Godzilla (2014) - A Fan's "Review"

In my last post, I provided a snapshot into my relationship with Godzilla (though I forgot to mention that one of the most vivid dreams I remember from when I was a young kid involved Godzilla, him destroying things and me yelling at him and slapping his nose as if he was a bad dog) leading up to the 2014 movie which just released this past weekend. Again, that was just a small snapshot.

Now I’ll talk about the movie itself so be warned this post has a wealth of spoilers.  Again, keep in mind that there may not be a lot of objectivity in this based on my fan historical from yesterday.

This movie is everything I hoped to see in an American Godzilla movie since learning about a potential American Godzilla movie in 1994 where he was set to fight something called the Gryphon. The credits roll over “footage” of atomic tests with the final bomb shot into the ocean were familiar looking jagged spikes are moving along the surface. Cut to 1999 where Ishiro Serizawa* (Ken Watanabe) and Vivienne Graham (Sally Hawkins) two scientists climb into a cave which turns out to be the bones and innards of a giant deceased creature when they learn something hatched and crossed the ocean from the Philippines to Japan. The other “spore” was sent to Nevada to be stored in the Nuclear Waste Repository. But before we truly get to the monsters, we learn about the people most profoundly affected by those monsters.

*a descendant of the Dr. Serizawa from the original 1954 film

Bryan Cranston and Juliet Binoche play husband and wife Joa and Sandra Brody scientists stationed in Japan, working a nuclear power plant. The two head to work as their son Ford heads to school. Little did Ford know that day, which also happened to be Dad’s birthday, would be the last day he saw mom. Mom was sent to investigate the leak, and was trapped during the catastrophe.

The thing which hatched caused an earthquake as it burrowed under the power plant consuming the energy, which eventually collapsed the power plant. Fast-forward fifteen years later, Ford Brody is a Naval Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) who has just returned from duty to his wife Elle and son Sam when the phone rings. His father, Joe was arrested in Japan and is thought to be something of a whack-job. Joe leaves that night to get Dad, who is still obsessed with the mystery surrounding the collapse of the Nuclear Power plant, because he knows it wasn’t an earthquake and has not gotten over the death of his wife. However, the seismic activity he registered prior to the collapse is happening again, so he and son head to their old home which is a quarantined zone due to the nuclear fallout from the collapse of the power plant. When they arrive, the air is clean as Joe takes off his helmet.

The Brodies are arrested and brought to the power plant where Joe once worked. Serizawa and Graham have set up shop and are observing a giant pulsating thing in the middle of the power plant. The thing eventually erupts and a creature emerges sucking in more energy before sprouting wings and flying away. This creature resembles the monster from Cloverfield, primarily because of its long, thin legs.

The M.U.T.O. (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism) is an ancient creature, as we learn from Serizawa, which feeds off of radiation, but as radiation levels cooled across the globe ages ago, the creature went into a state of super-hibernation. However, the operation is taken over by the Navy and Dr. Serizawa says this creature is the prey of something much larger, an Apex Predator which was awoken in 1954, and subsequently, the nuclear tests publicized were actually attempts to kill the Apex Predator. Ford reveals his father was tracking echolocation anomalies and it is deduced that M.U.T.O. was communicating with something, which also drew the Apex Predator’s attention.

M.U.T.O. and the Naval forces arrive in Hawai’i where Godzilla also makes landfall. The two monsters have a brief scuffle, which is more or less in the background as people, including Ford who is on a monorail when M.U.T.O. arrives, struggle to survive. M.U.T.O. flies away, heading to the mainland US, where its signal is being sent. We eventually learn that a larger M.U.T.O., wingless, erupts in Nevada and it is deduced the two M.U.T.O.s will be mating as the female is the larger of the two in Nevada.

A military plan to draw the M.U.T.O. mating pair off the coast of California with the nuclear warhead is enacted because they can sense the power which feeds them. This will draw all three monsters together and kill three with one proverbial stone. Conversely, Serizawa thinks Godzilla is the only thing that can stop the M.U.T.O. as he is the super-predator.

The three monsters converge on San Francisco, where M.U.T.O.s engage in a kind of mating ritual, where we can see just how much larger the female is compared to the male. Godzilla can easily take one of these creatures, but is overwhelmed when they fight him in unison, which is what happens after the female lays her eggs and joins the fight. In the midst of the fight, Brody’s group of soldiers head to the nest to stop the nuclear bomb, when they realize the controls are broken so they must extract the bomb can be detonated off-shore. Ford lags behind, cracks open a gas tanker and lights up the nest destroying the eggs.

