I am going to be comparing this movie a lot to certain other movies, not Godzilla movies, but Transformers movies, as I did above. I love the Transformers, and when Michael Bay made the first of the live action movies, I had a bit of a fangasm about it, despite the fact that the movie honestly wasn't very good. Every time he makes a sequel, same thing. The movie is pretty bad, but I still go see it and get hyped for Transformer beat 'em up action and Optimus Prime's cool voice. I expected Godzilla to be a Transformers movie with Godzilla instead of Autobots and Decepticons, and I would have been happy if it had been just that, because I still would have gotten to see this great-looking Godzilla character tear some stuff up. I was proven wrong, however, when I got to the theater, sat down, and was treated to a genuinely good movie that just happened to be a Godzilla movie.
And thus the comparisons to the Transformers movies ends...
Instead, let's look at this as a Godzilla movie for just a moment. Now, this is a review of this movie, not other movies from the franchise, so I won't talk about those much. Let's just say that the original Godzilla was a symbol of what we might cause if our nuclear progress went too far too fast in the form of a cool movie monster. He came from the sea, born of the aftermath of atomic explosions. Eventually other monsters were created from the same source, and we had a pantheon of monsters, prevented from destroying us only by the first, who had become the King of Monsters.
The new movie is very similar to the original in theme, except that it is not the nuclear weapons which create Godzilla, they just stir him up. This Godzilla is a member of one of an unknown number of ancient species which existed on our planet long ago when it wasn't yet finished forming and was still radioactive. These creatures live by consuming radiation, and some have survived to present day by relocating to the bottom of the ocean and consuming the ambient radiation coming from the planet's core. Godzilla himself is sort of the great equalizer of monsters. When one of the ancient monsters encroaches on our world and threatens the new balance of life on Earth Godzilla rises from the ocean and puts the trespasser down, trying his darnedest not to kill us all in the process, though he makes no promises. Godzilla is portrayed as a grizzled old warrior who takes no crap from nobody, and the CG model was detailed and expressive enough to show it.
When Godzilla was impatient, you could tell that he was impatient. When he'd had enough, you could tell that he's had enough. And when the human's pissed him off by trying to murder him, you could see how much he really didn't want to waste time dealing with their stupid little missiles and guns. In fact this Godzilla was portrayed in a similar fashion to the original later in his franchise: as our reluctant guardian and champion, who just happens to be a giant, destructive, atomic-powered lizard thing. In other words, this Godzilla, of course, had no dialogue at all, and yet was still a well-developed, likeable, and understandable anti-hero, and the movie was all the better for that.
I know that I said that the comparison to Transformers was done, but there is one more similarity that I'd like to address. Like Transformers, this movie was mostly told from the perspective of audience surrogate characters, particularly Bryan Cranston as Joe Brody, his son Ford, played by Kick-Ass star Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and Ford's wife Elle played by star of my heart Elizabeth Olsen. Bryan Cranston get's Ford involved in the story, and from that point forward Ford and Elle each represent different points of view of the subsequent acts of destruction. There are some military guys and some scientists, too, but they are really only there to exposit about the monsters and to give us a reason to follow Godzilla's progress during scenes when logically only military personnel would be there. It is for this reason as well that Ford is U.S. Air Force. Despite being effectively plot devices in human form, however, the characters were all pretty likeable, and it made scenes where they were threatened by the monsters just a bit more tense.
Segue into...
The thing that makes or breaks any Godzilla movie is, ultimately, the monsters. The observant viewer will have noticed from the trailers that there is more than one monster in this movie. In fact there are three: Godzilla and two MUTOs (pronounced Moo-Toe), MUTO standing for Massive Unknown Terrestrial Organism. There is a male MUTO which is smaller and can fly, and a female MUTO which is much larger and stronger. Both can expel electromagnetic energy, making the operation of machines in the area around the monsters difficult. The bulk of the story is made up of these two monsters trying to reach each other so that they can mate, while Godzilla and the military try to stop them. The MUTOs are as cool and as threatening as Godzilla himself, and while they aren't as expressive, you can really feel their desire to succeed and preserve their species, as it is likely that these two are the last of their kind. The propagation of these things, however, would be disastrous to us humans, so the viewer is always routing against them. After several confrontations between the humans and the MUTOs and Godzilla and the MUTOs, the military finally does the only sensible thing and steps back and allows the creatures to duke it out in the place where the two MUTOs finally met up: San Francisco, California. The fight was tense, it was epic, and it actually kept you guessing for a bit. Godzilla used his atomic breath, which is always a treat to see, and looked particularly good here. It was fantastic.
It was also, however, pretty short compared to the rest of the movie. This movie was two hours and three minutes long, and the final fight only lasted maybe fifteen of those minutes. Yes, there was plenty of other action, but Godzilla himself wasn't really clearly visible in more than a few scenes, the final battle, of course, being the one where we get our best look at him in all of his beefy monster glory. For the most part this movie felt a lot like Cloverfield, giving us brief glimpses of our titular creature, but only glimpses enough to keep us wanting to see more. Thankfully this movie was much more interesting and paced better than Cloverfield with a story that actually developed the backstory of the monsters and built intrigue around them. I guess you could say that this movie was actually pretty similar in more than a few ways to a few different movies, but it managed to be, for the most part, better than all of them.
Finally, before I wrap up the review, I want to talk briefly about the design of Godzilla in this movie. As this movie is a complete reboot of the franchise, it warranted a new look for the monster king. This Godzilla is bulkier than previous incarnations, with a head that borrows from the original look of the character as well as from the '98 Godzilla design. Some people have been complaining about how he doesn't look enough like how they expect Godzilla to look, but I say he looks great, and that, in my opinion, Godzilla has never looked better.
Godzilla was a surprising movie. It didn't deliver as much as I'd hoped in the action department, but it made up for that with good human and monster characters alike, and an enjoyable story that makes me want to know more about this world of monsters and the animals it spawned. With nods to the original, like calling Godzilla by his true name throughout, giving him the title King of Monsters, and even an almost off-handed nod to probably the second most well-known Toho Studios monster, Mothra, during a scene in Ford's run-down childhood home, this movie was a great reboot, and I look forward to seeing where they take the franchise from here. While I still would have liked to see a little more monster mashing, Godzilla pulls out ahead of my expectations with a 7 out of 10. Check out Godzilla for yourself, and come back later for another Something Awesome.
Nice review.
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