Three stars. Rated PG-13, for intense sequences of destruction, mayhem, creature violence and civilian casualties
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.16.14
The good stuff, up front:
Fairness demands that I
acknowledge visual effects supervisor Jim Rygiel and production designer Owen
Paterson, who have done a superb job with this film’s monster mayhem. As also
was the case with last year’s Pacific Rim, the massive sense of scale is
handled quite persuasively, and Northern California audiences will get a kick
out of seeing familiar San Francisco landmarks flattened like pancakes.
When Godzilla trails a winged, radiation-chomping MUTO (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism) to San Francisco, you just know the Golden Gate Bridge will be toast! |
Additionally, our dino-sized star
is granted a quite distinctive personality.
However...
If mankind as a whole behaved as inanely
as the cretins in this narrative, the monsters would deserve to win.
Writers Max Borenstein and Dave
Callaham have concocted a truly absurd premise, and their dialogue sparks
unintentional laughter at every turn. This is purple, afternoon-soap melodrama
at its absolute worst, and matters aren’t helped by director Gareth Edwards’
insistence that his actors deliver all their lines with the sort of clipped,
wooden stoicism we associate with stuff that routinely got skewered on Mystery
Science Theater 3000.
OK, let’s assume — for the sake
of argument — that Edwards & Co. deliberately tried to imitate the
hilariously grave tone of the post-atomic sci-fi flicks back in the 1950s. That
would suggest we treat this update of Godzilla as high camp: the sort of romp
that becomes entertaining precisely because it IS so solemnly sincere.
Except that this clearly wasn’t
Edwards’ intention, given how he has insisted, in pre-publicity interviews,
that Hollywood hasn’t delivered enough “serious takes on giant-monster movies.”
Hate to tell you, Gareth, but you’ve not improved that situation.
So, maybe he’s so clumsy that he
didn’t realize he was trying for camp. That still doesn’t work, because the
aforementioned mayhem includes multitudes of civilian fatalities, with some
folks perishing quite horribly. Edwards goes for the same death-by-apocalyptic
spectacle that made previous doomsday popcorn flicks such as 2012 and last
summer’s Man of Steel so unsettling.
Some films of this nature have
begun to display a level of gleeful, kid-like callousness that evokes images of
little boys pulling the wings off flies. Just as hard-core torture porn flicks
such as Saw have turned complex evisceration into a spectator sport, these
mainstream action flicks have upped the ante so much that (for example) the
stomping of innocent bystanders becomes a pinball-style laugh line.
Which is ironic, because — for
the most part — we care more about these innocent bystanders, than the
tight-lipped blank slates who pose as this story’s protagonists. Not one of
these so-called stars plays anything approximating a real character; they’re
all one-dimensional archetypes ... and quite stupid ones, at that.
The title credits unfold over a
montage that hearkens back to the post-WWII years, and events that subtly
re-cast what led to Japanese director Ishirô Honda’s 1954 “documentary” about
the original Godzilla. (And you thought all our atomic bomb explosions were
mere tests? Tsk-tsk.)
Flash-forward to 1999, as
secretive scientists Ishiro Serizawa (Ken Watanabe) and Vivienne Graham (Sally
Hawkins) investigate an odd event at a collapsed mine in the Philippines: a
cave that resembles something left over from the pod chamber in 1979’s Alien. Our shadowy government wonks find themselves looking at the fossilized, highly
radioactive remains of something very large, and quite old.
Something that might have left
some part of itself to gestate ... a part that may have departed quite
recently, in search of a fresh food source.
Elsewhere, at the Janjira Nuclear
Power Plant near Tokyo, American nuclear scientists Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston)
and his wife, Sandra (Juliette Binoche), are troubled by an increasing series
of tremors that don’t seem earthquake-related, but nonetheless are increasing
in strength. Their young son, Ford (CJ Adams), is at a nearby school when
catastrophe strikes; he watches in horror as the plant crumbles into oblivion,
its staff fleeing in panic.
(Given the horrific spring 2011
earthquake that wreaked such havoc and crippled Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power
plant, many viewers — here and abroad — likely will find this sequence quite disturbing.)
Events flash-forward again, now
to the present day, long after the zone surrounding the former Janjira plant
has been placed under a Chernobyl-style quarantine. Joe doesn’t believe it, and
has spent the intervening years obsessing over what actually happened that day,
and whether fresher events suggest an impending reprisal.
Joe’s son Ford has grown into a
strapping Naval officer (now played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson) who specializes in
disarming bombs, and has his own family: wife Elle (Elizabeth Olson) and
4-year-old Sam (Carson Bolde). Having just returned to their San Francisco home
after completing a military tour, Ford is dismayed to be summoned to Japan, to
bail his father out of jail, for trespassing in the Janjira zone.
