First of all, that line is the best part of that film. Is it over the top? Yes. Is it a little dumb even in context? Absolutely. But does it kick an insurmountable amount of ass? You bet it does. 

And yet, Shaw isn’t wrong to call out how bad that was as a plan. Monarch has had about 60 years to figure out what to do when Kaijus finally attacked a major city and the only thing they could come up with was to let two giant monsters fight it out? That’s even dumber than seeing giant monsters destroy cities and deciding that making giant robots with swords is the best way to defeat them.

Now, Shaw does say something else, something with potentially big implications for this particular show. He asks his interrogator, “What if Godzilla had lost?” That implies that Monarch had long considered Godzilla to be an ally, at least compared to the MUTOs that he fought. How did they reach that conclusion? How many times did Monarch encounter Godzilla before G-Day that they decided to form an alliance? 

Am I reading too much into a simple joke? Probably. But the joke works not only because it pokes fun at a great line of dialogue, but because of its meta implication for the whole history of the “Godzilla” franchise. Placing all of humanity’s (or at least Tokyo’s) hope on Godzilla fighting and defeating another monster has been the formula nearly every “Godzilla” movie has followed for decades. And somehow, it works every time. So, yes. Let them fight. If you can’t count on Godzilla, who the hell can you count on?

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