GODZILLA

Godzilla

Grade: B

Starring: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ken Watanabe, Elizabeth Olsen, David Straithairn, Bryan Cranston and Sally Hawkins

Premise: When radiation awakens several enormous creatures on the Pacific coast, the world’s scientists and militaries try to determine whether the monsters are out to destroy humanity or if they’re merely on a collision course with each other.

Rated PG-13 for intense action violence, constant scenes of peril and destruction, scary moments, and some language

Do you realize Godzilla has been stomping across movie screens longer than James Bond? Bond’s been around with more regularity, but this new big-screen production of Godzilla marks 60 years since the 1954 Japanese original. Since 1954, countless cities have been cratered, thousands of people have been stomped on or pulverized by a giant, swinging tail, at least half a dozen other radioactive monsters have been slapped around, and a certain reverberating, high-pitched roar has become one of the most familiar sounds in the history of movies. Sure, there’s always been an unmistakable element of cheesiness with Godzilla—whether it’s because early films used animatronics, stop-motion animation, models, and guys in suits to portray the monster, or because the English dialogue dubbing for Japanese-made films was always hilariously obvious—but Godzilla, like King Kong, remains a classic element of cinema.

But unless we’ve been breaking out the old VHS copies of the black and white ‘70s flicks where he fought Mothra or three-headed Gidrah, Godzilla’s gotten short shrift in movies recently. The highly-lucrative but lamely Americanized1998 version changed his look and made him a defensive, pregnant mother, and some early 2000s versions tried to recapture the campiness of the old Japanese films, with minimal success. Now, recreated in glossy CGI (with the assistance of motion-capture acting god Andy Serkis), Godzilla is back and better than ever…or is he?

Plot

When a nuclear power plant in southern Japan suffers a horrific meltdown and collapses, the world’s governments and press label it an accident. However, one of the plant’s head scientists, Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston, aka Walter White from Breaking Bad), knows otherwise, as he had been carefully monitoring unusual seismic activity in the area around the time of the collapse. But with the plant closed and an entire residential populace evacuated from a now-quarantined area, Joe no longer has access to his research. Years later, an obsessed Joe is considered a conspiracy theorist and regarded with skepticism by almost everyone, including his grown son Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, aka Kick-Ass), but when a confidential experiment on the old plant grounds suddenly goes haywire, a pair of scientists (Ken Watanabe and Sally Hawkins) become desperate for his research. Armed with the old research and tracking sudden new phenomena throughout the Pacific, the scientists gather that there are at least two giant, ancient creatures out there, awakened and hungry for radioactive fuel, which likely created them or contributed to their enduring life spans. One of them leaves a wide path of destruction across the Pacific as—the scientists believe—it looks for a place to breed; the other causes a devastating Hawaiian tsunami. A nuke-packing American admiral (David Straithairn) is ready to draw the monsters back out into the Pacific and try blowing them up, but the scientists urge him to wait, believing nature will stabilize itself (i.e. the monsters will have a monster smackdown from which there can only be one winner). But as both make land in San Francisco and cause massive destruction, time appears to be running out to see if the monsters will kill each other. But if they don’t, the question remains whether humanity has powerful-enough weapons to stop them.

What Works?
I’m being intentionally vague in my plot synopsis because, as many have guessed, Godzilla happily features a number of surprises the trailers have not spoiled. Right from the get-go, when the movie opens with a superb, gut-wrenching sequence, this Godzilla proves better thought-out than most monster movies. There’s more to this flick than Monster-Is-Discovered, Monster-Kills-People, People-Try-To-Kill-Monster, which is a pleasant surprise. Godzilla also utilizes the classic Jaws hidden-monster dynamic, where the monster is built up and built up until a big reveal—and here, even when the big reveal comes, it’s not a reveal of the monster you might think.

The special effects are pretty great, making convincing the devastating wrath of a tsunami, wanton destruction in major cities, and, of course, bringing to life some huge supernatural beings. There’s definitely a wow factor as these bad boys roar, stomp, burst out of the ocean and, most impressively, come whipping down out of the sky. This movie also gets a big-time bonus point in that there’s nary a use of shaky-cam, so what’s happening is always clear and easy to determine. Ultimately, Godzilla is sleeker and better put-together than most summer blockbusters.

What Doesn’t Work?

That said, Godzilla almost completely wastes a talented cast. With the exception of Bryan Cranston, who does some fine work (no surprise there) as a mad scientist type, the other actors are given almost nothing to do. Aaron Taylor-Johnson is onscreen the most and survives various falls, explosions and Close Encounters, but his character is a blank slate. Three Oscar nominees (Ken Watanabe, Sally Hawkins and David Staithairn) do little other than stare at screens and provide expository dialogue, an Oscar winner (Juliette Binoche) has a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo, and the talented Other Olsen Sister (Elizabeth Olsen) is wasted in a generic waiting-in-the-wings-spouse role. Now, I know the star of this movie—the one people are here to see—is Godzilla himself, and not any of the humans, but it’s still a shame they brought all these talented people on board and then basically forgot about them.

Godzilla is also a surprisingly joyless affair. I know giant monsters trampling humans and causing widespread destruction is not exactly a recipe for constant laughter, but, with a grim, brooding tone, this movie isn’t very much fun, especially for something that should be a throwback to classic popcorn movies from the ‘60s and ‘70s. It’s excessively talky early on, and there’s surprisingly little monster action until the third act (I couldn’t help drawing comparisons to last summer’s monster mash Pacific Rim, which was undeniably cheesy, but at least gave you the “man, that was awesome” highs you get watching monster movies like these). I’m sorry, but I’m not here to watch people watch screens; I’m here to watch Godzilla.

Content

There’s not a whole lot of blood and gore (other than a bit of creature-on-creature dismemberment in the third act) nor is there a lot of swearing or anything sexual, but Godzilla certainly has its intense moments. Whole cities are leveled, lots of people die, people run in terror from rampaging monsters or onrushing tidal waves, and people are backed into no-win scenarios. There are also a few good shocks—and some ear-splitting roars—that might scare the kiddies.

Bottom Line

Ultimately, Godzilla did the one thing right that it needed to, which was to have a Japanese man (Watanabe) be the first person in the movie to say the monster’s name—it sounded like “good-zla” and, of course, took me back to the classic English-dubbed black and white Godzilla flicks of the ‘70s. Everything else is just icing on the cake, right? Well, Godzilla could certainly benefit from having a bit more fun with its monster mash premise, and I still am disappointed it wasted such a great cast, but without the brain-dead plot and shaky-cam filming that screws up so many summer blockbusters, this one was ultimately pretty solid.

Godzilla (2014)

Directed by Gareth Edwards

Written for the Screen by Max Borenstein

Rated PG-13

Length: 123 minutes