Warning: There are very minor spoilers contained below. Godzilla is back and he is pissed off. Or at least he looks like it, and that is something that I really appreciate about the new movie version of the titular beast that came out last week. I grew up watching old, poorly dubbed Godzilla movies on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, and I always liked the look on the giant dinosaur creature's face. As he was smashing cities or beating the irradiated tar out of Ghidorah, our scaly friend's face always seemed to communicate, "I don't have time for this stupid foolishness. I need to barbecue these idiots so I can make it back to my subterranean lair for a nap." He looked simultaneously wise and really irritated -- and I liked that.
So, in 1998, when writer-director Roland Emmerich, hot off the blockbuster success of Independence Day, released his version of the classic monster movie, one of the many, many things he got wrong was the look on the main character's face. That Godzilla was based on a cross between some kind of sea iguana and a Jurassic Park velociraptor rip-off. And in a movie called Godzilla, if your star doesn't look right, not much else is going to go right. Despite the massive marketing campaign behind Emmerich's version, the film was lame. Lamer than a hamstrung sprinter. Lamer than Seabiscuit - after he died. Lamer than wearing socks with sandals. Lamer than a Phish concert.
So I approached this new version with some trepidation, having been burned before. (I stood in line in the rain with my little brother to get tickets in 1998. This time around I went with Fandango.) I reserved my judgement until I actually got a good, clear view of the monster himself. Wisely, director Gareth Edwards delayed that until a full hour into the movie, but when it happened, I was plenty satisfied. As computer generated as he is, Godzilla simply looks like a very realistic version of himself - silly, little T-rex arms; an almost jolly-looking belly, a mountainous ridge of jagged plates along his spine; and yes, that pissed-off, "I'm gonna cook you with my atomic breath and you are NOT going to like it" look on his face. Yay.
The film essentially has three sections and a star for each section. The first section is headlined by Bryan Cranston, late of Breaking Bad. He plays Joe Brody, a nuclear engineer at a Japanese power plant. He has a charming wife, a loving son, and a ton of responsibility sitting on his shoulders as a pattern of tremors is drawing closer and closer to his facility. One fateful day, bad things happen and Brody loses his wife, his job and possibly his sanity forever. The film fast forwards us to fifteen years later, where we see that he is isolated, paranoid, and obsessed with what happened at his plant that day. His son, Ford, also haunted by loss, has grown into a beefy Navy explosive ordinance technician. The two men are not close, but circumstances bring them back together, and they're both arrested while trying to infiltrate the contamination zone surrounding their former home.
It's at the end of this section that we see what caused the destruction of the plant fifteen years before. A MUTO (massive unidentified terrestrial object - fancy codeword for "giant freakin' creature") burrowed its way to the plant that day and has been feeding off the radiation ever since. It's a gargantuan flying mantis monster that looks like it's made out of black leather and lava rock. It breaks out of its cocoon and things go south for many of the humans nearby, including Cranston's character. This is unfortunate because, though the character hits many of the cliched beats of the former-genius-turned-paranoid-nutball-who-isn't-really- paranoid-at-all-but-instead-right-all-along-! Cranston imbues his character with a humanity and believability that is a rare commodity in a monster movie. He doesn't play the character with a wink. He just plays the character.
The middle section is by far the least interesting. It is mostly the tale of Ford trying to make it back to San Francisco where we know his lovely wife and cute child await his return as two MUTOs and Godzilla approach. Ford, as played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, is basically a cypher. Taylor-Johnson shows very little emotional range in his role and instead of coming across as haunted, determined, awestruck, or any other real emotion that someone in his place might feel, he just uses the same frozen, blank eyed look for every situation. His passivity creates little emotional buy-in for the viewer. Therefore, the section of the film in which he carries the bulk of the story is a little limp.
The star of third section? You guessed it - the G-man himself. Godzilla and the two MUTOs face off as they plow through downtown San Francisco. It's massively scaled and and expertly produced.The other thing that's wonderfully entertaining about this sequence (besides Godzilla's "I'm sick of this crap" facial expression) is how the filmmakers used the most advanced modern technology to effectively ape the fight choreography from the original films. This sounds wrong to say and I don't want you to get the wrong impression - but the monsters fight as though they are guys in rubber suits. When one of the MUTOs jumps on Godzilla's back, G reaches over his shoulder with his tiny arms, futilely trying to grab it, just like in the old days. Sounds cheesy and stupid, I know, and maybe I just like it for nostalgic reasons. But I don't think so. I don't think a twelve year old kid who has never seen an actual Toho-produced Godzilla movie would watch the fight scenes and think twice about them. But I can watch and smile. The best part, of course, is when Godzilla pulls out his ace - his fiery atomic breath. It was the thing that made me cheer as a kid and it was a perfect crescendo to the long battle sequence. Godzilla blasts it right down the throat of the one remaining MUTO and burns its head right off its body. He then tosses the head in the water with monster body language that appears to say, "Yeah, that's right." It's pretty boss, as monster moves go, I have to say.
As a film, though it's epic in scale, this new Godzilla is pretty modest in its impact. It doesn't send viewers away shaking their heads in awe at what they've seen. It doesn't raise any particularly provocative questions. That's too bad considering the original Godzilla began as Japanese filmmakers' veiled response to the horrors of atomic warfare. Like a lot of science fiction in the 50s and 60s, Godzilla was a way of dealing with anxieties about rapidly developing technology, the Cold War, and the constant threat of The Bomb. Rather than serve as social commentary, however, this new version is largely just a smash-a-thon. Fun but little more. It's not a bad way to spend two hours and ten bucks, especially if you are old enough to have been disappointed and underwhelmed in 1998. Spend your money and cleanse your cinematic palate. And if you don't? Here's what you-know-who has to say about that:
