Godzilla review: · 2:01am May 18th, 2014
So I went to see Godzilla last night. I gotta say, that's the last time I get my ticket through Fandango. I arrive at the theater, get directed to the auditorium, find that the auditorium on my ticket is playing the...that Disney movie about Indian baseball team...whatever. Go out to talk to the guy who took my ticket. I turns out the theater changed the schedule and the showing that I freaking paid for had been canceled and there weren't any more 2D showings that night. Fortunately, they comped me by letting me go to a 3D showing instead, for no extra charge. Well, at least the theater is run by decent people.
Anyway, onto the review.
The overall assessment was that it wasn't as bad as I feared it might be, but nowhere near as good as it could have been. Make no mistake, I enjoyed the hell out of this movie and I plan on seeing it again...and again...and again. But there is a hell of a lot of wasted potential here.
The first big thing is that Gareth Edwards claim that he was trying to recapture the spirit and atmosphere of the original 1954 version is total bull. This movie has only the barest resemblance to the original. The tone is actually closer to the early entries of the Millenium Series, particularly Godzilla 2000, wherein Godzilla throws down another monster (or monsters) with humanity caught in the middle. That wasn't a huge disappointment in and of itself, but I was kinda looking forward to the Big G's first solo adventure since Godzilla Returns. It turns out that when they talked about Godzilla being by himself, they only meant that no other Toho mainstays would be sharing the screen with him.
Regardless, there are good things about this movie and there are bad things. Warning, there are spoilers ahead. So if you haven't seen the movie yet...you've been warned.
The Bad:
While enjoyable, this movie had a lot of problems. The biggest is how damn afraid Edwards is of actually showing the monster. Everyone compares it to the slow reveals from movies like Jaws, or even the original 1954 version. It's kinda ironic seeing as the slow-burn approach both those movies took actually stemmed from special effects issues. Spielberg realized that the robot shark they'd made for Jaws looked like crap and hid it by showing the shark as little as possible, while the makers of the 1954 Gojira limited how much Godzilla showed up because the actual Godzilla suit was a black-rubber deathtrap for the actor.
Whilst the modern movie suffers from no such limitations in special effects, it could be considered admirable that Edwards was holding Godzilla and the other monsters back in order to build the impact when we finally get the big reveal...It could be, if he'd pulled it off properly. However, you can't quite pull the same trick you pulled with the shark in Jaws with monsters the size of scyscrapers. The result...On two separate occasions, Godzilla and the Muto show up, face off, get ready to throw down and...cut to something less interesting. There are at two separate spectacular set-pieces that could have increased the epicness of this movie to godlike levels and Gareth Edwards just skips over them so that we can waste time with boring shit involving human characters that's really hard to give a damn about when they're muscling the entire reason you came to see the movie in the first place into the background.
The human characters are the other problem of the story. Bryan Cranston was a blast as Joe Brody. I haven't seen Breaking Bad yet, but I can see why people like him. He plays his role with so much energy and enthusiasm that it's a shame that he gets killed off so early. Ken Watanabe's Ichiro Serizawa is also well-done, even if the name is the only thing connecting him to the Dr. Serizawa of the original film. The two of them could have made great foils as their acting styles and character traits bounced off one another and could've carried the entire movie on their own. However, Serizawa is shuffled unceremoniously into the background and Joe Brody is killed off so that we can focus on the protagonist who, unfortunately, is the least-interesting character in the entire piece...and the entire movie suffers for it. The monster battles, the military's desperation to do something about it, the grasping for causes, effects, and solutions is upstaged by Lieutenant Blank Stare's generic "reunite with his wife and kid who happen to conveniently be in harm's way" storyline. This guy's only defining trait as a character is his desperation to get back with his family, which might be realistic, but that doesn't make it interesting to watch, especially when we keep getting wrenched away from the epic monster battles we want to watch to do it.
By and large, the human element of the story is also its weakest element, but the element that gets flaunted the most and takes up the most screen-time. It's a shame.
The Good:
I've got to say, when I saw the previews, I was practically drooling. I've seen every Godzilla movie ever made and this is the best he's ever looked. Going CGI was the right choice. By the time we hit Final Wars, it was pretty clear that the whole suitimation aspect of Godzilla and kaiju movies in general was well past its time, and not simply because of the fact that the monsters look unrealistic. I mean, they're giant monsters who can punt multistory buildings like footballs. Of course they're not gonna look realistic. The problem lies in the fact that they are human actors inside those costumes, only really capable of human motions. Even allowing for some weird shots, such as Godzilla's tail-slide kick from Godzilla vs. Megalon or flying with his atomic breath in Godzilla vs. Hedorah, ultimately, there's only so much you can do with people in rubber suits and a lot of the fights in many Godzilla movies simply boiled down to glorified shoving matches.
The big advantage to the CGI Godzilla of this movie is that he's the first Godzilla incarnation to really look alive. His chest expands when he inhales. When he snorts, you can see his nostrils flare. The cast talked about looking to various animals when working on how Godzilla moved and fought and it shows. There are a couple of scenes where we see Godzilla rearing up to his full height and snorting dramatically that are perfect mirrors for a bear pulling the same move. His fight scenes, the ones we're allowed to watch at least, are spectacular. Seeing him throw down with two Mutos simultaneously and cutting loose with his atomic ray are fantastic to watch and left me hungering for more.