This draws the female away from Godzilla and the male M.U.T.O. and brings the female to where Ford is crawling away from the scene of the egg’s destruction Godzilla saves Ford by using his atomic breath for the first time, which is a great scene. Godzilla blows her away and to finally takes care of the male with his tail. This a move shows Godzilla as a smart fighter, learning quickly from his experience battling these monsters. Unfortunately, the move Godzilla used to take care of the male M.U.T.O. also collapses a building on Godzilla, knocking him out.

Ford finally gets to the boat with the nuclear bomb with his team, the female M.U.T.O. tracks them down leaving Ford as the only survivor who launches the boat with the bomb out to sea. As the female M.U.T.O. crouches down over Ford and the bomb, she stops. Godzilla has come back to claim his prey and the final battle between the two is spectacular. Unfortunately, Godzilla has been worn out by his battles with the two kaiju and collapses on the shore.

The next morning, San Francisco is in ruins, Ford finally reunites with his wife Elle and son Sam. Serizawa and Graham are at the site where Godzilla has collapsed, Serizawa sad because his great find is seemingly dead. Then, a giant eye opens, Godzilla “The King of the Monsters” lives and swims out to sea.

OK, so that’s what happened in the movie, here are some thoughts and reactions.

• I thought the connection / retcon to the original film was smart. It worked very well in the same way J.J. Abrams launched the new Trek franchise. (That was perhaps the smartest thing Abrams did with those movies, actually). Making this a ‘sequel’ also works just like the Millennium era films are each sequels to the original film.
• I like the M.U.T.O.s, which to me, are very much an updated, leveled-up and bad-ass version of Mothra. Insect like, a pair of them, fighting Godzilla together, but no twin fairies (thankfully) However, I’ve never found it plausible* that two giant grubs and a giant moth could beat Godzilla. Sure the design evokes the Cloverfield monster, but it still works for Godzilla's latest enemies.
  *plausible is a tricksy word when discussing a movie whose main thrust is two giant monsters fighting each other
• The original Godzilla / Gojira was very much a parable showing the dangers of nuclear power. While that is still a theme here, there’s also the theme of man v. nature. These creatures are ancient forces of nature and humanity has no chance in the face of that as Serizawa points out at one point in the film.
• I like that Godzilla was once again the ‘hero’ since he was a villain or threat in the the Heisei series /era  I think his surfacing in the US points to this:
• When Godzilla emerges in San Francisco Bay at the Golden Gate Bridge, there are a lot of kids and civilians on the bridge. The military was being all willy-nilly firing all over the place trying to stop Godzilla. At least one time (and probably more) Godzilla happened to be in a spot to block the munitions from connecting with the bridge where a bus full of kids was stationary, including Elle and Ford’s son Sam.
• Another instance it seemed like Godzilla may have been holding up the bridge which allowed the bus full of children to cross safely.
• Whether Godzilla had intent to save kids and people at this point could be up for conjecture, but the fact of the film remains, he saved some kids in a more personal manner than simply fighting the other monsters and in doing so saved, people wholesale.
• Often in these types of films (disaster films, science fictional apocalyptic films, etc.), the military is depicted as strong-headed and for lack of a better term, a bunch of unwavering jerks. Not so here. While David Strathairn’s character did indeed have a presence of power and strong will, he was cooperative and willing to listen to Serizawa.
• I really like the design of Godzilla in this film. Over the years, Godzilla has had many different designs, even if the differences were slight (larger eyes, more spikes, taller, etc). For me, there was always something vaguely dog-like in the design of his head. Godzilla here is heftier and his head is more blocky, but it works very well, especially when he roars.
• That roar is not quite the classic roar for Godzilla, but it is close enough and powerful enough that the difference from the classic is no problem for me. I particularly like how his roar ends in a bit of a growl. Again, the similarity to dogs comes to mind for me because the snarly-growl at the end isn’t too far off from the noises my own dog makes.*
  *I think part of the appeal and reason why we like Godzilla is this aspect – that slight resemblance to a dog, something familiar with which people bond.
• I loved how Godzilla's Atomic Breath was shown, used, and highlighted in the film. It felt like a last ditch effort when Godzilla was fighting and boy was it powerful.  From the hints of Godzilla's tail glowing to the eruption of that first Breath it was great.
• I’ve seen some complaints that there isn’t enough Godzilla in this movie. While I can understand that line of thinking, I can’t agree with it. The first 40 minutes to hour of the movie establish the world and the characters so we can care about them. (Granted Aaron Taylor-Johnston’s performance was a bit stiff). We saw the M.U.T.O. creatures before Godzilla, which to my logic makes sense. For the most part, we know what Godzilla looks like. We know what he can do (1998 notwithstanding) so getting to know the scope of the other monsters worked for me.
• The theater where I took my mom to see it wasn’t fully packed, it was an afternoon showing on a beautiful Saturday, but there were a good chunk of people in the theater. One of the largest group was a group of about a dozen 10 and 11 year-olds.. They were cheering at the right spots and seemed to be enjoying it. I pumped my fist and cheered when Godzilla used his atomic breath, so I was a 12 year old boy, too.
• My mom loved it, which is as much a seal of Godzilla approval for me as anything else

In the end, this is pretty much what I want to see in a Godzilla movie, and that in a nutshell sums it all up.

