Godzilla (2014)

It really doesn’t get much more summer blockbuster than this – an enormous and very loud creature destroying stuff in spectacular (meaning “like a spectacle”) fashion.  Gareth Edwards’s Godzilla, the umpteenth entry in a franchise now sixty years old, is not a perfect movie, but it is a more than enjoyable popcorn feature with plenty of eyeball kicks.

Fifteen years after a nuclear meltdown, physicist Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston) is convinced that the quarantine zone is a cover-up for something much more sinister.  His son Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), however, believes his father is crazy.  While Ford is content to move on with his wife Elle (Elizabeth Olsen) and their son, a mysterious scientist (Ken Watanabe) hopes to study a series of strange caverns and organic pods growing within...

I almost don’t want to reopen this old wound, but Godzilla is very nearly the film that I wanted Pacific Rim to be.  Where Pacific Rim was a rather empty and noisy experience, bereft of many of Filmmaking 101’s basic storytelling elements, Godzilla is much more smartly crafted.  Edwards, working with some very talented performers and with a solid debut screenplay by Max Borenstein, does good work pulling the audience into his story which zigs when it ought to but every once in a while zags in an unexpected way, which I really mustn’t spoil.

Let me get the bad news out of the way before I continue with the “effusive praise” bit, because I really did enjoy the film despite being aware of its shortcomings.  And I’ll do these in relatively rapid-fire order, because they’re not overwhelming problems.  Firstly, the film is, toward the middle, a bit too long; there’s maybe one subplot or character too many, and the narrative does meander a bit heading into the final act.  Conversely, there’s not enough Cranston in the film; Taylor-Johnson is not an incredibly charismatic protagonist, while Cranston continues to play at the top of his game.  And finally, there’s very nearly not enough monster stuff in the film – I think I could have used a few more minutes of action for this to be a perfect popcorn movie.

One senses, though, that Edwards is deliberately holding back on the creature-feature scenes.  Instead of bombarding us from frame one with terrible beasties in combat as Pacific Rim did, Godzilla imbues a very Spielbergian sense of awe by withholding the monsters for so long, teasing us with hints of exposition and glimpses at parts of the whole.  It’s very reminiscent of Cloverfield in this respect, and it allows us to get attached to more than just the visual elements.  We get lured into the story and end up caring about what happens.  I said “I think” in the previous paragraph because I’m not sure I actually do want more Godzilla in the film; one thing that really struck me as I exited the theater was just how much restraint there was in this film and how judiciously Edwards doled out the combat sequences.

And this is a very smart hand at the wheel.  Edwards films some very beautiful scenes here, as when the HALO jumpers trail red smoke into the drop zone over an eerie chorus straight out of the trailer for Ridley Scott’s Alien.  The homage to the original Toho films, when Godzilla lumbers through San Francisco’s Little Tokyo, is another highlight, but the real eyeball kicks come from the immense sense of scope, very finely intoned by Watanabe just before the film’s third act begins.  There is a terrifying sublimity to Godzilla, which most lesser horror films tend to overlook.

Not Edwards.  If he’s in any way involved in the inevitable sequel, perhaps he too will one day be crowned “king of the monsters.”

Postscript:  absolutely see this on the largest and loudest movie theater screen you can.  I’m talking about genuine chills running up my arms at the Godzilla roar.  I can’t imagine Godzilla working nearly as well on a smaller screen.

Godzilla is rated PG-13 for “intense sequences of destruction, mayhem and creature violence.”  There’s a ton of property damage, stuff blowing up, people running in terror, people getting stepped on by monsters – in the words of Godzilla vs. Biollante’s rating, “traditional Godzilla violence.”