With the new Godzilla King of the Monsters (2019) film out on the Friday after I write this I thought it might be interesting for me to go over the 2014 film. After watching it again I wondered if it would be a good idea to do this… And yes it is.
Godzilla (2014) is certainly a film. To say anything more about it I need to dive head first into just what Godzilla is, it’s history and impact. So lets do that.
The original Godzilla is a film from 1954 Japan. For context this wasn’t even ten years after the end of the Second World War, and Japan had surrendered in the face of nuclear destruction. As a nation it was terrified, with good reason. A nuclear bomb, while cliche in media today is no joke. A single device destroyed a city. Killing thousands, tens of thousands in a single stroke. It’s a weapon not meant to fight wars, but to end them. Definitively. You drop a bomb that not only wipes out a city, but poisons the land causing horrible death for hundreds of years to come? You damn well better be afraid.
That’s what Godzilla, the original Godzilla, was meant to be. In the original film wherever Godzilla walked he left radiation, his shadow killed people. His shadow. A giant, unstoppable, monster created by man’s hubris wreaking havoc and destroying all it touched. Its existence a warning and terrible reminder that sometimes man’s blind ambition can lead to him toying with things beyond his control.
In a country as traumatised as Japan, and a world that was already hovering on the brink of armageddon in the form of the nuclear arms race, a film and monster like Godzilla was inevitable.
While originally made in Japan the film was quickly picked up and re-dubbed for an american audience, with a number of scenes added of an American journalist to add context. It didn’t do very well outside Japan, but it did develop a cult following which meant, much like Star Trek and other iconic shows, it slowly entered culture and became a fixed point. Just like everyone knowing Spock as that guy with the ears Godzilla was a guy in a lizard suit.
A lot of the nuance and details get lost in the shuffle, but that’s what you have to accept. While that was going on in the US the impact of Godzilla in Japan was huge. Spawning sequels, spin offs and rip offs. Eventually creating a whole genre of film known as Kaiju Monster movies. Just look at the amount of Sci-fi fantasy films that came out after Star Wars and you get the idea. Godzilla has stood the test of time and faced down all comers to truly become the King of the Monsters
See what I did there?
Something interesting that happened, perhaps in reflection of the fact Japan was a relatively weak nation stuck between the superpowers of America and Soviet Russia, is other monsters showed up and Godzilla fought them. That set the tone for Kaiju movies:- two giant monsters mutated through man’s misguided actions (radiation, pollution, genetic engineering, you name it) duke it out, often in a city, and whoever wins it usually ends up with a destroyed city. You can connect the dots for the metaphors yourselves.
Because of this, the growing closeness between Japan and America, and a few other things Godzilla began to change. Originally a massive unstoppable force that could not be reasoned with he became an ally. A friend to Japan. Defending it from the other monsters out there. A powerful friend that stood by humanity against them. Godzilla went from being the ultimate big bad to a saviour. What started off as a metaphor of The Bomb alone became America itself. Eventually this change went too far and by the 70’s the character was a joke. Befriending kids in what was almost a crude parody of the original.
So it took a break, but not for too long. Coming back in the mid-80’s by trying to capture the shear horror and impact it had back thirty years earlier. Only with updated effects and in colour. It sort of worked, but quickly fell into the same problem it had before. You see, despite it all giant monster movies are very popular with kids. Even when it’s dealing with nightmares like the post atomic horrors the premise of two giant monsters beating the tar out of each other, combined with the fact adults just can’t shake the truth that at the end of the day it’s just a guy in a rubber suit, of course it’s going to be more popular with children.
About this point, after another US cut of the ’84 film Return of Godzilla that included some of the worse acting imaginable, and some Dr Pepper product placement that couldn’t be more intrusive, rumours of a completely US version of the character began.
While Japan continued to make film after film with the character the American film industry failed miserably to get their version off the ground. Eventually leading to the 1998 Godzilla film. I think the best description for that is a hate crime against the very concept of cinema itself. It’s quite simply awful. To quote one of the original Japanese producers that was invited to the premier:- ‘They’ve taken the god out of Godzilla.”
I’m not reviewing that. A lot of other people have done a better job of ripping it apart. However, sixteen years later the US tried again. Producing what became Godzilla (2014), which is what I am reviewing here. Finally.
