rating. For someone as young and inexperienced as I am, this is difficult to do effectively without a lot of time and space.

I have experimented with different formats to do this; an article that leads with the conclusions and brings in textual evidence to serve the argument is shorter, sweeter, simpler and always reads (to me anyway) as a stronger and better organized rhetorical appeal. That said, it is both substantially harder and a little more dishonest to write that way. I end up forcing the art into a direction I set instead of analyzing its aspects as they come about naturally. The other strategy I have tried is to recap the text in as great of detail as necessary, putting special emphasis on the most important aspects to the case I am trying to build for the eventual conclusion. Depending on how meticulous each essay is, I am basically participating in a close read when I do this, and I find that to be a better form for a review to take than most of the alternatives.

 

I do not want to name names since they almost exclusively have larger audiences than I do and still do make good points with the format and framework adopted, but the general trends I see with reviewing this movie is that the negative aspects of the film and an overall disdain for it color their interpretation. 

Few people tackle the entire movie with each scene, subplot, flourish and blemish getting its own consideration (and even I have some difficulty doing so). Though I am less qualified than these other commentators, that is what I try to do, truly view a movie again to chart the strengths and weaknesses of the entire movie to hopefully feel confident in an argument about the overall quality that can prompt a score out of 10 and also a discussion that better represents the art going forward. Though I focus on the Strengths and Stupidities, I cannot merely balance them. That would be more disingenuous, as it requires me to pretend that both are equally valid and prevalent. Though every movie is a mix between Strengths and Stupidities, some films genuinely are more stupid than good or more impressive than idiotic, so my approach has to account for that. That feels like enough preamble though, and this essay is difficult enough without adding further goals, so let us just begin with the review section.

 

Strengths and Stupidities

 

 

This film begins with a broadcast from Nichei News, explaining that in 1954, Godzilla attacked Japan. However, in this continuity, the creature in 1954 was in his spikier green Giragoji look and did not die. That is the general understanding of the differences between this universe and the standard Godzilla timelines, but upon a rewatch, I am not exactly sure that is what this is saying. Likely, this is due to the wonkiness of the translation, but the newscaster says that Godzilla “again” attacked Japan, brought "back to life" by the advancement and threat of nuclear weaponry. The monologue does not explicitly reference any previous attack from Godzilla, but it also might not preclude the actual 54 events we are used to if the Giragoji design is meant to be a regenerated 54 Godzilla in a similar vein to GMK’s Godzilla. The sloppiness of the exposition in this movie is a major weakness, so I want to emphasize it appropriately. But also, perhaps more importantly, this exercise is to look very closely at this film and see what it is trying to say, not what we expect to see. The organic unity of this story is what will legitimize it, and that sentiment will guide us far later on, so let’s get back into the film.

 

The film switches to a nondiegetic narrator explaining that Godzilla attacked Japan’s first nuclear power plant in 1966, so they replaced nuclear with renewable energy sources. This narration includes other journalists on the field reporting the news as it happens. In 1996, the government established the Bureau of Science and Technology, and this organization will be dominant in the film, employing the main cast and developing tools for the G-Graspers. The first diegetic dialogue from a named character starts with the words “As you all know,” and that is the third example of this sloppy exposition as Motohiko Sugiura, the man who is going to go on to drive the entire plot is first written as a plot function to catch the audience up on a plot point the narrator just explained in detail. In the actual context of the scene, it makes sense as a cliche for Sugiura to say on his podium to reassure the public about their new plasma energy, but there are better ways to write that, and the scene itself is unnecessary as it is redundant and wastes time getting to Kiriko Tsujimori and the inciting incident of her journey.

 

The narrator trails off and introduces us to Kiriko Tsujimori in the middle of a defense force operation to stop an attacking Godzilla. Many commentators have criticized these characters using mere bazookas against Godzilla as incredibly stupid, and, in the past, I have defended this plot point with the argument that this impotent effort in 1996 is meant to contrast the BST and G-Graspers’ tech in 2001. (Also, these bazookas are actually the same type of recoilless rifle that Goro Gondo used against Godzilla to fan acclaim in Godzilla vs Biollante.) Two things can be true however, and this is not exactly an unimportant cul-de-sac of a scene; it will serve as the inciting incident and motivation for our heroine, and it is the tragedy that will endear her revenge quest to us, a revenge that the film lets her achieve even when later themes would indicate she should not. So, a very important scene to get right. Because of our lead's takeaway of this mission, there is a theme here about the utter powerlessness of humanity against Godzilla and also about the importance of process. Tsujimori hesitates to respond to her commanding officer, stares at Godzilla in fear, wastes her shot on Godzilla’s neck instead of his legs to fell him, stays in position too long so her CO has to evacuate her, and finally her CO gives his life to save her from falling rubble. She retrieves his dog tag and fires his bazooka on Godzilla. Her resolution in this film will include a very contentious decision, but the idea here is that while their weaponry was insufficient to win, she specifically made a mistake and thinks she needs to take on attributes of her CO, including the guilt and shame for his death in order to win the day.

 

On a technical level, this scene is very good. The Godzilla suit is gorgeous, the dark lighting and low angles make him even more imposing, and the miniatures and composite shots are sufficient for the budget. Some shots include an orange glow that could be the result of his destruction or serve as foreshadowing for the manner in which the plasma energy summons Godzilla, an aspect of the film that is sorely lacking if we just focus on the script as I am prone to. Finally, Michiru Oshima’s score for this movie is incredible and augments every scene of Godzilla and the Meganula.

 

 

Finally, we get into the main bit of the story in 2001 as Kiriko, now with the G-Graspers and wearing sunglasses, tries to recruit inventor magician Hajime Kudo into the fight against Godzilla. As he performs a trick using robots to mix ingredients under a microwave shaped like a bowl (just go with it, it actually makes more sense than the bazookas in context), Tsujimori immediately guesses the solution and then proves it. I believe this is here to immediately contrast her more timid nature and inform us more about what she believes the ideal type of leader would do, how she is romanticizing her deceased commanding officer. This type of plot point actually happens three times in Attack on Titan, so I do not have to give any specific spoilers, but the idea of a character losing an authority figure or friend and then trying to act like them in a way that ultimately tells us more about the surviving character is a really interesting plot point when done right, and it is the main difference between Tsujimori and the later evolutions of her archetype Akane Yashiro and Koichi Shikishima. For that reason, further discussion of Akane and Shikishima is mostly irrelevant, as, outside of the obvious posturing in the story and a couple key scenes, they are actually very different types of characters. However, again, you only realize this difference when you let go of the noise and discourse and just focus on the film, which can be done responsibly and irresponsibly as I hope to demonstrate both in this article (though this transcript version will be two parts).

