Review: Godzilla (Heather’s Take)

Considering his first cinematic excursion with oversized creatures quickly became one of my favorite genre films of the last ten years, I knew if anyone was going to be up to the gargantuan task of breathing new life into the “King of the Monsters,” British filmmaker & Monsters helmer Gareth Edwards absolutely would be the right guy for the job.

The reality is that for a film like Godzilla, what we’re really showing up for are these giant cinematic beasts- not the humans- and that’s truly the one aspect of the movie Edwards nails to absolute perfection, making it easy dismiss all those minor flaws and get caught up in all the awesomeness of the monsters and their paths of destruction throughout the film. This Godzilla is THE perfect celebration of everyone’s favorite giant radioactive beastie and should undoubtedly deliver pretty much what any long-time fan could want or hope for out of a new Godzilla movie if you’re willing to overlook a few things here and there.

While Edwards’ Godzilla undoubtedly both deliver a breathtaking spectacle worthy of seeing on the biggest screen you possibly can, it must be said that the film does suffer from some major story and character issues as well as this overwhelming sense of coincidence akin to its summer blockbuster peers, including Independence Day, War of the Worlds, Transformers and even last year’s Pacific Rim.

After quickly taking us through an overview of a ton of backstory and references to what had happened to our titular creature via the movie’s opening credits (great stuff if you can catch all the in-jokes; they fly by pretty quickly over each title card), Godzilla then picks up in the year 1999 where a pair of scientists in the Philippines (Ken Watanabe, Sally Hawkins) have discovered several sets of gigantic animal fossils. These events are then tied into the happenings over in Japan where a cautious nuclear engineer, named Joe (Bryan Cranston), is trying to shut down his plant out of concern due to a recent onslaught of tremors to the area. As you may have suspected, the two events are related, ultimately leading to a monumental disaster that destroys not only the nuclear plant, but the surrounding area and thousands of lives as well.

Once we manage to get past all that lengthy set-up, Godzilla gets to crux of everything and takes us to present time where Joe’s son Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), an EOD specialist for the Navy, is finally returning to his wife Elle (Elizabeth Olson) and son Sam (Carson Bolde) after being away for 14 months. Desperate to put his past behind him, Ford gets a call from a police station in Japan that apprehended his dad who was caught trespassing near the nuclear disaster site. Once Ford heads to Japan to reclaim his father from authorities, that’s pretty much when Godzilla finally starts to get into all the rompy-stompy monster madness we’re all anxiously awaiting.

That’s unfortunately Godzilla’s biggest problem- after ALL that set-up, after ALL that time establishing these characters, once the monsters of the film enter the picture, we end up losing all the human characters we’ve been focusing on for so long when the film shifts focus to its ginormous star. And that is truly a shame, considering the amount of talent assembled onscreen in Godzilla. Taylor-Johnson spends much of his time in the movie just staring in awe at the radioactive giants around him, we totally lose both Watanabe and Hawkins at about the midpoint of the film, and all poor Olson gets to do through most of Godzilla is bawl her eyes out.

I don’t know if that’s necessarily the fault of Edwards, as he was working from a script he didn’t write in this instance. Based on his proven track record on his previous directorial efforts, Edwards has given us more than what we see in Godzilla. Hedid a stellar job in Monsters (which he also wrote) of blending the human drama against the backdrop of giant alien creatures that had invaded and now were living on our planet and yet somehow, Godzilla is very much missing that balance. And while a lot of that responsibility is on Edwards, he can only direct what’s on the script if you catch my drift.

All that being said, the characterization of Godzilla himself is a wonderful homage to the real Godzilla films of yesteryear, not that 1998 Roland Emmerich monstrosity that pretty much turned everyone’s favorite King Lizard into a creature with a very Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles­-esque backstory and a horrible redesign as well. I wonder if the 1999 date at the start of Godzilla isn’t something of a playful nod to rebooting things after Emmerich’s atrocious efforts 16 years ago.

Edwards’ first reveal of ‘The Big G’ is pretty much worth the price of admission alone, with the filmmaker setting the bar exceedingly high and topping himself continuously in Godzilla. Very few filmmakers are able to live up to those kinds of expectations, but, somehow, Edwards makes the unbelievable so very believable time and time again, which I think is a true earmark of a talented filmmaker. We get some unsettling and horror-esque moments with the film’s monsters, and there are also several mind-blowing moments of chaos and destruction in Godzilla that really do have to be seen to be believed.

Clearly Edwards’ background as a VFX artist has paid off tenfold with Godzilla delivering a bounty of jaw-dropping  moments smacking with a sense of wonderment and triumph that its arrival in theaters this weekend feels akin to what fans first experienced back when Jurassic Park stormed theaters over 20 years ago now. While I don’t necessarily think it revolutionizes the idea of the summer blockbuster, on a technical level, Edwards has created something of a visual masterpiece with Godzilla, making it a template for other future tentpole movies in terms of what he is able to achieve here. It may not be perfect movie, but it is a perfect summer movie and absolutely a worthy new chapter for “The King of the Monsters.”

Movie Score: 3.5/5