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Synopsis
In 1954, a massive creature, Godzilla, is discovered in the South Pacific. A multinational team - Project Monarch - forms to find a way to kill the monster; they ultimately use a nuclear bomb. This appears to succeed, as there are no more Godzilla sightings for decades. In 1999, at a mine in the Philippines, the fossilized remains of a huge animal are uncovered, along with what appear to be two cocoons. One of them is open, the other still sealed. The thing that emerged from the cocoon burrows its way to the nearest nuclear power source (all three monsters eat nuclear energy), a plant in Japan. Plant manager Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston), wife/nuclear engineer Sandra Brody (Juliette Binoche) and son Ford (CJ Adams, later played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson) experience the first attack of what will later be dubbed a MUTO (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism). Sandra is killed as the plant collapses. 15 years later, Ford is a bomb disposal expert in the US Navy, returning home from a 14 month deployment to his wife (Elizabeth Olsen as Elle Brody) and son (Carson Bolde as Sam Brody) in San Francisco. Joe is still in Japan, trying to prove that the plant accident was not a natural disaster or design flaw. Ford comes to bail his dad out of jail when he trespasses into the nuclear quarantine zone. Both head back in and find that Monarch has been monitoring a cocoon, the gestating form of the monster that destroyed the plant in 1999. A huge, flying creature emerges. Joe is killed. Ford starts a long journey home, while Godzilla emerges from the depths of the ocean and another MUTO - a female - emerges from the second cocoon, now at the Yucca mountain nuclear waste facility.
Honolulu and Las Vegas are destroyed and the three creatures converge on San Francisco. The military comes up with a plot to lure them offshore, using nuclear weapons fas bait, and then detonate the weapons, killing them. The female MUTO intercepts the train carrying the nukes, eating all but one. The male MUTO gets his hands (um, claws) on the remaining nuke, after it has been armed. Both MUTOs arrive in San Francisco, where they lay hundreds of eggs and use the last nuclear weapon as an incubator, preparing for the birth of hordes of giant monsters. Godzilla shows up, the three monsters fight, while Ford and a team of soldiers try to find the bomb and either disarm it or get it out of the city. They find the MUTO nest and Ford torches the eggs. Godzilla kills the two MUTOs after an impressive fight sequence and the nuke detonates offshore, because Ford is the worst bomb disposal technician in the military. However, he does survive and is reunited with his family, while Godzilla marches off into the sunset. The End.
Analysis
It is tempting to try and rewrite this movie, rather criticize it. There are a lot of great elements, but there are equal number of missed opportunities. However, writing a critique of a movie is not about speculating about what could have been. It is about looking at what is in the screen. And, what is on the screen is an uneven, but entertaining film.
The biggest flaw is the central story of Ford and his family. His attempt to get back to his family is dull, with both Taylor-Johnson and Olsen putting in somnabulant performances. I enjoyed Taylor-Johnson in Kick Ass, so I know he can act. Here, he seems to have been told to imitate the most boring movie hero persona he could. There is no dramatic weight to the human relationship that gets the most screen-time. The supporting performance are wasted with the exception of Bryan Crantson who effectively portrays a man teetering on the edge of a nervous breakdown.
Since director Gareth Evans and writer Max Borenstein decided to have the human story as the primary focus of the film with much of the monster action taking place in the background or off-screen (something Evans did more effectively in Monsters) it is crucial that this story be, if not original, at least engaging and dwell-acted. It is neither. This is a serious flaw. The film has no emotional core and feels longer than it's two hour run-time.
What does the film do right? Just about everything else. The overarching story and explanation for the monsters is fine. Their "motivation" - the MUTOs want to reproduce, Godzilla as a top predator in an eco-system of giants, wants to eat them - makes sense and explains their actions. The effects work is flawless. When we are finally shown a full-scale brawl between the three creatures at the end of the film, the entire sequence conveys the epic levels of destruction and gives each monster a unique character, While lacking some of the weight of the best Toho films (CGI still has a flat look to it) this is some of the best computer generated monster effects I've seen. The score by Alexandre Desplat doesn't come close to equaling that of Toho's master composer Akira Ifukube; however, it isn't bad and complements the action.
Gareth Edwards handles the actions scenes well. The four primary action sequences - the emergence of the male MUTO from its cocoon in Japan, an attack on Honolulu, an attack by the female MUTO on the nuclear weapons carrying train and the final, 30 minute long San Francisco battle - are all exciting and blocked well. Edwards likes to create ground/human eye level views of the action and this works, for the most par. Part of the fun of Godzilla films is getting a "god's eye view" of the destruction and we don't get much of this. As a Godzilla fan, I want to see kaiju tearing apart cities. Edwards gives us some of that throughout the film, but saves most of it for the battle of San Francisco. If the movie were 90 minutes long and not saddled by a cliche ridden and boringly acted central story, this wouldn't matter as much. As it is, having two monster battles (Honolulu and Las Vegas) reduced mostly to TV news footage and some aftermath shots is frustrating.
Even if the story is disappointing, the tone it strikes is not. The creative team takes the subject seriously, creating a fairly grim, frightening world in which humans are little more than annoyances in an emerging Age of Monsters. While not as disturbing or dramatic as the original, the film rightly stays away form the impulse (indulged in in the 1998 Roland Emmerich film) to treat the subject as an exercise in camp.
Notes
This film follows in the footsteps of Godzilla: 1985 by having the monsters home in on nuclear power. In Godzilla va Megaguirus this leads to Japan banning nuclear power plants.
The movie casts Godzilla as being a source of balance against the MUTOs, creating a semi-heroic character for him. This is sketchily developed in the current film (mostly through evidence-free, fortune cookie pronouncements from Ken Watanabe's Dr. Serizawa), although it has a long history in Toho's films, going back to Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster. In that film, Godzilla, Rodan and Mothra team up to defend the Earth (although not necessarily mankind) from an alien creature, the massive gold dragon, Ghidorah. Godzilla would continue to be seen in an heroic light - defending the planet from aliens, hostile undersea kingdoms and even a monster spawned from mankind's pollution (Hedorah aka the Smog monster). After the series resumed in 1985 (after a 10 year break) Godzilla would go back into having a more ambiguous or outright malevolent character in subsequent films. At best, he would be seen as the lesser of two evils in movies like Godzilla: Final Wars and Godzilla: 2000.
While the creative team emphasizes the human element in this movie, many of the previous films had strong casts and better stories following people living in the shadows of the giants. From heroic astronauts Nick Adams and Akira Takarada in Invasion of Astro-Monster to plucky reporter Chiharu Niiyama in Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack to disgraced and traumatized soldier Yumiko Shaku in Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla, the human element has always been present. One of the most chilling scenes in modern Godzilla films occurs in Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack . During the first use of Godzilla's atomic breath the scene cuts to a nearby school, where a teacher, seeing a mushroom cloud rising over the city, simply says "atom bomb." This more disturbing and powerful than anything found in the new Godzilla.
Verdict
In spite of the poor acting and characterization of the protagonist and the cliched, by-the-numbers primary story, Godzilla is still pretty good. The action scenes are well done, the effects are stunning and the overall tone of the story is grim and serious. The last 30 minutes are strong, ending hte film on an up note and, hopefully, showing what subsequent films in the American series will be like. This is a movie that is worth seeing on the big screen (although I've only seen the 2D version, so I can't comment on how it might look in 3D) one where the strengths overcome the weaknesses, even if it the balance is pretty close. Check it out.
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