Godzilla 2014 … A Preamble

I am and have been a big fan of Godzilla in specific, and Kaiju in general, for as long as I can remember. I recall when I was young boy that the NY stations WWOR (Channel 9) and/or WPIX (Channel 11) would run Godzilla marathons (usually three Godzilla movies in a row) on the Friday after Thanksgiving and I looked forward to that more than Turkey Day itself. Occasionally, one of the NY stations would have themed movie weeks and I was always excited when Godzilla and Gamera movies would be featured, or the Saturday movie marathons would feature these giant beasts fighting each other.

This passion and love for Godzilla was kindled by my mother who introduced me to Godzilla when I was maybe 5 or 6 years old and a lifelong fascination with Gojira was in full effect. One Christmas (or birthday), I was given perhaps the coolest toy I ever received* - th Shogun Warrior Godzilla toy, which “breathed fire” and shot its fist, with a punch of a button in the toy’s elbow. I think that was a feature of the toy line because Godzilla never did that in any of the movies.

*Maybe the Pit, the G.I. JOE base might come close

Fast forward to college in the nascent days of the Internet (early-mid 1990s) and hanging out in the University Libraries browsing the web on the old Netscape Navigator I searched for what else, Godzilla. This is when I learned that more Godzllla movies beyond Godzilla 1985 (as it was known here in the States) were made and released. One of the better informed and most detailed Web sites at that time was Barry’s Temple of Godzilla. It was around this time I learned of a potential American Godzilla film featuring a creature called The Gryphon. I could swear I saw the teaser trailer in theaters, too. Sadly (perhaps fortunately in hindsight), this film never happened. What we got in 1998 was much, much, much worse. In many ways, Godzilla was my introduction to Science Fiction, in a perhaps a smaller way, Godzilla was my introduction to fandom.

Meanwhile, there were two Flea Markets in NJ (Route 18 flea market in East Brunswick and the US 1 Flea Market in New Brunswick which was featured in the film Mallrats) where I remembered seeing some Godzilla toys when I was younger. Visiting these markets again around the time I learned of the continuing Godzilla franchise, I found a store where imports of these movies were sold. The quality was not the greatest and all of the movies was subtitled, but these were still new Godzilla movies: Godzilla vs. Biollante, Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla, the films that came to be part The Heisei series/era, which ended with Godzilla vs. Destroyah. These movies are separate from the films that were produced in the 1960s and 1970s, but do form a continuity with each other.  

Then 1998 happened and a collective wail of anger could be heard in the hearts and souls of all Godzilla fans.

Moving on.

However, a couple of years later, Toho re-launched the franchise with what was known in the US as Godzilla 2000. This was a fun movie I saw in the theaters and most importantly unlike that more recent mis-step, Godzilla fought a new monster. The movies in that series, which came to be known as The Millennium era/series, took still a different approach with most of the movies being unrelated with the exception of being sequels / continuations of the original 1954 Godzilla. What I’ve seen of these movies randomly on cable have been god.

This leads us to Legendary Films announcing, in 2010, acquisition of the rights to Godzilla. Fans were still understandably nervous having the 1998 G.I.N.O. film on their minds (and replayed on cable far too often because just once would be too often). 

 When Gareth Edwards, director of the independent film Monsters was announced cautious optimism soon replaced nervousness. Anybody who has seen this film knows Edwards has good fiilmmaking skills. If you haven't seen it, I highly, highly recommend it. Then casting began, with Bryan Cranston and Ken Watanabe as major stars who would appear in the movie, Heisenberg v. Godzilla soon became a rallying cry. For if one of the most talented American actors today would be in this Godzilla film, surely we can hope.

The latest American Godzilla film was set to release on May 16, which happens to be my mother’s birthday. What better gift than to take my mom to see Godzilla (because frankly, both my father and my wife don’t quite share the same enthusiasm for Godzilla which goes to show nobody is perfect).

Since this post is getting quite lengthy and I've barely discussed the latest American Godzilla movie, I'll hold off on that for another post, soon to follow. 

Godzilla: Full Trailer

Holy Shnikeys is the Big G Enormous!