 

Tsujimori and Kudo disagree about explaining the trick to the nearby kids, as the kids leave the building in response, but Tsujimori justifies it, saying that the kids are old enough to know the truth, and she will later on be able to have a healthy friendship with another child, so it is merely a matter of perspective, not a trait of alienating children on her part. I wonder how old she thinks is old enough to know the truth. These were actual children, but this new stage of her life is only 5 years old, younger than they appeared to be. She takes Kudo to the Self Defense Corps Shibaura Base, and he criticizes the look of the warehouse turned G-Grasper headquarters. Kiriko explains that even though, in theory, Godzilla only responds to energy leaks, the only way to be sure they are safe “would be to eliminate Godzilla once and for all.” It is worth mentioning at this point that the subtitle for the film is The G Annihilation Strategy and that Tsujimori, despite acting like the mentor character bringing Kudo into the fight, is actually the protagonist, but this is again because she is acting like what she thinks her CO was like. Still, he talked of saving lives, and she talks of eliminating Godzilla. Keep this in mind for when she detonates a highly dangerous superweapon in public to destroy Godzilla at the end of the movie.

 

As she explains, different sections exist in the workforce of their fight; the first searches for Godzilla, the second studies his behavior, the third handles statistics for evacuation scenarios, and the combat section are the G-Graspers. Tsujimori introduces the small team she leads on the G-Graspers: Makoto Nikura, Kazuo Mima, Seiichi Hosono, and Tomoharu Okumura. Our last main character, Professor Yoshizawa, has a preexisting connection to Kudo, having taught his high school physics class. This is a lot to cover in just a few minutes, and I will pose the question of why the film allowed this exposition to play out in dialogue between characters with complicated yet understandable relationships to each other, when so much else was left up to dueling narration between newscasts and a real narrator. I am not claiming one is better than the other, just that this film is not purposeful with how it delivers exposition to the audience. People would not criticize Tsujimori’s tragic backstory as much if we did not see the types of weapons they were trying to use, and how irresponsibly everybody used them. Similarly, the film has barely even hinted so far that plasma energy is anything less than the magical clean energy source Sugiura told us it was, so the later plot points concerning Godzilla and the illegal plasma energy are going to seem to come out of nowhere.

 

Yoshizawa now asks Kudo to join them, and his flippant response about not wanting to die young brings still images of Yoshizawa’s own tragic backstory with Godzilla to her mind. She lost her team before and has similar trauma to Tsujimori, just that she was the one in charge, not cosplaying as her superior now. And this is what I was talking about with how the film truncates some things and lets others play out dramatically. The film effectively communicates Yoshizawa’s grief without showing me a contrived setup to distract from it. It also works to characterize Yoshizawa, since we just saw her flashback, but she cannot bear to remember it as more than a series of still images, so that is all we get to see. Kudo apologizes, and she states her desire to prevent such tragedies from ever happening again with a plasma black hole gun. Let us table the obvious stupidity for one second.

 

At this point in history, Godzilla feeds on plasma energy. The film is a bit half-hearted as to whether or not an energy leak is required to summon Godzilla because that was the coverup response, and it certainly wasn’t the case for the nuclear power plant attack in 1966. Plasma is a symbol of caution, at best, and a bad idea masquerading as a viable replacement at worst. In other thematic considerations, an ever-expanding void that swallows Godzilla fired from a gun by Tsujimori is actually an excellent visual metaphor for her all-consuming grief. The issue is that it is Yoshizawa’s idea and will be Kudo’s invention. And now we can talk about how stupid it is. A black hole is obviously one of the most dangerous cosmic events, quite literally uncontrollable destruction. Miniaturizing the black hole does not fix the problem, and the logical leap from trying bazookas to using a black hole is a chasm in the plot, especially as there is no hint of satire here.

 

 

Kudo, as our established super genius, sees no issue with the plan, and his later Deus ex Machina levels of plot importance and technical prowess means he again is not the subject of satire. Somehow, working with black holes is enough to resolve Kudo’s “Refusal of the Call.” Again, that does not really matter, as the Hero’s Journey is Tsujimori’s, but it is interesting nonetheless.

 

Now, we jump three months into the future, and insect obsessed child Jun Hayasaka enters the movie for complicated reasons. We need him here to progress the plot and also humanize Tsujimori. The movie does not need him through the entire runtime though, so he will abruptly disappear eventually. He tries to enter the cordoned off Dimension Tide testing zone because he is an easily impressed distractible child and, more importantly, to me anyway, he looks old enough to know the truth. (I say that partially because his knowledge of the Meganula is on par with or possibly better than that of the scientist our heroes bring in to replace him, because, unlike the scientist, Jun will directly identify the extinct Meganula out of any of the thousands of types of insects he knows.)

 

In a conversation between Sugiura and Yoshizawa, we learn that the Dimension Tide black hole is necessary because they do not want to make the same mistake again and must make sure no trace of him remains, so this feels like the Oxygen Destroyer did happen in the universe, but he grew back within the same year. That would explain the escalation, and, crap, that would have been a good Cult Film Curiosities video idea. I won’t actually be able to use that for the Sophistry part of the essay for reasons you’ll eventually see, but uh, let me know in the comments if you want that Cult Film Curiosity “What Really Happened to Giragoji in 1954?”.

 

Once again, the film associates Yoshizawa with Dimension Tide even though the subtext only really matches Tsujimori, and she launches a miniature black hole at an abandoned building. The test works as intended, only it opens up a wormhole in the place of the building. The wormhole dissipates for some reason, but it’ll be back soon to facilitate some plot points. Wormholes are an odd scientific topic that I understand even less than I do black holes, but as far as I know, a wormhole needs to connect between two points of spacetime, insinuating a subject that has been in both places at once. Again, it is possible I am wrong about this, but this may be a major contrivance for Megaguirus’ egg to make it through the wormhole, and it is at least a small contrivance that the wormhole appeared to close for everybody except Jun later.

 

An agent catches Jun, and Tsujimori tries to handle the situation, first by taking off her sunglasses and then crouching down to his level. If my analysis of her taking on the role of her CO is correct, then this is her relinquishing that identity for a moment, showing Jun her eyes that we, the audience, have not seen since 1996. She speaks more softly, and, in opposition to her previous sunglasses laden attitude, she says that he should not tell anybody else about what he saw, specifically his parents who would definitely be old enough to know. She picks up his insect display and leaves, putting back on her sunglasses. This connection between the humanity in the jaded, ashamed veteran and the innocence of a young child is better handled in Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla, but you can see many of the same building blocks in a different but equally interesting package with Masaaki Tezuka’s first attempt here. I will continue to point out the presence or lack of sunglasses or military equipment as masks, as it pertains to this idea, sometimes shakily, but always at least a little bit.

