Finally, after years of secrecy and anticipation shooting through the roof, Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla is smashing its way into theaters and I couldn’t be happier. As a child I was a massive fan of the franchise, obsessively watching re-runs on TV or on playing and re-watching my VHS’. In fact, I still have my childhood Godzilla toy proudly displayed in my room. So when the lights went down, the IMAX 3D countdown began and Godzilla’s roar boomed loudly in the theater as it hit zero with the bass shaking my chest, I knew I was going to be watching the movie that I, and a lot of other people, have been waiting 16 years for.
The plot to Godzilla is fairly simple. Mankind has been keeping watch over powerful dormant creatures for years, but after an accident, it accidentally awakens two beastly “cockroach meets Starship Trooper” monsters that feed on nuclear waste called MUTOs (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms). In between the birth of the first and second MUTO, another monster is discovered lurking in the waters dubbed Godzilla, and it’s there to stop these creatures before all hell breaks loose. The film focuses predominantly on Ford Brody (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), a naval officer who specializes in disarming bombs and whose father (Bryan Cranston) was obsessed with finding out what the government was hiding from the people. Ford’s mission is to find his way back from Japan to San Francisco in order to protect his wife and son but in order to do so he must help Dr. Ichiro Serizawa (Ken Watanabe) the man who has been studying these monsters for years, and the military Admiral to see what the best options are for saving the lives of millions of people.
So how’s the film? To put it simply, when the monsters are on the screen, Godzilla becomes an epic you get absolutely lost in, when we return to the human characters it becomes a mediocre film that wastes the talents of all its best actors and gives the spotlight to a Hollywood hunk that you could care less about. Ken Watanabe spends most of his time staring into the distance, wasting his acting chops of a few corny lines and looking at things. Sally Hawkins is in the film as Ken’s assistant and is there to explain everything that’s going on. The issues with Bryan Cranston and Juliette Binoche is that they just don’t get enough screen time but certainly make the most of what they have. Elizabeth Olson is there to worry over her husband, Ford, and has become the young Julianne Moore of crying. Sadly enough Aaron Taylor-Johnson gets most of the attention and just so happens to be the least interesting and engaging character of them all.
I’m only harping on the acting and dialogue because it’s such a large part of the film, which I appreciated from a storytelling perspective, but realistically, everyone knows that these secondary characters are meaningless, we’re all there to see the return of the king and boy is it glorious. At first it seems as if Godzilla is overweight, but when you realize that he’s 350 feet tall, the guy has to have some chubbiness in his legs if he’s going to support that massive body of his. As any fan would have hoped for, Godzilla has a presence that can’t be matched and every time he appears on screen you get that “here we go feeling” as you rub your hands together anticipating what bad-ass thing he might do next. But when he starts doing some damage and kicking monster ass there’s not a soul in the theater that won’t cheer as he battles his foes. I can’t express enough how awesome he is but all I’ll say is be sure to brace yourself and grab something, because when he both roars and uses his atomic breath for the first times you’ll want to jump out of your seat, punch something and yell “LET’S GO!!!!!” This is a film made for IMAX and if you can see it in that format, do it, because what’s better than seeing a 350 ft monster on the biggest screen you can? Nothing.
The one part of the film that I loved but that audience members will be divisive about 
is how much screen time Godzilla has. The way the film is edited, Edwards teases us, giving us glimpses of the big guy but saving him mostly for the final epic showdown with the two monsters. We’ll see him about to start a fight and then cut away to the humans because we are seeing things from their point of view and they are going into hiding. This happens constantly and it only truly begins to teeter on the edge of frustration when we’re approaching the climax and the tactic is still being used. I personally liked it because it made me more excited for the showdown and helped increase my anticipation for the scene. It also made the film feel less of “let’s see how much of the city we can destroy” movie like Pacific Rim and more about giving the film a proper story and all the characters soul.
In fact, this soul, this personality, is probably Godzilla’s greatest strength. The monsters live not to destroy the planet; they have their own agenda and have emotions, which you can see in their faces like you would with any living creature. Unlike in the original Godzilla where he arrived to punish man, this Godzilla arrives to keep the balance of nature in check, he’s actually man’s savior and is there to prevent these other monsters from having babies that could destroy the planet entirely. He’s there as a force of nature, but a force that mankind cannot control.
One of the greatest assets of the film and what enhances it drastically, besides the incredible effects work and cinematography, is the menacing score from Oscar-nominated composer Alexandre Desplat. The film opens with an ominous track coupled with visuals of nuclear attempts to kill Godzilla, setting a haunting stage for what’s to come. The opening was powerful but you don’t realize how good the rest of the score is until you leave the film, it transports you into Godzilla’s world, the world that I found myself in countless times as a child.
Overall, Godzilla is exactly the film most people have been waiting years for; a film with a good, human-centric story with some commentary, much like the Japanese original, coupled with the return of a king that looks like the real deal and not some marine iguana. It’s an event picture that’ll get the crowd excited and pumped up while also highly engaged. For example, when I say I cheered out loud in the theater multiple times, I literally yelled with excitement along with a majority of the audience, that’s the effect this film has on you. And though Godzilla is not a perfect film, it’s certainly better than Pacific Rim on many levels and probably one of the best big monster movies since Jurassic Park (and it has a few similarities to it as well). If you can, see it in IMAX, it won’t disappoint.
Rating: The king of the monsters is back and he will not disappoint, but some of the human aspects might (7/10).
My fanyboy rating: I’m going to see it again (7.6/10)
PS keep an eye out for some fun Easter eggs throughout the movie, there’s one particularly good one that hints at the future
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