Godzilla: Movie Review
By Darren Bevan
Published: 2:31PM Thursday May 15, 2014
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Cast: Bryan Cranston, Ken Watanbe, Aaron Taylor Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen, Sally Hawkins
Director: Gareth Edwards
It's time to do the Monster Smash again.
Set across three time periods, the film starts with Breaking Bad's Bryan Cranston's apparently crazy Joe Brody warning that a disaster is about to hit the nuclear plant he works in with his wife. Sustained seismic activity has lead to this potential problem - and soon, Brody loses his wife in the subsequent meltdown.
15 years later and Brody's son, Ford (Kick Ass's Aaron Taylor-Johnson) has now grown up and works as a bomb disposal expert. When his father's arrested in Japan for going back into the quarantine zone, Ford leaves his wife (The Avengers' Age of Ultron star Elizabeth Olsen) and son to go to pick him up - but soon finds himself caught up in an event which could signal the end of the world - and the return of Godzilla...
Unashamedly B-movie in its feel, but bang upto date in its execution, Godzilla is a curious beast in many ways.
The director of low budget indie Monsters, Gareth Edwards, has brought the creature back to life in a film which encapsulates the history of Godzilla films and simultaneously updates the monster. In fact, the creatures in the 2014 Godzilla movie are perhaps perfect, with Godzilla himself almost bear-like in his reptilian appearance.
Sadly though the actual star of the movie appears to be sidelined in many ways - rejected in favour of a series of cliched and stereotyped characters, ripped directly from a pulpy trashy movie. There's a crazed conspiracy crackpot scientist, whose warnings no-one pays heed to, another scientist who spends a lot of the time aghast but who seems to mysteriously know how Godzilla works (Ken Watanbe), a stoic yet impassive soldier who finds himself in every appearance of the monster (Taylor-Johnson, relatively emotionless) and a procession of kids and animals who are in danger.
It's these beats which pepper the relatively serious movie and which make it feel tonally a bit uneven, and brutally, add little to the overall narrative. A lack of emotional connection in among the set pieces does little to connect you to the unfolding disaster.
That said, while the dialogue borders on the cliched and preposterous ('Nature has an order, a power to restore balance'), the restrained action more than delivers throughout as cities get smashed once again.
Edwards has found a way to bring some new and intimately haunting visuals to the screen - from troops jumping out of a drop-ship skydiving into hell to jets plummeting out of the skies, the darkness haunts Godzilla the movie, with 24 hour news showing footage of creatures fighting (both an homage to old movies and a commentary on today's global eyes and ears) to great effect. The opening titles are impressive too, a mix of conspiracy theories, atomic bombs and censorship which set the murky tone right away.
But it's that dour feeling which ripples through Godzilla - Edwards has negotiated a cautious way through silly and sensible, but, in among the scale of it all and with the odd intimate (and occasionally over-used moments), somehow manages to leave you with a feeling of wanting more carnage - after all, isn't that what Godzilla does?
All in all, Godzilla deserves to be commended for embracing the creature feature of olden days, and the legend of yore - certainly, monster fans will be impressed by what Edwards has committed to the screen - it's almost a love letter to the Godzilla movies you'd have watched growing up. It's just a shame that the human elements of the movie let the side down and leave this monster lurching when it really should be roaring.
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