By Anthony Jauregui
Senior Staff Writer
Disclaimer: You’re now entering the spoiler zone
“Godzilla” premiered last Friday and destroyed its box office competition by bringing in $38.5 million, the most for an opening night of any movie this year. We all know Godzilla from those beautifully cheesy Japanese movies from the 50’s and of course his blood curdling roar, but this time around, we see Godzilla as a hero. What the film excels in are the effects, but the movie lacks believable character development.
The story telling begins with the opening credits, as 60 years of Godzilla unravel, by implementing subconscious images of atom bomb testing in the Pacific as well as stills of a creature emerging from the deep sea ocean. The antiquated footage of atom bomb testing partnered with Godzilla memorabilia from the last 60 years serve as a warning beacon for what the viewer is about to see.
We fast forward to the Philippines in 1999, where scientists have detected large amounts of radiation in a mining pit, which leads to them digging, only to find a skeleton bigger than three blue whales.
In Japan, we meet the American couple Sandra and Joe Brody (Juliette Binoche and Bryan “Heisenberg” Cranston), who work at a nuclear power plant, where some recent tremors have been causing amuck, but officials blame it on earthquakes. Joe, with one ear open, suspects otherwise, but too late, whatever it is causing the commotion has destroyed the nuclear power plant and killed Sandra Brody. The events at the nuclear power plant lead Joe Brody on a downward spiral to obsess over the death of his wife and destruction of the plant.
Several years pass and their son, Ford Brody (Aaron Taylor-Johnson “Kick-Ass”), lives in the United States and has grown up to become a bomb disarmer for the U.S. navy. Joe Brody stays in Japan because he suspects that those weren’t earthquakes back in 1999, and lives in an apartment packed with news articles and disbelief posted on every square inch of his walls, which make it look like a Crime Scene Investigation episode or a preoccupied ex-boyfriend.
Ford Brody rescues his father from jail only to find his dad suggesting that a nearby quarantined zone in Japan is harboring something that the public doesn’t know about, and guess what, its actually home to Godzilla’s victim, a MUTO (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Object).
The movie had the potential to offer more to the viewer because the characters lacked depth.
We are supposed to feel bad for the characters, since their world is crumbling down, but we are left with dull flat characters who I don’t feel bad for. The actors aren’t to blame, however. The writing was spoon fed to the viewer, which leads me to the conclusion that it is in fact, an action movie. There is nothing special about the characters, besides Godzilla.
Godzilla was presented as a hero in this film, unlike the previous Godzilla who just wanted to eat and breed. This Godzilla protected most civilians, by damaging every square inch of land he crushed.
Godzilla did more to protect the world than the protagonist and his family, which only furthered the tear jerking moment when Godzilla “dies”.
The story is well composed but the characters aren’t.
We were left with a movie that is a medium rare steak, cooked to perfection on the outside but bloody and raw in the middle (Because nothing happened in it). Nonetheless, the film was good, not Oscar worthy, but better than Pacific Rim. Like most action movies, it’s lackluster, because it recycled the same characters and internal conflicts as every other monster action movie and expected me to feel sorry for them.
Watch this movie for the cinematography, story and Godzilla’s 5 minutes of screen time (beating Bryan Cranston’s 13) which are superb, and for the chubby Godzilla who burns MUTO ass.
