Godzilla (***)

Directed by: Gareth Edwards

Starring: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ken Watanabe, Bryan Cranston, Elizabeth Olsen, Sally Hawkins, Juliette Binoche, David Strathairn

Seen: May 16^th 2014

*** Out of ****

If you have bad memories from watching Roland Emmerich’s failed 1998 blockbuster, fear not, for this new Godzilla is a worthy monster film that completely overrides that effort with a great blend of human drama and monster madness. Gareth Edwards has rebooted Godzilla in a worthy way, full of visual cues resonating with memories from the classic Godzilla movies while also being something visually spectacular for this era of special effects mastery. The movie veers away from jumping into the action and showing Godzilla from the get go, with only glimpses and teases of the massive monster for the first hour of the movie. When Godzilla is revealed though, it is spectacular and the sound design for his roar is enough to make you shudder – an ear-splitting, screaming roar followed by an unearthly and almost musical rumble.

Godzilla starts off with the presupposition that the US nuclear tests in the 50’s were actually attempts to kill the monster, with glimpses of him revealed in old footage before jumping to 1999. Two scientists, Ishiro Serizawa (Watanabe) and Vivienne Graham (Hawkins) are taken to a site in the Philippines where an enormous skeleton is found underground, next to two egg-shaped pods – with one showing signs of having recently hatched. The Janjira nuclear plant not far from this in Japan starts experiencing seismic activity that is disturbingly stable, unlike what would be expected from an earthquake, and the plant’s supervisor Joe Brody (Cranston) sends his wife Sandra (Binoche) and a team of scientists to inspect the plant’s core for damage. While they are in the bowels of the plant the seismic activity peaks, and they are lost when Joe must close up the area to save the rest of the plant from the nuclear leak. Janjira is evacuated and after everyone including Brody and his son Ford is relocated, the city is quarantined.

Jump another fifteen years, and Ford (Taylor-Johnson) is now a member of the US Navy, specialising as an explosive ordnance disposal officer (EOD). When he gets home to his wife Elle (Olsen) and his son Sam, he barely has time with them before he is called to Japan, where Joe has been arrested for trespassing in the still-quarantined Janjira. Joe has been obsessed with proving that the disaster that took his wife from him was not merely an earthquake, and that there was a cover up. He is convinced they are hiding something, and when he manages to convince Ford to return to their home they are arrested and taken to the site of the old power plant, where much has happened since. The site is home to a facility where the creature that initially destroyed the plant is held captive in a massive chrysalis, and while they are there something big occurs half a world away. The creature here awakens when his mate awakens in Nevada – and the two leave destruction in their wake as they head towards each other, only stopping occasionally to feast – on anything they can find that’s nuclear in nature. The awakening and movement of these two MUTO’s (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms) also awakens Godzilla, their natural hunter, and the three monsters head towards a massive showdown in San Francisco that will level city blocks in their wake.

One highlight that definitely started the movie off on a great note was the title design, featuring old footage of nuclear tests by the US government tied into the story through on-screen redaction of text telling a story while the crew and more is revealed during the opening credits. The monster fights look spectacular while paying homage to the Godzilla movies of old, with large scale destruction following the enormous monsters wherever they go; and Godzilla’s fire-breath is a vision to behold as his scales turn blue as a precursor. The movie’s teasers & trailers managed to mostly keep Godzilla under wraps, focussing rather on another artistically marvellous piece – the team’s para-drop into San Francisco with all the soldiers trailing red smoke, and this scene blew me away. The movie is as serious as it can be while still acknowledging its roots as a ridiculous and ridiculously massive monster movie, with a deft melding of effective human drama and such tongue-in-cheek moments as hearing a Japanese character voice the name “Gojira” when Godzilla is initially revealed after numerous teases.

I enjoyed 1998’s flawed Godzilla as a teenager, but I revelled in this more mature version of the monster movie. It felt like I was experiencing a loving homage all through the giant blockbuster, and as opposed to the 1998 movie, this is one that I would like to own on DVD. I believe (without any true knowledge of the old and classic Godzilla movies involving more than screenshots and short clips) that this one captures the feeling of the old-time monster movies perfectly. Godzilla is back in a big way, and it’s great to have him back.