2014, 12, Directed by
Gareth Edwards
Starring: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Bryan Cranston, Elizabeth Olsen, Ken Watanabe
Starring: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Bryan Cranston, Elizabeth Olsen, Ken Watanabe
When Gareth Edwards strolled onto the scene in 2010 with DIY indie
masterpiece Monsters, ears were
pricked as to what this new-found talent (previously a BBC cameraman) was to do
next. In a superhero-gone-serious age of moodier landscapes where gritty
realism is embraced over light-hearted entertainment, it comes as no surprise
that the Warner Brother sharks circled the Edward's fresh blood as the man to
reinvent the Godzilla franchise,
locked away turgidly in a mammoth vault thanks to Roland Emmerich’s failure to
do so back in ’98.
Whereas that attempt simply threw 'Zilla' into the mix of things
in New York City, this attempt – in 3D IMAX, no less – fleshes out the origins
akin to the Japanese Toho originals back in the 50s. Embracing the ancestry of
their fear of crafting films explicitly to do with Hiroshima, by the time Godzilla – the baby of
such fears – makes his appearance on screen (you’ll be waiting a while…),
disappointment will most certainly not be the overriding feeling.
Beginning with a taut opener in which we see the destruction
of a nuclear plant in Janjira, Japan, American plant supervisor Joe Brody (Bryan
Cranston) lives years in a reclusive manner attempting to uncover the real
cause of the explosion, long since attributed to an earthquake. Assisted by his
hesitant son Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), a US Navy bomb disposal officer
living in San Francisco with wife Elizabeth Olsen and son, the two find
themselves in the mixer of an awakening of a winged MUTO (Massive Unidentified
Terrestrial Organism) – a creature
which wreaks devastation upon the world, always conveniently in the places
where our protagonist roams.
The visuals may be magnificent, the sound design thrillingly
overwhelming and the intentions admirable, yet after a brilliantly-edited opening half
an hour, you can sense the pressure getting to Edwards, the cinematography of
the film appealing more than the actual events playing out on-screen (big up
Seamus McGarvey). The monolithic one-note characters can be forgiven (Sally
Hawkins as an exposition-spewing scientist whose name you’ll struggle to recall;
Olsen criminally wasted as the doting wife rescuing the injured
in a hospital whilst the apocalypse occurs around her) – after all, something
has to give in a two-hour long film with a scope such as this. Much like Man of Steel’s disastrous final act, it’s
in Godzilla’s substitution of emotion
in favour of destruction - with every shot comprising of a city crumbling,
building by building, and unknown masses of people meeting unseen grisly ends.
Such problems lead to a desensitisation against what happens next, thus removing
most of the tension and almost all of the engagement.
All Godzilla manages
to amount to is an entertaining but criminally unchallenging way to spend a
few hours – a squandered opportunity from a filmmaker whose early masterpiece
could now be cited as sheer beginner’s luck.
3/5
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