6. Godzilla

Film number six this year in 2014. I'm going a bit slow but whatever, I'll probably ramp it up over the summer and quite frankly I really haven't been interested in a lot of titles that have come out so far. However, I was really looking forward to Godzilla. When I was but a wee lad prior to Star Wars in 1977, Godzilla was my favorite film character. I loved me some Godzilla. As I grew older, I began to realize that these films weren't all that good. Then in 1998, the guys who gave us Stargate and ID4 (another film that doesn't stand the test of time but that's a discussion for another time) were bringing Godzilla back! Suffice to say I was pretty stoked. Granted the film was pretty awful, it made a lot of money but it was bad. I can put my faith in Will Smith to save Earth even when he's teamed up with Jeff Goldblum  but Matthew Broderick saving NYC? Sorry, even with my vivid imagination it wasn't going to happen. The monster looked good, they gave it a real dinosaur kind of feel since there had already been 2 Jurassic Park films before Roland Emmerich's version of Godzilla was released. The story was lacking to say the least but at least they sold a lot action figures (which is pretty what it's all about these days in film, merchandising!).

In director Gareth Edwards' reboot, the origin of Godzilla is kind of swept aside but we do get some tidbits about his history. Originally, Godzilla was a spawn of the atomic age, a message that the "atomic monster" would wipe us all out if humanity wasn't careful. That's the way life was when the original Japanese version came out in 1954 (the threat of nuclear annihilation was very real back then). In the reboot, the story is that the Pacific nuclear tests were designed to kill Godzilla. I'm fine with that, I know his origin and to skip it and get to the good stuff is cool with me.

So Godzilla was an issue for awhile and thanks to atomic weapons, he seemed to have disappeared. Then we go to the Philippines in 1999, where a caved in mine leads to a discovery of a large fossil and what appears to be a hatched egg of some sorts and you can see the path that this large creature cut as it made its way to the sea. In a sleepy coastal Japanese town where Bryan Cranston & Juliette Binoche work at the nuclear power plant and live with their young son, there have been some seismic anomalies. Cranston is worried about them and Binoche goes into the reactor to check on it. Disaster strikes and Cranston is forced to seal off the reactor with his wife and her team inside. Harsh stuff. The plant is nearly destroyed and the town is evacuated and placed under quarantine. An earthquake is to blame.

Fast forward to present day, Cranston's son (played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson) returns home from Afghanistan to his wife (Elizabeth Olsen) and son. He is a Navy EOD expert. He's home one night and gets a call that his Dad was arrested for being in the quarantine zone. So much for spending time with his family. Cranston still hasn't gotten over his wife's death and doesn't buy the earthquake excuse and has been investigating it since it happened. So much so that he's now a crackpot. Cranston manages to convince Taylor-Johnson to sneak back into the area with him to retrieve his diskettes (remember those?) When there, Cranston takes off his protective gear, the area is clean. No radiation. They go back to their old home to retrieve the floppy disks and a few keepsakes (there's a shot of some damaged items that clearly spell out Mothra, nice). Given, they're caught and while being interrogated Cranston meets up with Ken Watanabe (Dr. Ishiro Serizawa, it's an homage to the original film). The two compare notes about what happened and they get to the root of the problem. A giant cocoon has been feeding off the radiation for the last 15 years and the Watanabe and his Monarch Project team (the group that has been clandestinely been in charge of the Godzilla in the 50's) are dumbfounded as to what it is. Now with Cranston's findings they have an idea but before they can put together a hypothesis, the cocoon breaks open and the giant monster inside starts to wreak havoc.

This is the toy version. Merchandising!

During the creature's rampage, Cranston is mortally wounded but not before Watanabe collects him and Taylor-Johnson to head to a US Naval aircraft carrier to begin pursuit (not exactly sure what Cranston was going to do being on death's door but I'm just a spectator so what do I know). Onboard the carrier, the monster is known as a M.U.T.O (massive unidentified terrestrial object). The MUTO has a special power, it can deliver an electromagnetic pulse which renders all electronics useless. This MUTO can also fly and it eludes the carrier force after setting off an EMP. During the chase, the Navy picks up a new signal, a real big one. Care to wager a guess on the identity of the signal? Yes, it's Godzilla! We get to see a full glimpse of Godzilla on Hawaii as he and the MUTO have a go. The battle is short lived as the MUTO escapes and heads for mainland USA with Godzilla and the Navy in hot pursuit. While chasing the MUTO to the mainland, Watanabe discovers that the signal the MUTO is emitting is a mating call and sure enough, there's a female MUTO that was stored in the US governments nuclear waste storage facility in Nevada and it's now loose.

Here's where the Navy hatches a bold plan to eliminate all 3 monsters. Despite the fact that the MUTOs feed on radiation, the military is going to "lure" all creatures to San Francisco and detonate a nuclear device so that the blast will kill them. This is where Taylor-Johnson comes back into play. They need to re-equip the warheads with an older non-electrical timer so the MUTO's EMPs won't render it useless. Watanabe is against this idea because he feels that nature will balance things out in the form of Godzilla. Like the rest of us, he wants to see a Kaiju battle but the stuffy military is more worried about civilian casualties. Of course the military's plan backfires, the female MUTO eats one of the warheads and the male gives the second one to her as a food source for the soon to be born hatchlings. To speed up the synopsis, Godzilla and the MUTOs do indeed have an epic battle during which time, Taylor-Johnson himself destroys the unborn hatchlings (much to the dismay of the now angered female MUTO). Godzilla defeats the MUTOs but apparently dies in the process (destroying all hopes for a franchise in the process).

During the aftermath, Taylor-Johnson regroups with his wife and young boy and the news media hails Godzilla as a hero (a scrolling banner reads "Godzilla, King of the Monsters saves our city"), the destruction of the city being a small price to pay. However, Godzilla was only just resting, he gets up, gives the people a wink and dives into water and swims home (franchise restored!) Everyone lives happily ever after. Except for all the military and civilian personnel who lost their lives during the conflict. Honolulu, Las Vegas and San Francisco are in ruins but its no big deal (much like Metropolis after the Superman Zod battle in Man of Steel) because that stuff takes care of itself right?

Getting to the point, I liked this film. It was a straight monster movie. The specials effects were really good and the final battle between Godzilla and the female MUTO was great. The film didn't get bogged down in all the human nonsense like the 1998 version (did anyone really care about the relationship between Broderick and Maria Portillo? Me neither) but there was enough with the family dynamic of Cranston/Taylor-Johnson and Olsen to keep it moving. Some people may not like the limited role that Cranston had but in the end the film was about Godzilla. Some people may not like that Godzilla seemed overweight or that his only purpose was to keep the MUTOs from doing their thing. What does Godzilla do? He fights monsters. This was far from a perfect film but it never set out to be that. There were things I didn't care for but it wasn't enough to get into a twist over (I thought the scrolling banner was dumb and Godzilla's "death" was really nothing more than filler as you know sequels are in the works as I write this). Its an action film, a summer blockbuster. Its purpose is to give the audience an escape and it did that, I mean it was better than Pacific Rim. Godzilla was fun and entertaining and it didn't seem to have an underlying theme other than family and that nature will somehow find a way to even things out.

This film was enjoyable and I recommend seeing it on this big screen at it was intended. Thank you for your time.