The Big G returns with a vengeance

Rating: 7/10 (8 June 2014)

You can't keep a classic monster down. And so it is with Godzilla. Toho hasn't released a new Gojira flick of its own ever since his big 50th anniversary showdown Final Wars in 2004. As the Big G is turning 60 this year, it seemed about time to revamp him once more. This time, the director's chair was given to somebody who had experience balancing human drama and monster action, Gareth Edwards. His take on the giant behemoth makes for one of the finest Godzilla movies yet, but it also frustratingly illustrates just how little you can do with the character.
Thematically, Godzilla has always been an obvious case of 'man versus nature' and this time proves no different. Man's folly playing with powers (usually atomic) beyond his control that end up wrecking civilization has been a prime franchise message since day one, but as it has been a decade since it was last sent to audiences, this is as good a time as any to reapply it to Godzilla's latest origin story. However, Edwards opts to focus most of the plot's attention not on examining Godzilla's existence, but his foe's instead. This story thread is interwoven with the fate of the Brody family. Living in Japan in 1999, Joe and his wife work at a Japanese nuclear power plant, where things soon go awry, leading to the plant's destruction and Sandra's dramatic death. The area is soon declared a quarantine zone, but Joe can't stop investigating the events of that fateful day for the next 15 years, alienating him from his son Ford, bland and forgetful Aaron Taylor-Johnson.
When his father causes trouble with his illegal excursions into the forbidden zone, the now adult Ford indulges him to present his case. Their father-son bonding trip into the zone makes for a haunting return to their old house in a now rundown city. News imagery of the Fukushima area in the wake of the tsunami and the nuclear disaster that followed is successfully evoked by the ruined town set to give this Godzilla movie a 21st century update that accordingly makes it feel sufficiently current and underscores Godzilla's themes still claim merit. The Fords are confronted with the 'MUTO', a giant insectoid creature, that has laid dormant for countless ages, but is now waking up. And all the military might in the world is not gonna stop it from following its natural instincts to feed on atomic energy and procreate. To the latter end, it has signaled a wake-up call to its mate and the two beasties proceed to hook up, likely to humanity's demise.
Edwards spends quite some time setting up the MUTO's motivations and the plight of the Ford family, soon making you ask a pertinent question: where is Godzilla? There is surprisingly little scenes of the actual Godzilla in this movie, but when he finally does appear, he does so with a vengeance. The giant reptile is the MUTO's natural enemy of ages past and as one big bug called the other, so too their predator woke up to find its prey, as expert Dr. Serizawa (Hollywood's obligatory Japanese actor, Ken Watanabe) explains, while donning a foreboding look of concern that irritatingly stays for the entire film. The name Serizawa will sound familiar to Godzilla aficionados, and is just one of many tidbits Edwards has lovingly thrown in as an homage to the Japanese movies. The MUTO's, however, are a new invention specifically for this film, but they serve their purpose adequately for resurrecting Godzilla and providing a good old-fashioned Kaiju brawl. Just like the Godzilla themes of old have hardly changed, so too does the audience's taste for monster battles remain, as Edwards all too clearly understands. It just takes quite a while to arrive at that point in the film where the fight finally goes down. We have to sit through many a scene of human character drama that ultimately doesn't make us really care about their plight before we get what we want. Though patience is required, it cannot be denied that the introduction of both Godzilla and his adversaries is slowly but surely built to a crescendo. When he finally does appear for the first time, it will be hard for fans to repress a chill at this reunion with their old friend.
It's clear Edwards sees no point in redefining Godzilla's look, as this new incarnation of Godzilla stays rather true to the recognizable Japanese forms. Of course, this being a big blockbuster movie, the beast has grown in size considerably to accommodate the humongous budget. Edwards' respect for the classic Kaiju movie approach of men in suits playing the monsters shows, as you'd almost be inclined to think Godzilla is brought to life again in just that manner. Even the MUTO's motions seem human at times, but make no mistake: all three monsters are fully digital creations. Nevertheless, Edwards' ode to sixty years of 'suitmation' is appreciated. Still, the notable differences in Godzilla's appearance compared to his predecessors, particularly his obese bodily features, are bound to tick off some fans.
Unjustly so, as this Godzilla, both the execution of the titular character and the movie as a whole, form a vast improvement over the previous American capitalization of the Japanese property. In terms of story Edwards adds little novelty to the previous fifty years of Gojira. The message remains the same, as does the usual tendency towards flat human character development interspersed between delightful monster battles. There's only so much you can do with a giant monster. However, as this movie demonstrates, times haven't changed enough for the cautions against man's tampering with nature to subside, nor has the audience changed enough they can't appreciate a good ol' monster clash on the big screen. Even if the upcoming sequels fail to deliver new directions for the franchise, Godzilla has enough of a fight left in him for another fifty years.