It’s hard to believe, but Hollywood studios seem to be finally realizing that the choice of director for their giant blockbusters actually matters. If studios want a good movie that will make lots of money, the filmmaker orchestrating the chaos had better have competence and talent behind the camera. Since Christopher Nolan was tapped to helm the Dark Knight trilogy, other studios and franchises followed suit (Joss Whedon for The Avengers, Shane Black for Iron Man 3, Guillermo del Toro for Pacific Rim) and the quality of these tent pole movies has increased dramatically.
Godzilla is the latest Hollywood reboot and while it had every possibility to be a train wreck on the scale of The Lone Ranger, director Gareth Edwards employs his indie filmmaking talents and unique vision to create a movie that satisfies our desire for larger-than-life spectacle while at the same time never pandering to the audience or assuming they are of low intelligence.
What makes Godzilla so wonderfully entertaining is the sense of fun Edwards is having while telling the story. The film is serious and avoids making any tongue-in-cheek references to Ishiro Hondo’s 1954 original (or the many sequels) and Edwards doesn’t fall into the typical Hollywood traps of having an action beat every ten minutes or a massive battle sequence to break up the dialogue-heavy scenes. In fact, we don’t even get to see our monster until almost an hour into the movie. But when we do finally see Godzilla, it is so much more effective because of the anticipation and the superior care and design which have gone into his construction.
The movie opens 15 years ago in a fictional city in Japan where a nuclear power plant is experiencing seismic activity unlike anything they’ve seen before. Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston) is the lead engineer at the plant and rules out the possibility of an earthquake; something much more sinister (and intentional) is at work. As the plant collapses, Joe’s wife, Sandra (Juliette Binoche), is trapped behind a security gate and doesn’t make it out alive.
Present day. Ford Brody (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), Joe’s son who lost his mother 15 years ago, is on his way back from a tour of service as an officer in the Navy. Almost as soon as he is reunited with his wife, Elle (Elizabeth Olsen), and their son, he is force to leave again to travel to Japan to help his father who has been arrested for trespassing in the restricted zone, the area surrounding the original power plant collapse. Joe is convinced that the government officials know something is going on and he is determined to find out.
Instead of being crazy – as his son assumes he is – Joe is proven to be completely right. At the power plant where it all started, Joe and Ford see something awake which has been lying dormant for years. Along with Dr. Ichiro Serizawa (Ken Watanabe), who has spent decades tracking a creature rumored to exist, father and son are among the first to witness something which will change our world and displace humans at the top of the food chain.
In addition to Edwards’ keen eye for action and skill for building suspense, he is also brilliant when it comes to picking his cast. These aren’t your generic action movie stand ins; these are serious actors, all of whom have earned critical praise for their work (mostly in independent films). Cranston is as excellent as you expect him to be, allowing Joe to walk that fine line between obsession and righteousness. We are terrified about what is going to happen because we see the fear in his face. Taylor-Johnson is always good, but not given nearly enough to do here. He has a sense of gravitas that is great for the role, but Ford is underdeveloped on the page so Taylor-Johnson can’t be blamed.
The real payoff (and the reason we’re going to see the movie) is Godzilla. When he is finally revealed, it is magnificent! The detail in the design is outstanding and his every move reflects the sheer massive size of this creature. Edwards and his amazing team of visual effects artists have crafted the monster to look not like a giant lizard (one of the many, many errors of the 1998 disasterpiece directed by Roland Emmerich), but like a creature whose genetic makeup is less easy to identify and may incorporate a number of species. In one of the few direct references to the 1954 original, there are times where Godzilla, standing as his full height, moves and walks like a man wearing a monster suit. This is no accident and it is great fun to realize.
At a time when movie ticket prices are increasingly difficult to justify, Godzilla is a movie where the price of admission is definitely worth it. Seeing Godzilla on the big screen is why we choose to go to the movies rather than waiting to watch at home.
Grade: A
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