Godzilla (2014)

     "And it is going to send us all back to the Stone Age!"

Godzilla (2014) is the second attempt at making an original American version of the Japanese monster movie series starring Godzilla. This film from Legendary Pictures is the sophomore outing of Director Gareth Edwards.

Ford's father is obsessed with what he believes is a government cover up that killed his wife. When he travels to Japan to try and bring his father home, he realizes his father was right and the whole world is about to have huge problems.

[Note: this review is a bit spoiler-heavy compared to others, if you care see the movie before reading on.]

The score to Godzilla is pretty good, I enjoyed it and felt it helped add a lot to the action on screen. My only two qualms are that I wish it was more memorable because I honestly couldn't sing any of it right now and sometimes it tipped its cards a little too early revealing something big was coming before it was on screen.

I think a lot of this film's issues come from the bad writing. First off the film has a bunch of bad references to the original Gojira (1954), for seemingly no reason. For example, Ken Watanabe's character is named Dr. Serizawa who happens to be the (eye-patched) character that is the key to defeating Godzilla in the original, and sacrifices himself to do it. Watanabe's character does neither of these things in the new film and clearly isn't related (if these were the same world) because the original guy didn't have kids (he was in the losing side of a love triangle at the time of his death) and Watanabe says his father was killed in Hiroshima. When you do things like this it just makes me think about the original and how much better the ending to that film is than this one! Early on this film sets up the radioactive nature of these creatures, the Muto even feed off of it! And yet the rest of the film doesn't even seem to keep this in mind at all. They drop a nuke that "makes the bombs they had in 1954 look like a firecracker" directly into the San Francisco bay and show absolutely no consequences or even reaction to it! That's just bad writing!

As if that wasn't enough, so much of this film relies on poorly written exposition scenes to explain what the heck is happening. Where characters deliver poorly thought out speeches and have pseudo conversations where they come up with answers with out any explanation (like the sexes of the Muto? How did you decide which one was male and which was female?) Even when the writing isn't horrible it's just mediocre and just the very typical stuff you've seen a million times before. Our lead happens to be at nearly every single place the giant monsters make stop including Japan, Hawaii, Oakland and SF, if that isn't convenient, then I don't know what is! Why does Godzilla wait so long (3 Muto battles I believe?) before he decides to try burning the damn things with his atomic breath? Why is the news reporting Godzilla is a hero when he probably did as much damage as the Muto and he hasn't even left the city yet? Oh yes, convenience. I could go on and on...

Overall the acting in this movie is really great! Bryan Cranston brings so much gravity to the role of a raving lunatic (how often can you say that?) You'll wish he was the only main character! Elizabeth Olsen does so much with the tiny part they gave her that I think she's the only reason I cared about their family at at all. And on the less good part is poor Ken Watanabe who got stuck with a horrible part, his character is two dimensional and really gets stepped over every time he's on screen. Don't they know Ken Watanabe is an amazing actor and deserves better than that? And our lead, Aaron Taylor-Johnson gives a solid performance, but it kind of left me wishing there was something more there. I loved the guy in Kick-Ass (2010) so I'm guessing the issue here is script-based too.

The direction of this film is quite good, I was really impressed. Suddenly it makes sense why the studios would have trusted such a huge property with such a new, young director. Especially if the script is as bad as I imagine, this movie really would have been far worse in the hands of a lesser director. He does a great job of balancing far away up-shots of the kaiju and the straight on monsters fighting shots that are traditionally associated with Japanese kaiju films, while keeping the variety of shots interesting and mixing it up.

There's lots of very memorable parts here too (direction-wise), I loved the way we see close ups of parts of Godzilla but we never really see Godzilla in full until he's right up against the Muto in Hawaii. This helped build a ton of suspense and really helps the viewer see Godzilla as a hero (more so than Dr. Serizawa's babbling) and I loved the first time we see Godzilla use his atomic breath, the way the light starts and builds is such an awesome thing to anyone who's a Godzilla fan and immediately knows what's coming!

I really liked the art direction in this film too. Loved the look of San Francisco in the the final battle with all the fire and the fog, it's such an unique look! And for the most part I really liked the monster/kaiju designs, there was just a couple of weird things like the weird kind of "C" shape that the Muto hatch out of in the beginning don't make a whole lot of sense to me.

Almost every part of Godzilla (2014) is better than your average Summer blockbuster film, every part except the writing.

3.5/5 Stars.

 Happy watching!



Be sure to check back because in honor of this movie, I'm tackling all or most of the early Toho Studios' Godzilla and Kaiju films. Check back next time for my review of Toho's first color kaiju film, Rodan (1956).


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