Spoilers–
The new [easyazon_link identifier=”B00KG2SXII” locale=”US” tag=”londonthoug-20″]Godzilla[/easyazon_link] starts with the opening credits being redacted. This was a cute bit of business where lines were blocked out as we watched. Then we see a mine where Something has hatched and hightailed it out of there. We soon find Bryan Cranston, a man who works at a nuclear power plant, trying to figure out what is going on. Soon disaster strikes and Bryan’s wife dies because she didn’t run fast enough to escape the fallout from the reactor breach. Bryan is bummed out. Flash forward fifteen years.
So, a lot of nothing happens. Bryan dies a pointless and meaningless death. A lot more nothing happens. We meet Mothra, sort of. We meet Godzilla. We meet Mrs Mothra. A lot more nothing happens. Godzilla gets in a fight with Mothra-and we instantly cut to a scene featuring some sap doing something that is ultimately meaningless. Godzilla starts to fight Mrs Mothra-and we instantly cut to a scene featuring people we care nothing about. Godzilla gets in a fight with both Mothras-and we instantly cut to a scene about some sap doing something meaningless.
Yeah, people who go to a movie called Godzilla don’t really want to see, you know, GODZILLA!!! We all wanted to watch some sap go jump off a bridge and out of an airplane and finally get rescued by the most blatant Deus ex Machina in recent memory.
What did they get right? Not a whole hell of a lot. Yeah it was better than Matthew Broderick’s Godzilla, but hell, just about anything would be better than Matthew Broderick’s Godzilla. Godzilla’s roar was pretty good, but they left out that fun clicking noise he makes as he builds up a head of steam. And Godzilla did look like he could stand to lose a few pounds, he was definitely soft around the middle. The music was nothing like the adrenaline pumping music of the old films. And then there was the odd bit at the end where Godzilla is viewed as a hero, even though he kills countless people as he tears apart the Golden Gate Bridge and stomps on buildings and cars left and right. Some hero.
There was also the business with the megatons nuke going off in San Franscio Bay, not sure that would have really been better than just killing all the monsters with it in the first place.
Godzilla was a monster movie that spent way too much time thinking deep thoughts about the meaning of life. I would have been happy with two hours of [easyazon_link identifier=”B000P24FAE” locale=”US” tag=”londonthoug-20″]Godzilla and King Kong[/easyazon_link] duking it out. I don’t need any father and son bonding in my monster movies.
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My brother was a connoisseur of the monster movie, but he always took things with a deeply cynical view.
He told me of one of the times he watched Godzilla vs King Kong (supposedly he had watched it several times).
When watching King Kong whale on some sort of land-borne giant octopus, he realized that at this time he was watching nothing more than a guy in a bad gorilla suit beating on a shiny trashbag.
He lost it right there.
True. That was the charm, such as it is, of the really bad Godzilla films, and the Kong one was a really bad one, but a very fun one.
Godzilla was always clearly a guy in a rubber suit and I like him that way. The cartoon CGI Godzillas, not so much.
There are some things that special effects don’t improve.