Godzilla
(2014)
(SPOILERS) In more ways than one, Godzilla is very much this year’s Pacific Rim. A movie giant monster-adoring geeks are willing themselves to
love, amped up beyond words by the prospect of great leviathans duking it out, but
which fails to deliver in some fundamental respects. On a movie-making level Godzilla is the more admirable of the
two, taking an almost classical slow-burn approach to the telling, but this ends
up ensnaring the picture, making its shortcomings all the more apparent. It is
sure to receive many a salutatory gesture for respecting its source material in
a way the 1998 Hollywood version never did, but this serious mindedness throws
a whole lot of attention on how goofy the whole enterprise is. Most damagingly,
the (very valid) Jaws approach of
keeping the creatures on the periphery leaves fundamentally uninteresting
characters and plotting front and centre, and it’s this that kills the picture
for long periods. Godzilla ends up
kind of boring.
I’m not really one to get behind the
mainstream critics, but the Godzillites seem to have picked up mainly on how
slow they all say it is and found their rebuke in “Would you rather it was like
Emmerich’s version or (shudder) Transformers”.
Which is rather missing the repeated and salient thrust of the complaints; the
reason the picture seems slow is that the characters fail to engage. The one
character that does (and the trailers are highly misrepresentative in the
amount of screen time they suggest for him) is killed off before the first act
is over and, when he’s gone, there’s a vacuum left that can’t be filled. The
complaints about complaints that the title character takes his time to stride
out of oceans and batter through crumbling cityscapes are ones I can get behind
more, but this wouldn’t even come up if the human interest worked. In that way,
for all the comparisons, Godzilla is completely
dissimilar to Jaws. The characters in
that movie are the movie; they drive
the plot every bit as much as the shark. Here, you can sense the writers
tripping over themselves trying to get (insert Etchasketched character here, in
this case Ford) from A to B to C, and the result induces interminable subtitles
announcing yet another military base and yet another dimwitted conversation
between David Strathairn’s admiral and Ken Watanabe’s muto-dino-astute doctor,
in which the former asks the latter about the peril they face to vague and
ominous response.
Roland Emmerich’s version is roundly and
resolutely slated for it’s betrayal of the character, although I wonder how
much it would be chastised if he looked like a guy in a suit as here. Like
Jonathan Ross (hallowed company, I know), I seem to be one of the few who admit
to finding it quite enjoyable; I watched it again last year and, some
irritating and obvious characters and plot beats aside, I still can’t find too much
to complain about. There’s nothing to get overly excited about either, but it is engaging in that formulaic
blockbuster manner at which Emmerich excels (its failure has been much
overstated too; it was far too expensive to make a tidy profit, but it was
still the third biggest hit of ‘98 worldwide). I’m just not a purist enough, I
guess.
To me, Godzilla was always the ‘70s US cartoon. The one with Godzooky and “Up from the depths, 30 stories high,
breathing fire he stands in the sky”. The one that saw him battling a new
weekly monster over 20 minutes and habitually ended with a coterie of humans
congratulating him for graciously saving the day. I watched a few of the
founding film series when they were screened on Channel 4 in the late ‘80s –
early ‘90s, but couldn’t really take them to my bosom. Perhaps I needed to be
of a certain age. And really, I can get only so much enjoyment from seeing
giant creatures knocking each other’s tonsils out at the expense of human
interest these days. Del Toro attempted to incorporate the people into the
giant fisticuff fest in Pacific Rim,
but unfortunately his characters outrageously cardboard to a man (and woman).
So I guess I’m maladjusted when it comes to monster mash mayhem. I can’t much see
the appeal of Transformers, even beyond
Michael Bay’s paralytic editing and Shia LeBouef’s LaBoeuf-ness. It’s the same
thing, but with robots. Only King Kong
(not Peter Jackson’s) really succeeds but then it has a much stronger backbone,
and it isn’t, the occasional interlude aside, about a great big dust-up. I’m
not saying it’s impossible to successfully integrate the elements, but 90% of
the time it will fall back on the thinly sketched specimens of humanity sitting
back while a couple of great plodders get down to business. And so it is here.
