**********SPOILER ALERT!!!!!**********
This post is going to contain spoilers about the new Godzilla movie. If you have yet to watch Godzilla, and don't want to be spoiled, I suggest that you turn back now. If, you have seen Godzilla, or you don't care whether the movie gets spoiled for you, then by all means, continue...
So, Godzilla.
The king of monsters makes his triumphant return to the big screen, and it is definitely a triumph. There are a lot of things to love about this movie. I mean, visually, it's stunning. The destruction is breathtaking in both it's scope and spectacle. This is a true monster movie and disaster movie all rolled in to one. The monsters, and especially Godzilla, look spectacular. The visual effects are stunning and the visual effects team went above and beyond to bring these characters to life.
I enjoyed this movie. It is a big, old popcorn flick, meant to be nothing more than a good time. And that's exactly what I got.
The movie starts off with a great montage of stock footage from the 50's about nuclear testing and a couple of quick glimpses of what may or may not be the monster. We then switch to 1999 and an introduction to the main, human characters.
Apparently, as the lore goes, millions of years ago, when the world was nothing but radiation, giant creatures who used it as a food source, roamed the Earth. As the planet evolved, and the radiation on the surface decreased, these creatures burrowed under the ground, towards the Earth's core, where radiation is abundant. During a mining operations in the Philippines, a cave in exposes a cocoon of some sort that, of course, scientists must study. This leads to the scenes in Japan involving a Nuclear power plant. Apparently, there were two cocoons, the first of which hatched before they could get down there. The monster, needing food, made it's way to Japan to burrow in a nuclear power plant and absorb the radiation. This is where all hell starts to break loose. I think that Bryan Cranston was a brilliant in these scenes. The emotion and the depth that he brought to the film were spot on, and it is a terrible tragedy that they killed his character off so soon in to the film. Although I do like Aaron Taylor-Johnson, I'm not sure that making him the main protagonist was the right way to go. Besides the fact that I had a problem seeing he and Elizabeth Olsen as a couple... of course, that is only because I already think of the two of them as the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver in the upcoming Avengers movie, and those characters are brother and sister... just me? Yeah, that's a possibility!... I think that the movie might have had a bit more depth of character if Bryan Cranston had remained the main focus. Ken Watanabe was also fantastic as the scientist that has spent his life studying this possibility of these creatures.
Of course, in any good Godzilla movie, Godzilla should really be the main character. In this iteration, Gareth Edwards gave us the slow burn... the tease... it takes until about the last 45 minutes or so before we get a really good look at Godzilla. And I am okay with that. Because once he makes an appearance, it's all good! :) I enjoyed the build-up to the main event and think that, overall the movie was paced quite well. It is more or less an origin story after all, and I think that the introduction was just fine. I will admit that some of the human elements to the film were a little on the weak side, but this really isn't about that, anyway. The human bits were really more like filler until we got to the big show down.
And boy, do they deliver.
Downtown San Francisco is decimated as the three creatures converge in an epic battle. Buildings are crushed. Planes fall out of the sky. Utter chaos ensues. It's glorious! The scene that they alluded to in the trailers of the Navy Seal's HALO jump in to the city is breathtaking in it's entirety. The fall through the storm clouds towards the destruction, is undercut by the view from Taylor-Johnson's character, Ford. You experience the free fall from his perspective, the rush of the wind, the view of the monsters slugging it out in the distance... it's an amazing scene. I'm sure the visuals are great in 3D as well, but since I don't really care for the format, I saw the film in just regular old 2D, and it was still great. The fights between Godzilla and the MUTO's are epic. Apparently, in this world, Godzilla is the king of monsters, the guy that keeps the balance when the other creatures get out of line, and you know, try to take over the world. So, in essence, he's the good guy. And, even though we see that he's trying to help, in typical ignorant fashion, we, as humans, try to destroy that which we don't understand. Needless to say, we're idiots.
There are a few things in the movie that bothered me, like one of the end scenes where the nuclear war head miraculously makes it far enough away from the mainland to safely go off, even though the timer was down to like a minute and half and that apparently, it's really easy to be reunited with your loved ones during the apocalypse... no frantic searching or anything required. But I'm willing to overlook those nit-picky things because of my overall enjoyment of this film.
I've never been a huge monster movie fan... in fact, I never even saw the train wreck that was the 1998 Godzilla, but I will admit that, if the movies remain this entertaining, I am a convert. Word has now been released that a sequel is in the works. This is awesome news. I am looking forward to visiting with the King once again. This time, maybe a little more screen time for the big guy will occur, making it even bigger and better. If that's even possible.
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