Hollywood’s relationship with Godzilla maybe isn’t on the best terms after the abomination that was Roland Emmerich’s 1998 disaster which saw Matthew Broderick tangle with a monstrously-chinned incarnation of the famous beast in a disastrous attempt to cash-in on Jurassic Park’s success. Charged with restoring some credibility to one of cinema’s most beloved creatures is Gareth Edwards, aiming to anchor the monster-movie thrills and spills with character-driven drama.
It’s an approach that served Edwards well in his 2010 debut, the excellent lo-fi sci-fi Monsters which kept its titular beasts largely hidden until the third act, instead focussing on the growing tension between the two leads. With Godzilla, Edwards’ canvas has grown significantly, taking in a raft of characters and monsters of a much larger scale.
Aaron Taylor Johnson plays Ford Brody, a young solider whose parents (Bryan Cranston and Juliette Binoche) were scientists at a Japanese power planet where something went badly wrong 15 years ago. The memory of this tragic event has left Ford’s dad a crackpot conspiracy theorist, convinced that what happened was not a natural disaster.
This brings Ford and his dad to the attention of top nuclear scientist Dr. Serizawa (Ken Watanabe) who has been monitoring an enormous chrysalis that seems to be feeding on the nuclear energy. It eventually hatches, unleashing a creature codenamed MUTO (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism), a colossal, insect-like being that trashes the facility and flies off.
The arrival of this MUTO, and its even bigger MUTO friend, awakens Godzilla, who it seems is just hanging around at the deepest, darkest corner of the ocean waiting to help out humanity if a situation like this arises. Big G follows the MUTOs all the way to the US, where the creatures are seeking more nuclear resources, leading to a spectacular third act smackdown between the three beasts.
Edwards stages these action scenes brilliantly, shooting the monsters – particularly his title character – from the ground up, giving a fantastic sense of scale that really brings across just how massive these things are. The choice to delay Godzilla’s appearance until very late in the film builds a real sense of anticipation so when we finally do see him, it feels like a fittingly iconic moment.
Unfortunately, Godzilla’s motives are never entirely clear and the whole plot around the monsters is muddled and inert, lacking any of the satirical or allegorical qualities of the original. The stock human characters are no better, with each of them feeling like a device to move the plot along. The idea behind delaying the arrival of Godzilla and focusing on the characters is admirable but here it seems to have been done for the sake of it, without worthwhile characters or stories to focus on. Aaron Taylor Johnson is a stiff presence in the leading human role and the likes of Elizabeth Olsen, Bryan Cranston, David Strathairn, Ken Watanabe, Sally Hawkins and especially Juliette Binoche are badly wasted in nothing roles.
In his first blockbuster film, Edwards has shown a good command of grand action sequences and his desire to focus on characters is encouraging but it doesn’t quite work out here as Max Borenstein and Dave Callaham’s script offers up no real tension and no resonant themes, with only the monster mash ups offering any memorable moments.
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