Based upon Godzilla created by Toho
Story by David Callaham
Screenplay Written by Max Borenstein
Directed by Garth Edwards
1/2* (one half of one star)
Perhaps I am not the right person to be reviewing a film like this one, but I am sorry, "Godzilla," Director Garth Edwards' 2014 remake/reboot/re-imagining or whatever the hell you wish to call it, is without question the very worst film I have seen so far this year. It is a lumbering, cumbersome, graceless, bombastic mess of a film that exists completely without any sense of fun, excitement or even energy as it almost feels to be a study of inertia. Dear readers, this "Godzilla" is torpid. It is sluggish. It is lifeless. And our larger than life, nuclear enhanced monster movie King deserves so much more. Frankly, and while I know this may be blasphemous to some of you out there, I just have to say it: as terrible as Director Roland Emmerich's cataclysmic 1998 film version was (and it was terrible), it was also a helluva lot more fun than this new version. Ouch!
"Godzilla" begins with an opening credit sequence set during 1954 as a secretive nuclear bomb test is enacted as a giant creature emerges from the ocean. Flash forward to 1999 as we meet two scientists, Dr. Ishiro Serizawa (Ken Watanabe) and Dr. Vivienne Graham (Sally Hawkins), who discover two mysterious chrysalises in the Philippines, one of which is dormant and the other has been broken open.
Meanwhile, and in a performance that borders dangerously to hysterical parody, Bryan Cranston (forgoing essentially every shred of the skill and power he displayed upon television's "Breaking Bad" and adorned with an equally hysterical wig to boot) stars as Joe Brody, the lead engineer at the Janjira nuclear power plant in Japan who is convinced that the odd seismic activity in the region is in fact housing something unknown and deadly. But what?
On a fateful day, Brody sends his scientist wife Sandra (a criminally wasted Juliette Binoche) and her team into the power plant's reactor but once inside, the reactor is breached and releases an onslaught of radioactive steam. Sandra and her team perish inside of the reactor to Brody's horror, a tragedy compounded by the nuclear meltdown of the plant itself, as witnessed by their young son Ford, who attends school nearby.
Flash forward another 15 years to find the now adult Ford Brody (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) as a US Navy explosions ordnance disposal officer who lives in San Francisco with his wife Elle (Elizabeth Olsen) and son. Ford returns to Japan to reunite with his Father, still convinced of a government cover up, and who has been detained for trespassing in the supposedly contaminated Janjira quarantine zone. Initially unconvinced of his Father's rants, Ford soon realizes the truth as he discovers that not only is the quarantine zone not contaminated at all but a giant sized winged creature has now emerged and has begun to wreak havoc.
As Ford teams up with Dr. Serizawa and Dr. Graham, with his Father's data in tow, all of them realize that to save humanity from the unleashed winged monsters, Godzilla must rise again to defeat them.
Now, I have to first say that I have not ever really been a fan of monster movies of this sort as they have never truly contained much to hold my interest. That said, it felt as if there would be more than enough material to ensure that this new version of "Godzilla" would have more than enough going for it to be a monster movie worth watching. That instead of just essentially being two hours of buildings crashing, explosions blaring and creatures roaring, there just may be some good characterizations to offer as well as some sly ecological and anti-nuclear commentary to add into the mix. Unfortunately, and despite the best efforts of Edwards, whatever they may have been, essentially every moment of "Godzilla" is negligible.
At first, I was wondering if Edwards was attempting to capture the aura of a classic B movie as the dialogue is horrifically wooden and the performances are even worse. How is it possible that actors as skilled as Bryan Cranston, Ken Watanabe, Sally Hawkins, Elizabeth Olsen, Juliette Binoche and David Strathairn as a US Navy Admiral could be this laughably foul? This honestly had to be purposeful, right? An elaborate in-joke, perhaps? Yet after about 30 minutes or so, it seemed to me that this was not unintentionally or self-consciously awful like Director Frank Marshall's downright outrageous howler "Congo" (1995). This film was honestly and unforgivably awful.
First of all, there is the unforgivable cinematic crime of having actors of this caliber populate your movie and given them nothing to do, thus wasting their talents as well as our valuable time and money. But in the case of Aaron Taylor-Johnson, I think we have fund and even more invisible leading man/action movie hero since Sam Worthington blanded his way through James Cameron's "Avatar" (2009). Taylor-Johnson spends the entirety of the film with a struck dumb, open mouthed stare that signifies him awakening from a 20 year coma rather than being awed by the sights and sounds that surround him as Godzilla battles two winged monsters. Good night nurse! Even the inanimate objects elicit better performances!
Secondly, there is the titular creature himself, who does not make his official appearance in the film under essentially on hour into the thing. Certainly, the elongated period before he takes center stage is undoubtedly supposed to create a sense of anticipatory suspense but for me, the tactic backfired because Edwards and his screenwriters, by not giving any of the human characters anything worthwhile or substantive, all we are left with is just waiting for the monsters to attack and battle. And for me, that just made the film's first hour painfully interminable. To make matters worse and certainly not befitting of Godzilla's entrance into his own movie, I could not for the life of me understand how and why did Edwards decide to feature him almost exclusively during night scenes, which indeed made it more than difficult to get really good looks at him. Godzilla does not need to lurk in the shadows. He should be displayed loud and proud, not as if the special effects team didn't get their collective acts together in time for the film's release date.
And speaking purely on an audio/visual aesthetic level, "Godzilla" is yet another example of everything that is tremendously wrong with our current crop of mega budgeted, special effects driven spectacles. It is a film that for all of the pyrotechnics and sonic fury, there is nothing that lifts us out of our seats in awe or terror. And somehow, for everything Edwards throws at the screen, no matter how ponderously, every single moment is more yawn inducing from one to the next. It is all so dry, so empty, so hollow and flat and as this movie just went on and on and on, my patience with it evaporated all the ore rapidly as I could just feel the time that I was wasting even watching it. Time that could have be spent watching something better. Or truth be told, even watching nothing at all.
Since "Godzilla" has made a box office fortune and plans are underway to create a trilogy, I know that I am in the minority concerning my opinions of this film. Even so, I just feel compelled to ask if by any chance if you are at all tired of essentially seeing the same movie over and over and with an increasing lack of imagination at the helm? Of course, not everything can be like "Star Wars" (1977) but even so, I did happen to grow up in an age when the mega budgeted, special effects driven spectacles were truly spectacles as they all made me, and audiences around the world, see the movies in an entirely new light, inspiring our dreams almost every single time. Those types of films and even more specifically, those types of filmmakers are in drastically short supply in 2014 as the demands of the box office through anything instantly recognizable have grown exponentially in power and importance and completely at the expense of creativity, originality and artistry.
"Godzilla," as far as I am concerned, is the latest casualty, a terrible, terrible film that had the potential to be a true monster.
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