Ever since I was a young boy, I have been a huge fan of the Godzilla film series. The first Godzilla
movie I saw was Godzilla: King of the
Monsters, released in 1956. This movie
left a huge impression on me as a young child, and since then the series has
become one of the key things that defines me as a person. Though this isn’t going to be one big
retrospective of the series, instead I’ll be focusing on the new American
Godzilla movie that was released last year.
The reason that this is called a re-review is because I did review the
movie last year on my old blog, but what I wrote was pretty basic and short,
and honestly I wanted to watch the movie again so I could offer my full
opinion.
The previous time North America tried their hand at making a
Godzilla movie, we got a movie
featuring an oversized T-Rex running around New York City instead of Godzilla
himself. That movie was the key reason why
some fans were skeptical about this movie when it was first announced a few
years ago. Fortunately, when the movie was
released the reaction both critically and from the fans was mostly positive,
though there were some that weren’t satisfied with the movie. With all of that said, what do I think of the
movie?
The plot involves a man named Joe Brody, played by Brian
Cranston, who has been obsessed with finding out the truth in regards to a
mysterious accident at a power plant in Janjira, Japan, which killed some
scientists, in addition to his wife back in 1999. Since that incident, him and his son Ford,
played by Aaron Taylor Johnson, have had a tenuous relationship, given that
Ford’s father has been too focused with finding the truth instead of just
moving on. Ford travels to Japan to free
his father from jail after he was caught trespassing in the abandoned city of
Janjira. Joe tells Ford that he thinks
he’s found the answer to the accident and he convinces his son to join him on
another attempt to sneak into Janjira.
They manage to sneak into the city and it turns out the air in the city
never became radioactive after the collapse of the power plant, but while Joe
is collecting old data from his family’s now abandoned home, him and his son
are arrested and brought to the site of the destroyed power plant. It turns out that at the epicenter of the place
there is a massive object containing an unknown lifeform. The research is being conducted by a group
named Monarch, however, it isn’t long before the creature wakes up and it
starts to go on a rampage before flying off.
During the chaos, Ford’s father is killed and now Ford has
to help Monarch find and stop the creature.
Fortunately, the leader of Monarch, Dr. Serizawa, played by Ken
Watanabe, knows of a creature that was studied back in the 1950’s called
Gojira, or Godzilla. The unknown creature,
now called a MUTO, makes its way from Japan to Hawaii, and there it also runs
into Godzilla, who shows up to confront the creature. However, the MUTO escapes and Serizawa thinks
it’s trying to find and meet up with its mate, who has been held in captivity
at a warehouse in Nevada. The captive creature
eventually escapes its container and the two creatures meet up in San Francisco
to create more offspring. Now Monarch
and the military have to find a way to stop the MUTOs from creating more spawn,
but the answer may just involve Godzilla.
For what it’s worth, the plot and characters are both
good. Much like the first Godzilla movie, which was serious in
tone and portrayed Godzilla as a metaphor for an unstoppable force, this movie
portrays the monsters and their actions on the cities they show up in as the
equivalent of a natural disaster.
Certain scenes in the movie do a good job at showing the aftermath of
the carnage caused by both Godzilla and the MUTOs, and the toll it takes on
society. As I mentioned before, the 1998
Godzilla movie didn’t feature the
Godzilla we know as that monster greatly differed from the actual Godzilla in
terms of design and abilities.
Fortunately, this movie does feature the
Godzilla, even though the design has been slightly altered to give him some
animalistic traits. For example, his
face bears a slight resemblance to a grizzly bear, yet the overall shape and
design still carries the Godzilla design we know and love. Also, when Godzilla uses his atomic breath in
the movie, it is truly awesome. It
should also be noted that the movie never makes it clear as to whether Godzilla
is a good guy, bad guy, or an antihero. While Godzilla’s
role in this movie is referred to as the “alpha predator” and the “great
equalizer” since he is the only one capable of defeating the MUTOs. It does raise a question: if the MUTOs
weren’t around, would Godzilla still reappear, only instead to cause chaos?
The new monsters introduced in this movie, the MUTOs, are a
mixed bag. While their ablities are
fairly unique, design-wise, however, they look pretty generic. Simply put, these creatures look like what
would happen if the Cloverfield monster visited Tron. Though this is made up by their
abilities. The MUTOs are capable of
unleashing EMP pulses from their arms, plus, their primary food source is
radiation. So when the military plans on
luring the MUTOs out into the sea and then use a nuke to kill them, guess how
well that works?
One of the key complaints from people who didn’t like the
movie is that Godzilla doesn’t have a lot of screentime in this movie, which I
don’t have a problem with. What is a
problem, however, is the uneven pacing of scenes involving the monsters. While not prevalent throughout the movie,
there are a few times in which certain scenes with either Godzilla or the MUTOs
will abruptly end right as something interesting is about to happen. For example, when the MUTO from Japan appears
in Hawaii, along with Godzilla, the two creatures both let out their roars as
we know that a fight is about to go down, but then the movie cuts away and
instead we only brief glimpses of said fight via news broadcasts on the TV.
The other big complaint that people have is that Brian
Cranston’s character gets killed off early on, even though the trailers for
this movie made it seem like he would be in the entire movie. This, I agree with, Cranston’s character is
the best character in the movie as the emotional conflict at hand with him just
wanting to find the truth as to what killed his wife makes him the most
interesting character in the movie. His
son, Ford, is the character the movie mainly focuses on, and while Ford isn’t a
bland or forgettable character, the problem is that when compared to his
father, Joe Brody is the more interesting of the two.
Without a doubt, the special effects in this movie look
great. The Godzilla films are known for
their strong use of miniature sets and for having stuntmen portray the monsters
in costume. Obviously, this movie uses
CGI to portray the monsters instead of this technique, but the effects in this
movie look great. Similar to the movie Pacific Rim, this movie does a great job
at showing off the scale and size of these creatures and the impact of their
clashes. The music is also great, even
though this movie doesn’t feature the iconic Godzilla theme, the movie’s
soundtrack wouldn’t sound out of place in another Godzilla movie.
Despite some pacing issues in the
movie as well as the lack of more screentime for an important character, Godzilla (2014) is still an enjoyable
movie and it finally does justice to the King of the Monsters after the last
attempt of making a Godzilla movie by
North America messed things up.
Final Score: 8/10
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