 

Jun sees a Meganula fly past his window, and he returns to the testing site, where the wormhole has reopened so that the Meganula could fly through, lay an egg and fly back. Once again, the darkness, camera angles (higher up this time to emphasize the small stature of Jun) and the soundtrack show off the darker horror movie tone this movie will dip its toe into soon. A small fog on the ground surrounding the egg makes the scene somewhat dreamlike. Jun taking the egg back to Shibuya is a massive mistake, but the far larger one is disposing of the egg in the sewers. This one action will result in a flood that consumes the entire city. As it stands, this feels arbitrary too, but it fits the motif of a small action, the grief for one man that consumes Kiriko and a gun that can consume Godzilla. Once again, the film does not associate it with Tsujimori until later.

 

At this point, Kudo visits Tsujimori while she is working out with her platoon members. Trying to flirt, he diminishes her pursuit but then gives her Chekov’s micro transmitter that she can use to ask for his help. He strolls over to her personal effects and picks up her CO’s dog tag; we learn his name is Miyagawa. She snatches it back and storms off. Now, in this scene, for practical reasons, she was not wearing the sunglasses, and she also was not warm to Kudo, mainly because he insulted her discipline and then implied he could save her. But, as soon as she grabs the dog tags, she composes herself and tests off his micro transmitter with a dead shot on a large weight across the room, basically winning the phallic measuring contest, and that only makes sense because she is embodying her dead CO, a man. For this project, I sort of married myself to the imagery of clothing as symbols, but I would ask you upon a rewatch to look out for her hair as well as the other symbols, how rigid in her beliefs and process she is when it is tied up and what other emotions she shows when it is done.

 

Deep below Shibuya, the egg breaks off into multiple, and this is as good a time as any to explain the lifecycle of these beasts. So, Meganulon is an insect that originated in the original Rodan film, sort of a bait and switch monster that attacks the cast before we realize that the true threat is Rodan, who feasts on the Meganulon. In this film, Meganulon is what we will call the nymph or larval form of the creature, and, once it sprouts wings and flies, it is the dragonfly Meganula. Megaguirus is their queen, who probably would be special on her own in the past, but she bears reptilian facial features because Godzilla’s DNA and energy winds up inside of her. Jun sees the initial sewer overflow and immediately recognizes his mistake. This is a sort of Telltale Heart situation, but Jun’s mistake has not killed anybody…yet.

 

 

 So anyway, two city ordinance workers also spot the flooding, and a Meganulon perches on the wall above them. In Hitchcockian suspense, the two workers are talking about their job, and nobody cares because there is a violent murderous bug above them that they haven’t noticed yet. It starts to move, and then we meet a couple out on the town nearby. The man sits, smoking, and the soundtrack kicks into high gear with the shrill string noises that accompany the Meganulon as it creeps closer. The movie even puts us in Meganulon’s perspective for part of the kill, because there is a very effective horror movie somewhere in here. The girlfriend is next, and much of it is offscreen. Following the kill, the Meganulon sprouts wings and becomes a Meganula, leaving its original skin behind.

 

In the past, I have likened that scene to the hospital scene in Spider-Man 2, because it is the same kind of idea. This superhero movie suddenly became an Evil Dead film for a few minutes just because the director wanted it that way, and almost everyone agrees that was the right choice. What makes it strange here is that I cannot find any evidence that Tezuka directed any horror films, and he served as assistant director mainly on Toho kaiju films, samurai films, and political crime dramas. One of the films he was assistant director on, in particular, was Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla II, which could inform the similarly confused morality that we’ll get into later, but I have no idea why he directed the film this way, especially as it was his first directorial feature and his later Kiryu duology does not include this same talent for horror on display.

 

A guilty Jun meets with Tsujimori, who again has taken off her glasses to address the child. She takes full responsibility for the tragedy, claiming that the test must have mutated a nearby insect. Because Jun will leave the movie very soon, we do not get as much to follow up on this as in Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla, but Tsujimori is able to try and absolve Jun of the blame in a way she is not willing to do for herself in either personality. Still, Jun then shares his knowledge of the Meganula life cycle.

 

The G-Graspers discover through their sensors that near the Ogasawara islands, Godzilla is emitting heat rapidly and strangely against an enemy, which turns out to be a Meganula, and the soundtrack gives a sneak peak of its evolved version of the Meganulon theme that adds a vibrato and dissonance to the downward violin strokes. The G-Graspers take off in the Gx-813 Fighter Griffon ship, and this is probably the best time to talk about the film’s advanced “present day” technology. I refuse to believe that the monorail and the Griffon are plasma powered, because I noticed nothing in the film to indicate such, and the emissions should summon Godzilla wherever they go. Still, plasma power is the easy answer for the futurism on display, and there still is plasma power tied into industry, underground as it is, in this movie.

 

This is an abrupt stopping point, but I will have the video version of this essay debut alongside this post, updating this paragraph with a link, and, if you would prefer to finish this review in print, the second part of this essay will go up on this blog in a couple days.

Next Time: The Thrilling Conclusion

 

Part 3: Godzilla's Anime Trilogy - Attack On Titan On PCP - Transcript Version

 

By Joe Gibson

 

The following is the third part part of the transcript of a recent video on Plan9Crunch’s YouTube page that you can watch here: Godzilla's Anime Trilogy: Attack On Titan On PCP

You can find the first two parts of this transcript edition through following these links:

Plan 9 Crunch: All About Cult Films: Godzilla’s Anime Trilogy: Attack On Titan On PCP, Part One

Plan 9 Crunch: All About Cult Films: Part 2: Godzilla's Anime Trilogy - Attack On Titan On PCP - Transcript Version

Why I feel the way I do about this trilogy will become clear with the final installment, what all of this was building to; officially known as Godzilla The Planet Eater, for this exercise, let’s call it…

 

GODZILLA: The Pill Eater

 

The film opens with Metphies confessing to the audience that the Exif have been watching humans since before Godzilla even appeared, far before in fact, before the dawn of civilization. His conclusion is that religion does not actually work to keep humans in check, but they seek a leader that can carry out God’s message and embody the culture of the era. This reframes the trilogy’s events thus far because it explains why Metphies likes Haruo so much and helped him so much. Just put a pin in this though; there’s a lot more to say once Haruo finds out.

 

Godzilla is sleeping once more after expending so much energy in the last battle. It is 4 minutes into the movie; let’s play a game and see how long it takes him to wake up this time. As Martin watches the sleeping Godzilla, he speculates instead of humans’ mistakes birthing Godzilla, maybe humans were the opening act for Godzilla as the ultimate life form. As Martin is pretty much always right, we must accept this going forward. The idea kind of makes sense; that is what certain contingents of people believe about dinosaurs and humans. If we examine this in the context of the larger mythology of the trilogy, I wonder why the Hoututa exist then? That is a case of nature recreating humans but faster, stronger, smarter and more psychically aware, an adaptation that came after Godzilla and can live in symbiosis with him.

