First off, I believe Legendary realized the appreciation today’s generation has for the dramatic powerhouse that is Bryan Cranston and attempted to really capitalize on it –the star of all of the trailers is only him, not Aaron Taylor-Johnson or even Godzilla– but he is not the main focus of the film. Cranston’s character is integral to the plot but he sees an early termination of his pursuits and, thus, little screen time. Taylor-Johnson is the main character and one of our heroes. Legendary would have us believe otherwise since Cranston is a bigger name and I would be more upset about this had not the movie been exceptionally well done, but it truly was.
I did not and still do not know much about the Godzilla-verse, but I know Godzilla’s nature flip flops from movie to movie. Sometimes he’s made to be a cruel beast; other times he is the Earth’s savior from a greater threat. In this movie he is, at first, misunderstood. It is revealed that mankind has known about this creature for decades and has spent many resources on trying to eradicate him, but they never tried to understand his intentions. Their attempts to kill him proved fruitless and he was forgotten, but a true evil grew in his stead.
Note: I do recommend seeing it in 3D as it helps you see just how big the monsters in this movie are and adds a great sense of scale.
“And it is going to send us back to the Stone Age!”
The movie opens with Dr. Ichiro Serizawa (portrayed by the fantastic Japanese actor, Ken Watanabe) and his research group discovering gigantic skeletal remains in the Philippines. Here, is it found that a natal pod is missing from its incubation area, which the team fears has hatched and escaped. This is never revealed to the public but the scientists begin aiming all of their efforts at locating and containing this threat. Switching scenery to a Japanese town in the shadow of Mt. Fuji, Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston) is a nuclear power plant supervisor who has been tracking regular seismic activity nearing their plant and has become increasingly paranoid that this is not a sign of regular earthquakes. His wife, Sandra (Juliette Binoche) is a sort of reconnaissance engineer that looks to repair any damage to the plant’s equipment. After making sure their son, Ford, safely gets on his school bus, Joe sends her into the core this day to see how the machinery has been affected by the seismic tremors. An explosion occurs and the Brody family’s fate is sealed. Joe must seal the exits leading to the core to prevent radiation leakage into the plant, leaving his wife trapped and his son without a mother.
Cranston shows us the tremendously devastating effects that loss has on a person when Joe devotes the next fifteen years of his life to understanding why tragedy struck that day and to sustain the memory of his dear departed love (the town was quarantined so quickly that he was unable to return home and retrieve even a single photograph of her). Ford is now an explosive ordinance disposal officer of the U.S. Navy living in San Francisco with his wife, Elle (Elizabeth Olsen), and their son, Sam. He receives a phone call telling him his father was arrested in Japan for attempting to retrieve his work from their old home, so Ford has to travel back to bail him out. While Ford is visiting, he is let into Joe’s unorganized and obsession-driven life for the first time in many years, and begins to pity his father. For the sake of respect, however, he travels with Joe to their old home to aid him, where they get caught up in Dr. Serizawa’s discovery of the still-dormant creature that escaped from the Philippines. The adventure continues westward as the monster –deemed a M.U.T.O. (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism)–is birthed and rampages to the States, where Godzilla aims to kill it.
The Arrogance of Man
Much of the movie pits the U.S. navy against the creatures, but, as Dr. Serizawa states boldly in the film, “The arrogance of man is thinking nature is in our control and not the other way around.” This major theme is a recurring element of Godzilla’s original intent. In 1954, Godzilla was created to warn the world against seeking the power of atomic weaponry. He was a menace and a fiend to the people of Japan, and represented the sheer might of an atomic bomb combined with the counter-wrath that nature would use in anger against mankind for attempting to control it. For this movie, he still retains some of his original meaning. Dr. Serizawa also addresses another one of the movie’s themes: that the world requires a balancing force and nature can act as that force. Godzilla is just that, as he does not try to impede humanity’s progress, even when they blunderingly attack him in futile effort. His sole purpose is to defend us from the M.U.T.O.s and their destructive nature and he would die trying if there was a creature too strong to defeat.
As the world falls to shambles in the wake of the monsters’ battle, Taylor-Johnson shines as our hero, Ford. As his journey back to America hits a few rough spots, he advances as a father and as a son. He begins to understand why his father put himself through so much torment and into so much peril, and learns a father’s responsibility to protect his family as he saves a young Hawaiian boy from injury. The movie picks up speed quickly as Ford voluntarily decides to help the armed forces stop the M.U.T.O. and starts a chain reaction of events leading to a climactic battle of Chrysler Building-tall monsters, but loses a lot of momentum in Ford’s connection to his wife. They make a sparing number of phone calls to one another in which he promises to return and save her and Sam, but the pacing of the battle scenes fails to let this happen until it’s too late for the audience to still care about Elle’s well-being.
In the end, all of the Navy’s plans fail –a testament to the theme of our helplessness to stop nature as it acts– and Godzilla becomes the only hope. In this way, Ford parallels our favorite monster and this is confirmed as they both take a tumble in their plights in the same manner. They both have a purpose to protect something (for Ford, his family; for Godzilla, his planet), and are both at seemingly impossible odds to do so, but sometimes perseverance prevails.
Watanabe plays his solemn Dr. Serizawa extraordinarily well, being the sole character to understand Godzilla and always being vigilant to correct the Navy. Taylor-Johnson is a formidable force as our little hero (compared to our lizard-like big hero) who pushes onward to fight for the people he cares for, learning the importance of fatherhood. Cranston is an extremely passionate widower, and his outbursts of frustration onscreen are brilliant, and his few moments with Binoche are touching and sincere. Put all of these fantastic performances together with this time-tested story and you have one of the early, great blockbusters of the year.
The Good
- Cranston, Taylor-Johnson, Watanabe all deliver
- Moments of strong sorrow for Godzilla
- Impressive battles between the monsters
- Great themes to take home
The Bad
- Tricked into thinking Cranston would be a bigger part
- Ford family story builds to nothing
The Score
8.9 /10
Utterly mesmerizing and suspenseful. Leaves you hanging on the edge of your seat.
