Godzilla: 2014

   When I say monster, what sort of thing comes to mind?  Maybe you think of the Universal monsters like The Wolf Man, or The Creature From The Black Lagoon. Or maybe you think of the creations of special effects pioneer Ray Harryhausen. But if you're like me, then the first thing you think of when you hear "monster" is Godzilla. A name that implies ultimate power and destruction...and dinosaurs. Godzilla began his reign of destruction in 1954 with the release of his first feature film entitled, "Gojira". The monster was supposed to symbolize the power of nuclear weapons, and the destruction the monster caused mirrored (more or less) the devastation of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This is  who Godzilla originally was, but as he began to appear in more films the giant thunder lizard would become both friend and foe to the human race through one way or another.  And once again an American director has decided to wipe the slate clean and retell the first appearance of a scary, green, scaly, atomic breathing, giant monster. Let's take a look at Gareth Edwards' Godzilla!

   Now before I begin I would like to clarify something. I am a huge Godzilla fan. I love the monsters and robots that he fights. I love Monster Island. I love everything from Mecha-Godzilla to Jet Jaguar and I was really excited when I heard tell of a new Godzilla movie! Like, oh my god. For once in my adult life I would have a modern release to call my own! I was hyped, and I hoped that this revamp of a franchise would succeed in reminding audiences who the king of monsters was. However, I understand that writing a review of a film with this big a fan base is a heavy burden to carry, and in doing so I need to remind those who have an opinion to also respect mine for what it is. To you I might be wrong. To you I might not have fully understood the kind of Godzilla movie that was meant to be made. Maybe, to you, Gareth Edwards exceeded your vision of Godzilla to the nth degree. I'm trying to break to you that I didn't like this movie. Let me tell you why. Who knows, you might be really disappointed. 

   The plot follows Joe Brody (Cranston), his son Ford (Taylor-Johnson) and their efforts to uncover a conspiracy hidden by the government. As you may have guessed that conspiracy is Godzilla, and it later escalates as more monsters reach more populated areas. And the first thing that I want to talk about is Godzilla which was, after all, the main selling point for the film. There is a ton to consider when you take the helm for a job like this, and I think that Edwards did the most that he could do. And it looks beautiful. The pacing, every movement, his face, the moves! It's all there! And it looks so cool!!!!! As far as I'm concerned Godzilla looks perfectly fine. I heard that some people thought that Godzilla's legs and feet looked fat, and I can see where they're coming from, but it never really bothered me because he's a giant monster and I was prepared for him to be lumbering around a metropolitan area. In other words, his size matched his speed. 

For a movie called, "Godzilla" there really isn't all that much Godzilla in the film. The full screen time that Godzilla has might clock out to a half an hour at the most, and only half the time he's fighting other monsters. When I watch a Godzilla movie I expect it to revolve around him for the most part, but instead Edwards decided it would be better to star two actors to carry our story from beginning to end.

   I want to explain why a main character is important in a story for a frame of reference to this movie. The main character is who the audience vicariously lives through. It is important to have a character in a story that doesn't understand the driving action at hand so that when he is learning about the situation, so are we as an audience. The way that Jo works with Ford is similar to a movie like Back to The Future however only in the sense that there is an experienced man trying to explain a discovery to an inexperienced apprentice. But in a movie like Back to the Future we care a lot more about Marty than Doc Brown because we like his character, we want to see him overcome obsticals, and we know he's not perfect (when he loses his temper after being called "chicken"). Marty McFly is a well rounded character. Ford is not. I have no disrespect towards Aron Taylor Jonson's performance, but his character has nothing interesting set up during the entirety of his screen time. I don't care about him as a character at all. I don't care about his wife, or his job, or his well furnished house. The only reason I think he needed to be in the movie was to give us perspective of a human in comparison to Godzilla...which was incredible. 

   Bryan Cranston's performance was incredible as well and while I don't believe that he was picked simply to grab more of an audience, I don't think it hurt the film during box office weekend. His performance was so good, I can honestly say that I cared infinitely more about Jo and his wife with the ten minuets they were interacting together, than the entire rest of the film that had Ford and his wife interacting together. The very moment that Bryan Cranston died I had no one to follow in the movie that I remotely cared about. It relieved all the tension because I didn't care about Ford or his wife. He was the only interesting character and when he left I had nothing to invest in for the rest of the film. 

   Many people had gone into this movie with different expectations because while there is generally a formula to a Godzilla movie, there are also different aspects of the franchise that fans like to focus on. My ideal Godzilla movie would be a bunch of never-before seen actors playing scientists with no names that try to kill Godzilla with a science thing...but that will never happen. I didn't expect it to happen, but I hoped it would. This is not that movie.

