The mindlessly destructive, implacably angry Godzillas of 1954 and 1984 feel like a custom-made representation of America, the country responsible for its creation, in 2026. Godzilla loves sinking ships full of sailors. It loves recklessly attacking nuclear facilities. It loves carelessly ripping up famous architecture in the capital city. It loves spreading a trail of uninhabitable environmental ruin wherever it goes and leaving rubble in its wake. And it loves stepping on people too slow or sick or just too unlucky to get out of the way. As Return puts it, “It does as it pleases, and continually destroys.”
