Godzilla: Review

The best view of Godzilla you will get in 123 minutes

I originally planned to begin this post with a witty pun regarding Godzilla being a “Monstrosity”. “destroying expectation” or something similarly benign. However, it is perhaps in my lack of appetite for putting such effort into a quip that demonstrates best what a disappointing, flaccid and unimaginative mess Godzilla really is.

The marketing for Godzilla looked really promising, the very fashionable (and charismatic) Bryan Cranston featured heavily in promotional material, Godzilla looked magnificent in all his CGI glory and Avengers incumbent Aaron Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen were to cement their onscreen chemistry. It really felt the franchise finally had a savoir after Roland Emmerichs “most 90s film ever” had seemingly forever killed my generations love of gargantuan bipedal lizards. So, I sat in the cinema brimming with anticipation for what I was hoping would be Breaking Bad crossed with Pacific Rim. I wasn’t expecting tower-tall thunderlizards on Methamphetamine sporting pork-pie hats but I wasn’t expecting the borefest that endured.
Bryan Cranston is killed 30 minutes into the movie and the rest of the narrative follows the ridiculously named “Ford Brody” (Aaron Johnson) as he and his ridiculously thick neck run around trying to kill a pair of a ridiculously bland giant daddy-longlegs. I like Johnson, I am a big fan of his interpretation of Kick-Ass and I believe he has a promising career as both an actor and action star but he is, simply, not yet ready to carry a entire blockbuster movie himself, particularly one where nothing much happens for the best part of an hour-and-a-half. Godzilla suffers severe pacing issues, we do not meet the monster himself/herself until about 45 minutes in and he doesn’t actually do anything of note until 45 minutes after that. Godzilla’s presence in the movie is kept alive in the narrative by Ken Wantabes constant foreshadowing regarding a “apex predator” and the “rebalancing of nature”. This all gets very tiresome very quickly as the focus is on the previously mentioned “Giant Opiliones” and their horny sonar-speak. When we finally do have a clash of the titans the film makes the incomprehensible decision to cut away to scenes depicting Elizabeth Olsens parenting ineptitude and thus defeating the purpose of watching a Godzilla movie.

Heseinberg you are not

in Godzilla We witness lots of crashing trains, tidal waves and flickering electrical lights but a distinct lack of monster fights, I understand if the intent was to build to a final battle extravaganza (a la Pacific Rim) but even that is a mere damp squib compared to the majority of contemporary CGI blockbusters. One wonders whether Gareth Edwards, the director, should have stuck to the low-budget “less is more” for which he had such success. Talking about “less is more” it can’t be left unsaid in 2014 and with such a high budget films of this ilk should not be obscuring its star attractions behind band weather and darkness. We only have one real daylight shot of the titular beast and even that doesn’t linger nearly long enough.

For the sake of a balanced review I should probably think of something positive to say about the film but to do so is almost as challenging as it was to stay awake through the movies full two-hour plus showing. The only compliment I can pay the film is that it does do a good job of making a hero of Godzilla instead of portraying him as a mindless force of nature with the film having much more in common with a Spider-Man than the Day After Tomorrow, but even that is grasping at straws.
With two Hollywood stinkers now staining his name I think it’s time that this icon of black-and-white cinema returns to the obscurity of Japanese pop-culture, where he belongs.