Movie Review: Godzilla

Godzilla

In a period of cinematic remakes and adaptations few have been as successful both commercially and creatively as Gareth Edwardss reboot of the film franchise that is as famous for its massive monsters as it is for its decent-at-best track record: Godzilla.

And true to the original, irradiated lizard we all know and love, Godzilla dominates the screen not only because he is quite literally massive beyond belief but also because he holds such an awesome presence throughout the movie. Let’s face it, with all the advances in technology and visual effects producers no longer have to spend the time and money building elaborate set pieces (both a good and bad thing), but despite the obvious computer-generated images Godzilla looked and felt like an actual three hundred-foot-tall creature.

Godzilla’s commanding presence is helped largely by Edwards’ “less is more” approach to the monster’s screen time. The titular monstaracter (my clever combination of “monster” and “character”) does not make a full appearance until almost an hour into the movie, and he is only given less than ten seconds after all that time. However, those ten seconds were well worth the wait; Godzilla’s signature scream left chills up and down my spine and gooseflesh all over my body for nearly twenty seconds after the fact. The movie had already moved to what, I don’t know because I was still trying to process the grand entrance of the “god of the food chain.”

However, this “less is more” approach also works against the movie as a whole in a big way. The film is titled Godzilla and yet the main monstaracter is only in about one-quarter of his own movie; and for a two-hour movie that limited amount of screen time is dangerously close to cameo status. Granted, that one-quarter does not disappoint, I cannot reiterate enough how awesome of a presence Godzilla (Cameozilla?) is on the screen, but that means the other three-quarters are sacrificed to an uninspired, cookie-cutter, and somewhat boring human backstory.

The clichés in the storyline and characters are almost too numerous to name, but we’ll try anyway. There’s the older shaman who understands the natural purpose of everything that happens even though there is no real reason why or how he knows these things (Ken Watanabe); there’s the father obsessed with finding the reason why his birthday fifteen years ago was so awful (Brian Cranston) and his mildly estranged son who has buried his past and wishes his dad would do the same (Aaron Taylor-Johnson); there’s the mildly estranged son’s wife and child who really serve no purpose other than attempting to create some angst for his situation when he gets caught in the middle (quite literally) of Godzilla’s grudge match; and the handful of military personnel, frightened citizens, and other assorted cardboard characters.

Obviously a monster movie is not going to be deep and intellectual and character-driven, and it also cannot be hours of giant, computer-generated creatures duking it out for alpha-predator status, but I really felt nothing for these characters. And everything I did feel was because the movie was telling me to feel it, or because I simply wanted a clean, happy ending for everyone.

With the global commercial success of Godzilla rumors have been circulating that a sequel is already in the works. While it is great that such an iconic franchise has been rebooted so successfully I’m not sure in what direction the sequel will go. How many more pre-prehistoric monsters can pop up out of the ocean without a convenient, nigh-indestructible inter-dimensional portal? How many more hours can we tolerate Aaron Taylor-Johnson playing an angry little boy in a grown man’s body and Elizabeth Olson playing his neurotic, purposeless wife? There is definitely both a lot of creative room and a lot of room for failure for the future of this franchise. In either case, hopefully we’ll be seeing more of Godzilla (not just more Godzilla movies but more of Godzilla in his own movies).

Overall Rating: 8.2 out of 10