 

Because of the events of the previous film, there is a lot of fallout to explore. The Bilusaludo on the Aratrum see Haruo’s actions as treasonous, while the humans and Exif agree with the filmmakers about the nanometal. Yuko is in a permanent coma kept alive by the nanometal, and Adam has seemingly joined Metphies’ religion offscreen due to the latter’s role in their survival. In fact, Metphies has leveraged Haruo’s miraculous nanometal resistance as proof he is a hero, and, as Metphies said it would, that got everybody in line. In other words, a 180-degree character shift was achieved not through showing us a transformation but with 5 second foreshadowing via narration at the start of a film. The difficulty with comparing three movies to a 4 season show is that the show always has more time to develop themes and characters…except for Pastor Nick, a side character who is mostly in the shortest season of the show, whose devotion to his religion gets so much complexity for a bit part. It makes him obstinate but also brave, a roadblock for the heroes and also helpful in a moment. AOT also has a lot to say against religion, but it does so a lot more fairly.

 

Anyway, Haruo is in anguish over Yuko’s functional death, but Adam’s ramblings snap him back to his default anger, this time against something Metphies caused (keep this in mind, it’ll be a surprise tool that can help us later). That scowl persists as he watches Metphies’ religious ceremony, and Martin takes Haruo aside to explain the miracle as being the Houtua’s angelic scales as I’ve already mentioned. Martin calls the religion a cult, and Haruo gets angry but it is difficult to tell at what. He asks Metphies if they can talk and passes along Martin’s diagnosis. Metphies explains that he is manipulating the survivors to ready them for another attack against Godzilla using his God, and for some reason he is a lot less sly saying it than he usually is, prompting Haruo to scream asking why their God couldn’t have helped sooner, why people had to die? And now it is clear that this is about more than just these characters. This is a rant against organized religion given three yellow heads and beam attacks.

 

Now okay I do not want a Plan9Crunch Essay to be for or against religion. The cults we are interested in here pertain to entertainment culture. I cannot deny that many of the worst movements and organizations in history have had religion on their lips as they operated. Nor can I deny that the relevant God or gods have not stepped in at those times. But I also literally can’t deny that belief in a God is a major part of 12 step programs because I chose psychoactive drugs as my lens for this article. And I also think back to Grimm season 5 episode 16 where a Wesen used his unique ability to give absolution to followers in his religion, convincing them he was literally taking their sins within himself. Though the episode interrogated his monetary incentive, the way it resolved showed that without a doubt what he truly cared about was the people he helped.

 

 

These questions of religion have motivated so much art, and they are natural ones to ask. I just do not think it is best praxis to relegate the religious characters to mindless background drones against their prior characterization in the last film of the trilogy because it makes it so incredibly obvious that Haruo will not choose them. It’s the nanometal problem all over again but worse. I do not want to prescribe a specific path and say the story must take it, but if you are interrogating religion, do it sooner and deeper. Up until this point, characters like Adam only existed to take potshots at Metphies’ religion. The commentary becomes so much more potent if he were converted sooner and his radicalization unfolded before our eyes.

 

Metphies answers that he needed Haruo to become so angry his hatred for Godzilla would overcome his disbelief in their God, that only Haruo was angry enough and proud enough and sure enough in what humanity ought to be. That is apparently why Metphies selected Haruo. Wait… I thought, based on the previous scenes I pointed to, that Metphies molded Haruo this way, that Haruo was always intended to be the hero, and that’s how this wannabe terrorist made Captain. No, at some unspecified point, Metphies noticed the anger and pride, a trait Haruo thought no one had which should logically include himself, and then took an interest in him and started manipulating him.

 

The Bilusaludo turn off the Aratrum’s power, demanding Haruo’s sentencing. In a moment that has been memed to death, Martin walks in a room to talk to tell Haruo about it, forgets what he was there to say, goes on a big rant about religion and then remembers what he was in there to say. Martin pitches that Haruo pull a Trotsky and run away, and since Martin and Miana (who is in on the plan) are literally the only people Haruo can trust right now, he has to go along with it.

 

Conversing with Miana, Haruo learns that the Houtua philosophy is different from Metphies. They define winning as surviving and connecting life, with losing as dying. She then undresses and offers to connect life with Haruo, such a big step from the relatively chaste kiss last film. I’m more concerned though about the fact that Haruo is so important that one of, well, actually both, as we’ll find out, of the powerful priestesses in the Houtua culture instantly want to sleep with Haruo. Miana claims it is to get to know him better, but both twins winced when they witnessed Yuko kissing him. This is a weird power fantasy. Now that Metphies’ influence on Haruo is temporarily severed, I can diagnose this as the plot and writing using Haruo for these delusions of grandeur and invulnerability and not Metphies making Haruo feel this way. And that is important for the overall PCP thing because it means that this is not a clever deconstruction of this type of character, how making someone into a special hero will make them fall in line, it is just here to be here.

 

 

Anyway, thankfully, Haruo declines her offer…for now. I’ve also seen memes taking the piss out of this situation, and though this has no value as an appeal about film quality, I think it is very telling that the only way a large amount of the audience knew how to interact with this movie is through relentless memes. During Haruo’s sleep, one of the twins stumbles upon Metphies and confronts him for keeping secret that he too communicates psychically, while the other one attempts to remove his spacesuit and sleep with him. I’m still not exactly sure on the logic that because Miana took off his spacesuit before and Miana struggled to a little bit ago, that means the currently struggling Miana is actually Maina. In any case, Haruo sleeps with her. We don’t see the action, but we see the side of her naked body as she embraces him, and I don’t mean to pearl clutch but you gotta remember that City On The Edge of Battle was the second Godzilla film where main characters kissed, and now one of those characters is sleeping with someone else. This is weird for the franchise. Also, both twins’ subplots demonstrate some aspect of detachment as a motif. Haruo is so detached from who he impregnates that he can barely tell her apart from her sister, and Metphies detaches himself from psychic communication with the Houtua while monologuing about how detached he is from frank human open expression that he just observes them for the most part.

 

Metphies restrains Miana and threatens to sacrifice her to Ghidorah just as Godzilla opens his eye at the 32 minute mark. That actually would be a pretty good pace for a standard Godzilla movie (if the film didn’t show Godzilla waking up again at 43 minutes in, which is literally halfway if you adjust for the closing credits). At the same time, Haruo walks in on Metphies preparing a soup for a ritual. After trying it, while Metphies rambles on about how the angry observer Haruo is the only thing that makes Godzilla a kaiju and not a giant creature, Haruo peeks in the pot and finds Miana’s dead body. This is the most memed moment of the entire film; one really good one has Metphies’ head on Gordon Ramsey’s body. Okay this was a dream. Haruo was nowhere near Metphies in real life; this is a memory manipulation from Metphies, and Maina wakes up in terror because she heard her sister say the word Ghidorah.

