I want to go into the new Godzilla movie in great detail and I will in a future edition of Monster Movie of the Week, which has been on hiatus while I've been in grad school. I like to take all of the franchise movies chronologically and I have not even made it up to the first American Godzilla movie yet, so 2014 Goji is still quite a ways off. Anyway, here are some quick thoughts on the new movie now that I have seen it a couple of times:
RETURN TO AWES
The best thing that the movie does is to bring a true sense of awe to the Kaiju genre. The movie takes itself sufficiently seriously and maintains an appropriately ominous tone from the beginning, especially in its evocative opening credits, which feature Atomic Age imagery mixed with a few quick shots of Godzilla about to surface on a remote Pacific beach.
The movie is very conscientious about sticking with the human characters for perspective even when it means cutting away from the action and I think it gives the movie a terrific sense of scale. It makes these monsters seem big and terrifying. It never feels like there is a movie about monsters on a miniature set and another movie about people and you are cutting back and forth between them like a lot of 20th century Kaiju movies did. Actually this is the legacy of the first American Godzilla which carried the sensibility over to the Millennium Goji movies and it is also a legacy of Cloverfield which more than any other Kaiju movie stuck to a human perspective as part of it's found footage format.
GOODY TWO CLAWS
For all the talk of honoring the original movie and the fact that the new movie is released on its 60th anniversary, the 2014 Godzilla presents a strangely benevolent version of the character, certainly much more so than the 1954 movie. Over the last 60 years there has been a wide spectrum of interpretations of the character from his overtly cuddly and heroic appearances in the 1960's to his downright malevolent incarnation in 2001's Giant Monsters All Out Attack. In the 1990's and 2000's, it has been fashionable to show him as a kind of a cranky anti-hero.
I'm the new movie, he's presented in a more heroic way than he has been for decades. The movie is cut so that on several occasions he actually seems to be saving people and the crowd audibly cheers him at the end of the movie. Not to mention that earlier in the movie, he is shown swimming in the middle of a bunch of aircraft characters like a damn dolphin.
I really hope those people are in for a rude awakening in the sequel.
GODZILLA BEGINS
As you may know, Legendary is also the production company behind The Dark Knight movies and it has me wondering if they are approaching Godzilla the same way. It would explain why Godzilla is a bit awkward and under powered in this movie. After all, one of Godzilla's defining characteristics is his toughness and it is very unusual for him to take the kind of beating that he takes in this movie. Also, when he first used his "Atomic Breath" it barely had an effect on the female MUTO, whereas in the Japanese movies it is usually a very effective weapon. Also, the fact that after his awesome tail swipe, he knocked a building down on himself was a bit embarrassing. Godzilla fans are actually quite obsessive over his invincibility and power, which is one of the reasons they loathed the first American Godzilla, who was a weak animal in comparison to elemental and powerful classic Goji. This new Godzilla shows a lot of promise, but he's not there yet.
I hope over the course of this (hopefully) new film series, Godzilla grows into his more classic character, that he gets better at Godzilla-ing, the same way that Batman got better at Batman-ing. Hopefully he won't grow a gross beard in the third movie, like Bruce Wayne did. And maybe as in the Dark Knight series he will face a more iconic adversary in his second outing. Who's the Joker of the Godzilla world? King Ghidorah? Mothra? Jet Jaguar?
MO-SU-RA
What as up with all of the subliminal Mothra shoutouts? Famously, the word "Mothra" is written on a terrarium in the abandoned Brody house but that is only one of many references to butterflies throughout the movie which is particularly loaded when Godzilla's most famous opponent happens to be a giant butterfly.
Just a few that I noticed:
-In the abandoned Brody house the camera starts its pan on a large caterpillar
-In the classroom, before the reactor collapses there are illustrations of the butterfly life cycle and an image of a large monarch butterfly
-One of Joe's echolocation diagrams features a bat chasing after a butterfly, also Mothra's nemesis is another monster called Batra.
-One of the scientists references a butterfly
-The male, winged, MUTO hatches from a cocoon, like Mothra. This actually makes me wonder if the male MUTO was actually Mothra at some point in the film's development. It would have actually been interesting to have Godzilla have been the one who was causing all of the destruction and Mothra and a second Toho Kaiju be the ones trying to stop him, instead of Godzilla trying to stop two new monsters. There does actually exist some concept art that appears to show Anguirus and Godzilla fighting in San Francisco.
What role would the Earth Defender Mothra have when this Godzilla is already so heroic? Maybe Goji develops a taste for surface life and begins to menace the Pacific, raiding nuclear sites. I'm hoping by the next movie, humanity has soured on Godzilla and he resumes his role as nuclear hell beast.
MUTO MADNESS
I was a little nervous having seen the MUTO toys prior to the movie and I still think that they look a little too 90's Gamera but I was happy that they at least possessed some interesting and believable behaviors. I found it particularly interesting that the monsters were literally eating anything radioactive that they could find, cracking open nuclear subs like peanuts to get at the reactor cores. In fact, I wish Godzilla would have possessed some more of those qualities in the movie. It is stated that he feeds on radiation although he shows not evidence of this in the movie. In retrospect it kind of irks me that all of the cool ominous things that characters said in the ads and trailers were actually about the MUTOs and not Godzilla. The MUTOs and their attempts to feed and breed are actually what drives the story, Godzilla really only reacts.
SCREW YOU GUYS, I'M GOING HOME
While I'm quite happy with the new design, which is recognizably Godzilla (particularly the exquisite angry-looking face) I do think that this Godzilla is a little too chunky for my liking. Not that any of the Japanese Godzilla's were ever exactly svelte. Godzilla has a long history of blegs, canckles, puckered knees, and the Giant Monsters All Out Attack Godzilla even had a distinct potbelly. This new Godzilla is a bit top-heavy and he lacks the upper body muscularity that became a feature of the character from the 1990's on. This new Godzilla is a bit too whale-like for his own good. I hope to see a leaner and meaner Godzilla in the next movie.
IN CONCLUSION
Despite my nitpicks, I am very happy to finally have such an awesome and well-received Godzilla movie and happy for the prospects of an even better sequel in the near future. Kaiju movies are few and far between. That is especially so for Godzilla movies. Ones that are actually good are even more rare.
Patrick Garone
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