Godzilla (2014)

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It’s a given that the new Godzilla film is going to make tons of money; the theatre where I saw it was packed. Despite this, the movie has several glaring problems.

Firstly, the enormous lizard’s hardly in the movie at all. He’s more of a supporting player, who doesn’t make his first appearance until nearly an hour in. Up until then, the movie’s made up mostly of exposition-providing dialogue, by characters we never get to know. The style of most recent big-budget films is to hook audiences in by giving them an action-packed, over-the=top set piece right out of the gate. I thought Godzilla was going against this recent convention, and instead slowly building and creating suspense, which is a perfectly reasonable choice. But at some point, in a film called Godzilla, there have to be extended sequences of…you know…Godzilla, rather than humans simply talking about Godzilla, and then scenes of aftermath. I’m curious to know what Godzilla’s actual screen time is.

The film’s plot and main antagonist aren’t given away in the previews, so I won’t reveal there here, either, other than to say there’s confusing talk of nuclear energy gone wrong, and its inevitable result.

Secondly, once we finally do get a glimpse of the monster, he’s almost always shrouded in mist, or fog or darkness. Which works initially, but again: we need to see Godzilla doing Godzilla things—crushing tanks, toppling skyscrapers, shrugging off artillery fire and breathing fire

In the old, Japanese B-films, behemoths fought in broad daylight. Production values and credulity fell victim, but at least the audience could tell what was happening. Here, fights mostly take place in the shadows. Often time it’s hard to tell what’s happening. Buildings fall beneath monster’s enormous weight, but who knows which beast is winning? Scenes are edited in such a way that they feel amputated. It takes human characters expository dialogue to explain the action, rather than the images doing story-telling heavy lifting.

There are several accomplished and talented actors included, even some Oscar winners and nominees (Bryan Cranston, Juliet Binoche, Ken Watanabe, Sally Hawkins, David Strathairn, Elizabeth Olson). Unfortunately, they have very little to do beyond deliver overwrought lines, and look incredulous and amazed. Their acting consists mainly of looking wide eyed and mouthed.

The visual effects are, as you’d expect, top rate. Specifically, a tsunami the lizard inadvertently causes to hit Hawai’i is convincing and frightening (but did they have to imperil the dog? That felt cheap). When Godzilla ravages the Golden Gate bridge, his rampage is both believable and chaotically reminiscent of the original, when he stomped through the electrical towers and into Tokyo.

The movie’s most suspenseful scene doesn’t involve any monsters at all (an ominous development in a monster movie), but instead a rushing cloud of radioactive gas, chasing a group of inspectors from a Japanese nuclear power plant. It comes early in the film, which leaves what follows feeling like it’s lacking.

This movie owes much to the superior Cloverfield. The scenes of monsters destroying cityscapes were more harrowing and interesting in that film. They felt more vibrant and urgent there, too. Not only that, but we cared about what happened to the characters in that movie. Here, we’re one step removed—detached—merely watching what unfolds instead of feeling invested in the outcome.

I wish I liked Godzilla more. I wanted to. The Saturday afternoons of my youth, spent watching D-grade horror films on Creature Double Feature, made me hopeful. There was charm in those hokey men-in-monsters-suits battling it out. Here the creatures obviously look much better, but there’s no heart or urgency in their CGI (The opening title sequence, with it’s redacted words and phrases, was a creative touch).

More than that, the film’s main problem is that instead of being a ferocious, terrifying, end-of-the-world-bringing monstrosity, the titular character is a good guy, who ultimately helps and protects humankind. It’s a strange choice by director Gareth Edwards (whose low-budget Monsters was promising). Can you imagine a Jaws film where the shark’s on the same team as the swimmers: Instead of eating them, he helps them to shore. Who wants to watch that? Where’s the fun, the fright, the suspense and summer-blockbuster mayhem in that? Godzilla’s shriek is supposed to summon our darkest fears, not reassure us everything will be alright (for that we have the infinite number of superhero and Transformer films).

Like the kid in the iPhone commercial, Godzilla’s supposed to crash through buildings, level cities and be unstoppable. This new 2000s, kinder, gentler King of Monsters couldn’t hold the black-and-white version’s jock.