You really want to know? I must remind you that everything I do evokes you and/or Les with disagreement and annoyance.
Topic on User talk:Astounding Beyond Belief
Why would I need to be reminded of that? Just say your piece.
You can tell by how unfocused and flame-like the atomic breath blast appeared that it wasn’t a relatively concentrated, powerful blast. It more so resembles the blasts with the female MUTO than occasions where it was laser-like, straight, evidently more powerful. The more quality fuel you give a flame, the more it assumes a blue, funnel-like appearance as opposed to an orange, fluid blade-like appearance.
Monsterverse Godzilla doesn’t ever do things without necessity, including killing others or harming them. It is important to keep in mind that pain and psychological harm has the same effect on the body as physical, more conventionally-recognized damage. A blast of atomic breath can be too much to take even if the damage is not severe. It would stand to reason that Godzilla torched the Ion Dragon to knock the majority of the fight in it rather than to kill it or almost kill it. We all know that even a relatively weak hit can do so much harm. For like 3-5 seconds, an injury can be seen on the Ion Dragon's shoulder area, the same spot where Godzilla tore it apart. The Ion Dragon is visibly on the smaller side as far as Titans go, so obviously the injury was enough to leave the forelimb susceptible to being torn off, especially by someone as strong as Godzilla. Godzilla's objective was to defeat the Ion Dragon since it obviously posed a threat to the nearby humans and needed to be dealt with, but he didn’t have to leave it dead. He just needed to subdue it enough for him to dispose of it, which we all know he did. Accidents happen, so it would make sense that Godzilla underestimated the extent of the damage he inflicted to the Ion Dragon's forelimb. To be fair, mutilation is admittedly far from a source of moral discomfort, so of course Godzilla didn’t show signs of shock or remorse for tearing off the arm. His objective was met and he got rid of the dragon without outright killing it. Logically, this whole thing would support the matter of the on-subject atomic breath use being a “subtle” one. The less formidable they are, the less it takes to do them harm.
Long story short: The appearance can tell you a lot about the usage, the power invested into it, the effort, the purpose, etc. You need keen eyes and an analytical mind.
And about it being accidental, Godzilla isn’t so ruthless that he goes over the top with the violence and destruction that he does intentionally go through with. Mercy is a natural choice for him. Necessity is important no matter what. Not every conflict ends with death, which is the case most of the time in nature. Only a “subtle” amount of force is needed.
So... Godzilla wasn't trying to kill the female MUTO? We also know, thanks to Adam Wingard, that the atomic breath Godzilla fires to meet Mechagodzilla's Proton Scream wasn't full power, yet it was visually the same as his other rays throughout the film. With that in mind, the form the atomic breath took against the Ion Dragon doesn't seem significant. I suspect that the VFX team simply made it more flamelike as a callback to the 2014 film (but you will notice I am not presenting that theory in the article as fact).
The strict moral code you’re attributing to Godzilla is also dubious. If he was really so careful in his use of force, it beggars belief that he would have no reaction to accidentally ripping off another Titan’s wing. That’s not exactly a flesh wound! And while many of his actions are clearly justified in-story, he’s also destroyed harmless jets and ships, sliced Tiamat into pieces after breaking into her house, and repeatedly dropped everything he was doing to try and kill Kong. He’s spared some opponents when they backed down, but the Ion Dragon fought until the end.
Welp. We both said our pieces.
While I appreciate your level of thought, and your use of outside knowledge to inform your reading of the fight scene, as an encyclopedic website, however fair/accurate our interpretation may be, we must always be mindful of artistic intent. While I do see that your understanding of the mechanics of fire was used to judge the intensity of a blast, and how from that you were able to extrapolate an interpretation of Godzilla's intent, it is still just an interpretation.
While that interpretation can be valid to you, or others, or anyone, it is the duty of a site like this to state verifiable fact. I suppose what that means is that unless you have a specific source from the creative team saying that they use his blasts to demonstrate intention, or that the use of one beam design over another is something they put a lot of thought into, or even circumstantial evidence like the different beams being used similarly in other episodes/MV projects, the idea that he is using a less powerful attack, and that that must mean he did not intend a lethal strike, is just an interpretation and not a hard fact. To use fandom terms it boils down to a headcanon. Not an unreasonable headcanon, certainly not an uninformed headcanon, but headcanon nonetheless. As such, we cannot list it as fact in the article.
I am not here to talk down to or discourage you, but I want you to understand why the team often takes issue with your edits. I know it can feel frustrating to see your work discarded, and it not a personal issue, it is a policy issue. We have to have facts in our articles, and what you have added does not match our research-oriented definition of fact.
Does that make sense to you?
I understand perfectly. It feels good reading this. I’m still gonna try my best to avoid expunging what amounts to head-canon. It’s difficult, but I won’t stop trying.