Director: Gareth Edwards
Stars: Bryan Cranston, Ken Watanabe, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen, Juliette Binoche, Godzilla
Godzilla, king of the monsters roars back into big screens with this effort from Gareth Edwards. After disturbing readings at a power plant, a monster emerges from under the Earth. It begins attacking cities and creates a path of destruction from Japan to America. While the humans are wondering how to deal with this creature that feeds on radiation another monster comes up, a force of nature…Godzilla.
Usually I say more about the story but really, the plot is pretty thin here. In fact, I’m going to start by saying that I’m not even sure I should like this film. The people I went with thought it was terrible and judging from most of the opinions I’ve read a lot of people online share their views. I can understand it because there is a lot to dislike about that film. So let’s start.
The story is very thin. Basically these monsters emerge and….that’s about it. Humans run around after them to try and contain them but they’re always playing catch up and they don’t ever really stand a chance. But I quite liked this as it shows that we are subject to nature and we may think we are the dominant species, but against nature we are powerless. However, they do try to develop a plot with Ford (Taylor-Johnson) trying to get back to his family, and this is just a snorefest. The film is only two hours but it feels longer because there’s so much build-up and the first hour or so is extremely slow paced. Aside from Bryan Cranston I didn’t find any of the human characters compelling at all. Ken Watanabe looks like he’s in a daze for most of the film, Taylor-Johnson looks completely overwhelmed by it all and Elizabeth Olsen gets nothing to do except scream and look worried. At one point I was worried too because there was a lot of teasing and not enough pleasing, as every time we got a glimpse of Gozilla fighting the other monster the camera cut away to focus on the humans again.
This happened too often. I liked the fact that they teased Godzilla at first, because it gave his eventual entrance a lot of impact, but after that I think we should have seen more monster-on-monster action. Some parts struck me as stupid as well, both stylistically and story-wise. For example, at one point in Vegas an Elvis song plays for maybe 30 seconds. It seemed so out of place and didn’t really add anything at all. In another scene they find that a monster has escaped from a nuclear waste facility and has left a huge hole in the mountain. Um, okay, are you telling me people really didn’t notice that? (A follow-up scene shows someone looking at binoculars, he doesn’t see anything at first but then his view shifts to the right and the monster comes into view, seriously, come on, the thing is so huge you don’t need binoculars to see it!).
On top of that the film is repetitive, and although I loved the fights there were too many times when they played the, ‘Oh no, Godzilla is down!’ card to create tension, but then just brought him back up immediately. There was one telling point in the film when Watanbe’s character (the characters were honestly so thin that I only remember a couple of names) urged the army to simply let nature take its course and not to interfere. “Let them fight,” he said, and that echoed my feelings as all I wanted was some monster on monster action.
Finally it came, and it was glorious.
The effects and cinematography were excellent. Godzilla was imposing and awesome. His roar sent shivers down my spine and seeing him move was like the Godzilla from the old movies brought to life. I loved every minute that he was on screen and there were parts where I had a huge grin on my face. And even now when I think of those moments I still get a kick out of it and as bad as the rest of the film was Godzilla comes in and makes the film for me.
Aside from Godzilla, this film is bad. I imagine that it will be getting a lot of criticism in the coming weeks and deservedly so. But seeing Godzilla up on the screen is such a cool sight and his introduction is handled well, aside from a little too much teasing. The effects are excellent and I felt satisfied by the conflict we did get. The human stuff was boring, but the Godzilla stuff was immense.