I’m going to preface this and say that this is my first Godzilla movie that I have ever seen. I’ve never seen the original, or the one where he fights King Kong, or the one with Matthew Broderick that everyone hates, nothing, none of them. I am someone who is in no way shape or form a savant when it comes to The King of Monsters.
So everyone whose anyone has a pretty good grasp on just who Godzilla is. He’s a giant lizard, he destroys things and humans try to fight him, sometimes succeeding, most of the time failing because he’s a giant monster the size of a skyscraper. One thing about this movie is despite seeing all the trailers for it and what not, I really had no idea what this movie was about. Is it about Godzilla? Is it about humanity? Is Godzilla the only monster? I like that I went into this movie with not a lot of knowledge about the premise. However I can say that the movie was not what I thought it was going to be at all. Now that’s not to say that I was disappointed by this.
The film starts off with this engineer, Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston from AMC’s Breaking Bad (2008-2013)), saying that something is going on in Japan and people are trying to cover it up, which I liked because it showed that this force of nature didn’t just show up out of the blue and that it has history. This then leads to Joe asking his son, Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson from Kickass (2010)) to help him uncover these secrets, and Ford is in the navy and just as he comes home, this stuff happens and he has to leave his wife, Elle (Elizabeth Olson – Yes, Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen’s sister) and their son… which sucks, you feel for the guy for having to leave his family AGAIN – which leads to this movie really being a human movie with monster stuff mixed in instead of a monster movie with human stuff mixed in.
You definitely need the main characters to deliver in this movie if you’re going to have a character focused movie and you definitely get that in this movie. Aaron Taylor-Johnson has come a long way since Kickass. He has matured, his craft has improved, and he certainly does a good job in this movie. Ken Watanabe plays Dr. Ichiro Serizawa, who is the guy that knows most about Godzilla and his history on Earth. The more movies I see with Watanabe, the more I like him. He’s a very good actor. Bryan Cranston is more of a supporting role than the advertisements made it out to be but I’m glad about that. If Bryan Cranston were the main character it would have just been the Bryan Cranston show and he would have just stolen the whole movie because he’s that good of an actor. Like I’m convinced he’s not even acting anymore and what we see is just home video footage. Like some guy from a studio is like, “Holy crap, Bryan Cranston is just in this mailman’s face like, ‘SAY MY NAME!’ film it and we’ll put it in something.” The guy is just unreal, from his timing, his emotion, his facial expressions, everything.
Speaking of not in the movie for that much, Godzilla isn’t in this movie as much as you’d think. Like it REALLY is a movie about humanity and the arrogance of man when it comes to nature and whether it is or isn’t in our control. They tease you with Godzilla right before pulling him away and you’re sitting there like “COME ON, GIVE ME GODZILLA,” because you can’t help but have this expectation of seeing Godzilla wreck things and cause utter mayhem in a movie titled Godzilla. Believe me, you do eventually get your Godzilla and the waiting indeed pays off because the climax of this movie is INCREDIBLE.
Godzilla was indeed an enjoyable film despite being a more character oriented film instead of a monster battlefest. If you want that, go see Pacific Rim (2013). Bryan Cranston and Aaron Taylor-Johnson are great along with Elizabeth Olsen and Ken Watanabe. Also it was good to see the chemistry between Taylor-Johnson and Olsen because they’ll be sharing a lot of screen time together as Quicksilver and Scarlett Witch in The Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015).
Overall Rating: 7.5/10
More of a movie about humanity and the arrogance of man. Still a good dose of Godzilla after some teasing. All in all it was a fun movie and definitely worth your time whether your a fan of the Godzilla franchise or not.
-Reed
IMAGES: http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/vIu85WQTPRc/maxresdefault.jpg, http://cdn.screenrant.com/wp-content/uploads/Godzilla-2014-Teaser-Trailer-Poster.jpg
WNS 