After seeing “Godzilla”, I’m worried that writing this blog
has made me over-critical. I usually
like movies better than official critics; I tend to agree more with movie
viewers. In this case, though, I liked “Godzilla”
less than both groups, at least based on the Rotten Tomatoes ratings.
I understand that opinions, by definition, are
subjective. People who like comic book
movies will probably enjoy a new comic book movie more than those who don’t
like that genre. So perhaps my
estimation of Godzilla is less than people who like monster movies.
Last year’s “Pacific Rim”, admittedly, wasn’t a great
movie. But it had mecha (aka giant
robots)! Not only that, but it had mecha
fighting giant monsters! And the designs
of the mecha were really cool! To me,
that was more than enough to forgive funny science, plot holes, and a somewhat
disappointing end, among other things.
Mecha make up for a multitude of movie sins. “Godzilla” didn’t have any mecha.
**SPOILERS AHEAD**
What it did have was a lack of logic. For example, the military seemed bent on
using nuclear weapons, when all evidence pointed to radioactive material being
a food/energy source for the bad monsters (MUTA—it’s an acronym) and perhaps
for Godzilla as well, though that was somewhat unclear. Another thing was that the MUTA seemed to
have multiple methods of development: the pods that the two main ones hatched
from along with eggs that the female laid and tried to bring to term. I suppose it’s possible that the pods were
cocoons, and they had started out in life as the eggs, but that was never
mentioned or explored.
There were more things that bugged me, but they weren’t
necessarily logic errors. One, getting
into and out of hard-to-access areas was never shown: characters talked about
needing to get into those areas, and then they were just there. Two, Godzilla was described as a
predator. His behavior, however, wasn’t
predatory as in an animal hunting food.
It was more like he was a hunting down bad guys or going for revenge on
a couple of killers. Three, Godzilla
didn’t use his “special move” (breathing blue fire) until the very end. Why not start out with that—unless the
waiting was necessary to extend the length of the movie?
Along with all of those gripes, there were others. There wasn’t enough Godzilla. We got to see him (or bits of him) at the
very beginning of the movie. As the
movie went on, we still didn’t get to see all of him until about two thirds of
the way through it. Along with that, he
seemed to be a background character as opposed to the title character. Finally, while the movie started out with a
decent amount of excitement, it was slow until the end. I think I actually heard a guy behind me
snoring at one point.
There were some things about “Godzilla” that I really liked. For example, the aesthetics of the movie were
very nice (a scene with a dark grey cloud of dust in the background and some
strings of orange lanterns in the foreground comes to mind.) Godzilla’s design was very true to the
original, if a little chunky, but with much better special effects. The MUTA were well designed as well, and
definitely scary.
The acting wasn’t too bad, either. My first introduction to Bryan Cranston was
in “Malcolm in the Middle.” The next
time I saw him was in the remake of “Total Recall” a couple years ago. What a switch! I haven’t seen a lot of “Breaking Bad” yet,
but again, so much different from my first introduction to his work. He’s very good in “Godzilla”—and not as a bad
guy this time. He’s a lot more versatile
than I ever thought he’d be. The rest of
the cast was pretty good as well, though Ken Watanabe never got to do anything
except scowl and be thoughtful. I wish he’d
been allowed more of a part.
In all, I wonder if I’d have liked the movie better if I was
more of a fan of monster flicks. I know
that they aren’t necessarily known for their plots. If there had been something to make up for
the deficiencies—like the mecha in “Pacific Rim”—I would have had an easier
time overlooking them. As it stands,
this won’t be on the top of my movie list for summer 2014.
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