Dave Callahan (The Expendables!) is credited with the story and Max Borenstein
(the, er, delayed The Seventh Son) with
the screenplay. But also over-stewing the pudding are David Goyer (why not, he
manages to get his undistinguished paws on most Legendary Pictures properties)
Drew Pearce and Frank Darabont (both of whom are solid talents, so presumably
their lack of credit suggests they didn’t have enough influence). Together,
they opt to go down the route of Godzilla the defender of the natural order and
balance, as opposed to the metaphor of nuclear Armageddon of the first movie
(you know, the nasty monster; which is where Emmerich took his cues, knowing,
as an adept if wholly predictable storyteller, that it guaranteed greater peril
and predicament). The only problem is, it’s an utterly daffy idea for a movie
that takes itself as morbidly seriously as this one. In some respects these
confounding antithetical elements are perversely appealing, in the same way monsters
in suits are reimagined as expensive CGI monsters in CGI suits. You admire the
balls in envisaging Godzilla this unadjusted way, but that doesn’t make it work
as a piece of cinema or encourage narrative suspension of disbelief.
And it is disconcerting, the way Godzilla stomps about as if he’s a blown
up baby dressed in an oversize romper suit. The MUTO (the movie doesn’t have
many laughs, but the best is the explanation of the acronym as “Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism…
except that it’s airborne”), meanwhile, is commendably abstract, with the
crazy dislocated joints of one of those costumed carnival stilt walkers. It’s
definitely the strangest looking creation you’re likely to see in a mainstream
blockbuster, where creature design generally conforms to anodyne templates. But
you’re left wondering “How, what, why?” when everything else is played for
real. As for their monster-on-monster confrontations, Edwards lays on some
brutal WWF slamdowns for the big lizard but when push comes to shove the kills prove
to be both amusing (some grievous thwacking tail action) and uproariously
ultra-violent (puking blue fire down a MUTO’s throat, then tearing its head off,
is so batty you have to love it – but again, this kind of off-the-leash sense
of fun comes out of nowhere in the context of the picture as a whole).
The nuclear nightmare origins are
retained from the original iteration, and we have a special new creature that
feeds off radiation as a result of its origins in a period when the world was
many times more radioactive than now (which in a way rather lessens the whole
nuclear threat idea; don’t worry, it was once perfectly normal to be full of
radiation). The MUTOs are the ideal solution to the world’s nuclear waste
problem, so it’s a shame the duo have to be killed off (and their spawn; as with the Emmerich movie, the third act revolves
around the threat of the menace breeding). The archive footage device is
over-familiar now, but it’s nevertheless appealing the way Gareth Edwards
retrofits the Bikini Atoll tests with the current menace (this idea was
reportedly at the director’s behest, so people should probably follow his
instincts more, or he should get involved enough for a story credit). The redacted opening credits are also a great place-setter for the presumed tone of the picture. The
problem is, as successfully mythologising as this is, it falls down when the
plot kicks in and the awe subsides. The narrative is so literal, no manner of
strange, majestic, apocalyptic visuals than can make the overall piece
resonate.
Which is a shame, as post-Fukushima the
nuclear nightmare is as relevant in our consciousnesses to an extent it hasn’t
been since the Cold War era. But it’s squandered with a movie reality version
of the dangers of the split atom. The opening sequence is superb, and grips the
emotions in a way the rest of the Godzilla
sorely lacks. Bryan Cranston, a physicist at a Japanese nuclear plant, is
forced to watch wife Juliette Binoche succumb to a lethal dose of radiation
when the something he has been
monitoring causes a massive breach of the reactor core. This is stirring stuff,
but almost immediately spoiled by the sight of the entire facility, huge
chimneys and all, collapsing in on itself (viewed from the vantage of young son
Ford’s school – later to be Aaron Taylor Johnson).
And then we cut to 15 years later, so
all that devastating radiation unleashed in the immediate aftermath (I know, I
know, the MUTO absorbs it all, but not straight away, right?) has caused no
ill-effects on Cranston and Son? In
an Emmerich movie (2012, for example)
that would be fine hyperactive bollocks and par-for-the-course, but Edwards
desperately wants you to find verisimilitude in his world. There’s a curious disconnect generally with
the nuclear age Edwards and co. are playing with. The military, being idiots
(and yet also the heroes, as embodied by our naval leading man) want to give
the MUTOs a super-dose of an enormously powerful atom bomb to chew on. Of
course, plans go awry and it becomes necessary to defuse the damn thing. But it
never happens. Instead, as with The Dark
Knight Rises, it is transported away to explode “harmlessly” at sea. It
gets to the saturation level where one has to wonder if this is some kind of
covert propaganda; radiation is only a problem in massive doses and even then
its okay it won’t be a problem unless you are locked up with it; and don’t
worry about all that nasty waste, something will come along eventually to suck
it all up (let’s commission a few more plants, eh? Future generations can worry
about it if we don’t figure out a solution).
