My Favourite Movies: Godzilla (2014)

Whilst I didn’t exactly grow up watching the original Godzilla movies I was pretty familiar with the rather strange Japanese basis of the whole idea. I’d seen chunks of quite a few of those early versions and think I actually made it all the way through the first movie when it was given away free on DVD by my Sunday paper. Despite seeing the previous Hollywood outing (also simply called Godzilla) in 1998 starring Matthew Broderick which was frankly awful I thought that the trailer for the 2014 remake looking interesting (and dark) enough to give the idea another chance. As you can imagine, from it making my Favourite Movies list, I wasn’t disappointed.

One of the things I liked about the latest outing is that it took time to build a story rather than just leaping into the action after the most perfunctory introduction of story or characters. Interestingly (as I’ve seen on a few occasions) quite a bit of the background story was telegraphed in the opening sequences – though explained to an ‘outsider’, in other words us, later on. Another thing that impressed me was that you didn’t actually see Godzilla – at least not all of him – for almost the first hour of the movie. Both things are (these days anyway) rather brave stances to take and rather trusting of the audience that they’re willing to wait a fair bit for the action.

The story was, I thought, a pretty good one. Engineer Joe Brody (played by Bryan Cranston of ‘Breaking Bad’ fame) is investigating strange seismic activity near a Japanese nuclear power station when all hell breaks loose and his wife is killed in the disaster. Refusing to accept the official report he stays in Japan to find out what really happened. Meanwhile his son, Ford (played by Aaron-Taylor-Johnson of Kickass fame), grows up and joins the US military as a bomb disposal expert. When Joe is arrested in the quarantine area Ford needs to get him out of police custody and there’s the inevitable fight. Following him back into the supposed danger zone both father and son realises that something is very wrong when they stumble upon a secret facility set up to study a strange giant creature they call the MUTO (Massive Unknown Terrestrial Object). When it escapes and heads across the Pacific towards the US the Navy set off in pursuit only to be accompanied by another giant creature they have been tracking for decades – Godzilla. Hoping that the giant reptile can ‘restore balance’ and kill the MUTO they’re happy to keep their distance whilst Godzilla takes care of the problem. But when a second MUTO appears and seems to be pregnant with hundreds of eggs the US military can leave nothing to chance if they want to avoid pushing mankind back to the Stone Age.  

I know I’ve said something like this probably too many times but one of the things that really sold me on this film was the cinematography. I just really liked the way it was filmed – from the glimpses of the monsters (almost incidental in places to the human action in the foreground), to the impressive devastation shots including the destruction of large parts of Las Vegas and San Francisco, to the (not really very well explained) EMP weapons the MUTO uses with devastating effect against US aircraft, as well as the nicely crafted fight/battle scenes – some which felt rather surreal at times. Much of the film was on a vastly larger scales than the mere human but managed time and again to bring the human element back into focus. Giant monsters might have been battling each other between the cities skyscrapers but it was the people scurrying around in the resultant rubble that counted. A surprisingly good monster movie I thought and I find that I like it the more I watch it – which can’t be bad really.