I liked the Muto designs as well. Although, I once again can't help but feel that their presence makes this movie closer to Godzilla 2000, as opposed to the original, particularly because their designs did seem to share certain characteristics with Orga. Like Godzilla, the filmmakers do a fantastic job of bringing these monsters to life, especially when we see the male Muto presenting the female with a nuclear missile as a prize for her young. You get to watch as the monsters actually share a brief moment of affection before the male flies off to defend the nest and his mate.
The final conclusion is that the monsters, including Godzilla himself, are fantastic works of art, which makes it such a damn shame that we get to see so little of them over the course of the movie and that Gareth Edwards keeps wrenching us away from all the stuff that makes the movie interesting and worth watching so that he can shove one of the most generic, cliched story-lines imaginable down our throats.
I was originally gonna run a comparison between this Godzilla movie and the 1954 original, which this was initially billed as a sort of remake of. However, as I've pointed out, this movie has more in common with G2K than any of the others. There's a special kind of silliness with G2K ending with the main characters chatting, wondering why Godzilla keeps protecting them, which leads to one of the most ridiculous lines in cinema history, "Maybe there's a little Godzilla in all of us," all while Godzilla is busy wrecking the shit out of Tokyo behind them. In that same vein from this movie is the news banner proudly proclaiming Godzilla to be the "Savior of the city" while he's walking away after leaving San Francisco a mess of rubble behind him in a battle where Godzilla clearly didn't give two shits about anybody who might have been crushed beneath him while he was fighting the other monsters.
While I enjoyed the monster battles, I really would have liked to see a true Godzilla solo adventure that really went back to the roots of the first movie. The original Gojira is actually a very lean machine of a film. There are no other monsters, no secret organizations, no government cover-ups. For a film shot in 1954, watching it now makes it really refreshing to see a monster movie where the government doesn't immediately respond to evidence of a giant monster with a combination of contempt and denial or try to sweep the whole thing under the rug. Instead of all those subplots which clutter up so many of the monster movies that have been made since, the impetus of the original Godzilla is very simple. It's about the simple horror of humans being powerless in the face of an indestructible incarnation of atomic energy that shrugs off every effort to contain and thwart it. There isn't any real reasoning behind why Godzilla attacks Tokyo. Hell, for all we know, he could've just taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque while trying to get to Pismo Beach. It's terrifying and tragic on multiple levels.
This movie could have been all that and more. They could have used the awesome effects that brought Godzilla to life in this film to showcase the horror and destruction that he wreaks on a level never before seen, raked in a ton of cash and then started licensing other monsters from Toho for sequels. Oh well...
Ultimately, this wasn't a bad attempt on Legendary's part to reboot the franchise and I certainly hope they try again. I just hope that they find someone else to direct the movie next time, someone who actually wants to make a Godzilla movie that's actually about Godzilla. And lest I forget, there's one last thing that's missing from the movie that no Godzilla movie should be without...
Maybe next time...
The movie LOOKED amazing, especially Big-G and the Mutos, but that's the only good thing I can say about it. I honestly feel ripped off after seeing this, I think they should have just titled it "Ford".
I have to agree with your views the cutting away to deal with Ford bugged the hell out of me I actually said out loud during the part when the subway tunnel was closing and it switching back to Ford was "damn it I don't care about these assholes, go back to the fight" but again overall I enjoyed the movie cause it was actually Godzilla I almost squeed when his spines lit up when he charged his atomic breath the first time
Ford is and always will be a tool. A boring generic tool.
Badass Godzilla is badass, nuff said.
This is the path most remake films take when one of the main characters is something that isn't a human. They tend to drift away from what made the original great and focus on boring human characters. This is done in a half-baked attempt to connect to the audience. While newcomers may find the ride decent, old fans are left out by the shift in quality.
This brings me to the second half of the path, the actual film quality. The graphics are usually impressive, but the quality stops there. All we get between action sequences are thin, boring plots to either connect them together or fail at trying to modernize the franchise.
I haven't seen the new Godzilla film, but I've seen more than enough of this song and dance at other places to get the idea. Do I even have to mention the Transformers films by Michael Bay? The Transformers themselves were incredible in design and movement, but the human cast consisted of idiots, self-centered lunatics, and bland main protagonists (this includes the kid and both of the female leads.) The only entertaining one of the bunch was the African American fellow from the first film due to his reactions to the situation. He wasn't even on screen until near the last act, but he amused me far more than the annoying lead ever could.
To summarize my points, it's less than surprising that Godzilla filled the same shoes as Transformers before it. Let us hope that Michael Bay's version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fixes a few of these problems. I don't expect much progress, but an inch forward is better than not moving at all.
I gotta say that this movie made up for the dismal 97 one. I loved it and the last kill of Godzilla was damn impressive.
2122955 There have always been human plots in the Godzilla movies. The main issue lies in making the human plot engaging, so that it meshes well with the giant monster battles. The original Gojira had a good human plot, especially towards the end with the conflict over the use of the Oxygen Destroyer. One of my personal favorites, Godzilla vs. Biolante has a human plot the revolves around corporate sabotage, which is what actually kickstarts the monster stuff in that film and it's brilliant, probably the best of the Heisei films in terms of story.
The problem with the new movie is that it had all the right characters in all the right places, but the focus was way off. If the human element of the story had been centered around Serizawa and Brody Sr, with Brody Jr. serving as our occasional soldier perspective, the movie could have been darn near perfect. The problem is that Ford contributes absolutely nothing to the plot that couldn't have been done by some faceless extra, but he's still treated as the main character, which he shouldn't be.