Godzilla (2014) has a massive cast, including some well known actors, in an echo of the glorified cameo from Raymond Burr back in ’54. Ken Watanabe and Bryan Cranston being two of the big ones. The special effects, while moving on to CGI from the rubber suits, is more than adequate and the scope of the film is impressive. Suggesting that giant creatures roamed the Earth in the distant past, surviving off the then radiation rich atmosphere before hibernating for millennia as it fell to background levels. Recent events, such as the atomic tests in the Pacific and Chernobyl along with a number of other nuclear power plants, have raised radiation enough to wake them…
So that’s not a bad set up for the film. High production costs, established fan-base and for a change a concept relatively loyal to the original material without copying it beat for beat. So the ingredients are there. I should really like this film. Do I? No.
Sorry, it makes too many mistakes. First of all it’s far, far too dark and I don’t mean in tone. At points all you can see on screen is jumbled mess of shadows. I’ve had to turn off just about every light in the room just to see what the hell is going on. Frenetic action, shaky cam and near pitch blackness? Not a good mix. Next up is perhaps the biggest problem with CGI monsters, something that is noticeable all the way back in Jurassic Park and still happens today. The monsters change size. There’s no consistency in it. One moment the creature is the size of a mountain, then it’s only about half as big. Skyscrapers seem to come from nowhere and are at least a thousand stories tall. It’s a mess visually, but that shouldn’t matter if the plot holds up.
Urm… no. No it doesn’t.
The biggest problem is the family at the centre, or should I say conveniently just off centre, of what should be the plot. Bryan Cranston plays a former nuclear power plant safety officer who is obsessed with the accident that killed his wife. An accident that was caused by one of the giant monsters being drawn to the plant. His son is a bomb disposal expert with the military and the son’s wife is a nurse. We follow as somehow the son happens to be just in the right place at the right time to witness and be key to every major event.
The Father (Cranston) gets his son to help him break into a secured area just in time to witness one of the monsters hatch from the ruins of the power plant. Cranston dies and the bomb disposal expert son gets a free info dump before he is shifted to Hawaii. Where the monster happens to arrive just in time for the title character to make an appearance. They fight, off screen, before sodding off. Somehow the bomb disposal expert survives.
They find out that the first monster is heading to meet up with a second one, in the middle of San Fransisco no less. Guess where the Nurse Wife lives and works. The entire plot is this never-ending cascade of incredible convenience. Why is the son a bomb disposal expert? Oh, because he’s quite literally the only guy on the planet that can rig the nuke in the fourth act and then disarm it in the fifth.
And yes, I am not even looking up the actor’s name because he’s a charisma vacuum here. I’m all for the viewer’s proxy, the idea that you have a character that the viewer relates to over the film, but this is taking it too far. Stretching the suspension of disbelief beyond capacity.
The biggest kick in our collective teeth was that first Godzilla fight, this is what we came to see. This should have been the show stopper, the fight that sets the scene for the big throw down at the end. What we got was the build up. A reveal, followed with a classic roar and cut away. We see a couple of shots on a news program, but that wasn’t what we paid to see.
Combine this with the aforementioned impossible to see final fight and what are we left with? A Godzilla film two hours (123 Mins) long and we get almost 10 minutes of the title character. Throw in the bait and switch with Cranston dying at the start of the second act and you’ve got a film that is desperate to subvert expectations.
Only when you sell a film on the anticipation of fulfilling, or even exceeding, expectations you shouldn’t play that card. Murder mysteries are allowed to defy expectation, to pull the rug out from under the audience. Horror can subvert the tropes normally involved in it. A Kaiju film is not the time or place to try and get too clever. As I pointed out with the whole metaphor rant during the background there is a lot behind the “That guy in a rubber suit” film already. A lot more than you first think seeing what is effectively a wrestling match in silly costumes.
Godzilla (2014) fell for every trapping hollywood blockbusters have become famous for since Cameron’s Avatar. So busy trying to be a spectacle that the concept of a cohesive plot was a distant second. A popcorn movie. To be watched, enjoyed on a surface level and then discarded for the next big thing.
Godzilla meant more than that. Ahhh well, wonder what we’re going to get with the Battle Royal the latest movie promises?
IMDB:- 6.4 out of 10
Rotten Tomatos:- 75%
Score 4 out of 10
If you are interested and want to see a fantastic summery of the origins of Godzilla visit SF Debris review Here:- https://sfdebris.com/videos/films/gojira.php
No comments:
Post a Comment