I saw this late, having read and heard some reviews,
including a pretty comprehensive one my Mark Kermode on his radio show with
Simon Mayo. The interview they had with Director Gareth Edwards was insightful
without giving away some crucial plot points. I’ll endeavour to do the same.
As is well-known, the 1998 Roland Emmerich Godzilla film
starring Matthew Broderick and “who the hell cares who else” failed to impress.
I’m sure it took good money (though I suspect the production costs were huge)
and popcorn-guzzling audiences probably enjoyed the destruction and special
effects. This film has a few things in common (necessarily) with the ’98 incarnation
– city destruction, a huge lizard, heroic protagonists – but treads a different
path in explaining ‘Zilla’s origins.
The opening credits are fantastic. I liked Gareth Edwards’ first feature film, “Monsters” a lot because of its subtlety, the way it pulled you in to the story from the start and then the careful pacing. It has these things in common with Godzilla, to its benefit. We see footage of the 1950s Pacific nuclear tests but not as we’ve seen them before. Yes, the armada of decommissioned military boats are still there in the blast radius, with Officers looking on from a safe distance, but the unmistakeable silhouette of something living is there. These nuclear blasts may not have been tests after all.
Cut to 20-something years ago and Bryan Cranston (most recently hugely famous in Breaking Bad) is Joe Brody, working at a nuclear power plant in Japan. Bringing up his son Ford with his wife Sandra (Juliette Binoche), tragedy strikes. Cut to the present day and Joe is trying to uncover the cause of the tragedy, convinced that the real cause is being covered up. Arrested, his son Ford (now grown up of course and played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who I didn’t realise until now also played Kick-Ass in Kick Ass) flies to see him and then we’re waist-deep in monster action.
Firstly the special effects: they’re standard-setting. The creatures we see never look like they weren’t there. The mix of physical effects and CGI is well done too, with moments like San Francisco bay filled with the US Navy’s fleet looking for all the world like they’d actually amassed a flotilla of killing machines for real. A special mention for the sound effects – Godzilla sounds awesome (the film and the creature). The sound is subtle when it builds atmosphere and brutal when the moment comes. There’s just one little thing that irks (well, irks me). When things crash towards you from the sky (missiles, mortars, planes, whatever), the sound they make should increase in pitch (as they get closer) as per the Doppler effect (things moving away decrease in pitch). In Godzilla they decrease in pitch - a familiar sound, like when a mortar is "Incoming!!". In nearly every film I’ve seen this error is made. It wouldn’t have bothered you until you read this though, huh?
The performances from the humans are spot on. Nobody is going to win a Best Actor award for this, but Cranston is suitably stressed, Ken Watanabe is as reliable as ever (look at his history on IMDB – his CV is astonishing). No one character aside from Ford Brody gets a huge amount of screen time. This is a film about giant creatures, environmental responsibilities and the human response to the threat of destruction.
The opening credits are fantastic. I liked Gareth Edwards’ first feature film, “Monsters” a lot because of its subtlety, the way it pulled you in to the story from the start and then the careful pacing. It has these things in common with Godzilla, to its benefit. We see footage of the 1950s Pacific nuclear tests but not as we’ve seen them before. Yes, the armada of decommissioned military boats are still there in the blast radius, with Officers looking on from a safe distance, but the unmistakeable silhouette of something living is there. These nuclear blasts may not have been tests after all.
Cut to 20-something years ago and Bryan Cranston (most recently hugely famous in Breaking Bad) is Joe Brody, working at a nuclear power plant in Japan. Bringing up his son Ford with his wife Sandra (Juliette Binoche), tragedy strikes. Cut to the present day and Joe is trying to uncover the cause of the tragedy, convinced that the real cause is being covered up. Arrested, his son Ford (now grown up of course and played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who I didn’t realise until now also played Kick-Ass in Kick Ass) flies to see him and then we’re waist-deep in monster action.
Firstly the special effects: they’re standard-setting. The creatures we see never look like they weren’t there. The mix of physical effects and CGI is well done too, with moments like San Francisco bay filled with the US Navy’s fleet looking for all the world like they’d actually amassed a flotilla of killing machines for real. A special mention for the sound effects – Godzilla sounds awesome (the film and the creature). The sound is subtle when it builds atmosphere and brutal when the moment comes. There’s just one little thing that irks (well, irks me). When things crash towards you from the sky (missiles, mortars, planes, whatever), the sound they make should increase in pitch (as they get closer) as per the Doppler effect (things moving away decrease in pitch). In Godzilla they decrease in pitch - a familiar sound, like when a mortar is "Incoming!!". In nearly every film I’ve seen this error is made. It wouldn’t have bothered you until you read this though, huh?
The performances from the humans are spot on. Nobody is going to win a Best Actor award for this, but Cranston is suitably stressed, Ken Watanabe is as reliable as ever (look at his history on IMDB – his CV is astonishing). No one character aside from Ford Brody gets a huge amount of screen time. This is a film about giant creatures, environmental responsibilities and the human response to the threat of destruction.
At a whisker over two hours, Godzilla romps along with few sagging points. There’s a strange little sub-plot lasting minutes in the middle involving a Japanese kid separated from his parents that I think is supposed to serve as an example of a character’s humility and heroism. It stuck out as a bit unnecessary and clunky but hardly hurts the pace or plot.
A film about giant monsters trashing cities (Look! Vegas! Kaboom!) isn’t really the place to look for depth but Godzilla is invested at least with some purpose. His “reason for being” is suggested but not explained fully as a balancing force, here to maintain the natural order. Whether GZ is conscious of his (her?) role as Giant Lizard Mediator is unclear. It’s enough though to justify the giant creature’s role in this story. The family story involving the Brodys seems superfluous at times and moments where someone waits in a dangerous place waiting for their hero to rescue them, journeying from another dangerous place when they could just get the heck out of there reminded me of “The Day After Tomorrow” a little, but as with the stranded Japanese kid sub-plot, it’s just no a big enough deal to distract from a brilliant monster movie. I’ll be very interested to see how well it translates to the home cinema experience. I’ll be getting it on Blu-Ray nonetheless.
See the trailer here:
Written by Steve Fair - 2014
No comments:
Post a Comment