WARNING! Contains spoilers: big, scaly, thundering, shouty, atomic, fire-breathing spoilers.
Here's my top tip for seeing 'Godzilla'. Buy your ticket, go to the bar and then make sure you sit down to watch the film, but only a good full hour after the film has started.
What will you miss?
blah blah blah ...scientist gobbledigook speak... blah blah blah...is that really Juliette Binoche?...blah blah blah...running around corridors...getting chased by a cloud....nuclear power station gets it...blah blah meet the Hollywood family....blah blah blah....father and son stuff....blah blah blah...I'm in the army now....let's go to the contaminated zone...blah blah blah...it's not really contaminated...blah blah blah...big war room stuff...wise Japanese man...more scientist gobbledigook speek....and FINALLY a monster!!!
That's it. That's what you'll miss. I'm not sure why the film takes so long to set up the premise, after all it's not high concept: Godzilla comes out of the sea and twats stuff. It's pretty much what happens in every Godzilla movie ever. At least 'Pacific Rim' has the decency to hit the ground running with that sort of stuff.
I know, I know... the slow burn beginning is there to set up the characters and the situation and it builds the tension to an unbearable pitch. Except it doesn't.
Meet the characters:
Cranky scientist type that nobody believes. Okay I guess we've got to have this guy in a Godzilla movie but this guy is such a dufus that he can't even remember that it's his own birthday. He's caught up in his work. He hasn't got time for his son. Nobody believes him. Oh spare me, please! That's just the laziest of lazy characterisations. Oh, but we're expected to feel his loss and pain because he has to watch his wife die on the other side of a containment door. No, you know what would have packed a real emotional punch? If he'd stepped inside the door to die with her. That would have been a better gut punch than the big emotional surprise that the film has in store for this character later on down line. I warned you about spoilers, didn't I? Well here's a big one: Brian Cranston is in this film for less screen time than Godzilla. Yep, that's right, we're expected to invest in this off the peg character, see him watch his wife die, see him try to bond with his son, share his frustration at not being believed, watch him risk his life in the contamination zone etc only to set up a surprise scene where he gets killed off a third of the way through the film. When I say killed off, I don't mean big jaw-dropping WTF type scene along the lines of Samuel L Jackon's demise in 'Deep Blue Sea'. No, I mean a heart attack, zipped up in a body bag and move it along quickly scene. Rubbish. The girl in the row in front of me had to ask her friend what had happened to him five minutes later. That's how well done it was. That's the emotional power it had.
Grown up son who has one specialist skill that might just save the day. Cranky scientist's son is all grown up. He's a soldier boy and an explosives expert. An explosives expert? I wonder if that will come into play later on? It might you know. There is nothing to make us root for this guy or even be the slightest bit interested in him. He's nice to a Japanese boy who gets separated from his mother on the subway. He has a wife and a kid. He must therefore be a really nice guy. Really? That's shorthand, it's not character building. It would help if he wasn't played by someone who came runner up in a Jake Gyllenhall lookalike contest. Ooohh, I've got big eyes. Yes, and you've also got a vaccum where you should have charisma. The actor's name is Aaron Taylor-Johnson. He was in 'Kick Ass'. I hope I never see him on screen again.
The Wife. She answers the phone, she switches off the telly, she likes her husband, she's a nurse, she looks worried in the A&E department, she looks like an Olsen twin, she watches the skies. She's a very well rounded character. Well done.
That's the Brody family. Yeah, a bit like the Brody family in 'Jaws'; as if this film is up there with the greatest monster movie ever made. 'Jaws' had Chief Brody, Hooper, Quint; great characters that you would happily watch even if the film wasn't about a giant shark. This has the standard insipid family that must pull together in a time of crisis and reaffirm their bond. At least it doesn't have a bowl haired moppet in a school bus which gets stranded on the Golden Gate bridge. Oh, no, sorry...forgot...it does indeed have the school bus on the bridge scene.
Godzilla. The King Of Monsters. In this one he's basically Rocky. Not a great fighter. A bit out of shape. but he can take the punches and so can go 12 rounds with big metallic bug monster things. He's big, bloody hell is he big, but he's got a thick neck and a tiny head. His face looks a little bit like a labrador. He staggers around and tires easily. It's hard not to feel sorry for the big guy. He knows it's not his greatest hour.
