A fun summer blockbuster

Rating: 8/10 (18 May 2014)

When I was younger, I was a big fan of Godzilla. I watched a lot of the older movies and the Roland Emmerich "Godzilla" from 1998. Despite the love I had for these movies when I was younger, I had since lost interest in the films and did not think much about them. When I heard about this movie being released, I was interested in seeing it, but I had some fears that it would be an overblown, dumb monster vs. monster action movie with no time or thought put into it. Thankfully, I was wrong.
Opening up in the Philippines in 1999, the skeletal remains of a large creature are discovered after a mining accident. Inside the skeleton, there are two pods, one closed and one opened. A trail of destruction leads from the opened pod to the ocean. Meanwhile, in Japan, seismic activities start to occur at a power plant. The activity around the power plant costs the lives of many people, including the main character, Ford's (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) mother (Juliette Binoche). The event causes Ford's father (Bryan Cranston) to spend the next fifteen years looking for answers.
Ford is called to Japan fifteen years later when his father is arrested for entering a quarantine zone. Ford decides to help his father reenter the quarantine zone, but they are captured and brought to the old power plant. At the plant, there is more seismic activity and a creature awakens, which ends up mortally wounding Ford's father and escaping out to the ocean. Ford attempts to go home, finding himself in the midst of destruction caused by the creature, and decides to help the military kill it so he can return to his wife (Elizabeth Olsen) and his son (Carson Bolde).
What took me by surprise is how the story was told. Godzilla and the other creatures do fight in the movie, but there is barely any of the fight shown. It mostly focuses on Ford and whoever he's with trying to get a mission underway that they believe will kill the creatures. I think many people would probably be underwhelmed with the movie for this fact, but I liked it because barely showing the fights and showing what the characters are doing during the fights is something not a lot of monster movies do.
The characters of the movie are pretty bland and forgettable. Ford is your typical main character who is a husband and father trying to do what's best for his family. His family is just his family, though they did not bother me like a lot of families in movies do. Ford's dad, played by the brilliant Bryan Cranston, is misused as a character who mostly spouts exposition and then dies. Dr. Ishiro Serizawa is just a scientist. There isn't anything interesting about the characters, but that is made up for by the scale of the movie and the amazing effects.
The path of destruction ranges from Japan, to Hawaii, to Las Vegas, to San Francisco, and there is a lot of diversity to the destruction. Sometimes we just see the creature march through the area, we see Godzilla cause a tsunami when he first arrives in Hawaii, and we see naval ships being tossed from the water. With the little bit of monster vs. monster we see in the movie, it is exciting and a blast to watch. My only complaint is that I would have liked to see one of the monsters go through a smaller town, just to see what the destruction would be like in a place that wasn't a big city.
Godzilla has never looked better on the big screen. The towering creature looks like he is actually there, and his laser breath blast looks real. The effects of the film are also really good. The weather effects used during the battle between Godzilla and the other creatures in San Francisco set a very eerie mood and tone.
"Godzilla" is in no way a brilliant movie, but when it comes to summer blockbusters, it is a lot of fun. It does have pretty boring characters like a lot of summer action movies do, but the story is thought out and well paced, you can tell what is happening amid the destruction, and the monsters look amazing.