★★★
It seems to me that the
monster movie genre would be one of the most difficult genres to screw up. Yet
somehow Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin managed to do just that with their atrocious
1998 version of "Godzilla." Most of the film made absolutely no sense
and paid no tribute to the original source material. Furthermore, it ruined the
film careers of just about all those involved. Now, 16 years later, filmmaker
Gareth Edwards tries his hand at Godzilla. His result is a vast improvement on
the 1998 movie (which isn't very hard to do) but it still doesn't exactly feel
very satisfying in the end.
Our main character here is
Ford Brody (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), a Navy Lieutenant and member of the Explosive
Ordnance Disposal team returning home to San Francisco from a mission overseas.
His wife Elle (Elizabeth Olsen) and son Sam are happy to have him back, but
their excitement is short lived. Ford is called up to go tend to his father Joe
(Bryan Cranston) who has been detained by police in Japan for trespassing in a
quarantined radiation zone. Joe is trying to prove that some “thing” caused a
meltdown at the nuclear power plant where he worked 15 years ago. Of course no
one believes him.
And of course he's right. A
team of scientists, lead by Dr. Ichiro Serizawa (Ken Watanabe) and Vivienne
Graham (Sally Hawkins), is hiding a cocoon that feeds off the radiation of the former
plant. The creature, which they call a Muto, breaks out and starts terrorizing
everything. But something else knows that this Muto is here. A giant lizard
from the sea that Serizawa calls Godzilla who only has one purpose: to prey on
these creatures.
"Godzilla" has all
the makings of a pretty fantastic old school monster movie, but it ultimately
falls short of being that great. It really has nothing to do with the story
because the screenplay by Max Bornstein is surprisingly solid. There is plenty
of rooting interest in these characters, especially since they dedicate so much
time to setting up the back-story of the Brody family. It's pretty dark too
with very little humor built into the script.
The problem is there are very
few scenes featuring monsters in this monster movie. Isn't that what you want
to see in a monster movie? One shot shows two monsters ready to engage in epic
battle, but the camera is behind two doors as they shut. The last thing we see
are these two creatures inches away from each other but we don’t see them fighting.
Two big ugly monsters fighting each other is what makes the old
"Godzilla" movies so entertaining. You won't hear me say this often
but I think the thing that hurts this "Godzilla" the most is the
story.
I find it hard to fault the
movie for this, but I have to. The movie's title character doesn't even show up
for an hour, and after that he’s never the star. You're paying for monsters
fighting, and that's what they should be delivering. But where I'm torn is that
the dramatic narrative is actually very polished. I find it very hard to fault
anything like that, but this is an instance where “more monster/less story”
would have been desirable.
Director Gareth Edwards hasn't
done much else before being handed the large budget for this film, and he
proves himself to be a success. He handles the well-developed script well and
does not go overboard with his use of CGI. Sure, the monsters and the destruction
they leave behind aren’t real, but it blends in seamlessly with the organic
action in the foreground.
And the monster battles when
we do get to see them are great and enormously entertaining. Edwards pays great
homage to the original "Godzilla" movies by letting the monsters have
at it with no regard to anything around them. Even the score from composer
Alexandre Desplat has a nostalgic feel for the monster movies of old. But he
doesn't maintain that old style throughout the film. He adds some nice dissonant
cues to the more intense moments, which help prove that he's one of the best
music composers working today.
"Godzilla" is more than just a standard monster movie
and it’s certainly better than any Roland Emmerich disaster film. There's a lot
of depth in this movie, which is nice to see from a big budget studio picture.
But that gets in the way of us wanting to see what we came to the movies to
see. There's very little Godzilla in "Godzilla." I can't say I loved
it because it didn't deliver what it promises by the title. The story is great,
don’t get me wrong, but that’s not what we paid to see. It's supposed to be a
monster movie, and that's not what this is.
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