Godzilla

Have you ever been having sex or just playing with yourself, and you can feel the orgasm building. It's getting close. The intensity is right there, right at the threshold of all its incredible glory- and then it just fizzles. You don't fully get why or where the really awesome sensation you were about to have went but it's gone and now suddenly you're working a little harder to get it back. And after a little bit you can feel it building again. You can feel the threshold. The payoff is- oh god its- it's- gone again. So you keep going but now you're getting tired and a little bored but you've already put all this effort in so there's no way you're stopping until you've gotten what you've come for. But then when it finally happens it's fine but not all that great and you're left with a general feeling of, "Well, I guess... that occurred..."

This is more or less what it's like to watch Gareth Edwards' Godzilla.

The movie starts strong enough. We have Bryan Cranston living in Japan and mostly speaking English with the rest of the world conforming to his language in case an American audience happens to be watching. But that gripe aside, we're quick in getting to a disaster, a tragedy, the mystery, some cool special effects, and a sense of real danger. It sets Cranston up as a family man who's lost everything and gone a little insane in the process.

Then the movie goes through the motions of establishing the aftermath and the impact on Cranston and his son played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson. Not so much Japan and all those Japanese people who were effected, just in case an American audience is watching, but instead this father and son who happened to be in Japan at the time of disaster. And as part of the American audience that happens to be watching, we're sympathetic, we understand their plight, but we also know what's coming and we're Americans so can we just skip over the government cover up bullshit and get to the giant fucking monsters doing giant fucking monster things? Or could you at least play Pacific Rim in the lower left corner of the screen so we have some fun and explosions while Edwards takes us through the standard motions of every other giant monster flick?

I actually don't mean to be snide at the first half of the movie, mostly because it's by far the better half of the movie. The build up, the tension, and Cranston's performance are all excellent. Personally, I get a little bored with government cover up stories. In part because they've been done a billion times but mostly because they've been done a billion other times. At least in the original Godzilla they had a scene where some officials and other people were debating on whether or not to hide the fact that there's a giant monster. And what sucks is that this entire cover up sequence could've easily been replaced with a much more interesting story where the giant MUTO cocoon is discussed internationally and there's a huge amount of debate about it over fifteen years. A rare, endangered species absorbing nuclear radiation for food is going to hatch one day and half the world is screaming, "We must save and protect this beautiful creature!" while the other half of the world is screaming, "Crack that bitch egg open before it replaces us as the dominant species. Fuck world hunger! Omelettes for everybody!" Or alternatively "That thing is absorbing tons of energy and will remain in a cocooned state until it has enough. How can we tap that as an alternative energy source and completely abuse this rare creature?" Which also would've tied much better into the movie's underplayed theme of man vs nature and just how powerless we are against these greater forces.

But instead we were given another god damn government cover up movie where the heroes are just sort of trotting through everything around them while trying to find excuses for them to be there. The result is that a bulk of the movie feels like Aaron Taylor-Johnson's own misadventures in a military remake of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. And it spends all its time finding excuses for him to go through one situation after another while keeping him more or less at ground zero, which wouldn't be bad if they didn't feel like excuses and lame justifications for him to be there. After the first MUTO attack when Ken Watanabe is asked if there's any critical staff he requires to help investigate the situation he points to Johnson and Cranston, who he's never actually talked to in person and Cranston is in a stretcher at death's door. And nobody bats an eye despite that Cranston very clearly needs to be taken to the nearest hospital immediately. "I need that horribly injured guy who's about to die and his son who we never even questioned. In fact, I've never officially met either of them but we should bring them along. Just in case an American audience is watching."

And then Cranston dies and pretty much every last ounce of humanity is sucked dry from screen. The one character we developed an attachment to is dead, succeeded by his son who is far less dynamic, doesn't seem to care all that much about his father's death and the truth of his mother's death finally revealed. He just has to get back to his family. He's along for the ride and now the audience is along for his ride, not Godzilla's.

What sucks here is that Ken Watanabe easily could've carried this entire movie on his own. He's a Japanese scientist who understands the creatures and their behavior. He's the closest thing anybody has to an expert in the field. The incident from fifteen years ago had a huge impact on his life. Also, as somebody who's been studying the MUTO egg for over a decade, he has every reason to always be at ground zero. We don't need excuses for him to be there because it's entirely organic with the story and it allows for more time to really sink our teeth into giant fucking monsters fighting.

But Godzilla doesn't really want to show us monsters fighting. It wants us to know that monsters can easily be hidden by a fog or cover of night or both. It wants us to know there's all sorts of destruction going on. But it pulls a very interesting and unique punch about midway through the movie. The MUTO is causing all hell to break loose at an airport, and we see a line of jumbo jets exploding in the background, and finally finally finally Godzilla's giant awesome foot of badassery stomps on the screen. I got goosebumps as the camera slowly scaled up Godzilla's body until we're finally face to face with him. And then he roars. Oh my god, he roars! It's massive. It's jaw dropping. It's everything we've been building up to and finally finally finally we're going to see- a boy watching TV on the sofa.

Huh? So Johnson's son is at home in San Francisco being told to go to bed but is instead watching a live broadcast of Godzilla and MUTO fighting on the news. And as an audience we're all sitting there, waiting for the movie to take us back to the airport where we'll get to see the big badass monster rumble. I mean, the little boy on the sofa gets to see it. Why not us?