 

(This is not exactly what I described, but this was the best I could find.)

 

 

The soup is real, even if Miana was not its main ingredient, and it basically becomes the Kool-Aid for Metphies’ cult. As Metphies tells his followers to embrace God by losing their individuality, the similarity to the nanometal debacle is probably intentional, but that was still very recent so it really is not logical that this is working. Like I get what Gen Urobuchi is trying to say here about religion making people act against their own self-interests, but this was like between hours and a week ago that the Bilusaludos were demonized for trying this. Ghidorah’s shadow emanates from artifacts Metphies and another Exif hold and massacre the believers. Now, this feels like an allusion to Heaven’s Gate especially with the alien and liquid components to it, and I think the film should be a little bit more tactful if this is the form of religious commentary it wants to provide, but I have my opinions which may become reality and I have Godzilla The Pill Eater, which is reality.

 

 

A singularity opens up, and one of Ghidorah’s impossibly long necks comes out to destroy the Aratrum. This version of Ghidorah can warp space and time, and its ties to the Gematron crystal override the ship’s features. Consequently, their vital signs read as dead before they actually experience that happening. This causes Ghidorah to draw nearer to Earth with three singularities nearby for each of the heads. Haruo and Godzilla both race into action, Haruo to save Miana from Metphies and Godzilla to face the singularities. I will spare you any reproduction of Martin’s play by play of the final act of this film; if I were to include it, we would be here all day. Basically, Ghidorah is not fully real in the world and so it can attack Godzilla, but he cannot touch it. We are deep into the PCP use now; reality is bending in on itself, and nothing makes sense anymore.

 

Metphies starts monologuing about the flowers of nature and how the prime monster is always the last and greatest flower, and then Ghidorah, the Golden Demise devours those fruits. As far as Metphies has told Harou, Ghidorah destroyed the Exif’s planet, but now he explains that some priests were spared to spread Ghidorah across the universe. This gets Haruo angry and is coding religion as seeking destruction. Metphies has put an artifact in his eye that hypnotizes Haruo, transferring these two into his memories, and this is another area where the awareness of one’s body and mind, where it starts, how ideology is inseparable from the human and their tools and their purpose, grand purpose invulnerable avatars of the fight between Godzilla and Ghidorah all that stuff comes into play.

 

And this is also where we have to give The Planet Eater its flowers. The next few minutes of the movie is where it beat Attack on Titan to the punch on one of its most beloved plot points.

 

This trilogy first went into production in 2015, and this film was released at the tail end of 2018. The part of Attack On Titan’s manga where blonde manipulator War Chief Zeke takes Eren through the latter’s memories in order to convince him of his nihilistic worldview started to debut in the middle of 2019. The anime trilogy somehow predicted that the older blonde character would go into the angry one’s memories and try to convince him of his worldview. It was not without its fair foreshadowing in AOT; memories were very important to the way Eren and his Titan functioned, and Zeke clearly needed Eren for something, but it is uncanny. And I saw this before AOT, so these scenes impressed me on a first viewing even though I still did not think the reveals were the smoothest.

 

 

Haruo resists Metphies’ sermon on the finite nature of the universe with great pain even though he never once talked about immortality. Then we flash back to Haruo’s memory of his parents’ death, but now it is Metphies that saves him, not Yuko’s grandfather Daichi. Metphies hands Haruo his first ration aboard the ship. In the real world, Metphies cradles Haruo’s body, reenacting La Pieta while trying to convince Haruo that all of these memories lead to the single truth that Haruo has just wanted the pain to end, a very suicidal mindset, so let’s go back to the chart.

 

 

Metphies made Haruo dizzy, which led to loss of balance at which point he gave him hallucinations of falling into his memories in a state that could be a seizure since Metphies stabilizes him all with the goal of implanting delusions and suicidal thoughts so that Haruo will take to the violent behavior of ending the planet. This was the motherlode of PCP symptoms, and I gotta say I am enjoying myself with this project.

 

More than just memories, Metphies also conjures apparitions of Leland and Yuko and visions of atomic bomb testing. Metphies also refers to himself as a primate, which I find kind of weird. Metphies’ manipulation starts to take, despite this gaffe until Maina and Martin pray to the God Egg Mothra to invade the dream. Before, it was established that both twins were necessary to amplify the psychic strength enough to reach a large room full of people, but now Martin can sub in for Miana to overpower Metphies from an entire Mountain’s height away. It's fine, don't worry about it. Metphies reveals that he is responsible for blowing up the Tau-e ship, and this does not immediately enrage Haruo because Metphies has sufficiently broken him down. Haruo picks up the pendant he lost when his parents died, and a flashback to something we’ve never seen before restores his autonomy, the symbolism behind a flower. So Haruo starts getting angry at Metphies, and that turns the tide of battle, shattering the artifact in Metphies’ eye. Confusingly, this allows Ghidorah to become corporeal, which was only supposed to happen under the condition of Haruo becoming the anchor, but whatever. Godzilla immediately beats Ghidorah, and each head vanishes after one strike each. To pay off that foreshadowing from the start of City on the edge of battle, Ghidorah’s singularity destroys the Aratrum, and Godzilla destroys that singularity with an atomic breath from the Earth’s surface.

 

 

As Metphies dies, he tells Haruo that his anger can still manifest Ghidorah if he chooses to, and Haruo embraces the corpse (this is meant to mirror the last shot of City On The Edge of Battle) because Metphies still was one of his only friends for years. With all of the bad guys except for Godzilla defeated, Haruo, Martin and the other survivors assimilate to Houtua culture, and a montage in a different art style shows them burying their weapons and rearing children. Eventually, the humans even adopt the Houtua’s style of clothing except for Haruo, though he is otherwise clearly happy. (You could use this to claim that Haruo still is not happy, but that would be forgetting that a major detail of Eren Jaeger’s clothing style was that he never took off the Shiganshina style shirt even after fleeing from there, so no, this is a reference to that.) He takes great joy in seeing spring flowers (the symbol for Haruo’s humanity we introduced at most 20 script pages ago) and it is Martin finally salvaging a Vulture that gets Haruo to remember his crippling anger against Godzilla and Metphies’ machinations. So, to prevent Martin from using the nanometal to restart the process of creating monsters, he makes sure Godzilla will destroy the Vulture and Yuko’s body, and to prevent himself from summoning Ghidorah, an act coded as suicide, Haruo puts himself in that Vulture, fulfilling the kamikaze charge he attempted twice before. In other words, to prevent his own suicide, he caused it. (Technically he had no way of knowing that it wouldn’t summon Ghidorah to do that.)

