Godzilla's story (now that's entertainment!)

Rating: 10/10 (16 May 2014)

Going into this film, I only wanted an entertaining B movie that honored the Toho series I grew up with. And I am completely satisfied with what I got.
Because of the enormous amounts of money spent on genre films these days, many people are under the illusion that 'B movie' is a derogatory designation. That is nonsense. Some of my most beloved films are B movies - wonderful adventure thrillers, action fests, horror stories, westerns, mysteries. Sure there are B movies that excel and leap into 'A list' territory (e.g., "The Good, The Bad & The Ugly"). But there's nothing wrong in making a great B Movie - A lot of films by such as Howard Hawks and Alfred Hitchcock were put together with no greater desire than to entertain a ticket buying audience. That's all a B Movie has to do.
"Godzilla" does that grandly. It IS a B movie; so is Hawks' "El Dorado" or Hitchcock's "Psycho." So it is in good company. And (like all great B movies) it is very entertaining.
Edwards succeeds partly because he has designed the movie to look like a movie. This is not a visual roller-coaster ride. No shaky-cam or MTV editing here. The sometimes quick closure to action moments, like with Godzilla's first meeting with the MUTO, are clearly intended to bring the audience to the edge of their seats demanding more. This did not work for some critics, but it worked for me. I never felt like I was getting less than I wanted.
Also, the pacing was far stronger and more rapid than many reviews had led me to believe. The narrative drive, once one grasps the real narrative, is utterly relentless. And what I mean by that is, the real story here is not about any of the humans. This movie is called "Godzilla," not because he's on screen most of the time (he's not, although we see him far earlier than any of the critics have reported - like in the title sequence) or because he's the 'main' monster (he's not that either, although he plays a much more important role than the others do); but because it's HIS story - it's HIS conflict, and, being THE agent, HE has to resolve it. (The MUTOs are important because they are part of that story, and it is partly their story as well - and they are terrifying, BTW.) Edwards shoots this story slightly off-center, through the eyes of humans trying to cope, only because he has a human audience to play to. (If the audience were all just radioactive lizards, there wouldn't be a human on the screen. But it would still be the same story.)
BTW, all of the critics complaining about the somewhat undeveloped characters here have missed the big boat. Whether consciously or not, Gareth Edwards and his team have achieved a remarkable conceptual construction here, staggering in its simplicity and audacity. They have grafted a ('90s) "Heisei" era Godzilla story (see, e.g.,: "Godzilla and Mothra Battle for Earth") onto a 1950's era Hollywood science fiction film - think "Them!," Pal's "War of the Worlds," or the original "Thing from Another World." As I watched these characters struggle to come to grips with their monster problem and still get on getting a job done, I kept thinking of the scientists and soldiers facing similar problems in '50s American sci-fi movies, responding in similar ways with similarly compressed explanations and suppressed emotions. Edwards makes up for any lack of depth to these characters by keeping the perspective on the monster action as close to humans experiencing it as possible - much the way that the directors of the '50s did. The complaints against Aaron Taylor-Johnson, missing this point, miss the finesse of his performance - he is doing what Edwards wants him to do, standing in as 'Everyman' avatar for the audience (much like James Arness in "Them!"); any stronger performance would have been distracting.
But the main story is of course the monsters'; that also has been missed. The humans are witnessing the culmination of a conflict beginning millions of years ago. Consequently, they are merely annoyances for the monsters who are enacting their ancient struggle for natural resources. This drama is in fact a fluidly unfolding whole, which critics who try to impose a classic '3 act' structure on it fail to see. This film has a prologue, the narrative certainly has connecting episodes, but there are no 'acts' - once in the present day, it just goes.
Which is why the finale is actually quite satisfying. For the real protagonist of the film, with the big fight over, there's no need for a wrap-up - and surely no need for commentary from those pesky little hairless apes, who don't have the slightest clue as to what's really going on in the world they think they dominate.
What more need be said? Like the '50s sci-fi movies it so heartedly evokes, the dialog is sometimes silly and cliché. The photography and design are solid; the music is not at all dull, it is supportive of the visuals without drawing attention to itself (which is a classic '50s era soundtrack composition rule-of-thumb, BTW). The CGI is state of the art (I saw it in 2D and it looked great). And there are a lot of 'Holy Crap!' moments that are truly memorable.
And did it pay homage and honor to the source material, the original series produced by Toho, 28 films over 50 years? Absolutely. The story is very "Heisei" era, and as good a reboot as "Godzilla 2000." For a kaiju eiga junky, this film is seventh heaven. Highly recommended without reserve - and take the kids to see it, preferably at a drive in with lots of popcorn. (That's how I first saw Godzilla - memories are made of such as this.)