The second American remake of “Godzilla” was released during a time when I rarely went to the movie theaters. (I know, super weird to hear such things). I have to admit though, the film caught my curiosity and I liked the trailer. At the worst, I figured it would be at least on par with the first American made “Godzilla” film which I oddly didn’t hate like many other people did (though it has many problems). This film turned out to be very different than that film unsurprisingly.
The film follows a Navy Lieutenant named Ford Brody who accompanies his father Joe to Japan to investigate what caused the meltdown that killed Ford’s mother at the Janjira Nuclear Power Plant. Upon their investigation, a creature emerges and ends up killing Joe. Ford, being a Navy Lieutenant and witnessing this creature, is informed about Project Monarch which studies monsters and he is told about Godzilla. Project Monarch hopes that Godzilla might be able to fight these new creatures, dubbed MUTOs, along with the United States Armed Forces. Ford finds himself caught in the middle of the rampage caused by the monsters fighting. Will Godzilla end up being a savior to humanity or an unstoppable monster?
To be completely honest with you, I was actually pretty excited to see this movie when I finally got it on video. A large reason I had so much faith in this movie was because of Bryan Cranston. Cranston was still doing an incredible job on “Breaking Bad” at this time and he could only elevate a project like this. To his credit, he does add a sense of realism and does an amazing job...SPOILER WARNING...for the few minutes he is in the movie. Unfortunately, Cranston is the only actor who manages to ground the film with his presence with the exception of Ken Watanabe who is also hardly used. Instead the film focuses primarily on the couple of Ford and Elle Brody who are a bit of blank slates in this movie. Now, I don’t blame the actors for this because their characters had almost no development. Once Godzilla shows up, the focus on human emotion takes a backseat. Aaron Johnson-Taylor and Elizabeth Olsen play the Ford and Elle Brody and both actors have done fantastic work in the past, it is just a shame they weren’t given more to work with.
A lot of the problem I had with this film was with a lot of the narrative decisions. As stated above, you don’t hire Bryan Cranston for your film and then kill him off in the first act. Even Cranston himself called his character’s death a “narrative mistake”. Then there was the somewhat confusing way Godzilla was viewed by Project Monarch in this movie. It seemed like the organization was a bit all over the place with what they believed Godzilla’s motivation to be. Then there was Ford and Elle Brody who ALWAYS seemed to travel right in the path of destruction. No matter where Godzilla and the MUTOs happened to end up, so did the Brody family. Lastly, while the action was well done, it took awhile to finally see Godzilla in all his glory. This isn’t a horrible creative decision, but I just personally wanted to see more of Godzilla early on. While I didn’t love the design of the MUTOs, I thought the design on Godzilla was top notch and deserved more screen time.
This film marked the beginning of Legendary Studios’ MonsterVerse which now includes “Kong: Skull Island”, “Godzilla: King of the Monsters”, and the upcoming “Godzilla vs. Kong”. In some ways, this film felt a little more like “Cloverfield” (minus the shaky cam) than a traditional Godzilla film from Toho. While I think there was more quality that went into this movie and definitely more care, I don’t know if I enjoyed it more than the first American “Godzilla” movie. Sure, the first one was dumb and had a lot of flaws too, but it also knew it was a dumb popcorn flick. I enjoy when movies take themselves seriously, but sometimes there is a middle ground as well. Essentially what hurt this movie the most was it’s structure. It just needed some tweaks and it could have been mind blowing, instead we ended up with a respectable popcorn flick, which is nothing to be ashamed of either.
Grade: C
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