 

But more to the point, this time he’s leaving behind a family and culture that depends on him. The conceit is that he asks Miana if she hates Godzilla, and he starts to feel that only he feels hate and must die. If he remembered City On The Edge Of Battle, he would know he is capable of not letting his hate consume him, if he remembered earlier in this film, he would know he is capable of not letting his hate draw Ghidorah into the world and consume everything. And he Houtua will reward this by making Haruo into a God. So, no, this is a terrible ending, but let’s wrap around these topics. So, Martin restarting industrialization with the nanometal being destructive per Metphies’ diatribe.

 

You must consider that if acts of pollution and war truly are the reason these monsters showed up, it does not make sense that they started appearing in the late 1990s. But whatever it’s not like the Exif mentioned timing as being important for their plan, and it’s not at all like this is an ironic statement.

 

If the late-stage civilization of humanity and their polluting technology were bad and created the monsters, then the humans should not be able to live happily ever after joining the Houtua with their highly advanced civilization and language capabilities and their technology that includes the nanometal that was literally poisoning the land. Well, you might say, okay, but the Earth made them resistant to nanometal through their scales. Well, they still chose to use it. Remember that Hedorah, the ultimate environmental evil, was reimagined as a successful biological weapon harnessed by the humans as one of their last actions of biological terror against the Earth and its creatures. If I look back from Houtua to Martin to Houtua to Martin, I do not see a difference as all he wants to do is use the nanometal as technology. Also, Miana may claim that the Houtua do not experience hate, but that doesn’t make it something to demonize. Anger and pride are what makes someone human according to this trilogy, so Haruo is feeling bad about himself because he is human. Also, the Houtua can conceptualize enemies, enemies that take each other’s lives in combat such as what happened between Godzilla and their God Mothra, so the movie can piss off with that. 

 

Furthermore, one of the evilest machinations Metphies did was use Haruo’s leadership as a religious messianic symbol. How are we meant to regard the Houtua making Haruo a God of Wrath to commemorate him? The film does not explore this because it cannot, but the myth of Haruo as well as his likely inheritable mental health issues could lead to a manipulative charismatic leader that once again mobilizes support for war against Godzilla, but that point is getting away from me.

 

Haruo killing himself comes literally out of nowhere in the film, and we are literally in his head to see his turmoil. The final stretch of Attack on Titan takes us out of Eren’s head to keep us in suspense about his self-destruction. The Houtua subsequently immortalize Haruo as a God of Wrath with no runtime left to explore what that means, while Eren literally becomes a God of Wrath, and his story fully explores what that insinuates. Those certainly are two approaches to a similar story, and I think one was better, and the other was on some kind of depressant drug.

 

Conclusion

 

This has been a long video essay, so I’ll try to keep this conclusion quick. The trilogy is bad, I think Attack on Titan is good but I have not substantiated that, and I have drawn comparison between this trilogy’s storytelling and hard drug use.

 

Attack On Titan is not the kind of story to show the obvious temptation Haruo is going through and use every aspect of the story to try and get through his thick head that he shouldn’t fall for it three times in a row. If this were Attack On Titan and, again, I mean if the crew had the benefit of knowing how AOT ends and working backward to see how the Eren archetype inevitably leads there, if that were the case, then how this trilogy would end is Haruo would use being the avatar of Ghidorah to overpower the nanometal hive mind in order to become a giant Mecha King Ghidorah monstrosity to fight Godzilla and the Servum and Mothra and the Houtua. And then instead of signposting in every way possible that this is wrong, the art would ask you if it’s wrong and where he went too far and if there was ever any hope of a different outcome. And that’s the heart of my critique here. The arc Haruo has in City On the Edge of Battle about choosing to save his humanity even if it means not killing Godzilla should logically prevent him from needing to learn that again in The Planet Eater, and seeing that he was able to overcome both of those and start to be happy with the Houtua means that he did not need to kill himself at the end. But this examination of human nature is just his violent and detached suicidal dissociation that got substantially less fun to talk about once he went through with it.

 

And it’s not even paired with action in a way exemplified by AOT where you can match the rising personal stakes with the existential ones. This story is slow, more introspective than it can really afford to be with those moral training wheels rigidly rejecting the nanometal or Exif religion as even options to rush us into assimilating with the Houtua. Captain Levi’s speech about still not being sure about what the right answer is between trusting your team or trusting yourself is a more human, more sober, and deeper evaluation into the kinds of questions this trilogy tried to tackle. It is strange that this story is an even darker scenario for humanity than AOT and yet every major conflict has a clear theme and anti-theme, a kind of moral simplicity that should leave a story that intends to demonize religion. This might be a very strange comparison to drop into the conclusion of this video, but it reminds me of the way that the Barbie movie showed a toxic matriarchy as an allegory against the patriarchy but still felt the need to argue that the matriarchy was better because we, as writers, cannot afford to show a bad scenario and let it speak for itself. There is an indecision I feel in showing Haruo as an individual in showing these dueling worldviews as valid alternatives and everything was doomed to either end in the destruction of the Earth or Haruo killing himself for some reason.

 

Well, I hope you enjoyed this transcript edition of my review of Godzilla’s Anime Trilogy. If you have not watched the video, that is a more unbroken and smooth presentation of these thoughts, and you can find it here (Godzilla's Anime Trilogy: Attack On Titan On PCP).

What Does Lucky Represent In Animal Farm 2025?

 

By Joe Gibson

I recently went to see the new(ish) Animal Farm in theaters (as I have ascertained, it technically debuted at an art festival last year between Netflix shirking the distribution rights and Angel Studios picking them up). As you can probably tell, given that this is a focused editorial on a small part of the movie and not a review, my reaction to the film is such that I do not care to go back to it for a more in-depth review. I did not like the film, I think it is actually pretty poorly told, I only laughed out loud once at an unintentionally funny part, and it is a terrible adaptation of George Orwell's book. However, it is very important to me that you understand that those are four distinct claims I shared and not one half-baked argument. Liking or not liking a film is subjective, as is humor. Why I think the adaptation is pretty poor will become clear with the rest of this article, but you must keep in mind I regard adaptation changes as "sideways" in quality, neither inherently good nor bad. As for why I think the film is bad, I think there are unfortunate interruptions in the arcs of Napolean, Lucky, Boxer and Puff that make me unable to track their growth and changing attitudes in many cases because of the jokes in this movie taking the easy shortcut to appeal to I-Pad babies. I am still open and willing to have discourse on this movie that can change my assessments; there are just four distinct areas to have those conversations. If you like the film and have watched it multiple times, your recollections of the film are probably more precise than mine, but I have done my best to remember and double check the plot points I will be discussing, as well as cross-referencing these decisions with Andy Serkis' stated goals from interviews. With that out of the way, we can begin the actual topic here.

