Chad’s Grade: B+
Is there not a more pop culture artifact linked to Japan than Godzilla? Yes, the Anime subgenre like “Akira” and “Ghost in the Shell” has the flourishes of the country’s unique Asian culture (along with some genuinely stunning animation). Yet there’s something primal about Toho’s great lizard beast that became a cornerstone of 1950s Japanese cinema. Godzilla was a cinematic representation of the deep-seated trauma of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. A massive creature born out of nuclear annihilation causing chaos across the planet, with puny humans utterly helpless in his wake of destruction.
The first full American version of “Godzilla” (not counting the obscure “Godzilla 1985” re-edited feature with Raymond Burr) was Roland Emmerich’s 1998 take from Tri-Star pictures. That movie turned out to be a total train wreck, offending the die-hard fans with its complete redesign of the familiar Godzilla beast. Not to mention one-dimensional characters, stilted dialogue, and ridiculous plot twists that are hallmarks of director Roland Emmerich.
When a second American version was mounted, two trends were conflating in Hollywood in the early 2010s. The new Kaiju sub-genre was kicked off by Guillermo Del Toro’s 2013 feature “Pacific Rim.” And it was around this time that every studio in town was raiding their existing IP vaults to create a multi-franchise shared “universe” to compete with Disney’s Marvel Cinematic film machine and a new batch of Star Wars films.
Enter Warner Bros, who snatched up the rights to the Godzilla franchise when Tri-Star failed to renew the license. Teaming up with Legendary Pictures, Warner’s envisioned a set of movies that they dubbed the “Monster-verse.”
Warner Bros hired up and coming director Gareth Edwards, who had wowed the industry with his low-budget 2010 film “Monsters,” which featured large-scale aliens quarantined in the Mexican desert. “Godzilla” was a passion project for Edwards, a self-professed super fan of the majestic beast. Edwards put together a teaser trailer (see below video) for his vision of the film, with shots of a massive slumbering Godzilla with a voice-over of the J. Robert Oppenheimer “destroyer of worlds” monologue. The clip was shown at Comic-Con, where it wowed the Hall H crowd and Edwards was off to the races to make his first big-budget feature.
Thankfully, the 2014 “Godzilla” is a vast improvement over the deeply flawed 1998 version. Director Gareth Edwards proves himself the real deal, embracing the Japanese origins of the property and giving the Godzilla beast the appropriate amount of gravitas. But the film isn’t without some flaws, namely, its script that’s a jumble of numerous writers. Reportedly David Callahan, Drew Pearce, David S Goyer, and Frank Darabont all worked on drafts of the script, and this lack of focus dampens this otherwise solid version of the giant lizard.
Brian Cranston plays Joe Brody, a former lead engineer of the Japanese Janjira power plant that fifteen years earlier experienced unusual seismic activity that tragically killed his wife (Juliette Binoche). Still suffering from that loss, Joe has turned into a paranoid conspiracy theorist, convinced that something else caused the meltdown of the Janjira plant. Namely, monstrous creatures awakening and starting to communicate with each other.
When Joe is detained for trespassing in the Janjira quarantine zone, his estranged son Ford Brody (Aaron Taylor Johnston), a US Navy officer, is called to bail him out. Joe is determined to find out the truth at Janjira and convinces Ford to return to the quarantine zone. They are again captured and taken to the plant’s ruins, a huge organic hive that houses the insect-like MUTO (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism). There, Joe and Ford encounter project Monarch, a government organization dedicated to studying these MUTOs, especially the alpha predator Godzilla.
The winged MUTO hatches from the hive and escapes. Soon Monarch discovers that there are two MUTOs, male and female, who plan to mate and reproduce. This awakens alpha predator Godzilla from his decades-long slumber to hunt these MUTOs in a show of dominance. A brief encounter with the male MUTO in Hawaii is followed by a massive beat down in San Francisco, with Godzilla taking on both MUTOs. What’s worse is that Ford’s wife Elle and their young son reside in the city and are caught in the crosshairs of these massive battling creatures.
Brian Cranston is easily the best thing in the movie, and why he wasn’t the lead is baffling. Cranston was amid a career resurgence thanks to the uber-popular Breaking Bad TV series, and he brings much of that manic intensity to his performance. The movie was building a compelling drama about a conspiracy-obsessed father trying to reconnect with his estranged son that would’ve been a good fit for the film’s dark tone. The movie even grants Cranston a crazed monologue worthy of Paddy Chayefsky.
When Cranston is abruptly sidelined midway through the movie, it’s up to Aaron Taylor Johnston and Elizabeth Olsen as his wife, Elle, to carry the human element in the film. When given good material, both Olsen and Taylor Johnston can really shine (Johnston showed enormous range in “Kick-Ass” and “A Million Little Pieces”). Still, both are playing ciphers here: Johnston, the dutiful Navy soldier, and Olsen as the motherly nurse caring for their young son. Olsen and Taylor Johnston are nicely paired (incestuous casting alert: the pair would play siblings Scarlett Witch and Quicksilver in 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron), but the drama is bland and uninteresting.
The true star is Gareth Edwards, who directs the hell out of this movie. Edwards shows his chops here, with an ability to give these vast creatures a sense of scale that was missing from not only the 1998 version but the Japanese films as well. Edwards fills the screen with stunning visuals, like an overhead shot of Godzilla’s massive scales diving underneath an aircraft carrier before making landfall in Hawaii. Or spec like soldiers shooting flares revealing the mountain-like size of the Godzilla beast. With their insect-like bodies, even the MUTOs move quickly and give Godzilla a run for his money in their final battle in San Francisco.
Edwards also knows the value of pacing, as he doesn’t reveal Godzilla until a good 40 minutes into the film. In interviews, the director has stated that he was inspired by Spielberg’s Jaws (as if the Brody name didn’t tip you off). Edwards constantly teases and cuts away from his battling creatures until the final climax in San Francisco.
And I give a special shout-out to the H.A.L.O. jump sequence where Brody and his squad parachute into the city while Godzilla is beating down the MUTOs. Set to the haunting Gyorgy Ligeti’s Requiem (the same music featured in 2001: A Space Odyssey), it’s easily the film’s most intense moment, from the red streaks of the parachutes piercing apocalyptic clouds to the POV shots of Brody descending past the battling hulking beasts. It’s here that the film emphasizes the helplessness you would feel if these gigantic beasts roamed the planet.
Unlike the 1998 version, the filmmaker smartly embraced the Japanese roots of the character. This Godzilla looks similar to the original 1950s design, albeit thicker and larger in scope. And most importantly, the great lizard is neither presented as a hero nor villain, just a beast taking his rightful place in the natural order. After battling the MUTOs, he rises from the ashes of the fallen city and slinks quietly into the ocean, with the humans watching in awe. A nice inversion of the far cruller ending that the 1998 Emmerich presented.
The film did solid if a middling business, grossing $200 million domestically and $529 million worldwide. That was enough for Warner Bros to move forward with their “Monster verse” series of films, including 2017’s “Kong: Skull Island,” 2019’s “Godzilla: King of the Monsters,” and concluded with 2021’s “Godzilla vs. Kong.” All these films showed diminishing returns, hinting that the American appetite for the Kaiju genre is waning. But the 2014 “Godzilla” is worth a re-watch and shows a young director full of promise saddled with a flawed script.