Godzilla:
****/*****, or 7/10
You
can't keep a classic monster down. All you can do is keep him locked
in the fridge for a while, until the time is right to introduce him
to a new generation. And so it is with that most iconic King of
Monsters, Godzilla. Toho, the Japanese studio behind the creature,
hasn't released a new Gojira flick of its own ever since his
big 50th anniversary showdown Final Wars in 2004.
As the Big G is turning 60 this year, it seemed about time to revamp
him once more for an international audience. Teaming up with studio
Warner Bros., making audiences forget about the previous American
remake, the dreadful 1998 Roland Emmerich movie, proved the least of
challenges. This time, the director's chair was given to somebody who
had proven experience carefully balancing human drama and monster
action, the man behind the guerrilla style low budget Monsters,
Gareth Edwards (whose credits until that point included only that
movie). His take on the giant reptilian behemoth makes for one of the
finest Godzilla movies yet, but it also frustratingly
illustrates just how little you can do with the character.
Thematically,
Godzilla has always been an obvious case of 'man versus nature' and
this time proves no different. Man's folly playing with powers
(usually atomic) beyond his control that end up wrecking civilization
has been a prime franchise message since day one, but as it has been
a decade since it was last sent to audiences, this is as good a time
as any to reapply it to Godzilla's latest origin story. However,
Edwards opts to focus most of the plot's attention not on examining
Godzilla's existence, but his foe's instead. This story thread is
neatly interwoven with the fate of the Brody family. Living in Japan
in 1999, father Joe (the always formidable Bryan Cranston) and mother
Sandra (Juliette Binoche) work at a Japanese nuclear power plant,
where things soon mysteriously go awry, leading to the plant's
destruction and Sandra's dramatic death before her husband's eyes.
The area is soon declared a quarantine zone, but Joe can't stop
investigating the strange events of that fateful day for the next 15
years, alienating him from his son Ford (a rather bland and forgetful
Aaron Taylor-Johnson).
When
his father once again causes trouble with his illegal excursions into
the forbidden zone, the now adult Ford, a US Navy officer, indulges
him to present his case or shut up about it forever. Their father-son
bonding trip into the zone makes for a frightful, haunting return to
their old family house in a now abandoned, rundown city. Alarming
news imagery of the Fukushima area in the wake of the terrible
tsunami and the nuclear disaster that followed is successfully evoked
by the ruined town set to give this Godzilla movie a 21st
century update that accordingly makes it feel sufficiently current
and underscores Godzilla's original themes still claim merit.
Stumbling onto a secret government operation, the Fords are
confronted with the 'MUTO', a giant insectoid creature, millions of
years old, that has laid dormant for countless ages, but is now
waking up. And all the military might in the world is not gonna stop
it from following its natural instincts to feed on atomic energy –
it eats nuclear bombs, which kinda sounds like a solution really –
and procreate. To the latter end, it has signaled a wake-up call to
its mate and the two beasties proceed to hook up again, likely to
humanity's demise, with more tragic consequences to the Fords,
directly caught in its wake.
Edwards
spends quite some time setting up the MUTO's motivations and the
plight of the Ford family, soon making you ask a most pertinent
question: where is Godzilla? It must be stated that there is
surprisingly little scenes of the actual Godzilla in this movie, but
when he finally does appear, he does so with a vengeance. The giant
reptile is the MUTO's natural enemy of ages past and as one big bug
called the other, so too their predator woke up to find its prey, as
expert Dr. Serizawa (Hollywood's obligatory Japanese actor, Ken
Watanabe) explains, while donning a foreboding look of concern and
alarm that irritatingly stays for the entire film. The name Serizawa
will sound familiar to Godzilla aficionados, and is just one of many
little tidbits Edwards has lovingly thrown in as an hommage to the
Japanese movies. The MUTO's, however, are a new invention
specifically for this film, but they serve their purpose adequately
for resurrecting Godzilla and providing for a good old-fashioned
Kaiju brawl at the movie's climax. Just like the Godzilla themes
of old have hardly changed, so too does the audience's taste for big
monster battles remain, as Edwards all too clearly understands. It
just takes quite a while to arrive at that point in the film where
the fight finally goes down. We have to sit through many a scene of
human character drama that ultimately doesn't make us really care
about their plight before we get what we want. Though patience is
required, it cannot be denied that the introduction of both Godzilla
and his adversaries is slowly but surely built to a crescendo. When
the Big G finally does appear for the first time, it will be hard for
fans to repress a chill at this reunion with their old friend. It
would have been even more effective had the classic Godzilla score
been applied, but the current soundtrack proves effective enough.
It's
clear Edwards sees no point in redefining Godzilla's look, as
Emmerich did before, as this new incarnation of Godzilla stays rather
true to the recognizable Japanese forms. Of course, this being a big
blockbuster movie, the beast has grown in size considerably to
accommodate the humongous budget and the expected onslaught it wreaks
on both human cities and the military forces thrown at him. Edwards'
respect for the classic Kaiju movie approach of men in suits playing
the monsters shows, as you'd almost be inclined to think Godzilla is
brought to life again in just that manner. Even the MUTO's motions
seem decidedly human at times, but make no mistake: all three
monsters are fully digital creations, not guys in suits smashing
cardboard sets. Nevertheless, Edwards' ode to sixty years of
'suitmation' is well appreciated. Still, the notable differences in
Godzilla's appearance compared to his predecessors, particularly his
rather obese bodily features, are bound to tick off some fans.
Unjustly
so, as this Godzilla, both the execution of the titular character and
the movie as a whole, form a vast improvement over the previous
American capitalization of the Japanese property. That said, in terms
of story Edwards adds little novelty to the previous fifty years of
Gojira. The message remains the same, and is delivered in a
rather serious fashion, as this particular Godzilla is certainly one
of the darker takes on the character: for Edwards, giant monster
movies are a serious business and there isn't much room left for
levity. The usual tendency towards flat human character development
interspersed between delightful monster battles remains. The fact is,
there's only so much you can do with a giant monster. Edwards will be
hard pressed to find innovative angles to take his successful reboot
in for the next installments. However, as this movie demonstrates,
times haven't changed enough for the cautions against man's tampering
with nature to subside, nor has the audience changed to such an
extent they can't appreciate a good ol' titanic monster clash on the
big screen. Even if the upcoming sequels fail to deliver notably new
directions for the franchise, clearly Godzilla has enough of a fight
left in him for another fifty years.