One of the most puzzling changes from the outset of this project is the inclusion of Lucky, a young piglet played by Gaten Matarazzo, who is both student to Snowball and protege of Napolean. Andy Serkis has said that Lucky is supposed to be an innocent audience insert to frame this story, and he has also said that he pursued animation for this project to make it easier for kids to relate to the story, so the obvious answer for why Lucky is in the story is to make it more palatable for children with a likable lead and happy ending, already a concerning direction to take this story but I digress. (Making it a parable with animals is already enough to help it teach children important lessons. I think Andy Serkis should have consulted Aesop or the Brothers Grimm if he still thought children needed to be talked down to with these stories. Similarly, in contexts set after the fall of the Soviet Union, I understand Animal Farm better as a warning against revolutionary populists; "corporatism is the new communism" is probably not a theme you should include in a story where the happy ending is that the surviving characters all recommit to a new communism.)

Upon a first glance, Lucky's role seems to be the standard liberal archetype of 'being unable to do anything except token gestures against rising authoritarianism and getting swept up in the increasing compromises until they become the new bourgeoise and get backstabbed.' Once Lucky realizes Napolean has gone too far, his plan is to appeal to the pigs and humans' sense of decorum by showing in video how Napolean is actually crass, pathetic and irresponsible, the most fecklessly liberal plan imaginable (especially because Seth Rogen seems to be playing Napolean as though he were Trump, but that might have been unintentional yet inevitable the moment they dumbed the Stalin character down into a fat materialist celebrity with an exaggerated cartoon voice). Add back in the fact that Lucky never lost his privilege even once he rejoins with the oppressed animals and becomes their de facto leader, and it is actually very, very difficult to root for Lucky.

However, there is potentially more to Lucky's character and what he represents in this film than may be obvious. I mentioned earlier that there was one moment that I busted up laughing in the theater, and it wasn't Napolean shaking his butt or Lucky's plan destabilizing into suicide terrorism (I'll get to that in a moment); it was a 'touching' moment of Lucky using the memory and martyrdom of Boxer and Snowball to rouse the impoverished starving animals into a second revolution to purge the 'rightists' that have taken power from Animal Farm. It all clicked place into me there, and I could not contain myself. Lucky is, whether intentionally or not, Mao Zedong, and the movie is actually fairly propagandistic in shaping our view of Lucky and what he represents to Animal Farm.

I admitted that it is difficult for me to root for Lucky, but the film does not share those qualms. Boxer actually narrates the film, immediately casting Lucky in a positive light. Boxer was chosen to narrate this film because Andy Serkis resonated with the character all his life, but the fact that Boxer, the paragon hero doomed to die, vouches for Serkis' OC transfers some of that inherent goodwill onto him. Indeed, Lucky is Boxer's best friend and tries to share the milk Napolean hordes for the pigs with Boxer early on in the story. Though Boxer starts out as a mentor character to Lucky, we all know that Boxer is very naive and assumes the best of this movement, working himself to the grave. That is the first misspeak in the film; his narration is far more nuanced than he has the capacity to be, and Lucky even says in one of his last monologues to the Animals that even Boxer was not correct about their movement. The closing moments reveal that Boxer was narrating this film from heaven (the stars specifically, but if a fat pig can be Stalin without that ever being stated in the text, spirits in the stars can be Heaven), but, in order to keep that twist intact, when Boxer dies, his narration ceases, and it cuts to Lucky telling this story to the new generation. Lucky's narration also gets a wrap around in the ending, and, in lieu of a better way to square away two characters both claiming to narrate the film, I have to assume that the heavenly martyr Boxer is part of Lucky's propaganda.

Consider this. Lucky is the junior partner to Snowball during her illegal forays into the farmhouse and protege to Napolean as they make every other compromise through to the book's original ending of looking back from pig to human and being confused which is which. (The "cautionary tail" version of this story, as it markets itself, should obviously end there, and the POV switch to Boxer would be very chilling as we, the audience, could debate if Boxer was right about Lucky or if Lucky was this adaptation's version of the rose-colored glasses Boxer has for the regime.) Instead, Lucky flees and returns to the downtrodden animals, regains their trust and launches an assault on Animal Farm's dam. Though his plan is peaceful in the biased version of the story we hear, let us consider what actually happens, the suicide terrorism I mentioned. Napolean has a bunch of fireworks planned to show off his strength (for whatever reason he has started dressing like Stalin instead of a gang leader, as he was for the rest of the movie) as he holds a large rally of pigs and humans. Lucky wants to sabotage the fireworks, and so he unplugs them and the fireworks themselves wind up in a pit that just exists in the dam for some reason. Squealer plugs it back in, and the Andy Serkis voiced rooster is on guard to stop the fireworks. He stops the spark from going down the line to the fireworks but catches on fire himself, which sets the lines on fire. The rooster falls in the pit with the fireworks, and, as they explode, he says a nationalistic chant about fighting for Animal Farm. The dam explodes, killing countless humans directly and leading to the circumstances where Lucky gets to kill Napolean. (The rooster does not show up again for another tenish minutes, leading us to believe he died, until he pops back up to reveal that Lucky also survived, as the film was desperately trying to convince its child audience that Lucky had died escaping the deluge.)

It does not matter if Napolean deserved it, and it does not matter what the film shows Lucky's intent to be. This story is about questioning revolutionary populists that say the right thing and focusing on the indistinguishable actions of the Tsar and the Stalin. Lucky's Continuous Revolution immediately became the most violent action in the movie, and this is after he was complicit in the mistakes of Snowball and Napolean. Why, oh why do the other animals forgive him? Why is he the defacto leader in their charge on the dam? Why is it okay for Lucky to let the falling silo crush Napolean when it wasn't okay for Napolean to let dogs kill Snowball? The simple fact is that, after his arc two thirds in the movie, the movie does not allow us to question Lucky's motivation or his actions. (The cult of personality of this film is Lucky's.) As soon as he has reunited with the peasants and started to liberate them, all nuance disappears from the conversation. Ending Animal Farm with a continuous revolution where the animals are happy (even though it has been done before) removes the satire and reclassifies it as textbook revolutionary romanticism, specifically Maoist peasant fiction as the film make a point to show much poorer the proletariat animals have become since Napolean rose to power. (Also consider how much literacy is emphasized in these animals, how Lucky knows how to read and tries to teach Boxer, how Lucky's girlfriend Puff teaches the illiterate peasant animals, and how Maoist propaganda was the earliest form of writing education for peasant writers such as the prolific award winning author Mo Yan.)