But we don't see it. Instead the movie cuts to the next day and we only get to see the aftermath of all the destruction. Granted, the aftermath is glorious. Everything is destroyed. People are dead and injured. The spectacle of that battle that took place feels epic. But... really? We've been waiting an hour to watch Godzilla destroy stuff and... really?

Now, the only way the movie could make up for that is by having the fight at the end be massive. It should be epic and awesome in the truest sense of the word. After spending yet another hour of Aaron Taylor-Johnson, knowing this big epic battle is coming, we finally finally finally get to the big fight and- we mostly watch more of Aaron Taylor-Johnson.

Don't get me wrong. Godzilla is in there for the last twenty minutes. Mostly off screen or in the background while the movie continues to focus on the people. He does fight two giant MUTOs at once, but the movie still does everything it can to avoid actually watching the giant monsters fight. We see skydiving. We see streets in ruins. We see the MUTO nest explode in a giant fireball. We see soldiers trot around with a giant nuclear bomb, trying to get it a safe distance away from the city (so I guess the writers really enjoyed the ending of The Dark Knight Rises). And we see Aaron Taylor-Johnson running around a whole bunch. And in between we get brief glimpses of Godzilla about to do really cool stuff. But we seldom actually see him do those cool things we were so excited about when we walked into theater. It's almost as though the animators visual effects wizards who rendered Godzilla knew how to make a giant monster, but nobody on the staff had any clue as to how to choreograph a big ass fight. So they instead of showing us the monsters battle, the movie kept cutting away. And cutting away. And cutting away.

Godzilla roars and they cut away.

The flying MUTO jumps on Godzilla's back while the other one charges and they cut away.

Godzilla grabs other MUTO and they cut away.

The flying MUTO jumps on his back while the other one charges and they cut away- Wait, we just saw that happen. Is that they only thing they know how to do?

Twice in this little fight -not once. Twice- Godzilla is knocked down at presumed dead. And as much as that might work in wrestling matches, there's usually a lot of jumping off ladders and chair to back hits in between. But for what little time we actually get to spend watching Godzilla, he really doesn't get to do all that much. Yes, there's the atomic breath and it's glorious. Yes his tail smashes through some stuff and it's sweet. But it's only glimpses and quick moments in between all the boring nuclear bomb stuff.

The end result is that probably the greatest Godzilla fight of all time happened mostly off screen or in the distant background of yet another run of the mill "stop the bomb from exploding before the timer runs out" movie.

And I can see the intention here. I get what Edwards was going for in sticking to the humans, and keeping the human perspective, and really fleshing out the human experience of a giant monster attack. Did he do it as well as Cloverfield? Not by a long shot. Did he do it as well as the original Godzilla? Ha! And that's the main problem with the movie. The whole thing was created with a mentality that less is more. The more they keep Godzilla off screen the more the audience wants him, and the more we want him, the better it's going to be every time we see him. To this effect, it works. It's great. When Godzilla does something awesome, if feels AWESOME. And that would've been good and fine if everything in between had been just as incredible. But the human characters, their stories, and their actions mostly terrible. Brian Crantson and Ken Wantanabe are both superb and it's a shame the script wasn't tailored around both of them. Aaron Taylor-Johnson is a poor substitute. A fine actor but seriously they could've given him more than "The soldier who happens to have the exact skill set required to diffuse a nuclear bomb who just wants to get home to his family." We've seen it all before and we've seen it done better. The result is that the constant build of waiting to see Godzilla again becomes more frustrating than exciting.

Something Edwards didn't consider was the second viewing. Yes, I would absolutely love to see both minutes of Godzilla doing amazing things over and over again. But I really, really don't want to have to sit through two hours of the millionth movie about a soldier trying to get home to his family just to see those two minutes. Thankfully we live in the YouTube Age and by the time I post this review there are undoubtedly hundreds of compilations and auto-tuned remixes of my favorite scenes so I never have to bother with the rest of the movie. And that's the real tragedy here. Edwards made a movie meant to be the first time. But there's little point in a second or third viewing because it was designed to anticipate and play with people's craving to see Godzilla himself. That anticipation only works for a first viewing. Once that's gone and you know what's coming, it kills the payoff and reward. I'd much rather they'd honed all their energy into making a twenty minute monster fight worth seeing again and again. Either that or have a more unique human story around monster awesomeness. As is, I guess I can recommend watching Godzilla once. But you'd be better off watching the original.

And just one final thought, if you're going to remake Godzilla, why not make it a movie that takes place entirely in Japan in the 1940s? Update the original story for a modern audience, sure. But we all know what Godzilla is about, what he represents, and why the movie exists in the first place. Stop Americanizing him for American audience when you can show real respect for the source material. And for two reasons, don't worry about whether or not Americans will spend their money on a movie if nobody in it speaks English. First, if there are giant fucking monsters doing giant fucking monster things, trust us, we'll watch it. They could be speaking in The Sims nonsense language and we'll watch it. Second, if your audience is too petty for subtitles and respecting other cultures, they're probably not the sort of people you want your movie to be associated with anyway. Godzilla was heavy in its tailoring for Americans, and I don't know if that was a decision from the studio execs or Edwards himself, but I'd really have rather seen something about the monster than the people watching it.