That visit proves instructive in
many ways, not least because Joe and Ford finally encounter Serizawa and
Graham, who seem to have been up to some government-sanctioned no good at the
former power plant.
This is roughly the point where
discerning viewers will eye each other skeptically. In the annals of Truly Dumb
Ideas, the notion of “investigating” a clearly dangerous whatzit in this
manner, for well over a decade, ranks right up there with stepping on a third
rail to find out if you’d get a little tingle.
All heck predictably breaks
loose, unleashing what top-flight American Naval commander — David Strathairn,
as Admiral Stenz — dubs a (ahem) Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism, or
MUTO for short. Then, rather unexpectedly, the carnage-inducing MUTO’s presence
also prompts the arrival of something equally large and ferocious: the
ever-lovin’ prehistoric behemoth we all know and love as The Big G.
It must be remembered, following
this creature’s aforementioned 1954 debut, that Godzilla quickly became a
global savior in dozens of film sequels, protecting Earth from an increasingly
hilarious cycle of menaces such as Gigan, Biollante, King Ghidorah,
Mechagodzilla and — honestly, I’m not making this up — Hedorah, the Smog
Monster.
All of which explains the somber
Serizawa’s decades-long search for what he has termed Earth’s “alpha predator,”
and the role Nature has given it, on our planet.
Unfortunately, despite his
obvious earnestness, Serizawa may be this film’s silliest character (a hard
call, with so much competition). Edwards shamefully wastes Watanabe, a truly
fine actor who does nothing but wander from one scene to the next, his mouth
forever hanging open, glazed expression on his face, mumbling dire, fortune
cookie pronouncements and looking like a grandfatherly escapee from a frathouse
stoner party.
Actually, though, Strathairn gets
the worst dialogue: another highly skilled actor forced to spout ridiculous
lines that must have made him shake his head, between scenes.
Hawkins’ Graham is no better; she
follows Serizawa everywhere, like a lost puppy dog, looking stricken and
occasionally spouting utter nonsense. Her character serves no useful purpose,
and seems to have been inserted solely to prevent Elizabeth Olson and Juliette
Binoche from being the only females of consequence.
Cranston fares a bit better,
bringing his experience as the increasingly unhinged Walter White (TV’s Breaking Bad) to this role of an anguished scientist who goes off the rails
because nobody will believe him. Olson and Binoche hit their marks as loyal
wives and doting mothers; little else distinguishes them.
Once the story kicks into gear,
Taylor-Johnson emerges as the ground-level hero, a role he handles respectably
well. Genre fans who remember him as the geeky Dave Lizewski in the Kick-Ass franchise will be surprised by how persuasively he has bulked up here; he makes
a stalwart soldier, as the only character who seems to comprehend the true
gravity of these escalating events.
He’s also present for the film’s
more suspenseful moments, which tend to be (refreshingly) smaller and quieter:
a nail-biting, late-night reconnaissance stroll along a railroad bridge, to
determine if the track is clear; the impromptu responsibility for a little boy
separated from his parents, who comes to peril under unexpected circumstances.
During these scenes, Edwards
displays some actual directorial talent. Most of the rest of the time ... not
so much. With only one previous big-screen film to his credit — 2010’s
little-seen Monsters — I’m frankly amazed he was entrusted with a project of
this magnitude. He simply isn’t a very good judge of pacing or atmosphere, and
he clearly has no skill at drawing credible performances from his cast.
Director Guillermo del Toro had
the wisdom to make the monster-hunting in last year’s Pacific Rim an
international affair: a logical decision, when the entire planet is in peril.
Edwards and his writers skipped that notion, instead leaving their new Godzilla an entirely American affair, even to the extent that U.S. overseers
control all activities at the Janjira plant.
I guess, since these massive
critters only threaten Hawaii, Las Vegas and San Francisco, the rest of the
world is content to let us stew in our own monster-laden juice.
Certainly we’d deserve such a
fate. Once the critters start laying waste to San Francisco, we get a scene of
high-rise office workers happily plugging away at their desks, apparently
oblivious to the ear-splitting carnage taking place mere blocks away, until the
MUTO reduces them to so much brick and dust. I think we call this “Darwin in
action.”
I still recall how critics and
Godzilla fans alike sharpened their claws and filleted director Roland
Emmerich’s 1998 remake, months before that film opened to disapproving or
outright hostile reviews. Granted, it was a big, dumb monster movie, but at
least Emmerich and longtime partner Dean Devlin knew how to keep the tone light
and entertaining; their movie isn’t nearly as bad as its woeful reputation
suggests.
More to the point, it feels like
Shakespeare, compared to this one.
Movie summers often are
characterized according to a given year’s opening volley. Let’s hope this Godzilla isn't an indication of what’s to come, because — if so — it’s gonna
be a long and disappointing four months.
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