Alright, even if you are still following me, Mao Zedong specifically is a little random. I've been sprinkling a few hints throughout this article, but I really should make this reading a bit more blatant. This film very clearly distances itself from the Russian allegory by having a 'Big Bad Duumvirate' of Napolean and the owner of Wal-Mart. That is obvious from the trailers, but the story also very deliberately removes Old Major (the Marx/Lenin of Animal Farm). I cannot speak to the intent of this decision as, to my knowledge, no one has asked Serkis about that yet, but it means that the communism of Animal Farm can mean other things with other figures. The way that we can know Old Major is Marx or Lenin is in his archetypal stylings and position in the story. How would we write an allusion to Mao Zedong? Well, he was a student during the earlier revolutions surrounding May Fourth 1919. Wait, Lucky is the student of Snowball during the first revolution against Farmer Jones. Before the revolution, he is merely an educated animal, failing to read the obscured S in slaughterhouse and getting in the van with the other animals, but after he is present for every major decision, the same way that the May 4thers became activists and political leaders (whether communist or nationalist). You have to admit there is something there, but I must again return to the moment I found so hilarious in the movie.

Within Maoist propaganda, there were certain ideal communist figures that Mao would valorize with propaganda. The thing is that pretty often these people all died for the cause, so the unfortunate implication is that Mao's ideal worker is a dead one, his ideal woman a dead one, his ideal communist, if they survived the great famine and depression of the Guomindang, starved in Mao's famine. Lei Feng was one such figure, the ultimate loyal and hardworking soldier. Selfless and devoted, he links up to Boxer in several key ways, and like Mao, Lucky uses his martyrdom to get the other animals into line. I am not a scholar on Mao, and the notes from classes into Chinese history are pretty much useless for me because I could not write the names down in time due to less familiarity with how to spell those pronunciations. But of the women martyrs that Mao valorized, I can at least tell you about Yang Kaihui. She was one of his wives that died in the 30s, but I think that Puff would actually map better on to his later wife Jiang Qing (gaining political power after a split with Lucky but then falling in line at least for a while). The idea here is that the people that Lucky valorizes are not the living members of Animal Farm, and he leads a much smaller force of peasants against Napolean's larger army because Lucky advocates for a continuous revolution of purging rightists (purging rightist authors often meant simply ejecting them from the society, such as Lucky's original plan for Napolean). Lucky's peasant underdogs succeeding against his enemies could match the underdog communists winning the Chinese Civil War in 1949, which means that Lucky's Animal Farm is still doomed to go through the Great Leap Forward (especially since Lucky alludes to hard work and communes for his future plans) and Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Forgiving Lucky for his mistakes when they are still in dire straits due to destroying the industrialized dam and nearby humans is tantamount to forgiving Mao for the Great Leap Forward.

I might seem overly cynical about the propagandistic nature of this movie, but redeemed heavenly Boxer telling us a story from the stars he used to look at with Lucky is cloyingly sentimental, unless there is a purpose in the text for it. Initially, I thought it was one of those tropes that wound up in there because Angel Studios released it (because all of the Angel Studios movies I have seen have something subtly in there to point the kiddies back to Christ), but Angel Studios acquired this film very late in its history. This was going to be a Netflix film, which certainly means that they were not intentionally including Maoist imagery but also means that Christ is not on the forefront of the creative's minds. Realistically, the answer is that Serkis likes Boxer so much that he wants to think of him as going to heaven, but that is also how Mao felt about Yang Kaihui. The following is two lines in two translations of Mao's "Reply to Li Shuyi" that directly concern Poplar (Yang).

"I lost my proud poplar, and you your willow,

Poplar and Willow soar lightly to the heaven of heavens..."

"I lost my proud poplar and you your willow.

As poplar and willow they soar straight up

into the ninth heaven...."

Mao was a revolutionary romanticist. Though he censored a lot of Chinese authors, his own poetry is not as rigid as you might expect. He includes romantic appeals to nature, but he believes the collective that conquer it easily. From "Return to Well Ridge Mountain" - "We can clasp the moon in the Ninth Heaven and seize turtles deep down in the Five Seas. Nothing is hard in this world If you dare to scale the heights..." So why is this important. When the Animal Farms works together, their yield is higher than it ever was under Jones. I am not pleased that they included this scene, but early in the movie all of the animals trade with some humans at the Animal Farm farmer's market, and they still pull in more cash than Jones ever did together. At the end of the movie, the Andy Serkis rooster goes out in a fiery blaze to take down the dam, but he survives it. The whole of the new Animal Farm survive the deluge wiping away Napolean's regime. In the most literal sense (outside of Rocky Balboa punching down trees and climbing a mountain), these communists conquered nature as Mao himself told them they could. The film ends by telling us they can all do it again. (If you think it is unrealistic for Mao to inherit a bad economy and famine and then balance the budget and restore the economy, he technically already did that in reality. Chiang Kai Shek's wartime policies against merchants led to an unparalleled famine and depression decades before Mao tried to skip Marxism's middle stages and starved everybody.)

But okay this still all feels random. Communist animals commenting on humanity, Mao Zedong, what's the connection? Well, I'm sharing a bit more of Mao's poetry than I meant to today, but here is one last poem from Autumn of 1965, "Two Birds: A Dialogue."

"Leviathan-roc spreads his wings

Rises ten thousand miles

By the whirlwind's force propelled

The sky on his back he surveys below

Walled cities where humans dwell:

Horizons lit by gun-flash

Shell craters all around

Startle a sparrow from a bramble dell

'Whatever to do?

Oh! I want to fly off as well'

'And whither, sir, shall you journey?'

Now comes the sparrow's reply:

'There's a fairyland, I hear tell,

Where a year or so back, when the moon was bright

Three clans contracted in peace to dwell

They've lots to eat there too

Potatoes piping hot,

Plenty of beef to sell.'

'Bullshit, my friend:

Just watch heaven switch with hell.'"

There are also other translations of this poem, but I am not copying a full poem in here twice for Mao Zedong of all people. I am not going to say if Mao was aware of Animal Farm when he wrote this poem or if he was merely engaging in the long-held tradition of Aesop to Grimm to Orwell of using animals to explain human concepts, but I am more confident in my reading of Animal Farm 2025 for knowing that Mao has also used animals in his communist writings. I think we are well past the point where a New Critic could read Mao into this story, and we are just left with "this clearly is not what anybody making the film intended." I will be the first to admit that as I have done so already. But that is kind of the lesson here, is it not? If you are writing or adapting such an important story as Animal Farm, you have to be really extraordinarily careful about what changes you make. If you want to valorize your own characters in a story with a moral about how you shouldn't let populist strongmen get away with anything, and you also want to undo the very purposeful logical negative ending of a retelling of Stalinism, you need to be very careful to not accidentally rediscover Mao. (If you would like a more in-depth version of this in video format, I can make no promises. I really don't want to rewatch this movie.)