The other unappetising aspect of all
this is the preponderance of military personnel and hardware. Sure, they may
not be able to defeat the menace without the help of a Japanese monster, and
they have the help of a wise Japanese man (although not so wise that he doesn’t
need the help of a soon-to-exit Bryan Cranston), but they’re resolute and
dependable, never less than defenders of the nation. There’s little other
perspective and it becomes entirely tiresome, no matter how well staged
individual scenes are (and most are superbly staged). It doesn’t have to be
this way; just look at Cameron’s Aliens
for an engaging portrayal of grunts (no offence). As it is, Broderick et al in
Emmerich’s take are many times more appealing, without even being especially
appealing.
The biggest mistake Edwards makes, or at
least his writers make, is killing off Cranston. It’s not just that he brings
the requisite conviction and Heisenberg energy to the resolutely unmemorable
dialogue that besieges the picture; he has presence. (Sally Hawkins, so good in
Blue Jasmine, also makes an
impression in as an exposition-friendly sidekick to Watanabe.) Aaron
Taylor-Johnson is a good actor, and he’s a very pretty fellow, but at current
reckoning he’s a character player not a charisma monkey. He’s as good or bad as
the writing he’s given to work with (well, bad would be overstating it but
non-descript is about right). Poorly catered for as he is, and he’s on screen
most of the time Godzilla isn’t, the writers constantly strain themselves
finding something for Ford to get busy at on his mission to get home, handily
fetching him up in the right place at the right time for some dramatic
shenanigans with a MUTO or Gojira, poor Elizabeth Olsen fares even worse.
Perhaps the actors’ prettiness is inversely proportional to how meaty their
role is, as Olsen is even pretty than her on-screen husband. And she has
absolutely nothing memorable to do,
apart from luminesce before the camera.
I feel a bit bad about laying into Godzilla,
because it really is a beautifully made movie. Joe Wright’s regular DP Seamus
McGarvey ladles on the familiar desaturated green-grey wash, but there’s
something more here. Edwards allows his movie to breath. There isn’t the
feeling of over-editing (Bob Ducsay worked on Stephen Sommers movies, so
perhaps he going extreme Cold Turkey) that afflicts the modern blockbuster. If
only Edwards had content to work with too, this might have been a classic. I
rated Edwards’ first, micro-budget feature Monsters,
which managed a similar air of ambient foreboding. The impressively realised
creatures there were also sidelined, with a front-and-centre but subdued love
story that I found quite affecting. I know others found this element weak
swill; if so God knows what they will make of Godzilla, where there isn’t a single merit-worthy characterisation.
Edwards mounts sequences with consummate
skill; I just wished I cared about them. The HALO drop set piece, set to Gyorgy
Ligett’s Requiem (better known for
it’s appearance in 2001: A Space Odyssey)
is breathtaking, the jumpers’ descent lit up as red flares against a grey,
crumbling city. The overgrown urban landscape seen in the first act’s
quarantine zone is a masterpiece of production design, and recalls both Monsters (both have gasmasks in common
besides giant beasties) and I Am Legend.
A sequence in which a little girl looks out to sea, the waves turning to a
tsunami initiated by the arrival of Godzilla, recalls the opening of The Lost World: Jurassic Park in the way
it endangers the little ones. Except that, unlike Spielberg, Edwards doesn’t
pull his punches. There’s no suggestion the child escapes the tidal forces. Elsewhere,
the director appears to be summoning the spirit of John McTiernan as camera
tracks in on the mud encrusted motionless body of Ford. And there’s a nice
moment – well, there had to be one, didn’t there? – when Ford and the giant
lizard make eye contact on a smoke-shrouded street. There’s none of glossy
emotioneering of Bay’s LeBoeouf and his Bumblebee buddy, but it’s still a
moment where the only impact is how wonderfully adorned it is. Likewise, the
newfound hero status of Godzilla amongst humanity is confirmed via a huge video
screen announces it is so; this the kind of really barrel-scraping, intrusive “tell-don’t-show”
that adorned the (much less forgivably) TV commentary climax to Spider-Man 3.
The recurring theme developing in big
movies this year seems to be hugely talented filmmakers coming unstuck with
under-developed screenplays (ah, ‘twas ever the case). It blighted Aronofsky’s Noah, and now it sabotages Edward’s
first bash in the big leagues (I might add Transcendence
to that list, but I’m dubious Pfister could have made great things of even a
great script). And then there’s the waste of a talented cast; the downside to the
gradual exit of the movie star vehicle is that good solid actors aren’t able to
fill a gap in character substance. Borenstein and Callaham have their work cut
out for them trying to sustain the Godzilla
narrative, so perhaps it’s little wonder there’s no time left to make us care.
Gareth Edwards is going to make a terrific big budget movie at some point; maybe
next time.
**1/2