I had extremely high hopes when it came to the 2014 reboot of Godzilla. As a kid, I used to watch all the classic
Godzilla monster movies with my dad and brother and they were some of the
coolest movies I had ever seen. I always
appreciated the fact that at the end of the day, Godzilla is one of the good
guys. The destruction he causes is
collateral damage; a necessary evil to prevent the destruction of the
world. After several attempts to
recapture the magic of the early Godzilla monster flicks, I had given up hope
that we would ever see the blue breath wielding “King of the Monsters” in his
true form ever again. I’m happy to say
that this film proved my wrong, but it wasn’t without its faults.
The films plot
centers around Joe Brody, a supervisor at the Janjira Nuclear Plant in Japan
and his son Ford. Over a decade after a mysterious
earthquake destroyed the plant, Ford travels back to Japan to assist his father
who has been trying for years to determine the true cause of the disaster. They come to realize that a cover up has been
in place and that the “quarantine zone” around the destroyed plant is really a containment
area for a “massive, unidentified, terrestrial organism” which the scientists
call a “MUTO”. After the MUTO escapes
and a second one emerges thousands of miles away, the military personnel and scientists
alike defer to Ishiro Serizawa (played by Ken Watanabe) who is a member of
Project Monarch a secretive agency set up in the 1950’s to study Godzilla, a
large monster discovered during nuclear testing in the Philippines. Serizawa insists that Godzilla will help them
save the world from the monsters and after much convincing the three titans are
allowed to fight it out to the death.
The film was a
massive success in the overall sense.
Similar to the Godzilla films of the 50’s and 60’s, the movie was simply
the sudden appearance of two evil monsters and the necessary arrival of
Godzilla to preserve balance in the world and destroy them. Godzilla was back to being the “good guy” so
to speak and ends up being cheered on by the very humans who were initially
trying to destroy him. The ending scenes
in which Godzilla actually gets down to brawling with the MUTOs are
spectacular. Godzilla looks just like he’s
supposed to with the massive stegosaurus-like plates running down his back and
the stubby nose and face which look almost canine. His roar has the same pleasing echo as his
earlier counterparts and when he leans back and unleashes his radioactive blue
fire breath the movie reaches its cinematic, monster movie apex.
However, while
plot holes and storyline flaws are easily overlooked in the now campy Godzilla
films from 50 years ago, they are harder to get past in today’s modern
cinema. The plot was very chunky and
felt like we jumped from one thing to the next almost as if you could tell when
one page of the screenplay ended and the next began. This made the movie feel blocked out and
almost episodic, as if it was a miniseries condensed into a feature film. Brian Cranston plays Joe Brody whose
character turns out to be a disappointment rather than a strong focal point
which I was really hoping for. All in
all, I felt happy at the end of the film.
I got to see what I wanted which was an accurate portrayal of my
favorite movie monster in all his epic glory, destroying the monsters in a
heroic battle which looked marvelous with today’s special effects. I just wish the plot and character
development was better thought out. I
would have loved to know more about Project Monarch and Watanabe’s character
Serizawa. But I guess there is always
hope for a sequel because as is the case in every true Godzilla movie, the King
of the Monsters slowly makes his way back into the deep sea abyss from whence
he came waiting until the time he is needed again.
