‘Godzilla: The Planet Eater’ Actually Has Something To Say

The Story of How Cosmic Nihilism Can Destroy A World

Destroying the World

If you haven’t watched Godzilla: The Planet Eater, the newest Godzilla anime on Netflix, I am not surprised. The first two films in the series (Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters and Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle respectively) were pretty terrible. They followed a ragtag group of humans and aliens (named the Bilusaludo and the Exif) returning to Earth after Godzilla kicked them off the planet, and in a weird twist, terraformed the entire ecosystem to fit its needs.

The third movie tackles something unexpected — a fervent form of religious fundamentalism that perpetuates a toxic and destructive cosmic nihilism. It parallels a phenomenon happening in the real world. The Planet Eater is not a good film, but it does provide a cautionary tale on how radical ambivalence brought on by nihilism can have a detrimental impact on the world. It’s an eerie examination of climate change denialism, and that, I think, deserves further discussion.

The central plot of the film is that after a series of setbacks, the coalition of humans and aliens have become deeply religious as a coping mechanism. An Exif named Metphies claims that his people have actually scientifically proven the existence of…