Dull as dishwater

Rating: 6/10 (20 May 2014)

There are times when I just feel out of step with the average moviegoer, and watching the latest Godzilla film in a packed movie theater was one of those times. Godzilla was met with constant cheering and clapping from the audience. But I don't think the movie ever built momentum, suspense, or tension, nor did the characters provide a compelling human element. Godzilla was a flat out bore to me.
I can't really express my disappointment with this movie without revealing crucial plot elements; so if you haven't seen the movie, stop reading this now. The film begins with scientist Ishiro Serizawa (played by Ken Watanabe), who arrives at a quarry in the Philippines where two ancient, giant fossilized eggs have been found – one appears to have hatched. In the meantime, two nuclear engineers in Japan, Joe Brody (played by Bryan Cranston) and his wife Sandra Brody (played by Juliette Binoche) have detected disturbing seismic readings underneath their power plant. The power plant melts down and Joe Brody is forced to seal a few engineers in the core, including his wife, in one of the most painful scenes of the movie. Cranston suspects that the government is hiding something about the nuclear power plant's melt down, and it's obvious to the audience that it has something to do with the eggs that Ken Watanabe found.
Fifteen years later, Cranston, fraught with guilt, is obsessed with discovering what exactly happened to cause the meltdown. His son Ford, a military veteran played by Aaron-Taylor Johnson, has moved on and has a wife (Elisabeth Olson) and a child of his own. Ford's return from a tour of duty in the Middle East is cut short when his father is arrested in Japan for attempting to trespass on the nuclear power plant site. They discover that a monster that feeds on radiation caused the meltdown - but it is not Godzilla, as you might think. No, the culprit is only referred to as a MUTO (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism), a giant moth-like creature that destroys everything in its path through brute force and its ability to emit an EMP blast.
Bryan Cranston is lost in the ensuing destruction. The movie does not really spend much time mourning Cranston as the MUTO quickly calls out to another bigger and badder MUTO that has awoken in California. As Serizawa and Ford work to figure out a way to stop these creatures, the key to their destruction comes from an unlikely source - Godzilla. Godzilla has awoken as well, and he is on the hunt for some MUTO meat.
Director Gareth Edwards takes a different approach with this movie than you might expect, focusing on the humans of the story rather than the monsters. I can certainly appreciate his effort. Overexposure of the monsters might make them lose their impact after a while. But none of the characters are well defined or particularly interesting. Aaron-Taylor Johnson's personality is dull as dishwater and the writers did not really give him any compelling traits. The only character that could have had any kind of interesting arc was Cranston considering the enormous guilt he feels about his wife's death, but he dies within the first twenty minutes. The movie loses its most interesting character far too soon.
The film is only partially redeemed by the action. The action scenes have a very dark, apocalyptic feel, epitomizing the 9/11 fears that have crept into American movies for the past thirteen years. The monsters themselves look amazing and there are definitely some cheer worthy moments when Godzilla kicks serious butt. The last thirty minutes are a TON of fun!
Before the end of the movie though, the action scenes are always cut short, which is a surefire way to take me out of a film. There is never any sense that the stakes were getting higher as the film went on. Perhaps if the human stories were more interesting this approach could have worked, but it just resulted in a very boring movie.
The movie's largest problem is that Godzilla is just a supporting character in his own movie, as Christopher Orr pointed out in the Atlantic. The movie isn't really ABOUT Godzilla; it's about the MUTOs. And I just don't care about MUTOs.
It's clear that a lot of people LOVE this movie though, so there's a pretty good chance you will like it too. I'm just glad that I skipped out on IMAX though, that would have been a real waste of money for me.