When Godzilla came out in 1998 I was amazed. I'm ashamed to say it was one of my favourite films (probably - I was six when I first saw it and it stuck in my mind, they obviously did something right) but I have never watched it since I was old enough to go and see 12-rated movies in the cinema. Now, with the rise of a new Western take on Japan's biggest export (from head to feet) it's time to see how Gareth Edwards' more traditional interpretation of a classic kaiju holds up.
Here's where I run into problems. See, I want to tell you it's great, that you should definitely go see it, if only because it's better than the 1998 movie.
I want to tell you that, but I really can't. Don't get me wrong, it's not a terrible movie. It's grand, it's explosive, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson does a great job with what he's given by the script and story. But already you can see the problem. I get what Edwards is trying to do with it, he's giving us this personal story about the whole thing and focusing on one family and there are times it works well; Taylor-Johnson and Brian Cranston as father and son, the former a soldier who is running away from the death of his mother, the latter a nuclear physicist who is certain the accident which killed his wife was no ordinary meltdown. The action is tempered by the story, Taylor-Johnson's Ford Brody desperately trying to return home to his wife and children as the kaiju attack all around him, and the inclusion of two "mutos", new kaiju created for this movie, make it feel more like a monster movie than 1998's offering.
The problem with the story is this: there's not very much of it, and what there is is very by-the-numbers. I feel like I should care for some of these characters, but nothing is really motivating me to because I can see the ending plain as day from the start. Godzilla introduces you to the characters and almost orders you to feel sorry for them, but when Mrs. Brody (I can't remember her name, she's pretty insignificant in terms of story) dies inside the nuclear power plant all I can think is "yeah, I kinda saw that coming." Everything about it is like that - you know what's going to happen, because it's been done so often before. There's no arc, no real story for any character, they're all very reactionary. Things happen and they act around them. The only characters who have any real depth to them are Bryan Cranston's Joe Brody and Ken Watanabe as Dr. Serizawa, and they are arguably given the short end of the stick in this film. Every other character is either piledriven into a movie archetype or else given so few lines they don't have a chance to develop any personality. Which is why I have to say fair play to Aaron Taylor-Johnson; he makes the movie bearable as the main protagonist and he tries so desperately to inject some life into the first half of the film.
Okay, good things. Well, it really picks up after the fifty-minute mark, and when the action hits San Francisco the action explodes and Godzilla gets to pound some giant insectoid faces. There are genuinely tense moments, and Godzilla is amazing, appearing through smoke and debris and crushing buildings, the roar still gives me chills at times.
But that's really all I can say about it. Godzilla was an awesome monster and all, but it was a film as drab and bland as the colour palette they used - lots of greys and browns and bark greens on black. The characters were one-dimensional and were only in there to try and prop up with some semblance of story a movie which is about a giant proto-dinosaur fighting giant proto-bugs. And the sad fact is, story or not, that's all this movie would ever have been about.
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