Godzilla (2014)

A retrospective by Forrest Humphrey

After the disastrous effort from Tristar in 1998, Toho rebooted Godzilla themselves barely a year later with “Godzilla: Millennium” (Godzilla 2000 in the west). This began the “Millennium” era which lasted from 1999 to 2004's “Godzilla Final Wars”, celebrating the character's 50^th anniversary, when the character was retired for another hiatus of at least 10 years, according to Toho. In 2009, rumor began to circulate that Legendary Pictures might be negotiating with Toho to reboot the series and try again, later confirmed in 2010. Finally, in 2014, on time for his 60^th anniversary, we got “Godzilla”, directed by Gareth Edwards and starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen, Ken Watanabe and Bryan Cranston.

Our story is simple. Opening in the late 90's, we follow Watanabe as a leader of Monarch, an organization which becomes important in later films, as they discover a massive fossil underground, and eggs inside it, one of which somehow hatched. Cut to a nuclear plant in Japan, where Cranston works, and something causes the plant's destruction. Cut forward fifteen years and Cranston and his son, played by Johnson, are investigating the disaster. We find out the thing that hatched attacked the plant, absorbed its radiation and growing until it was ready to hatch. The creature, dubbed “MUTO” for Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Object, starts its rampage and destroys the facility, killing Cranston. Johnson then joins Watanabe as they try to find a way to stop the MUTO and get Johnson back home to his wife, played by Olsen and son. The MUTO seems mostly immune to weapons, but there is another possible solution: another ancient monster Monarch has been trying to keep tabs on since the 1950's. Godzilla. The ancient alpha-badass, who could probably kill the MUTO if given the chance. We find out of course there's more than one MUTO, there's 2, a male and female, converging on Los Angeles to meet and mate, with Godzilla following and hankering for a fight.

While straightforward, the story is everything it needs to be for a movie like this. It moves at a solid pace, and the tone is consistently serious, as one would expect a disaster movie to be, its solidly directed. So far so good, but there's one big problem. The characters. While Bryan Cranston gives a genuinely great performance, he dies less than halfway in, and Ken Watanabe just doesn't have a lot to do, sticking us with Johnson and occasional cuts to Olsen. Olsen, having proved herself many times a great actress, has nothing to work with here, the worried wife we've seen a billion times, and Johnson is almost entirely lacking in charisma as “army man husband”. So we unfortunately have a boring leading man to follow for most of the film.

But hey, this is a Godzilla movie right? It'll be worth the boring characters as long as the fighting is a good payoff right? Yes and no. The MUTO are relatively fine as far as monsters go, their body designs are quite unique and not something that could be accomplished without CGI. The issue is the fact they're almost entirely gray, and when action scenes take place at night with heavy amounts of dust and smoke, they can be hard to really see. Godzilla though, unlike in 1998, has a very faithful and excellent design. There are some minor new elements like a set of gills on his neck but overall, this is clearly Godzilla, and the updated roar? Fantastic. 

While I have my gripes, another thing the film does extremely well with all the monsters is convey just how freaking BIG they are. Godzilla is his biggest yet, over 300 feet tall. With solid camera work, wonderful audio and visual effects, this is a hell of a monster movie when it cuts loose. There are some gorgeous shots here too, with a skydiving scene being really something to see. However, memes have no doubt informed you how little time the monsters have on screen, and I mostly agree. As good as the action is, the film has an annoying habit of cutting away right when it starts until the very end. While this works in the early portions to build up the tension and anticipation, it just won't stop cutting away. By the time we get to the final battle in LA, you'll be grinding your teeth just wishing to watch Godzilla and the Mutos fight for a single uninterrupted minute. 

But I just cant dislike the movie. Because when Godzilla is on screen, GOD is he badass. And they also manage to infuse Godzilla with a lot of personality thanks to body language and facial expression, he's just so tired by the end of the film. And while the darkness and smoke can sometimes make the action a little hard to follow, the final battle is absolutely worth seeing. If there hadnt been so much cutaway, just a couple more minutes, especially midway into the film after Godzilla finally shows up in Hawaii, the weak characters wouldnt have been so easy to pick on. Of course if the characters were better the lack of monster action in the middle of the movie wouldn't be so felt either.

Overall, the film is serviceable. The action is good when you get to it and the early portion with Cranston is compelling. The effects hold up well even if the soundtrack is largely mediocre. Not bad, just not the level of memorable or iconic from the Japaneses films. It was also a solid box office and critical success, launching the “Monsterverse”, which continues with “Kong: Skull Island”. Check it out, its not a bad film, just not as good as it had the potential to be and in the end, I personally still enjoy it.