The 2014 Version Of Godzilla Is An Awesome Monster. The Movie, However, Is Rather Bland...

[philosoraptor42]

Godzilla (2014)

When I first heard about this film it sounded like one of those crazy internet rumours. Garth Edwards had managed to produce a quite stunning film using a combination of appropriate location shots and carefully planned low budget visual effects.



Gabe Toro's main criticism of "Monsters" was that the use of sites wrecked by real natural disasters was exploitative. However, the more common criticism was that for a movie called "Monsters" it contained remarkably few of them appearing rarely.



To hear that he was now being entrusted with an enormous budget of millions of dollars to make a new Godzilla movie seemed almost like a joke. Would he even know how to spend millions of dollars? Would Godzilla actually ever be seen during this movie?



Yet strangely "Godzilla" seems to be the reverse of "Monsters". While "Monsters" made the human characters central and kept the actual monsters firmly in the background, providing quite a beautiful expansion of the central relationship, "Godzilla" has little in the way of a compelling human drama (at least, not consistently through the film).



In spite of the extensive cast: Sally Hawkins (Made In Dagenham, Blue Jasmine), Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Kick-Ass), David Strathairn (Good Night and Good Luck) they don't seem to get the character-centred moments they deserve.




I've only really seen Elizabeth Olsen as a traumatised cult recruit in "Martha Mary May Marlene", but I had reason to believe she had more to offer. Here she gets to play traumatised once again as she is caught in the middle of the Godzilla attack and we don't get to see much beyond that.



I was surprised to see Juliette Binoche's name turn up in the opening credits since I hadn't heard anything about her appearance in this. Sadly she's yet another great actor who is poorly used.



Bryan Cranston is about the only person who really managed to bring some heart to this very flat piece. But he isn't given the opportunity to do so consistently because Aaron Taylor-Johnson's character is actually the real star and he isn't doing anything like such a good job with the material. In a film where pretty much everyone seems a little flat, I'm disinclined to judge him harshly as an actor, but if anyone really need to save this film it was him.


In spite of all this I actually kind of liked this film. Though I didn't feel like the first half connected properly with the second half. The first half is the more character-based side. Then we start seeing monsters (and I think it's worth noting that Godzilla isn't the first monster to show up). And it should be noted that Gareth Edwards is big on subtlety. Every visual treat is made to feel remarkably natural and when Cranston and Taylor-Johnson are wandering through the quarantined area surrounding the old nuclear reactor disaster it's easy to just accept it all at face value rather than wondering how the studio have created an urban setting so clearly reclaimed by nature.



Edwards loves to tease the audience. The monster attacks are almost always from someone's perspective. Godzilla is seen emerging from the sea by men on a ship, or is seen advancing towards the city by civillians on a bridge, or sometimes we'll skip from a battle occurring close-by to someone else watching the terror unfold in news footage on their tv screen. Edwards never wants the spectacle to be 'just there'. There has to be some context to every shot.



And this would all have been incredible if the human characters were more compelling. This does not bode well for the upcoming film from Sergey Bodrov (director of "Mongol") since his new blockbuster "Seventh Son" starring Jeff Bridges is also written by Max Borenstein.



The one character who I think ends up working well here is Ken Watanabe whose role is essentially to explain to the audience how they should feel about the action sequences. He has real gravitas no matter what lines he is given and he keeps us somewhat invested in the human story in the second half.



The monsters look amazing, Godzilla is brilliant (and actually has more engaging emotional character moments than many of the human characters), there is definitely a consistent story and the visuals are extremely well handled. While this is nowhere near the irritating stupidity of a Michael Bay film and is light years ahead of Emmerich's previous travesty, I actually think Guillermo Del Toro's "Pacific Rim" did a far better job of capturing the heart of the giant monster genre.



This Godzilla movie has elements to recommend it, mostly related to the special effects side, but it's a bit of a mess overall. And perhaps the most annoying thing is that it was so close to being brilliant. I hope Gareth Edwards will be a little more discerning about the next script he takes on, because I know he can do better human drama than we saw here.

C+