To be honest, you can probably stay in the bar for a bit longer if you want to. The middle bit has monsters in it, but not that much of Godzilla; I guess he asked for too much money. Instead we concentrate on the MUTOs. What's a MUTO? Apparently it's a Massive Unidentified Terrestial Organism. Gulp. What does one of those look like? In this instance it looks like the bastard offspring of a praying mantis and a staple remover. I suspect they were made using Cylon technology because they have that Battlestar Galactica pulsing red light thing going on. 'Starship Troopers' had better monsters. I'm not quite sure why the Special Effects people had to make them look like big robot insects. Are metallic insects easier to animate than anything remotely organic looking? Probably. The strange thing is when they try so hard to digitally realise Godzilla. At times you still think that it looks like a man in a suit.
So we have nuclear power plants getting destroyed, man interfering with nature and America under threat from unknowable and seemingly unassailable forces. Wow, I bet this film is thematically strong and deals with complex ecological themes in a populist but thought provoking way. Nah, no at all. This film has nothing much to say at all. The original 1954 film is is a cultural mourning for Hiroshima and Nagasaki where Godzilla stands in for our shame and our punishment. He is awakened as a result of our nuclear activity. In this version the American military have just been trying to secretly bomb the poor bastard for the past sixty years. Nothing much is made of it. Nothing much is made of the ecology theme. There's no real exploration of the reaping what you sow theme. At best you might come away thinking, I hope they don't start fracking in my area - they might unleash some big nasty moths.
Now look, don't just think I'm a hater, I get it. This is a Godzilla film. It's a multi million stupid monster movie, a very well crafted one granted, but still a stupid monster movie. It doesn't have to be strong on characters or plot or theme. It doesn't even need to be all that good. That's not what we're paying for. We just want to see some monsters having a wrestling smackdown. In that sense the final act of the film really delivers. Watching monsters fight is the money shot. But if that's all it is, then don't waste so much of my time on instantly forgettable characters and don't pretend you're saying something important. I like Japanese monster movies, I really do but the thing I love about them is the cheesiness. I love the model cities, the men in rubber suits and the absurd plots. I love the surreal quality they have, I love the new mythology and fantasy worlds of men and monsters they create. As soon as you start making them more realistic the fun evaporates for me. Everything is obscured in dust and darkness. Godzilla is not The Dark Knight. Let's see him in daylight.
The best scenes in the movie don't involve any monsters at all. There is a skydive sequence that is a truly wonderful piece of cinema. It has the tension and excitement missing elsewhere in the film and it creates an almost overpowering feeling of awe. It's just some blokes jumping out of a plane but if the film can find poetry and brilliance in that scene why can't it find it elsewhere? The film should have started in the contaminated zone. It would have been an eerie and unsettling opening. Everything we learn about the characters could have then been revealed in a more interesting way and we could have got to the action quicker. Instead we have the slow build up, the tease and quite frankly a lot of irritation and boredom.
So the final fight in the city is well done and has lots of mayhem and destruction porn but I saw all of that in last years blockbuster 'Man Of Steel'. At least Godzilla is more heroic in this movie than Superman was in his. The big lizard makes a bit less mess as well.
The soundtrack is terrible, one of the worst in recent years. I take it as a given that all the monsters will screech and roar but you don't have to sonically assault me the rest of the time too. There's no real score as such, just lots of jarring big BAwwwaaaMMM base notes until the credits. Isn't Godzilla supposed to have his own march theme?
Godzilla 2014. That's 123 minutes of boredom, noise, military breast beating, cliche and frustration. 123 minutes for a story about a big lizard swatting a couple of bugs. It's already the highest grossing film so far this year and a sequel has been announced that will no doubt be Godzilla versus massive robots, or Godzilla versus a superhero team, or Godzilla versus some fart jokes. Maybe they should just call it 'Godzilla vs Aliens vs Predators vs Superman Vs Batman Vs Smurfs'. At least the resulting explosion of fanboy jism could power our planet's energy needs for the next ten years.
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