   There were a few minor problems I had with Godzilla, like how everything seemed a little too convenient for our main characters when they were everywhere Godzilla was, and when Ford makes it his mission to save one child out of the fifty people that are on a train literally speeding towards one of the monsters. But I can look past those flaws. All in all Godzilla takes itself a little too seriously for me. There are several dry spells in the film where nothing happens, the actual story that doesn't involve Bryan Cranston is terrible, and I didn't care about the main character. But if you're willing to put up with that to get to the best ten minuet monster fight you've ever seen, I recommend it.

6/10

Trailer

The Lost World: 1925

   I am so glad that I'm reviewing a horror film again.  It's been so long since then, but it is nice to be back in the chair, in my room, and on this blog.  "The Lost World," made in 1925, utilized the ability of stop-motion animation to bring the these behemoths of lizards back from extinction, and onto the big screen.  It was the first adaptation of the book written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle  who actually stars in the film as himself (no doubt raising his ego by 30%)!  But could these prehistorical skyscrapers, these magnificently towering lifeforms, these...dinosaurs...alone support an entire film?  let's find out in my review of, "The Lost world!"


   


   Oh, Lost World, what secrets do you hold?  A garden of Eden, unharmed by the destructive nature of time?  A prehistoric paradise with convincingly tall rocky formations?  Well, whatever it was, it did generate a profitable amount of buzz.  See real live dinosaurs, interact with humans!  Travelers, exploring dangers unknown!  It was every adventurers dream  come true, right up on the big screen.  Because now, after reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's novel about dinosaurs from the Jurassic age, they got to see everything come to life for the first time!  I'm sure that It blew everyone's mind (all over the theater too)!  The effects must have been stunning then, and to be honest, it's still pretty okay even for today.  But, the question that has been waiting quietly in the margins of the review is, "how does everything else hold up?"  I'll be the man to take that plunge.

Well, the first thing we find is that the SAME EXACT music is recycled from, "The Phantom of the Opera."  Don't get me wrong, it's great music; in fact, it's symphony's has been etched into my mind as classic.  There's only one problem.  It doesn't work in this movie, and I'll tell you why.  With these two films, we have two different locations.  One is in a jungle, and another is in an opera house.  The music, in, "Phantom of the Opera" succeeded in immersing you even further into the film with the gloomy atmosphere, and characters.  It fit perfectly.  THIS film.....doesn't work with this kind of music.  I would have preferred something along the lines of the music from a film like, "The Ape," or "The Ape Man."  They weren't as good pieces, but at least it would have fit the mood of the film.


 I feel as though this film is reminiscent to, "King Kong,"  how several explorers venture out to a, "lost land"  teeming with prehistoric life.  However the many differences that these two films face is that one film keeps the main characters as the humans and the monsters as an amusing spectacle. The other film the switches the roles and, the monster becomes the focus of the film.  This film takes the easy way out.  You don't have to send a message, just through a bunch of dinosaurs into the plot to make it edgy!  What a lousy bunch a' mediocrity!  I don't care if you take the time to bring the monsters to life, because you don't give them any place in the film other than something really cool to look at.  You know what it's like?  It's like if you've ever been to a float parade.  The main reason the things are built is to look pretty, and to give the spectators something to look at.  Those dinosaurs were tools to enhance the experience of being marooned and to heighten the tension of the film, but you turned them into PRETTY PARADE FLOATS!!!   But, I digress.

  During our first moments in the jungle we get to look at as many animals as the film's budget could muster.  However, our explorers aren't frightened in the slightest as they come across these animals one by one.  In fact they go right up to two bear cubs who are fighting for food!  I'm sorry, let me rephrase that, "they go up to a pair of hungry bears like they're in a zoo!"  Although I'm sure a zoo wouldn't be too much different, because these animals don't seem to have an ounce of dignity left inside their shipped-out hides!  But I digress.


   But the animals of the present would later be cast aside by our main attraction; dinosaurs!  These lumbering Goliath's are brought to life by stop-motion animation.  This form of film is achieved by the film maker moving an object however far he it believes an object to actually move during the duration of one frame. You start the camera, pause it, rinse and repeat.  The effect works well, but the fluency of movement could have been a whole lot better.

   Alright, I'm done kicking this film in the face.  Now lets talk about what made this film so good.  The scenery is very nice, and my favorite shot is of the two cliffs in the distance.  The rocky formations are very distinct and I enjoy the notion that they took the time to make or to find this shot. However, the closer shots throughout the film are very dark, lighting wise.  It is interesting, but it also makes everything much harder to see.  I will say this though: It was very ambitious of the director to create such an environment, realistic for its time.


   The best way that I can describe this film is that its head is in the right place, but whatever it did to emulate that idea, was not...done...too...well.  The reason that I'm saying this is because I have found a pattern within the film.  It goes like this:  Dialog, Shot of scenery, Dinosaur fight!  That's why it gets boring!  That's why it's predictable, and that's why this film barely passes my rating system.  It's amusing, I'll put it like that.  However, you want to watch something within the monster arena, I would recommend...my new future series.  But, I will be doing other reviews before then.

Next review:  Raiders of the Lost Ark 1981